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by Lauren Biron AS I WRITE THIS, I wonder if you know the one I seek. Are you a friend or, even better, a relative? Did you hear of the infamous deeds while sitting upon your grandmother’s knee? Is the story of rebellion retold jubilantly at Christmas celebrations, once your great-uncle has been plied with eggnog? Or perhaps no one speaks of it, the family embarrassment becoming a hushed secret that the older generation tries to forget and the new generation never knows - though all the clues lie in dust-covered cardboard boxes stacked on an attic shelf. Worst of all, are the clues destroyed, hurled into a fireplace or abandoned in a county dump, left to slowly decompose by someone who did not know their worth? Does anyone survive who knows the truth? *** Los Angeles, 1929 Inside a stone-faced building without windows or ventilation, at an old-fashioned roll-top desk covered with papers, sat Joseph Taylor, Chief of Detectives. Burglary reports arrived every 24 hours, while officers teletyped or phoned in felonies as soon as a victim notified them. A few rooms away, a flying squadron of blue uniformed policemen awaited calls. With pistol-grip shotguns, pump shotguns, and murderous Thompson machine guns, they prepared to stop robbers who, judging by the number of reports Taylor read, were all too prevalent. He ordered the stations to increase their search for the past weekend’s criminals. A young man had boarded a Los Angeles Railway street car at the corner of Eleventh and Georgia streets. He drew a revolver, aimed it at the conductor, took $40, and leapt from the car, speeding away in a waiting automobile. That same hour, Randolph Cooke and a woman sat in a car parked on Mulholland Drive. Suddenly, a pair of men appeared. One cocked a pistol; the woman handed over her jewelry while Cooke relinquished $38. Late on Saturday night, as Marguarito Santa Ana walked along the Los Angeles River, a man demanded money. After Marguarito surrendered $5, the thief shot him in the right hip and fled into the river bottoms. That same weekend, a man robbed three different service stations on Sunset Boulevard. As he pulled into a J.R. Hardy’s station on Beverly Boulevard with $32.50 in loot, Lieutenants F.L James and Arthur Bergeron leapt onto the running boards of his car as their partner Jack Leslie covered him from behind. Lieutenant James made to draw his .45 pistol when the car lurched into gear and swerved from side to side, gathering speed. The officers fired shots even as they fell towards the pavement. The bandit escaped, leaving the men without so much as a license plate number. One week later, two men jumped on the running boards of a car as it slowed at Vermont Avenue. They forced the driver out of the car, robbed him of $1.50, and drove off, leaving him stranded for hours. Another bandit pair robbed Earle Rost and Catherine Orphan as they sat in their car on Question Mark Hill; while Rost and Orphan were reporting their stolen $50, the same bandits held up another couple a few streets away. In Highland Park one man held James T. Lullewellyn immobile while another beat him across the face. They rummaged through his pockets and disappeared with $1.80. Then, Monday morning at 4 am, a tall, unshaven man in a dark overcoat waited with his thirty-year-old companion near a large black sedan. As a watchman made his rounds, the two men slipped into the empty lobby of the Hotel Huntington. One man walked down the hotel corridor to the clerk’s desk, pulled out a .45 caliber automatic pistol, and pointed it at Robert Gleason’s head. “Reach, and reach fast!” After Gleason was bound and gagged with strips of towels and sheets, the men attempted to crack the safe in the back room. While they struggled, Gleason inched towards the telephone switchboard twenty feet away, managing to dial the operator before passing out from an unfortunate combination of the gag and a stuffed nose. The operator, sensing something was wrong, alerted the police – who arrived after the robbers had escaped with $800 from a cash drawer. Los Angeles was in an uproar. Cars taken, jewelry stolen, money demanded at every turn, rum-runners high-jacking cargos, and on top of all that, a huge drop on Wall Street just a few months before. Something had to be done. Chief Taylor launched sweeping drives against underworld characters, instituting 24-hour motor patrols. The police proudly reported the drop of robberies over the next weekend, December 21 and 22. Cops caught two suspects within ten minutes of stealing a taxi-cab. The force was no longer full of easily-bribed officers who ignored the speakeasies and focused more on their own embezzling than on catching criminals. The Los Angeles Times printed a series of reports: “What the Police are Doing.” In full view of public scrutiny, the police detailed their arrests and plans to put criminals away. The number of patrols crept up. On December 23, 1929, a slender, fair-skinned girl from San Pedro sat with two men and a blonde with curls. She sipped her booze and watched as the men grew increasingly drunk. Eventually, she persuaded them to do her a favor. She stole a gun and a flashlight, and the four drove to the city of Venice, California. There, the two men held up a service station. It was her first robbery. The next day, she opened a black diary to the first page. Grasping a white pencil, she wrote: May the star of good fortune, strong and clean, pilot me happily through the next year. Would you like to know what turned me into a bandit? Well, I have tried to play the game on the square all my life. I have worked hard whenever I have had a job. I have always played square with my friends – especially with the one I love… but he dropped me like a live coal. So I am resolved in the future to play the game as crooked as in the past I have played it square. She listed “Job No. 1” and the details of the night before. Alice Le Fevre, the Diary Bandit, dedicated the remainder of her life to breaking the law. With her confident, curly-haired friend, 19-year-old Dorothy V. Trone, she didn’t wait long to fulfill her promise. (continued on page 2) |
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