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 DEADLINE U.S.A. starring Humphrey Bogart, Ethel Barrymore and Kim Hunter. Enjoy the film!
TCM says:
On the day that reputed gangster Tomas Rienzi testifies before a New York state Senate committee that he has no criminal ties, the staff of The Day , a newspaper that has been following the Rienzi case closely, learns that the paper is to be sold. The Day ‘s late founder, John Garrison, was close friends with the paper’s managing editor, Ed Hutcheson, and Ed is disappointed that Garrison’s widow Margaret has capitulated to her greedy daughters’ demand to sell. Ed continues laying out that evening’s edition, however, and refuses to print titillating photographs of an unidentified woman who was found drowned wearing only a mink coat. Ed does allow reporter George Burrows to continue investigating Rienzi, even though the committee dropped the charges against him due to lack of evidence. Ed then meets with Margaret, her daughters–Katherine Garrison Geary and Alice Garrison Courtney–and their lawyers, who inform him that rival newspaper publisher Lawrence White is buying The Day . Ed is infuriated, as he deplores White’s lack of integrity, and tells Margaret that she should prevent the sale because White is buying The Day merely to kill it.
At the end of July 1977, Patrick Kearney was indicted in Riverside county and pleaded innocent to the murders of Albert Rivera, 21, Los Angeles; Arturo Marques, 24, Oxnard, and John O. LaMay, 17, El Segundo. Kearney’s attorney, Jay Grossman, requested that the transcript of the Riverside County indictment proceedings be sealed. His co-counsel, Steven Harmon, requested a gag order.
Already serving a life term in Chino for the “trash bag murders” of three young men in Riverside County, in February 1978 Patrick was changed with 17 additional counts of murder. The complaint against Patrick was the largest ever filed in Los Angeles County. Two Sheriff’s homicide detectives, Al Sett and Roger Wilson, gathered the evidence on the cases using information provided by Patrick himself.
In late June 1977, Sheriff’s officers announced that they were seeking Patrick W. Kearney, 38, and David D. Hill, 34, formerly of Redondo Beach, as suspects in the sex murders of 8 young men. Investigators said that they had found evidence near the body of John Otis LaMay that lead them to issue warrants for the two men–but they wouldn’t reveal what it was they had found.
The victims tentatively linked to the wanted men ranged in age from 12 to 24–none were as young as 5-year-old Ronnie Dean Smith, who had been dead for nearly 3 years. Maybe the detectives were mistaken in their earlier hunch that the boy’s slaying was connected to the others.
David Hill’s mother, Edna, was interviewed in her hometown of Lubbock, Texas: “My David would do anything like that. I know the Lord’s going to help. He’ll take care of him.”
Seven days after his disappearance his mother, 22-year-old Joann O’Connor (she and Ronnie’s father were divorced) talked to the press in the squad room of the Sheriff’s station.
Here in L.A. there was the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, the so-called Trial of the Century. If you remove fame, wealth, and race and reduce the crime to its basic elements you end up with nothing more than a tragic domestic homicide–the type of crime which is altogether too common everywhere–yet the case continues to fascinate.