A Second Chance

March 19, 1927
Long Beach, CA

longbeachshootingFred and Lela McElrath had been married for 25 years, and raised three children together, now grown. But just as the couple should have been settling down into contented empty nesthood, a violent disagreement nearly destroyed it all.

Fred wanted to leave Long Beach for Freewater, Oregon, where they owned a ranch; however, Lela was determined to stay put. She moved out of their home at 45 Atlantic Avenue, and Fred spent nearly a week trying to track her down. On March 18, they finally agreed to meet at a neutral location, their daughter’s home at 32 Neptune Place, and try to talk things through.

However, Lela refused to reconsider, and walked away from the argument. As she was descending the stairs in her daughter’s house, Fred pulled out a gun and shot her twice in the back before turning the gun on himself, firing into his mouth. The shots didn’t kill Lena, and when she was admitted to Seaside Hospital, it was assumed that she would recover. However, Fred was barely clinging to life, and in fact, police arriving on the scene initially believed him dead.

Today, things looked drastically different. A bullet was lodged behind Fred’s left ear, but doctors expected that he would make a full recovery — and in all likelihood, be left to stand trial for his wife’s murder. The shots fired into his wife’s back had punctured her right lung, and she was not expected to live. Authorities stood watch at Fred’s bed, waiting to charge him either with murder or attempted murder.

Shockingly, the story has a moderately happy ending. On April 11, a frail Lena McElrath, appeared at her husband’s preliminary hearing and was helped to the stand by her son, where she made an impassioned plea on Fred’s behalf.

"I do not want to testify against my husband, nor do I want him prosecuted. I believe our trouble was caused as much by me as by my husband. I want to go back to him and begin all over."

Judge Stephen G. Long agreed she should have that chance, saying, "This is a very remarkable affair, but if both parties are willing to forgive and forget and to endeavor to patch up their broken lives, I think the kindest thing for this court to do is to give McElrath a chance."

The charge was dismissed, and the McElraths left the courtroom with their arms wrapped around each other. Lena’s wounds were expected to heal completely with time, though Fred would be forever incapacitated by the bullet, still lodged near his spine.

Physician, Kill Thyself

February 17, 1927
Santa Ana

zappedThe widow Alice Hanmore has a bone to pick with Evangelists, or, more specifically, the College of Medical Evangelists.  Truth be told, evangelists should be, oh, evangelical, and leave the application of Röntgen rays to the professionals.  

In March of 1926 Alice’s husband M. J. Hanmore, a Fullerton oil worker, began experiencing stomach pains and loss of appetite; Drs. Claude E. Steen, Emerald J. Steen and John A. Whalen of the CME/White Memorial Hospital decided that an intensive course of that ever-beneficial ionizing radiation would do the trick.  Today, Alice is charging in court that “negligent and unskillful” employment of X-rays resulted in severe fatal burns—she’s asking for $30,000 ($348,669 USD2007).

(Our evangelical docs Steen & Steen will make the papers again in March, charged of malpractice by one Mary A. Greene of Fullerton—she goes in for an ingrown toenail, so they take that portion of the nail.  So far so good.  Steen & Steen subsequently amputate her big toe.  Then they amputate much of her leg.  Further operations result in anthropy of Mary’s thigh muscles.  She’ll ask for $25,000.)

The REAL Aviator

February 9, 1927
Los Angeles

deathdefyinSure, while we’ve repeatedly reported to you about blindfolded drivings—today was announced something that actually guarantees splintering wood and crunching metal.  

Finley Henderson has a really good idea:  dive an airplane from a height of 1,000 feet, clip the wings from the machine between two telegraph poles, and crash into a bungalow with the remains of his plane at sixty miles an hour.

Don’t worry:  he wears the shoulder and shin guards of the football field, the breast pad of the baseball umpire and a catcher’s mask.  Kids, try this at home.  Above your home.  Into your home.

Sponsored by Earl L. White and KELW!  Come on out to Burbank’s Magnolia Park and watch the fun!

FearlessFinleyFor the record, when the stunt was performed on February 20, Finley emerged unscathed, smoking a cigarette.  And then noted for the wowed crowd and boys of the press “The stunt is easy if you know how to do it.”

Finley made the news again in June, when, at the Glendale Airport Air Rodeo, just as he was stepping into his plane (this time, to crash into a barn), in front of all those eager spectators, United States Deputy Marshal Charles F. “Spoil Sport” Walsh served Finley a summons.  Hot on Walsh’s heels were pansy Capts. Walter F. Parkin and William B. Breingan, of the recently created Aeronautics Branch, United States Department of Commerce (oh, Mary), there to enforce their writ of injunction restraining Finley from performing the stunt.

Apparently, these hi-falutin’ aeronautics fellows have just made stunting within five miles of a regularly established and operated air line against the law…apparently also is flying a plane that is wholly unsafe, and is likely to collapse upon the audience when in flight.

But wasn’t that part of the thrill?  No wonder we went into a depression.

Mysteries of the Road

accidents
January 19, 1927
Santa Monica, Venice

A drained, shamefaced whisky bottle and wrecked car were all officers found tonight at Colorado Blvd and Twenty-Third Street.

A thorough check of the hospitals and morgues revealed nothing further.

In nearby Venice, at Washington and Brooks, an ambulance was summoned when excited folk in the vicinity witnessed an auto turn turtle.  In true 1920s fashion, the two young male occupants righted the thing and drove off, presumably in a crazy zigzag with zany piano accompaniment.  

The Bell/CHCI3 Stradivarius Colligation

December 30, 1927
Redlands

kloro-formWell-known automobile distributor Lawrence S. Ferguson, 20 San Gorgonio Drive, was called to the telephone today.  A hoarse-voiced “Mr. Morris” declared that his auto had broken down five miles outside of town and that Lawrence’d better come quick.  Apparently Lawrence always does as he’s told, because he hot-footed it out of town.

But the hoarse-voice chap wasn’t five miles outside of town; he had instead hightailed it over to Lawrence Ferguson’s home.  Hoarsey and a buddy paid a visit to the abandoned Mrs. Ferguson, where they stuffed a large wad of chloroform-soaked cotton in her mouth and nostrils, knocking her out and, according to authorities, did so nearly permanently, which would have added murder on top of robbery, and making prank phone calls.

The robbery part, incidentally, netted the robbers three diamond rings worth $1,800 ($19,854 USD 2006) plus a silver saxophone, some jeweled wristwatches, overcoats, the money hidden in the mattress (how many times do we have to tell you people?) (and not in the Bible, either) and Mr. Ferguson’s revolver.  And his Stradivarius, valued at $400 ($4,411 USD 2006).

Beware of the Goat

December 12, 1927
Glendale, CA
 
deaththreatsThree Glendale families found interesting missives in their mailboxes this week, and they weren’t no holiday wishes.

The Van Pelt family received a note reading:  "You are to be killed tonight at 10pm sharp."

The Westons were warned, "Highway bandits will rob your house tonight."

And then, the cryptic letter received by the Simingtons:  "Beware of the goat.  He is watching you."

Today, Glendale police revealed that two bored 12-year-old girls named Dorothy Alman and May White were responsible for the threats which kept the neighborhood "on the verge of nervous spasms for several days."

 
The two said they wrote the letters on a lark.  Today, these shenanigans would probably get a kid put on some kind of watch list, but in 1927, the preteen terrors were turned over to their folks.  The detectives on the case didn’t report the particulars of how the girls’ parents responded to the news, but said that "it sounded like a-plenty."

Little Girls Lost

December 5, 1927

juneMr. and Mrs. Jack Laughlin of 2115 S. Harvard departed for a weekend getaway in San Diego, leaving their daughter, June Blossom, 14, in the care of their housekeeper and family friends.  After saying goodbye to her folks, June invited her friend Mary Jane Carroll, 13, over for the weekend.

Sunday afternoon, the girls went outside to play, and vanished.  Shortly after their disappearance was noticed, the blue dress and sandals that June had been wearing that day were found in a nearby vacant lot.  When the Laughlins returned, they found that in addition to a missing daughter, about $4000 worth of clothing and tapestries were missing from their home.

So sinister-sounding were the facts surrounding the disappearance of Mary Jane, and June that it seems impossible that the incident wrapped up as happily as it did.  As it turns out that the whole thing could be chalked up to a case of "girls will be girls."maryjane

On December 6, Mr. Laughlin and Mr. Carroll set out to pick up their daughters from a San Diego hotel.  The girls had skipped town on a lark with the intention of surprising June’s parents in San Diego.  Unfortunately, they’d left around the same time that Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin had started home.

No word on how June’s clothes turned up in the lot, or the whereabouts of the missing tapestries; however, the most precious cargo was accounted for, albeit in deep, deep trouble.

When Does He Find Time to Play Pool?

November 25, 1927
Santa Ana

nexttimenexttime

Those of you who have taken a club to an elderly woman know, that’s six months in County.  Everybody knows that.  And just as those of us who have wielded a pool cue at a mother-in-law are looking at the ol’ six mos and that $500 ($5,515 USD2007) fine, that’s what shoulda faced Anaheim’s Walter J. Jewell—except in his case there were extenuating circumstances.

You see, he’s a man who loves his children.  He wuvs them.  In that bloodlusty kinda way.

Seems that Jewell arrived at wifey’s house (they’re separated) to pick up the kids for the customary week-end visit.  But despite his being a prominent citizen, he just doesn’t see fit to pay his alimony, which sent wifey’s mother—the aforementioned mother-in-law—into a huff.  Crone in question, Mrs. Marion Blake, also of Anaheim, refused to allow Jewell possession of the youngsters.  Enraged, Jewell rushed back to his auto and retrieved his trusty billiard cue.  Back in the house he did, though, stop short at cracking her skull open like a soft-boiled egg.  

The court informed Mrs. Blake that it was “inadvisable” to take the law into her own hands—that would be apparent.  Mr. Jewell was scolded that he was “old enough to know better” than to “assault an aged woman with a club.”  That may be.  In any event, because everyone loves children so durn much, Judge Ames decided to knock Jewell’s punishment down to ninety days and nix the fine.  Awwwww.

GAR Blimey

confessionNovember 24, 1927
Long Beach

Frank E. Foster once stared down the blazing Enfields and Richmonds of Johnny Reb, Bragg’s cannons and Forrest’s cavalry, but it took some punk kid from Long Beach to put him down for good. 

That punk kid is Richard Robert Haver, 16, whose penchant for driving other people’s cars landed him in Chino, where police interviewed him today about a spate of Long Beach robberies last September.  Sure, during one robbery he pushed an old man.  Haver hasn’t been told that the old man died.  

“I saw him coming, although it was dark,” Haver told Detective Sergeants Smith and Alyes.  “At first I tried to avoid him by slinking back against the wall, hoping the man wouldn’t see me.  But he grabbed me by the coat with both hands.”  (Apparently the 85 y.o. Foster figured the whippersnapper wouldn’t be reconstructed.)  “I kept pushing him into the screen porch where he slept.  The door was open as I rushed for it and I pushed the man out of the way.  He tripped on the steps and fell outdoors onto the sidewalk.  Then I ran toward the front of the house and headed for the ocean.  I’m sorry I pushed him so hard, now that I know he is an old man.”  Haver’ll be sorrier once the authorities inform him that, on top of being popped for the eight homes he ransacked while the occupants slept (earning him the sobriquet "The Pants Burglar", in that he stole away with trousers in the night and emptied their pockets), he’s a murderer.

(Haver was sent to the State Reform School to remain until he turned 21, at which point the courts would again pass upon his case; the papers make no mention of that event or its outcome.)

quails!In further news of the Boys in Blue, another Damn’d Yankee, this one in Spokane, has problems of another variety.  “I’m living on borrowed time,” said Enoch A. Sears, 84, “far past my allotted three score and ten, and I only want peace and quiet.”  He has filed for divorce from his wife of one year, and has departed his home, leaving it to his wife, 59, and her mother, 79.  Enoch simply stated he was “too old to become accustomed to living with a mother-in-law.”

Spend Xmas With the Demon Dog on the James Ellroy Digs L.A. Bus Tour

UPDATE: 12/22 has sold out, 12/29 tour was added and sold out within a day… but you can still get on the waiting lists!

Gentle reader,

We are giddy to announce that our Christmas week tour will be a very special event: "James Ellroy Digs L.A."

Our host on the tour will be the acclaimed crime novelist and memoirist whose highly personal take on L.A.’s underworld from the 1940s through the 1960s is as captivating as it’s horrifying.

Passengers will gather on Saturday 12/22 at Arnie Morton’s downtown (which is opening specially for our group at noon, with a limited snack and bar menu), then get on the bus at 1pm sharp for James Ellroy’s personal guided tour through the city that haunts his dreams and inspires his art.
 
We’ll accompany the author on an uncensored time travel journey to tony Hancock Park, where he stalked his teenage classmates and later broke into houses. . . to the Hollywood flats to explore some of the heinous 1950s murder cases that fascinated him as a youth and continue to feed his obsessions. . . and out to El Monte, where his mother Geneva was murdered, the unsolved crime that runs through all his work, from "The Black Dahlia" to "My Dark Places."
 
When asked what passengers could expect on this tour, James Ellroy said, "I dig L.A. because I’m from here. My parents hatched me in a cool locale. I’m desperate to impress people, I’m a good talker, I know a shitload about L.A. and I want to share it. On this tour, you’ll get L.A. crime and social history on an unparalleled AND intimate scale."
 
So get on the bus at Arnie Morton’s in downtown LA on December 22 and spend your holidays with the demon dog of American literature, on what’s sure to be the coolest ticket in town.

Tickets are $60/person, available from https://www.esotouric.com/ellroy or by emailing to reserve and then sending a check. Seats are extremely limited on this special event tour; and sorry, no discounts or Esotouric season pass tickets will be honored.
 
Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule:
Sat Nov 17  – Pasadena Confidential tour
Sat Dec 8 – Raymond Chandler’s LA
Sat Dec 15 – James M. Cain’s So California Nightmare
Sat Dec 22 – James Ellroy Digs L.A.
Sun Jan 15 – Vroman’s edition, The Real Black Dahlia