Join me tonight, Tuesday, March 10 at 9 pm PDT on Midnight in the Desert for 3 hours of conversation on my favorite topic, historic Los Angeles crime, with host Tim Weisberg.
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Film Noir Friday — Saturday Matinee: Shadow of a Doubt [1943]
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is SHADOW OF A DOUBT, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten and Macdonald Carey — with a fine performance by Hume Cronyn.
The script was a collaboration between Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson and Alma Reville (Hitchcock’s wife). This was Hitchcock’s favorite of his films.
Of course Hitch makes a cameo appearance in the film, and Wikipedia tells you when to look for him:
Alfred Hitchcock appears about 15 minutes into the film, on the train to Santa Rosa, playing bridge with a man and a woman (Dr. and Mrs. Harry). Charlie Oakley is traveling on the train under the assumed name of Otis. Mrs. Harry is eager to help Otis, who is feigning illness in order to avoid meeting fellow passengers, but Dr. Harry is not interested and keeps playing bridge. Dr Harry replies to Hitchcock that he doesn’t look well while Hitchcock is holding a full suit of spades, the best hand for bridge.
Before the feature, enjoy this short subject from the CRIME DOES NOT PAY series.
Film Noir Friday: The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.
Tonight’s feature is THE STRANGE LOVES OF MARTHA IVERS [1946] starring Barbara Stanwyck, Lizabeth Scott, Van Heflin and Kirk Douglas. Rest in Peace Mr. Douglas.
TCM says:
Years after a murder drove them apart, an heiress tries to win back her lost love
Film Noir Friday: The Man Who Cheated Himself [1950]
Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.
Tonight’s feature is THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF [1950] starring Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt, and John Dall.
IMDB says:
A veteran homicide detective who has witnessed his socialite girlfriend kill her husband sees his inexperienced brother assigned to the case.
Enjoy the movie!
December 1969
On October 13, a paragraph in the Los Angeles Times’ Southland section covered a raid on a “Hippie Commune” in Death Valley National Park twenty-one miles west of Badwater, CA. The raid, conducted by sheriff’s deputies, national park service rangers and the CHP, turned up several sawed-off shotguns, handguns, rifles, and ammunition. The raid went off without a hitch which, given the number of weapons found, is a small miracle.
Fifteen people were arrested. A scruffy little man named Charles Manson was among those taken into custody. A Sheriff’s deputy dragged him out of the 12×16-inch cupboard in which he was hiding.
The raid had nothing to do with the August murder spree which took the lives of seven adults and Sharon Tate’s unborn son. Manson wasn’t yet a suspect. The raid was all about the auto theft ring operated by the family.
While Manson sat in jail on the auto theft charges, did some free members commit murder on his behalf? Manson’s paranoia about squealers had already resulted in Donald “Shorty” Shea’s murder on August 26.
The following five cases have connections to the Manson Family. Some of the connections are compelling, others are peripheral.
On November 5, John “Zero” Haught was found in his Venice Beach home with a single gunshot wound to his head after losing a game of Russian Roulette. At least that is the story told by witnesses Catherine Gillies, Bruce Davis, Sue Bartell, and Madaline Joan Cottage “Little Patty” – all of them Manson family members.
Each witness was interviewed separately and recounted Zero’s death. Investigators thought the accounts sounded rehearsed. They were suspicious, but couldn’t prove a thing.
When Leslie Van Houten learned of Zero’s death, she made it clear she didn’t buy the Russian Roulette story. She was incredulous that he was playing the deadly game by himself as the witnesses stated. An anonymous man told a newspaper reporter he was there when the shooting occurred, and that one girl had pulled the trigger. The man was never identified and the death is officially a suicide.
On November 7, an early morning walker discovered the mutilated bodies of teenagers Doreen Gaul and James Sharp. The victims were stabbed so many times that police thought they were shot gunned to death. The overkill was like the Tate/La Bianca murders and there is a Manson/Scientology/The Process (a cult) connection. But without proof the murders remain unsolved.
Reet Jurvetson, known for over 40 years as Jane Doe 59, was another victim of random violence in 1969. Years after her death Manson was asked about Reet. He said he didn’t know her and knew nothing about her murder. Was he telling the truth?
December 1, 1969, Joel Pugh, estranged husband of Sandra Good, was found dead in a London hotel room. His wrists and throat were cut. No suicide note was found. Was it a coincidence that Bruce Davis was in the UK at the time of Pugh’s death?
In recent years, the LAPD has said that as many as a dozen murders may be linked to Manson and the family. While decades of dust gather on the open case files, at least the Tate/La Bianca murders are solved.
We can thank now-deceased Susan Atkins for busting the case wide open. The hippie girl who looked like a babysitter to her Sybil Brand Institute cellmates told them some horrific stories that they, at first, figured were bullshit. But after Susan described in gruesome detail Sharon Tate’s last moments, without showing remorse, the inmates went to the jail authorities to turn her in.
If not for Susan, the perpetrators of the August murders may not have been identified for many more months.
On December 1, 1969, LAPD’s Chief Edward Davis held a press conference.
Standing behind 15 microphones, Chief Davis announced the official end of the case.
“I am Edward Davis, chief of police of the City of Los Angeles. Today warrants have been issued for the arrest of three individuals in connection with the murders of Sharon Tate Polanski, Abigail Anne Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Steven Earl Parent and Thomas John Sebring.”
He explained that the same people were also involved in the murders of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca.
“The development of information from the two separate investigations, the Tate and La Bianca cases, led detectives to the conclusion that the crimes in both cases were committed by the same group of people. At one time two lieutenants and 17 men were working on only the Tate case. The Tate investigators interviewed 625 people, some four and five times each.”
Chief Davis referred to a break in the case that occurred two weeks prior to the warrants. He didn’t mention her by name, but he meant Susan Atkins.
Also not mentioned by name was the first victim of the summer murder spree, Gary Hinman. Chief Davis referred only to the “Topanga Canyon murder case.”
Chief Davis wrapped up the press conference as a late arrival, Mayor Sam Yorty, took the stage.
“Sorry, I got here so late,” said the mayor. “The city government and the Police Department are very grateful to the news media for the cooperation we have had . . . many people could have damaged our case if they hadn’t been so cooperative . . .”
The round-up of the Family members implicated in the murders was underway. The case against them was solid enough to bring to the grand jury.
December 5, 1969, Susan Atkins testified before the Los Angeles grand jury. Prosecutors got first degree murder indictments against Manson, Watson, Krenwinkel, Van Houten and Kasabian.
December 21, 1969, Leslie Van Houten talked to cops about her possible cooperation. One week later she recorded a confession with attorneys, but decided against cooperating with prosecutors.
By Christmas 1969, Manson and his co-defendants, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten were in jail facing capital murder charges.
With Manson and his band of murderous nomads behind bars, Angelenos breathed a sigh of relief. The ‘60s ended on a miserable note. They thought the ‘70s would be better. They were wrong.
During the 1970s the risk of homicide increased six-fold from the 1950s, and by the early 1980s the term serial killer began to turn up in mainstream media reports.
New monsters stalked the streets of Los Angeles.
The real carnage was just beginning.
Film Noir Friday — Sunday Night: The Street With No Name [1948]
There’s a great double feature on Movies! tonight, THE STREET WITH NO NAME and WHITE HEAT. Two of my favorite films noir. If you don’t have the channel (it is 13.3 in my L.A. neck of the woods) here, for your viewing pleasure, is The Street With No Name starring Richard Widmark, Mark Stevens, Lloyd Nolan and Barbara Lawrence.
Ignore or read the subtitles — in any case, enjoy the movie!
It’s Aggie Underwood’s Birthday Month!
Yesterday was the 117th anniversary of Aggie Underwood’s birth. In her honor the Central Library downtown is hosting a party on Saturday, December 21, 2019 at 2 pm.
I will speak about Aggie and her many accomplishments from her time as a switchboard operator at the Record to her groundbreaking promotion to city editor at the Evening Herald and Express. And yes, there will be cake.
Aggie inspired me to create this blog and her Wikipedia page on December 12, 2012. Aggie loved the newspaper business as much as I love writing for the blog and connecting with all of you.
Deranged L.A. Crime readers are an impressive group. They include current and former law enforcement professionals, crime geeks (like me), and the victims of violent crime. I have even been contacted by a serial rapist (a despicable scumbag).
Each December I reflect on the year that is ending and make plans for Deranged L.A. Crimes. In 2020, the blog’s reach will extend to encompass all of Southern California, which includes the following counties: Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Imperial.
I look forward to new stories, personalities and challenges.
Please join me as we enter the Roaring Twenties. This time, no Prohibition.
Image by © Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis
End of Watch: Nathan Oscar Longfellow — Thanksgiving Day, 1923
There is no such thing as a routine day in law enforcement. On Thanksgiving Day, 1923, a City of San Fernando motor officer, Nathan Oscar Longfellow, rode out to the scene of a reported riot on the 1300 block of Celis Drive.
One hundred people filled the street, none of them too stuffed with turkey and pie to celebrate the holiday. There was no riot. The large gathering was peaceful except for one man, Francisco Casade, 45, a laborer who was drunk, loud, and creating a disturbance.
Longfellow rolled up on his motorcycle prepared to quell a riot. He found one unruly drunk.
Before a crowd of witnesses, Longfellow placed Casade under arrest for disturbing the peace and placed him in the sidecar of his motorcycle. As the motorcycle pulled away Casade attempted to escape.
Witnesses watched as Longfellow tried to restrain his prisoner. Casade produced an automatic pistol he had concealed under his vest. He fired three times. Longfellow dropped to the pavement.
The crowd, enraged by the shooting, fought Casade to the ground and held him until other officers arrived.
An ambulance transported Longfellow to the San Fernando Hospital where he died a few days later. The officer was a 21-year-old former clerk who had had joined the San Fernando Police Department 13-months earlier.
Fearing that citizens in the neighborhood would storm the local jail and lynch him, police took Casade to the Los Angeles County Jail and held him without bond.
The county grand jury heard testimony from J.W. Thompson, Chief of Police in San Fernando, Deputy Sheriff Charles Catlin, who investigated the case, and Mrs. G. Strathern, a witness to the shooting. The statements were enough indict Casade for Longfellow’s murder.
On January 11, 1924, the jury in the Francisco Casade trial informed Judge Reeve that they could not reach a verdict. The judge ordered them sequestered until the morning of the 12th. Maybe all the jury needed was an overnight incentive.
The jurors tried, but they squared off: six for hanging and six for life imprisonment. A conference between the District Attorney’s office and the judge resulted in a continuance until January 14.
Judge Reeve had no choice but to dismiss the jury after the foreman told him that six of the jurors held out for hanging and would not budge. They ordered a second trial to begin on January 18.
Casade’s public defender tried to use his client’s intoxication as a mitigating circumstance. He failed to convince his recalcitrant client to plead guilty and avoid the death penalty. Casade rolled the dice.
After two hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty for first degree murder. They sentenced Casade to hang.
Appeals are automatic in a death penalty case, and Casade’s snaked its way through the system to the State Supreme Court. In September 1924 the court upheld the sentence.
Holidays proved unlucky for Casade. He killed officer Longfellow on Thanksgiving Day 1923 and hanged for the crime on Valentine’s Day 1925.
On this day when we give thanks, let’s honor those people who have paid the ultimate price to keep us and those we love safe: law enforcement, firefighters, members of the military. They deserve our respect and support.
In memory of Nathan Oscar Longfellow, a young man who never got the chance to fulfill his dreams, the following poem by an unknown author.
“Policeman’s Prayer“
When I start my tour of duty
God,
Wherever crime may be,
as I walk the darkened streets alone,
Let me be close to thee.
Please give me understanding
with both the young and old.
Let me listen with attention until their story’s told.
Let me never make a judgment in a rash or callous way,
but let me hold my patience let each man have his say.
Lord if some dark and dreary night,
I must give my life,
Lord, with your everlasting love
protect my children and my wife.
Aggie Underwood’s Birthday
November 1969: The Scientology Murders
On Saturday, November 22, 1969, a man living in the Pico Union district found the mutilated bodies of Doreen Gaul, 19, and James Sharp, 15 in an alley between Arapahoe Street and Magnolia Avenue, south of 11th Street.
Doreen was naked except for a string of multicolored beads—hippie beads—de rigueur for teenage girls in 1969. James wore a corduroy jacket, striped T-shirt and black Levis—the uniform of teenage boys.
Someone stabbed Doreen and James between 50 and 60 times each. Seventeen of the stab wounds inflicted on Doreen were near her heart. She was raped. Their right eyes were cut out. The overkill recalled the brutality in the Tate/La Bianca murders in August, but police uncovered no link between Doreen and James and the other victims.
Following the autopsy, the coroner concluded that Doreen was a recent arrival in Los Angeles because her lungs were smog free. The coroner was right, Doreen came to Los Angeles from Albany, New York a few months earlier to study Scientology. James was also a recent arrival to Los Angeles. He traveled west from Crestview, a St. Louis, Missouri suburb. He came to study Scientology, too. In fact, their study of Scientology was the only thing linking them.
Scientology, founded in 1950 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, was attractive to Baby Boomers, teenagers in the 1960s, who sought spiritual guidance in non-traditional religions, communes, and radical political ideologies.
In Los Angeles Scientology provided communal living arrangements in a few of the old mansions in Pico Union and near MacArthur Park. Doreen lived at 1032 S. Bonnie Brae Street and James lived less than a quarter of a mile away at 921 S. Bonnie Brae Street. On the evening of the murders Doreen left “Thetan Manor” to meet with James who was going to “audit” her.
For those of you unfamiliar with the basic tenets of Scientology, Thetan is “an immortal spiritual being; the human soul.” An audit is conducted by a Scientology minister or minister-in training using an electropsychometer (E-Meter) to locate and confront areas of spiritual upset. For Scientologists the E-Meter is a religious artifact used as a spiritual guide.
E-Meters are more sophisticated today than they were in 1969 when they were nothing more than a galvanometer with two tin cans attached—not unlike many quack devices marketed before and since to the gullible.
The Federal Drug Administration stepped in when L. Ron Hubbard made unsubstantiated claims about the E-Meter’s medical capabilities.
In a Court of Appeals decision, still in effect today, every E-meter must bear a warning that states, “The E-Meter is not medically or scientifically useful for the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease. It is not medically or scientifically capable of improving the health or bodily functions of anyone.”
The mainstream press characterized Scientology as a “cult” and a “mystical, quasi-scientific organization.” The organization cooperated with the Los Angeles Police Department at first, but dragged their feet when asked to provide a comprehensive membership list. LAPD Det. Lt. Earl A. Deemer wanted to explore any possible connection between the murders of Doreen and James and a Jane Doe slaying from several months before. The marked similarities in the three murders struck Deemer as more than a coincidence. He described the crimes to reporters: “All three victims were stabbed, and their wounds appeared to be the work of a ‘fanatic’. None of the three was slain where the bodies were found. The Jane Doe of the previous killing wore hippie-like attire which resembled that in which Miss Gaul had been seen and which is favored by many young females in the organization [Scientology].”
Deemer wanted to talk to Hubbard personally about the membership list, but the Scientology leader was adrift at sea, literally. He was on his private yacht to avoid a hefty tax bill that awaited him on land.
On behalf of Scientology Rev. Natalie Fisher, resident agent of the organization quartered at 2773 W. Temple Street stated, “This organization has no facts or information regarding the circumstances of the crime, but we are doing everything in our power to assist law enforcement agencies to see that justice is done.”
The families of the young victims were devastated by their loss. James’ father was a prosperous salesman and he permitted James to leave high school to study Scientology in Los Angeles.
Doreen’s friends said that following her graduation from a parochial high school in the spring of 1968, she became a devotee of Scientology. Her switch from Roman Catholicism surprised her friends, but not her father. He described Doreen as a “. . . good kid, but an emotional kid. She was always looking for green grass and rainbows.”
The investigation into the random slayings continued but police never located the place where Doreen and James were murdered. Solving a crime without locating the place where it happened is challenging. Police never solved the infamous Black Dahlia case in 1947 either. The victim in that case, 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, was murdered in a place they never found and her dismembered body was dumped in a weedy vacant lot in Leimert Park.
Police stated that there was no clear connection between the slayings of Doreen and James and 11 unsolved murders (including the five Tate murders) committed in the county since January 1969.
The two teenagers traveled to Los Angeles seeking spiritual enlightenment, why did they end up brutalized and discarded in an alley? Were Doreen and James the victims of a serial killer? Did a member or members of the Manson family kill them as some suspect? Fifty years later we have no answers, and we may never get them, the case remains unsolved.