Category Archives: Evening Herald & Express

Death of a Gridiron Great, Part 1

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Johnny Hawkins had the college sports career one can only dream of. He was a gridiron hero who was equally skilled at basketball and baseball. During the 1924 season, Hawkins was quarterback and captain of USC’s football team.

Despite his sports successes, Hawkins found the transition from Big Man on Campus to Joe Everyman a difficult one. Following his graduation from USC, he bounced from job to job.

By 1926, Johnny had settled into a career as head coach the South Pasadena military school, the Oneonta Academy. It thrilled Oneonta to have Hawkins on their coaching staff. They were so proud they took out a half-page ad in the L.A. Times to announce his hiring. But Hawkins’ career took a downturn that same year when the Hollywood Generals, a Pacific Coast Football League team he organized and played with, failed.

The death knell for Johnny’s post-college dreams of success came on an evening in mid-June 1928 when he was busted in the home of Earl Burtnett, leader of the Biltmore orchestra.

Clarence Thomas, a houseboy at the Burtnett home on South Catalina Street, spied a man entering the rear door of the house and promptly called the law.

LAPD Detective Lieutenants Steed, Green, and Mole of Wilshire Division answered the call and found Hawkins sitting in the living room listening to the radio.

Portrait of Earl Burtnett, director of the famous Los Angeles Biltmore. Photograph dated February 16, 1929. [Photo courtesy of LAPL]

Hawkins wasn’t a hardened criminal, and he confessed to dozens of burglaries. He told his interrogators that he desperately needed to raise money because his recent career as a real estate salesman had gone to pieces and his wife, Thelma (his college sweetheart), needed major surgery.

Hawkins said,

 “I know I’ve got it coming to me, but what torments me the most is the thought of my family and my wife’s family. I was driven to desperation by financial troubles.”

Johnny was with his parents in their Fullerton home while his wife was in Vancouver, Washington, for treatment. He said he waited night after night until his parents were in bed before going out to commit the burglaries, then returned home to stash the loot in their attic.

Police valued the recovered property at more than $35,000 ($622,482.16 in 2023 USD). It surprised them that Hawkins had stolen such a hodgepodge of high and low dollar items, including furs, old silverware, gowns, blankets, percolators, typewriters, lingerie, and jewelry.

According to Johnny, he never carried a weapon, a fact borne out by the arresting officers. Johnny had a flashlight, jimmy, ice pick, pass keys, and was wearing white gloves when the police found him in the Burtnett home.

It was strange enough that the football idol had perpetrated a series of at least 25 residential burglaries, but it was stranger still that never attempted to dispose of the loot. He purportedly committed the thefts for a few months, but all the items, except a suitcase full of “presents” for his wife, were traced.

If he was in dire need of cash, as he’d said, then why didn’t he borrow money from his folks or his in-laws? Perhaps the former gridiron star was too proud to ask for help. The alternative, having his name splashed all over the local newspapers, was even more humiliating.

What was going on with Hawkins? Why would he jeopardize his freedom and his reputation in such a stupid way?

NEXT TIME: A unique defense strategy.

The Black Dahlia Case Goes Cold

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Elizabeth Short’s murder dominated the front pages of the Evening Herald & Express for days following the discovery of her body.

Even in a murder case as well-publicized as the Black Dahlia, the more time that elapses following the crime, the fewer clues there are on which to report. That the case was going cold didn’t dampen the Herald’s enthusiastic coverage. The paper sought psychiatrists, psychologists, and mystery writers who would attempt, each in his/her own way, to analyze the case and fill column space in the paper as they, and the cops, waited for a break. Decades before the founding of FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), shrinks and writers whose work appeared in the Herald engaged in speculative profiles of both the victim and her killer.

The Herald tapped Beverly Hills psychologist, Alice La Vere, to contribute her analysis of the victim and slayer. The paper introduced La Vere as “… one of the nation’s most noted consulting psychologists.” La Vere regularly spoke to various organizations about the problems of returning veterans. According to the newspaper, Miss La Vere would give readers, “an analysis of the motives which led to the torture murder of beautiful 22-year-old Elizabeth Short”. La Vere’s analysis is remarkably contemporary.

Here is an excerpt from her profile of Short’s personality:

“Some gnawing feeling of inadequacy was eating at the mind of this girl. She needed constant proof to herself that she was important to someone and demonstrates this need by the number of suitors and admirers with which she surrounded herself.”

La Vere described the killer.

“It is very likely that this is the first time this boy has committed any crime. It is also likely that he may be a maladjusted veteran. The lack of social responsibility experienced by soldiers, their conversational obsession with sex, their nerves keyed to battle pitch — these factors are crime-breeding.” She further stated: “Repression of the sex impulse accompanied by environmental maladjustment is the slayer’s probable background.”

How does La Vere’s profile of Elizabeth Short and her killer compare with the analysis of retired FBI profiler John Douglas? Douglas suggests Beth was “needy” and that her killer would have “spotted her a mile away.” He said that the killer “would have been a lust killer and loved hurting people.”

On the salient points, I’d say that La Vere and Douglas were of like minds regarding Elizabeth Short and her killer.

At the time of Elizabeth Short’s murder, mystery writer Craig Rice (pseudonym of Georgiana Ann Randolph Walker Craig) was one of the most popular crime writers in the country. In its January 28, 1946 issue, TIME magazine selected Rice for a cover feature on the mystery genre. Sadly, Rice is largely forgotten by all except the most avid mystery geeks (like me).

In late January 1947, the Herald invited Craig Rice to give her take on the Black Dahlia case. She summed it up this way:

“A black dahlia is what expert gardeners call ‘an impossibility’ of nature. Perhaps that is why lovely, tragic Elizabeth Short was tortured, murdered, and mutilated because such a crime could happen only in the half-world in which she lived. A world of—shadows.”

The police couldn’t catch a break. Not only couldn’t they locate the crime scene, false confessors, male and female, diverted critical resources and muddied the waters.

NEXT TIME: FALSE CONFESSORS

Black Dahlia: The Investigation Continues

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LAPD detectives Harry Hansen and Finis Brown headed the investigation into Elizabeth Short’s murder. The case was challenging from the moment they arrived on Norton Street. The lack of physical evidence at the body dump site posed a problem.

A skillfully retouched photo of Elizabeth Short at the body dump site.

Police officers knocked on doors and interviewed hundreds of citizens to find the place where Beth was murdered, but they were unsuccessful.

The Herald-Express cruelly tricked Beth’s mother, Phoebe, into believing that her much loved daughter was a beauty contest winner, only to be told minutes later that she was a murder victim.

Phoebe Short at Beth’s inquest. Photo courtesy LAPL.

Murder victims lose their right to privacy; every secret revealed. To fill column space while reporters tracked multiple leads, the Herald looked to psychiatrists, Beth’s acquaintances, and even mystery writers, to speculate on the case, which they did with creative abandon.

The Herald sought the opinion of LAPD’s shrink. Dr. Paul De River. He wrote a series of articles for the paper in which he attempted to analyze the mind of the killer. De River wrote the killer was a sadist and suggested that: “during the killing episode, he had an opportunity to pump up effect two sources — from his own sense of power and in overcoming the resistance of another. He was the master, and the victim was the slave”.

Dr. J. Paul De River

In a chilling statement, De River hinted at necrophilia—he said: “It must also be remembered that sadists of this type have a super-abundance of curiosity and are liable to spend much time with their victims after the spark of life has flickered and died.”

Reporters interviewed people who had only a fleeting acquaintance with Beth. They weighed in on everything from her hopes and dreams to her love life. Beth was, by turns, described as “a man-crazy delinquent”, and a girl with “childlike charm and beauty”. Many people who claimed to be close to her said that she aspired to Hollywood stardom. The claim Beth longed to be a star is a myth, likely based on letters she wrote to her mother. Beth wanted to keep the truth of her life in Southern California from her mother; for instance accepting rides from strangers and moving constantly. No mother wants to hear that, so the Hollywood lie came easily. A believable fiction when you are young and pretty. The interviews yielded nothing of value in the hunt for the killer.

While working at Camp Cooke, Beth Short was voted “Camp Cutie.”

While the experts opined, Aggie canvassed Southern California for leads. She was twelve years into her career with the Herald-Express when the Black Dahlia case broke. In her 1949 autobiography, Newspaperwoman, she said she came across Elizabeth’s nickname when she checked in with Ray Giese, an LAPD homicide detective-lieutenant. According to Aggie, Giese said, “This is something you might like, Agness. I’ve found out they called her the ‘Black Dahlia’ around that drug store where she hung out down in Long Beach.” She immediately dropped the ‘Werewolf’ tag.

Aggie interviews a woman (unrelated to Dahlia case.)

A few days passed and police located the mystery man, Robert M. Manley, known by his nickname, Red. Early on the morning of January 20, 1947, Aggie interviewed the 25-year-old salesman. The first thing she said to him was, “You look as if you’ve been on a drunk.” Manley replied, “This is worse than any I’ve ever been on.”

Robert “Red” Manley busted in Eagle Rock. Note his wedding ring. I wonder if he wore it when he gave Beth a ride. Photo courtesy of LAPL.

Aggie told him he was in one hell of a spot and advised him to come clean. Harry S. Fremont, an LAPD homicide detective, looked over at Manley and said, “She’s right, I’ve known this lady for a long time, on lots of big cases, and I can tell you she won’t do you wrong.”

Manley told his story, and Aggie was smart enough not to interrupt him. Red said he picked Beth up on a San Diego street corner early in December. He confessed that the night he spent with Beth in a roadside motel was strictly platonic and concluded with, “I’ll never pick up another dame as long as I live.”

The story ran in the Herald with the headline: “Night In a Motel”, and Aggie got the byline. She was the only Los Angeles reporter to get a byline in the case.

Aggie’s Black Dahlia by-line

The morning following her interview with Red Manley, her editor yanked Aggie off of the case. She said, “… the city editor benched me and let me sit in the local room without a blessed thing to do.”

The no-assignment routine resumed the next day. Aggie said she sat for about three hours, then started on an embroidery project. Every person who saw Aggie with her embroidery hoop roared with laughter. She kept at it until quitting time.

Day three—Aggie prepared for more embroidery when the assistant city editor that told her that because of an overnight decision, she was to go back to LAPD homicide and continue working leads.

Aggie barely had time to pull out her notebook out of her handbag before management pulled her off the case again. This time, permanently. Aggie’s new assignment—city editor. Nobody was more shocked than Aggie. She deserved the promotion. With 20 years in the newspaper business, she possessed the necessary skill set to be an effective editor. She became one of the first women in the United States to hold a city editorship on a major metropolitan daily. She enjoyed running the editor’s desk, and did a phenomenal job, but she confessed she missed being in the field chasing a story.

One of the conspiracy theories that surrounds Beth’s murder involves Aggie. Some believe she got too close to a solution in the murder, and the killer(s) arranged to have her promoted out of the way. That means whoever murdered Beth had enough juice with the Herald to influence personnel decisions. I think that is nonsense. The paper’s owner, William Randolph Hearst, had no reason to tamper with Aggie’s successful coverage. Additionally, as city editor, Aggie handed out assignments and directed the activities of all the reporters in the newsroom. She knew everything they uncovered. The timing of Aggie’s promotion is a sidebar, not a conspiracy.

NEXT TIME: The Black Dahlia case goes cold — or does it?

The Flower of Temple Street

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On January 15, 1947, Beth Short’s gruesome murder pushed everything else off the front pages. But during her missing week, January 9 to 15, other stories occupied the minds of Los Angeles residents, like the Flower of Temple Street.

Bitter rivals, nineteen-year-old Jenny Trejo and twenty-year-old Josephine Soto, met in the parking lot of the Carioca Café at Figueroa and Temple on the evening of January 9, 1947.

Carioca Cafe c. 1930s

Why the rivalry? The neighborhood was only big enough for one of the pretty young women to hold the title of the Flower of Temple Street, and it currently belonged to Jenny. She would fight to keep it. The animus between them was mostly about who was the prettiest, the best dressed, and the most desirable to the local men. Nobody could pinpoint when the feud began, but it went back several months, even before they came to Los Angeles from El Paso, Texas. Jenny with her husband and Josephina with her boyfriend, Porfirio Mendoza.

Josephine recently asked Porfirio for a knife for protection. She told him Jenny threatened to “get her.” When she accepted Jenny’s request to meet at the Café, Josephine brought the knife; just in case.

Jenny and Josephine exchanged words. Jenny produced a three-inch blade and stabbed Josephina three times in the chest and once in the neck. Josephina staggered 50 feet before she twisted grotesquely and slumped to the ground.

Friends of Jenny’s advised her to flee to Mexico. They told her, “When they get you, you’re going to be in for a long time.” With her husband in prison on a narcotics rap, Jenny had few resources to make it across the border. She first went with her friends to 14th and San Pedro, then by a streetcar to Sixth and Main, by another streetcar to Santa Monica, and then by bus to San Francisco.

Police couldn’t locate the fugitive. At the end of February, weary of hiding out, she went to a police station in San Francisco and surrendered. When questioned, she said, “I don’t know why I stabbed that girl. I just got mad all of a sudden. If I say I’d had a little wine, no one will believe me.”

Once back in Los Angeles, police booked Jenny into the Lincoln Heights jail. Her appearance in court drew a crowd. Not all of them supported her. One woman said, “I used to be a friend of hers, but no longer. I hope they hang her. She was just envious of Josephine because boys were attracted to her more than to Jenny.”

Lincoln Heights Jail

Biatrice and Ramona Flores, who both lived at 317 N. Figueroa Street, recalled what they witnessed on January 9th. “Jenny drove up in front of the Carioca Café with a boyfriend,” they said.  

Biatrice and Ramona continued. “Suddenly Jenny asked Josephine, ‘Are you laughing at me?’” Then, according to Biatrice, the two women walked down into the street and behind a billboard into a parking lot. Biatrice said she and Ramona followed them. “I saw them fight—we ran to stop them—but Josephine was bleeding. I wrapped a coat around her neck because she had a hole in her neck. She just laid there, and that’s all.”

Later Jenny said to Dora Rose Fuentes, “I cannot get away with murder.”

The testimony of the witnesses was at odds with Jenny’s version of events in which Josephine wielded the knife and stabbed herself accidentally. Seriously? Three times in the chest, and once in the neck? Jenny’s version was fantasy.

Jenny opted to waive a jury trial and let Judge Walter S. Gates decide her fate. He found her guilty of manslaughter. While awaiting her sentence, Jenny divorced her husband, Salvador Trejo. She said Trejo beat her. The divorce would be the only good news she would receive for a while.

Judge Gates sentenced Jenny to one to ten years in Women’s Prison at Tehachapi.

No flower does well for that long without sunshine.

Policewoman of the Year, Conclusion

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Florence Coberly testifies at the Parra inquest. (Photo courtesy USC Digital Archive)

In 1952, LAPD Policewoman Florence Coberly had a bright future in law enforcement. She helped take down a career sex criminal, Joe Parra, in a treacherous sting operation.

Florence stayed tough during the inquest following Parra’s shooting—even when his brother Ysmael shouted and lunged at photographers. She appeared on television and received honors at awards banquets all over town.

After three years of marriage, she divorced her husband Frank in 1955. We’ve heard countless times how tough it is to be a cop’s wife, but I imagine being the husband of a cop is not any easier. The unpredictable hours and the danger can be enough to send any spouse out the door forever.

We don’t really know what caused the Coberly’s marriage to dissolve. The divorce notice appeared in the June 29, 1955 edition of the L.A. Times, but it was legal information only and gave no hint of the personal issues which may have caused the couple to break up.

Florence with her back to the camera, befriends a lost girl c. 1954
[Photo courtesy of USC Digital Archive]

With no further mention of Florence in the Times for several years, we can assume that her career was on track. Then, nearly six years after the Parra incident, on July 2, 1958, the Times ran a piece buried in the back pages of the “B” section under the headline: Policewoman’s Mother Convicted of Shoplifting.

A jury of eleven women and one man found Mrs. Gertrude Klearman, Florence’s fifty-three-year-old mother, guilty of shoplifting. It is embarrassing to have your mom convicted of shoplifting, and it is worse if you are in law enforcement. But it is orders of magnitude more humiliating if you are a police officer busted WITH your mother for shoplifting.

According to George Sellinger, an off-duty police officer working as a store detective to supplement his income, Florence and her mother stole two packages of knockwurst, a can of coffee, a package of wieners and an avocado–$2.22 worth of merchandise. The accusation could destroy Florence’s career.   

Florence seated next to her husband, Sgt. Dave Stanton.
[Photo courtesy USC Digital Archive]

At her misdemeanor trial Florence’s attorney, Frank Rothman, vigorously questioned Sellinger and got him to admit that he had not actually seen Florence stuff the food items into her purse. He pressured her to submit to a search outside the grocery store based on the scant evidence seeing her with packages in her hand. Rothman made the case for illegal search and Florence got off on the technicality.

LAPD in the late 1950s was touchy about any hint of scandal or misbehavior by its officers. During the decades prior to William H. Parker’s ascension to Chief, the institution watched as some of their number went to prison for graft and corruption.

While a package of knockwurst hardly rises to the standard of unacceptable behavior that had plagued LAPD earlier, just being arrested was enough to get Florence suspended from duty pending a Police Board of Rights hearing.

It couldn’t have been easy for Florence to sit on the sidelines and await the decision. Law enforcement wasn’t a 9-5 job for her, it was a career and one for which she had displayed an aptitude.

While Florence waited on tenterhooks for the Board of Rights hearing, her mother received either forty days in jail or a $200 fine (she paid the fine).

Florence’s hearing began on July 22, 1958, before a board composed of Thad Brown, chief of detectives, and Capts. John Smyre and Chester Welch. Even though a civilian court of law exonerated Florence, the board found her guilty and ordered her dismissed from LAPD.

Florence at the police board hearing. (Photo courtesy USC digital archive)

It was an ignominious end to a promising career, and I can’t help but wonder if there was more to Florence’s dismissal from the police force than the shoplifting charge.

In February 1959, Florence sued in superior court, seeking to be reinstated. She directed her complaint against Chief Parker and the Board of Rights Commission.

Florence denied her guilt in the shoplifting charge. She contended that the evidence applied only to her mother.  

It took several months, but in July 1959 Superior Court Judge Ellsworth Meyer sided with the LAPD and refused to compel Chief Parker to reinstate Florence.

I salute Florence for her no-holds-barred, kick-ass entry into policing in 1952; and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one last time that fantastic bandolier that dangled from her belt. I maintain my position that women police officers know how to accessorize.

If you want to know more about Florence, a reader kindly sent me a link to this LAPD press release.

MANY THANKS to my friend and frequent partner in historic crime, Mike Fratantoni. He knows the BEST stories.

NOTE: This is an update and revision of a previous post.

The Attic Love Slave: Dolly and Otto’s Bizarre Affair — Redux

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Due to an audio glitch on February 9th, this webinar has been rescheduled to February 16, 2021 at 7 pm.

Please join me for one of the wackiest, and most deranged, love stories in L.A.’s history.

There is always some madness in love.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

On the evening of August 22, 1922, at about 10:30 pm, Fred Oesterreich and his wife Walburga, nicknamed Dolly, returned to their home at 858 North La Fayette Place after visiting friends in the Wilshire district.

The couple engaged in a bitter argument as they crossed the threshold of their home; however, it was not unusual for the heavy-drinking apron manufacturer and his wife to shout at each other. After over 25 years of marriage each was armed with a vast stockpile of grievances to hurl with deadly accuracy at the other.

Their evenings customarily ended when the combatants retired to their separate quarters to lick their wounds; but this night ended like no other before it. Moments after arriving home, Dolly found herself locked in her upstairs bedroom closet screaming for help. Fred lay dead in a pool of his own blood on the floor downstairs near the front door.

Publicly, the police attributed Fred’s murder to burglars. Privately, they were skeptical of Dolly’s account. With detectives unable to substantiate their suspicions with hard evidence—Fred’s case went cold.

In 1930, Fred’s killer came forward and revealed a bizarre tale of sex, murder, and attics.

Join me on Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 7 p.m. Pacific time for a webinar about the strangest love affair in L.A.’s history.

If you can’t watch the live presentation, it will be recorded and available on demand via BigMarker.