November 22, 1947
Los Angeles
County officials are in no hurry to play host to 18-year-old Leonard L. Chambers, 652 S. Indiana Street, who was found guilty of going 55 in a 25 mph zone and sentenced by Santa Monica Municipal Judge Lawrence Scherb to 10 days in jail (nine suspended), 30 days without a driving license, and to visit the County Morgue in the next 10 days to gaze upon the mangled body of a speeding victim. A Coroner's office spokesman told the Times that in light of regulations, it was unlikely that this grisly date would be kept.
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Such are the threads of research, tangled by time and coincidence:
The gateway is a Page 1 story about extensive wiretapping at the state office building, with lines leading to Philharmonic Auditorium. Russell D. Mason, the technician who installed the wires, says he got permission from investigators for Atty. Gen. Fred Howser, but everyone in Howser’s office denies the allegations. Mason’s troubles grow worse when a fire at his home destroys expensive equipment and documents needed for his wire-tapping trial. And his ex-wife sues for back child support when she sees his picture in the paper.
Mason is eventually cleared of everything but a minor technical infraction when it turns out that one of the investigators, James H. Mulvey, recalls that he indeed said it would be OK to run the lines but that he would have to check with his boss first.
Mulvey, in turn, is the investigator in the 1958 bombing of the Krishna Venta compound in Box Canyon by two former cult members. The suicide bombers left rambling tape-recorded statements in their pickup before killing themselves, Venta and seven cult members, destroying a two-story building and touching off a 150-acre wildfire.
And then there’s the small mystery of an unrelated item mysteriously appended to one of the Mason stories: A photo and caption of Deputy Public Defender Kathryn McDonald (who would later defend child killer Fred Stroble) and Robert H. Hansen.
Hansen, a radio technician who lived and worked with Ralph and Olga Dirksen in San Francisco before joining them in Los Angeles, was caught after he killed the Dirksens, took their bodies out to the Mojave Desert and tried to burn their heads and hands in the incinerator behind their repair shop at 5619 E. Beverly Blvd. in 1948. After killing the couple, he took their 3-year-old son, “Sparky,” to the beach and then left him at a boarding home that cared for children. Hansen was sentenced to life in prison.
Bonus factoids: Douglas Aircraft drops from its wartime level of 160,000 employees to 9,000 and expects to reach 3,000. Lockheed is down from 94,000 employees to 12,000.
www.lmharnisch.com
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