The Boos Cruise, Conclusion

cassie boosBy early August 1916, Cassie Boos and Naomi Ernst had been locked in mortal legal combat for weeks. Cassie had accused Naomi of attempting to extort money from her; Naomi accused Cassie of trying to steal her husband from her. Neither woman seemed willing to give an inch, at least if what their attorneys told the reporters was true.

E.E. Ernst, the man in the middle of the embarrassing skirmish, was trying to diffuse the situation, or maybe he was just trying to get released from police custody, when he signed an affidavit denying that he or his wife were involved in a plot to blackmail Cassie Boos, and he also vehemently denied that Mrs. Boos had made an effort to alienate his affection from his wife.

Naomi won the first round when Judge Richardson sustained the demurrer to the complaint against her, in which she was accused of attempting to extort $15,000 from Cassie Boos.  The judge’s action automatically dismissed the charge; however, it was stipulated that the prosecution could, if it desired, file an amended complaint.naomi

It is difficult to say who blinked first, but on August 16, 1916, the Los Angeles Times reported that Cassie’s attorneys, Morton, Behymer, Craig and Salzman stated that an agreement had been reached by the waring parties, and that Mrs. Boos was going to withdraw the criminal complaint she’d filed against Naomi.

Maybe a good faith sign from Cassie was all the incentive Naomi needed to drop her suit too. Naomi even went so far as to admit that she’d been misled and deceived by a few of Cassie’s enemies who urged her to bring the suit.  Who the enemies were and how they came across Naomi wasn’t revealed in the papers. Naomi (as her mother had earlier advised her to do) agreed to return to Cassie the letters that she had written to E.E. during the summer of 1915.

By the end of August 1916, the combatants had negotiated a peace treaty–but it lasted for only a couple of months.

sues boosE.E. must have spent the time from August to October ruminating over the claims and counterclaims that had resulted in his arrest and seven day detainment in the City Jail–because on October 13, 1916 his attorney, Daniel M. Hidey, filed a false arrest suit against Cassie Boos on behalf of his client.

The newspapers took the opportunity to rehash some of the more humiliating moments of the alienation of affection claim against Cassie. To buttress her argument that Cassie had attempted to steal her spouse, Naomi had produced letters from Cassie to E.E. in which she addressed him as “The Duke of Catalina”, “My Sweetheart” and “My Dear”.   A disclosure of this kind would have been bad enough for anyone, but for the wife of a wealthy and respected man it had to have been devastating.

Through his attorney E.E. stated that he had suffered damages amounting to $60,796 (equivalent to $1.3M in today’s dollars) due to his false arrest.  He had spent seven days in jail where he declared he was made ill after being subjected to a “third degree” interrogation by detectives.  Further, according to E.E., Cassie knew he was innocent when she swore to the complaint charging him with blackmail.

Daniel M. Hidey submitted an itemized list of damages to the court:

“Seven days in jail, lost time at $3 day, $21; legal counsel, $150, securing above sum he sacrificed property valued at $300; seventy-five days lost by reason of arrest, $225; illness caused by “third degree” required medical services, $100; injury to feeling and loss of pride, $10,000; general damages, $25,000; punitive damages, $25,000.”

Cassie Boos’ attorney, Ona Morton, issued a unequivocal denial of the charges, alleging Cassie was the victim of a conspiracy to extort money from her.

Mr. Morton said:

“Mr. Ernst has no just claim against Mrs. Boos for false arrest and we will show that, by his own statements, Mrs. Boos was fully justified in causing his arrest on the charge she did.  There was no malice in the charge.”

Unfortunately, there was no further mention of the Ernst vs. Boos lawsuit in the L.A. Times so I don’t know if E.E. emerged triumphant. My guess is that the lawsuit went nowhere; I can’t imagine that the L.A. Times would not have reported on such a large settlement, if there had been one.

henry boos deathI don’t know how E.E. and Naomi fared in the months and years following the lawsuits; but the Boos’ marriage survived another four decades beyond Cassie’s brief infatuation with “The Duke of Catalina”. Henry passed away at age 78 at his home on Plymouth Blvd in April 1957. He had retired in 1946. He was survived by his widow Cassie, brother Cyrus and four married sisters. Services for the cafeteria pioneer were conducted in Grace Chapel, Inglewood Park Cemetery.

The Boos Cruise

In 1905 the four Boos brothers, Henry, Cyrus, Horace and John moved to Los Angeles from Moscow, Ohio with a dream of opening their own cafeteria. Cafeterias were a new concept in those days; in fact the term hadn’t even been coined until 1893 when John Kruger opened an eatery in Chicago modeled on European smorgasbords.

Boss Brother Cafeteria c. 1934 [Photo courtesy of LAPL]

Boss Brother Cafeteria c. 1934 [Photo courtesy of LAPL]

The brothers had worked in restaurants in New York and St. Louis and they were drawn to Los Angeles, as were so many others from the East and Midwest, because of its weather and the opportunity to create something completely new.

Angelenos loved the cafeterias, they offered a multitude of choices and, even better, you didn’t have to tip! By 1916 the brothers were operating four cafeterias downtown.

00037577_boos bros xmas dinner 1934

Cassie Altherr arrived in Los Angeles a few years after the Boos brothers. Cassie’s husband, William, trained and showed Shetland ponies and was involved in what was referred to as the “amusement” business–I read that to mean carnivals and/or circuses. William may have been good with horses, but he was a miserable husband. The pair had married in 1902 in Alton, Illinois, but the union lasted for only a few years before William deserted Cassie. At least he left her stranded in Los Angeles–not the worst fate that could have befallen her.

In September 1910, Cassie sought to divorce her spouse on the grounds of desertion. Cassie testified that William wasn’t a total deadbeat, he had sent her regular checks–usually accompanied by a terse note:

“Cassie, Please find enclosed check for $35.”

The judge asked her if that sort of abbreviated communication was typical of William’s correspondence, and she said that it was. The judge said:

“Well, they are brief and to the point, but they are not examples of the missive a man would send to his wife if he really cared for her.”

Cassie won her divorce.

Cassie remained in Los Angeles; and it isn’t clear how she and the cafeteria magnate met but they married on March 20, 1912. The wedding, a small affair, was covered the next day in the Society page of the L.A Times:

“Miss Cassie Altherr, daughter of Mrs. Mary Green of Kingsley Drive was married yesterday, to Henry Boos, a young business man of the city. Rev. J. M. Schaefle read the ceremony at the Hotel Alexandria, in the presence of twenty-four guests. The room was aglow with bride roses, and where the young people stood a forest of palms was effective.
Luncheon was served from a table, enhanced with a beautiful centerpiece of bride roses. A three months’ trip through Florida, Cuba and the East will be enjoyed before making this city their home.”

Only a few weeks into their honeymoon Cassie and Henry, along with the rest of the world, would hear the news that the luxury vessel Titanic had gone down in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean just four days into her maiden voyage. They must have felt fortunate knowing that, even if they had wanted to, they would never have been able to make it to Southampton, England in time to take the cruise.

The newlyweds returned from their extensive trip in June and eventually made their home in a palatial mansion on Gramercy Place.

Other than an occasional mention in the society pages the Boos appear to have led a quiet life. But this is Deranged L.A. Crimes, so you know that quiet domesticity never lasts.

On June 24, 1916, LAPD detectives Raymond and Canto, and a private detective named Blair, went to the small home of Naomi and Erwin Ernst at 1321 1/2 W. 25th Street. The Ernst home was about two miles and two million light years away from the Boos mansion.

The police had a warrant issued by Judge Richardson to arrest Naomi and Erwin for being members of a blackmail gang that was said to have extorted large sums of money from well-known businessmen and their wives over the course of about six months. A complaint had been signed by Cassie Boos alleging that the Ernsts had attempted to extort money from her.

blackmail headlineNaomi told the detectives that the charges against she and Erwin were absurd. She said she wasn’t a blackmailer at all, in fact she was a wronged woman. She said she was going to name Mrs. Boos in a $50,000 alienation of affection (heart balm) suit.

Erwin, who was cooling his heels in the City Jail, was more than willing to talk about what he considered to be a misunderstanding. He backed up Naomi’s claim that neither of them were blackmailers; however, he said that his wife had recently come into possession of some overly friendly letters sent to him the previous summer by Mrs. Boos, and therein was the problem.

Apparently, in August 1915 Erwin had been employed by the Catalina Excursion Company as a boatman and he had met Cassie and several of her wealthy friends when they hired the boat he piloted for an outing. It may only have been a day cruise, but apparently Erwin made quite an impression on the ladies.

Erwin said:

“I met Mrs. Henry Boos and several other ladies on an excursion and extended every courtesy; these ladies seemed to appreciate the kindness extended to them and I later received several letters from them manifesting their interest in me and their intention to help me.”

Erwin claimed that he and Naomi had separated a couple of months prior to his meeting Cassie, so there was no way that the cafeteria owner’s wife could have been responsible for alienating him from Naomi. He maintained that the correspondence from Cassie was innocent,  and certainly not intended to rupture his already rocky marriage.naomi

By December 1915, Naomi and Erwin had resolved their differences and resumed their marriage; that was until the letters surfaced. Like most daughters in a similar situation, Naomi sought the counsel of her mother, Mrs. L.C. Osborne, a former Long Beach osteopath.

Mrs. Osborne protested her daughter’s innocence to the detectives and recalled her advice to her offspring:

“When my daughter obtained those letters from her husband, last December, I advised her to take them to Mrs. Boos and have it out with her and return them without resorting to any legal action.”

Good advice that had fallen on deaf ears.

Cassie’s attorney’s tried to spin the case as an egregious attempt by two sinister individuals to perpetrate a crime against their client:

“We regret exceedingly that there has been any publicity of this case. The facts unquestionably show that a certain coterie of people deliberately planned and purposely acted to extort money by blackmail from our client. We are prepared to prove this beyond any question from many sources.”

“Unfortunately, blackmailing in Los Angeles is becoming a fad.”

They continued:

“In this instance they (the alleged blackmailers) have found one who has been strong enough to meet the light of publicity full in the face, for the sake of exposing the attempt that has been made to extort money from her, and the authorities, after a careful investigation are now bringing justice to the instigators of this nefarious plot.”

Nefarious plot? Maybe. Maybe not.

The attorneys for both sides traded barbs in the newspaper, but it was tough to tell who was in the right. Were Naomi and Erwin blackmailers–was Cassie a home wrecker; and who would emerge victorious once the smoke cleared?

NEXT TIME: The Boos Cruise continues.