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. Today’s feature is THE CROOKED WEB starring Frank Lovejoy, Mari Blanchard, and Richard Denning.
Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
Former G.I. Stan Fabian runs a drive-in restaurant with his waitress girl friend, Joanie Daniel, who receives an unexpected visit from her brother Frank. Frank asks Joanie for a loan for a “deal” in Chicago, but she refuses. At dinner that evening, Stan reveals to Frank that he wants to marry Joanie, but she has declined, wary of his lack of financial security. Later, when Stan drives Frank back to his hotel, he inquires about his deal and Frank divulges that years earlier during the war, he and partner Ray Torres hid a sizeable amount of gold, but they have been unable to raise the money necessary to return to Germany to retrieve their treasure.
It was just after 6:00 a.m. on December 10, 1951 when a bandit broke into the home of supermarket manager B.G. Jones and his wife Juanita. The bandit had tied a green scarf around the lower half of his face, and he was holding a weapon. He slugged B.G. with a leaded sap and Juanita screamed. The man gruffly asked if anyone else was in the house. B.G. said, “Just my little boy, and he’s asleep.”
But eight-year-old Jimmy Jones wasn’t asleep, he was playing possum. He feigned sleep even as the masked man entered his bedroom with a flashlight and looked around.
Few kids would have had remained as cool and collected as Jimmy, but the boy had an advantage. His father had prepared him for the possibility of a break-in.
B.G. recently warned Jimmy that a bad guy roamed the area. He abducted supermarket managers and forced them to open the safes at their stores. B.G. told Jimmy if he heard anyone break into the house that he was to lie still, wait until he felt safe, then run to the phone and call the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Montrose substation. That is exactly what Jimmy did.
Jimmy told the deputy who answered the phone, “A man just took my father and mother away to make my daddy open the safe.” Then he told the deputy, “He shined his light right in my face, but I pretended I was asleep. I kept my eyes shut and didn’t move.”
Deputies Joe Rieth and J.R. Shelton were dispatched to the Shopping Bag Market at 920 Foothill Blvd in La Canada. The Deputies roared up just as B.G., stalling for time, fumbled with his key before unlocking the door for the bandit. Alerted to the arrival of the deputies, the masked man attempted to escape. He collided with off-duty deputy John Davis. Davis pulled his pistol and commanded the man to halt, but the fugitive continued to run even as Rieth and Shelton fired at him.
Slugs from Reith’s weapon penetrated the man’s neck, while pellets from Shelton’s shotgun peppered his legs. The man was so pumped with adrenaline he continued to flee. When Rieth and Shelton tracked him down, they discovered him hunched over the wheel of deputy Davis’s car, frantically trying to start it.
An ambulance took the critically wounded crook to Physicians & Surgeons hospital, Glendale. The bandit gave his name as Jim Marcus.
The Sheriff’s didn’t take the man at his word, which was just as well. He lied. It didn’t take long for them to ID him as James Monroe Rudolph of Placerville, California, which is about 450 miles from where he’d committed his most recent crimes.
Deputies found Rudolph’s late model Buick sedan parked about a block from the Jones’ home, and when they searched the trunk, they found highly incriminating evidence including, 100 empty money sacks, scores of rolls of coins, a wallet containing five $100 bills, and an ID that gave Rudolph’s L.A. address as a motel at 4562 N. Figueroa Street.
Also in the car were several changes of clothing, a.45 caliber automatic pistol, a Las Vegas police badge, and a fire extinguisher loaded with a knockout solution for spraying victims, and a green scarf. Police finally had the Green Scarf Bandit, the villain who had eluded them for weeks.
Sheriff’s robbery squad detectives went to Placerville where they arrested Rudolph’s wife, Inge, a German war bride. Inge surrendered to the detectives two fur coats, a fur jacket, a fur neck piece, several pairs of expensive field glasses, a half dozen cameras, and several thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry.
Inge insisted she wasn’t a party to her husband’s misdeeds, and the police believed her. She believed he had purchased the luxury items with money that he won in card games. Inge must have thought her husband was a high roller when he put over $8,000 (equivalent to $92,000.000 in 2023 USD) down on their $17,000 (equivalent to $195,000.00 in 2023 USD) home.
Rudolph and Inge met in Germany. They married in a civil ceremony in Linz, Austria in 1947. After Rudolph’s discharge from the Army in 1949, Inge accompanied him to the U.S., first to his hometown of Atlanta, GA, then to Washington, D.C., and finally to California.
While police searched the Rudolph home for more of the Green Scarf Bandit’s stolen loot, Inge traveled from Placerville to Los Angeles to visit James. When she saw his condition, she wept at his bedside, and declared that she would stand by him.
As the critically wounded man lay in a hospital bed struggling for his life, eight-year-old hero Jimmy Jones was recognized for his bravery by Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz. They gave the boy a miniature sheriff’s badge, and Biscailuz said, “Jimmy demonstrated a courage and calm presence of mind seldom found in a youngster of his age.”
Would James Monroe Rudolph, the man Jimmy helped to capture, recover from his gunshot wounds, or would he die before they could try him?
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 CITY OF FEAR starring Vince Edwards, John Archer, Patricia Blair, and Steven Ritch. In 1961 Vince Edwards hit the small screen as doctor Ben Casey.
Strictly speaking this isn’t a film noir (see below description from TCM). I think of this as apocalypse noir. Is that a thing? Anyway, that said, I don’t think you’ll mind too much. It is a wonderful copy, and there is some glorious footage of SoCal from the late 1950s.
Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
A low-budget programmer from Columbia Pictures, the crime thriller City of Fear (1959) is sometimes classified as a Film Noir, although it is probably too conventionally executed and arrives a bit too late to be considered a part of the Noir cycle.
The plot is promising enough. At the San Quentin Federal Penitentiary, convict Vince Ryker (Vince Edwards) and a fellow inmate make an escape after stabbing a physician and stealing an ambulance. Upon his escape, Ryker grabs a metal container that he believes contains a large and valuable amount of heroin. In disguise and with a different car, Ryker approaches Los Angeles in hopes of selling the drugs. The police know that Ryker is in the city he has killed his fellow escapee and the body has been discovered.
Chief Jensen (Lyle Talbot) and Lt. Mark Richards (John Archer) consult with Dr. John Wallace (Steven Ritch) about the stolen materials in the criminal’s possession. In a surprising revelation, Wallace identifies it as Cobalt 60 a deadly radioactive material that slowly poisons those who are exposed for long periods to the container, and that if the container were to be opened, thousands in the Los Angeles may die.
On May 2, 1953, fragments of love letters written by Joyce to Richard during the previous summer when Joyce and her husband Robert were in Alaska, were read aloud in court. Richard told the truth about the existence of the letters.
Did Robert know anything about her affection for his friend? On the witness stand, Robert admitted he knew Joyce had deep feelings for Richard and he had “turned-the-other-cheek.” Joyce said she wrote the letters (26 of them, each at least 20 pages) to cheer Richard up and, “to keep him from committing suicide.” Joyce denied Richard’s claim that he was the father of her unborn child. Joyce responded to his claim, “Hearing that read in court from his confession didn’t surprise me–or Robert, either. We’d read it before. Richard is like that, always imaging things. He’s making all that up.” But was he? He didn’t lie about the letters.
Whether the jurors would hear the contents of the letters was up to Superior Judge Mildred L. Lillie. One important question about the letters was whether they were Joyce wrote them. Had Richard forged or tampered with them? Joyce was sworn in and handed a bundle of letters. She gave them a cursory look and then said that she didn’t think all of them were in her own handwriting. “I’d have to read them all,” she said. “There’s been all kinds of stuff added,” although she finally conceded that “basically” she was the author. Judge Lillie instructed Joyce to go through the letters and delete whatever was not in her handwriting. Then Judge Lillie allowed the letters to be entered into evidence. Maybe the letters would reveal the truth about Joyce and Richard’s relationship.
On June 3, 1952, Joyce wrote to Richard telling him she received two letters which were delayed by a storm. She said she went off by herself to read them. “Anyway, I got to sit down–all by myself–in the ‘Garden’ (we know nothing will grow before we leave) and read them–which made me very happy.” She continued. “The only time I can really be alone is when it’s nice, so I can go outside and at nite after everyone leaves and Robert is asleep. And then I am not only alone but lonely. Richard, don’t worry about if I’ll be interested at least a little bit–I am interested very much in everything you write and do, so make it a problem to write me, just write exactly like you have been and tell me anything or everything you think, do or feel and I’ll be very happy. OK?”
Joyce asked Richard to take the time to sit down and write her a long letter. She wanted to know how he would have planned his life if he had done anything he wanted “from grammar school on.”
On June 6, Joyce wrote, “What I said about all the hours we spent–I didn’t mean wasted. I just was thinking how nice a few of those hours would seem now and it seems like there is so much to be said that could have, but really, I guess it’s like you say, there are better ways of saying things than words. That’s what is lacking because we can use all the ‘words’ we want now — and nothing else! But I do remember, too, surely you expected me to. And it makes me very happy, but I can’t keep from thinking–then what!”
In one of her letters Joyce talked about marriage: “You ask if I would have accepted to marry you–yes, I would and it seems, Richard, that our dreams are very similar.” Joyce signed most of her letters “All My Love.”
Was Joyce in love with Richard? She described her loneliness to him in many of her letters. She may have sought the attention she felt Robert didn’t give her. No matter how sophisticated the situation seemed, it is important to remember that each of the principal players was only 19-years-old. The extreme emotional highs and lows of teenagers are well documented.
Joyce’s denial of loving Richard stung. A Los Angeles Times reporter observed the defendant lower his head when he heard the love of his life testify that once she and Robert arrived home from Alaska, her feelings for Richard changed. “He hung around too much, and he was very moody. I was a little tired of him,” she said.
During the middle of the trial, a note from Joyce to Richard written prior to the 1952 Alaska trip surfaced, and it shed some light on the relationship. Joyce and Robert were married for only a year when Richard confessed his love for Joyce in a letter. Joyce confessed she loved both Robert and Richard, but she felt she was better suited to Robert. She said, “Richard, you and I–I feel are really genuine friends and I feel will always be, even now, but it’s horrible to ruin a beautiful friendship.” She encouraged him to find someone who would make him happy.
What would the jury of eight women and four men make of the case? Was Richard’s testimony that he and Joyce were intimate credible? And what about the suggestion that Joyce, and not Richard, tried to poison Robert?
The jury failed to reach a verdict after the first four hours of deliberation. They returned to the jury room and at last decided Richard’s fate.
They acquitted Richard of attempted murder, but found him guilty of mingling poison with beverages with intent to harm Robert.
When she heard the news, Joyce said, “We are going to try to forget we ever knew Richard.”
EPILOGUE: I always try to find out what happened to the people involved in a criminal case–and this one is no exception. Joyce and Robert’s teenage marriage survived for nearly twenty years before they divorced in 1970. Joyce may have remarried, but I don’t know if Robert did.
Richard LaForce earned a Ph.D. He moved to Modesto in 1986, and died there in 1992 at 58. His obituary names his children, and a brother. No spouse is mentioned, so he was probably divorced or widowed.
Joyce found Richard peering into her refrigerator and he seemed startled when she spoke to him. Joyce couldn’t tell what Richard was doing, but she wasn’t alarmed. Richard visited Joyce and Robert so often that it wasn’t surprising to find him searching the fridge for a snack.
The refrigerator incident took on a more ominous aspect when Joyce and Robert noticed a “funny taste” in their water and milk. Then they recalled how ill Robert became after he and Joyce paid a visit to Richard at Caltech. They didn’t want to think the worst of Richard, but it got harder to believe the best.
Joyce and Robert went to the L.A. County Sheriff’s substation and told the deputies of their suspicions. They brought a bottle of milk with them that they suspected was tainted. Sure enough, an examination of the contents proved that someone had tampered with it.
On February 6, 1953, Sergeant Bert Wood and Detective A.S. Martin sent the couple out for the evening and then waited in the dark outside their home to see if Richard would turn up. He did.
Joyce and Robert routinely left their door unlocked (hey, it was Downey in 1953). The two cops watched Richard let himself in and then waited for him to come out. Sergeant Wood and Detective Martin stopped him as he exited and found two half-pint bottles of arsenic trioxide in his possession. Enough poison, said one investigator, “to kill off a whole town.”
Richard confessed he had put some of the arsenic into a water bottle in the fridge. When asked if he was trying to kill both Joyce and Robert, Richard said no. He knew Robert was the only one to drink from that bottle. He also confessed to poisoning Robert’s soft drink at Caltech and said that he tried at least five times over several weeks to kill Richard.
Why had he tried to poison his friend? He said, “I have always wanted Joyce for my wife and I felt that if my plan to poison Bob was successful, I would have a chance with her.” He continued, “I’ve never been out with any other girl–she’s the only one I loved.” Richard said he had chosen poison to kill Robert, “Because of its convenience.” He could acquire the poisons at school. He admitted that, “It could have been done in a more perfect way, but I got to where I had to do something.”
What made Richard think he had a chance with Joyce at all? According to him, he had visited Joyce many times in her home when Robert was away. He told investigators that he and Joyce had taken long car rides and walks. During their time together, Richard said he and Joyce, “talked a lot about love and marriage.”
On February 10, 1953, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury indicted Richard on two counts of poisoning with intent to kill. Each count carried a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. Joyce and Robert told reporters they bore their former friend no ill will. They felt sorry for him.
Psychiatrists Dr. Frederick J. Hacker and Dr. John A. Mitchell examined Richard. The doctors said they found indications of, “a thinking disorder, in the direction of schizophrenia.” According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, “schizophrenia can occur at any age, the average age of onset is in the late teens to the early 20s for men.”
Was Richard schizophrenic? The doctors didn’t offer a firm diagnosis and, despite their concerns, they declared Richard was sane at the time of the poisonings and was sane enough to stand trial.
Interestingly, Dr. Hacker said Richard told him he, “wanted to take suspicion of poisoning attempts from Joyce.” Was Richard falling on his sword to protect his lady love, or was his statement a calculated move to shift blame to Joyce?
By the time his trial began in late April 1953, Richard claimed he and Joyce were having an affair. In fact, he figured that her unborn child had an 80% chance of being his and not Robert’s. In 1953, when DNA tests were decades in the future, a blood test could rule a person in or out, but that was it. No definitive test for paternity.
Joyce vehemently denied that she was romantically involved with Richard. But rumors surfaced that Richard kept over a dozen love letters written to him by Joyce while she and Robert were in Alaska. If the love letters existed, they could turn the case on its head.
NEXT TIME: A few more twists in the Love Poisoner case.
Current thinking about the teenage brain is that it’s a work in progress. Intellectually, teens can be a match for adults, but emotionally it is a different story. A teenager’s moods are the emotional equivalent of a world class chanteuse’s five octave range. Teenagers are mercurial. A potentially deadly trait when mixed with a love triangle involving nineteen-year-olds.
Downey residents Richard LaForce, Joyce Salvage, and Robert Hayden had been friends since middle school. During the war years, while they were growing up, the aircraft industry established deep roots in the town and had an enormous impact on the area. The postwar years saw the three friends enter high school and the town’s close ties to the aircraft industry likely resulted in the establishment of an aviation club at Downey High School–Joyce and Robert were both members. Surrounded by engineers and aircraft workers may have inspired Richard’s keen interest in science; with his high IQ (estimated to be 150) he hoped to pursue physics in college.
Robert Hayden (4th from the left, top row), Richard LaForce (far right, top row), Joyce Salvage (5th from the left, middle row).
Physics wasn’t the only thing Richard hoped to pursue into adulthood. He had loved Joyce since they were sixth graders and he hoped that one day they would marry. Was Richard surprised when, on May 12, 1951, at age 17, Joyce and Robert married?
If it shocked or hurt him, he kept his feelings to himself. At least the marriage didn’t end his friendship with the couple. Richard was a frequent guest in the Hayden’s home at 8558 Firestone Boulevard and he could still spend a lot of time with Joyce.
Aviation Club, Downey High School [1950]
The day after Joyce and Robert’s first wedding anniversary, and the day before they were scheduled to depart for a couple of months in Alaska visiting Robert’s older brother George and his sister-in-law, Charlotte, Richard took Joyce to a movie ostensibly at Robert’s request. Joyce and Richard were out together until 4 o’clock in the morning. Suspicious behavior for a married woman, but not so odd for a teenage girl. However, Richard complicated the evening by admitting in a note, just days before, that he loved her. He didn’t plan to act on his declaration of love. He doubted Joyce reciprocated his feelings, but during their evening out, he got the impression that Joyce loved him too. There wasn’t enough time to talk about the change in their relationship before Joyce and Robert left for Alaska.
Richard and Joyce corresponded regularly, some would say obsessively, during her absence. Robert was well aware of the exchange of letters between the friends but seemed unconcerned about them. When Joyce and Robert returned in late 1952, the three friends had quickly reestablished their former routine of spending at least two or three evenings together every week. Because the trio knew each other so well, both Joyce and Robert noticed Richard appeared to be distracted and he seemed to be depressed, but since he hadn’t confided the reasons for his melancholy in either of them, they could only stand by and wait.
A week after Christmas, 1952, Richard invited Joyce and Robert to the Caltech campus, where he was a physics major, for a visit. While there, he suggested they stop for Cokes at a nearby refreshment stand. Robert couldn’t finish his drink. He became violently ill and vomited. Recovering quickly, he resumed his ministerial studies at Whittier College.
In late January, during one of his visits, Joyce found Richard at the refrigerator. He seemed unnerved when she asked him what he was doing.
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 WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS, directed by Otto Preminger and starring Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney and Gary Merrill.
Enjoy the film!
TCM says:
New York City police detective Mark Dixon and his partner Klein return to the 16th precinct where Inspector Nicholas Foley introduces them to their new commander, Lt. Thomas. Later, Foley meets with Dixon to inform him that more battery complaints have been filed against him, but Dixon is unrepentant.
Two attractive young women posing as hitchhikers flag down a male driver on an isolated highway and flirt with him. Two women in another car then block the victim’s vehicle and steal it at gunpoint after slugging him with the gun. After parking the stolen car in an urban alley the thieves enter a building to meet their boss, Joe, and exchange the vehicle for cash and drugs. When Doc Bedford, a physician whose license has been revoked, arrives, Joe asks him to introduce June, Joe’s girl friend and the leader of the girls’ gang, to heroin use, but Doc refuses. Joe then shows June how to prepare and inject the drug. When Jack, Joe’s accomplice in the car theft racket, returns from delivering the car to a buyer, he, too, injects himself with heroin.
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 GIRL GANG starring Joanne Arnold, Timothy Farrell, and Harry Keaton as Harry Keatan.
Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
Two attractive young women posing as hitchhikers flag down a male driver on an isolated highway and flirt with him. Two women in another car then block the victim’s vehicle and steal it at gunpoint after slugging him with the gun. After parking the stolen car in an urban alley the thieves enter a building to meet their boss, Joe, and exchange the vehicle for cash and drugs. When Doc Bedford, a physician whose license has been revoked, arrives, Joe asks him to introduce June, Joe’s girl friend and the leader of the girls’ gang, to heroin use, but Doc refuses. Joe then shows June how to prepare and inject the drug. When Jack, Joe’s accomplice in the car theft racket, returns from delivering the car to a buyer, he, too, injects himself with heroin.
Welcome to Deranged L.A. Crimes. Ten years ago, I started this blog to cover historic Los Angeles crimes. I am not surprised that I haven’t even scratched the surface of murder and mayhem in the City of Angels.
I have been absent from the blog for a while, focusing on finishing my book on L.A. crimes during the Prohibition Era for University Press Kentucky. It’s not done yet, but I’m close. No matter, it is time to return to the blog. It is something I love to do.
Focusing my energy on the book, I failed to pay tribute to the inspiration for Deranged L.A. Crimes, Agness “Aggie” Underwood, on December 17, 2022, the 120th anniversary of her birth. If you aren’t familiar with Aggie, I’ve written about her many times in previous posts.
Aggie Underwood
In 2016, I curated a photo exhibit at the Los Angeles Central Library downtown. The exhibit, for the non-profit Photo Friends, featured pictures from cases and events Aggie wrote about over the course of her career. I wrote a companion book, The First with the Latest!: Aggie Underwood, the Los Angeles Herald, and the Sordid Crimes of a City.
Aggie is a dame worth learning about. She is a legendary crime reporter, who worked in the business from 1927 until her retirement from the Los Angeles Herald in 1968. A force to be reckoned with, Aggie worked as a reporter until her promotion to City Editor of the Herald in January 1947, while covering the Black Dahlia case. She was the only Los Angeles reporter, male or female, to get a by-line for her reporting on the ongoing investigation.
On her retirement, she told a colleague that she feared being forgotten. That won’t happen on my watch. Thanks again, Aggie, for the inspiration. Deranged L.A. Crimes is dedicated to you.
Among the things I’ve learned over the years researching and writing about crime, is that people don’t change. The motives for crime are timeless: greed, lust, anger, betrayal, and jealousy are but a few.
What is different is crime detection. Science has come a long way. Detectives no longer use the Bertillon system to identify criminals—they use DNA. I think part of the reason I’m drawn to historic crime is the challenges overcome by former detectives and scientists. Despite the advancements in science, it is my belief that if it was possible to pluck the best detectives and scientists from the past and set them down in the present, they would still be great. I am amazed at the cases they solved.
Class on the Bertillon system c. 1911
I look forward to this new year, and to the challenges it will bring. I am so glad you are here, and I invite you to reach out if you have questions and/or suggestions.
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 WOMAN ON THE RUN, starring Ann Sheridan and Dennis O’Keefe.
Enjoy the movie!
TCM says:
After San Francisco artist Frank Johnson witnesses the gangland murder of informant Joe Gordon while walking his dog, Inspector Ferris attempts to take him into protective custody. Afraid that he will be killed if he testifies against the murderer, Frank instead runs away. Ferris questions Eleanor, Frank’s estranged wife, about her husband, but she offers little help. Ferris does convince Eleanor, however, that Frank would be safer in police custody than alone on the streets. Later that night, Eleanor sneaks out of her apartment and goes to a nightclub in Chinatown. She is followed there by tabloid reporter Dan Leggett, who offers to pay her $1,000 for exclusive rights to Frank’s story.
