My Dark Places

by James Ellroy

  The White Man got business going. The San Gabriel Valley enjoyed a long agriculture boom. Confederate sympathizers moved west after the Civil War and bought a lot of valley land.

  The railroad shot through in 1872 and sparked a real-estate boom. The valley’s population increased by 1,000%. L.A. was becoming a good-sized burg. The valley cashed in on it.

  Real-estate profiteers annexed the valley into small cities. A development boom followed and continued straight through the 1920s. City populations grew exponentially.

  Housing bans were enforced valley-wide. Mexicans were restricted to slum districts and tin-roof shantytowns. Negroes were not allowed on the streets after dark.

  Walnut crops were big. Citrus crops were big. Dairies were a real moneymaker.

  The Depression put the skids to San Gabriel Valley growth. World War II resurrected it. Returning GIs got hip to westward migration. Real-estate developers got hip to their hipness.

  Tracts and subdivisions went up. Walnut groves and orchards were blitzed to make room for more and more of them. City boundaries expanded.

  The population skyrocketed through the ’50s. The agriculture biz declined. Manufacturing and light industry flourished. The San Bernardino Freeway stretched from downtown L.A. to south of El Monte. Automobiles became a necessity.

  Smog arrived. More housing developments went up. The boom economy brought a new look to the valley—but did not in any way alter its Wild West character.

  You had Dust Bowl refugees and their teenage kids. You had pachucos with duck’s-ass haircuts, Sir Guy shirts and slit-bottomed khakis. Okies hated spies the way the old cowboys hated Indians.

  You had a big influx of men fucked up by World War II and Korea. You had packed suburbs interspersed with large rural patches. You could walk down the Rio Hondo Wash and catch fish with your hands. You could jump into the Rosemead cattle pens and shoot yourself a cow. You could carve yourself a nice fresh steak right there.

  You could go drinking. You could hit the Aces, the Torch, the Ship’s Inn, the Wee Nipee, the Playroom, Suzanne’s, the Kit Kat, the Hat, the Bonnie Rae or the Jolly Jug. You could see what was shaking at the Horseshoe, the Coconino, the Trade-winds, the Desert Inn, the Time-Out, the Jet Room, the Lucky X or the Alibi. The Hollywood East was good. The Big Time, the Off-Beat, the Manger, the Blue Room and the French Basque were okay. Ditto the Cobra Room, Lalo’s, the Pine-Away, the Melody Room, the Cave, the Sportsman, the Pioneer, the 49’er, the Palms and the Twister.

  You could belt a few. You might meet somebody. The ’50s divorce boom was peaking. You could draw from a big pool of at-the-ready women. El Monte was the ’58 hub of the valley. Early settlers called it “the End of the Santa Fe Trail.” It was a shitkicker town and a good place to have fun. Recent settlers called it “the City of Divorced Women.” It was a honky-tonk place with a more-than-distinct western atmosphere.

  The population hovered around 10,000. It was 90% white and 10% Mexican. The city was five miles square. Unincorporated county land bordered it.

  The population expanded on Saturday nights. Out-of-towners drove in to prowl the cocktail joints on Valley and Garvey. The El Monte Legion Stadium featured Cliffie Stone and Hometown Jamboree—broadcast live on KTLA-TV

  The audience wore cowboy garb: Stetsons and pipestem pants for the men; starched hoop skirts for the women. The Stadium ran doo-wop dances on Cliffie’s off-Saturdays. Pachucos and white punks slugged it out in the parking lot regularly.

  The San Berdoo Freeway cut through El Monte. Motorists exited and took Valley Boulevard eastbound. They stopped to eat at Stan’s Drive-in and the Hula-Hut. They stopped to drink at the Desert Inn, the Playroom and the Horseshoe. Valley was the Saturday night thoroughfare. Eastbound motorists ended up dawdling there whether they planned to or not.

  The action strip ended at Five Points—the juncture of Valley and Garvey. Stan’s and the Playroom stood at the prime northeast corner. Crawford’s Giant Country Market was just across the street. A dozen restaurants and juke joints were jammed together off the intersection.

  Residential El Monte ran north, south and west of there. Houses were small and came in two styles: faux-ranch and stucco cube. Mexicans were isolated in a strip called Medina Court and a shack town named Hicks Camp.

  Medina Court was three blocks long. The houses there were made of cinderblock and scavenged wood. Hicks Camp was just across the Pacific-Electric tracks. The houses there had dirt floors and were built from lumber ripped off of old boxcars.

  The movie Carmen Jones was shot at Hicks Camp in ’54. A Mexican slum was recast as a Negro sharecropper slum. The set designers did not have to change a single detail.

  Medina Court and Hicks Camp were full of winos and hop-heads. A favored Hicks Camp form of murder was to get your victim drunk and lay him on the railroad tracks for an oncoming freight to decapitate.

  The El Monte PD handled patrol calls and investigated all crimes short of murder. The roster listed twenty-six cops, a matron and a parking meter man. The department had a relatively clean reputation. Local merchants kept the boys well lubed with foodstuffs and liquor. El Monte cops always shopped in their uniforms.

  The guys patrolled in one-man cars. The work vibe was friendly—captains and lieutenants drank with plain old harness bulls. The PD was a choice job—you could help people or beat up wetbacks or promote lots of pussy, according to your inclination.

  The boys wore all-khaki uniforms and drove ’56 Ford Interceptors. They repossessed cars for local dealers and beefed with the Sheriff’s over various chickenshit matters. Half the men signed on under a patronage system. Half came in via civil service.

  The PD ceded their murder jobs to Sheriff’s Homicide. For a rough-and-tumble town, they got very few snuffs.

  Two dykey-looking women killed an El Monte house painter on March 30, 1953. The man’s name was Lincoln F. Eddy

  Eddy and Dorothea Johnson spent that day boozing in several El Monte bars. They stopped at Eddy’s house in the late afternoon. Eddy coerced Miss Johnson into a blow job. Miss Johnson went home and discussed the matter with her roommate, Miss Viola Gale. The women got ahold of a rifle and walked back to the Eddy house.

  They shot Lincoln Eddy. Two boys playing catch outside saw them enter and leave. They were arrested the next morning. They were tried, convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

  On March 17, 1956, Mr. Walter H. Depew drove his car through the front wall of Ray’s Inn on Valley Boulevard.

  Two men were struck and killed. Mr. Depew’s broadside ripped out a 16-foot chunk of the front wall and a 19-foot chunk at the rear. Several other bar patrons were seriously injured.

  Mr. Depew was drinking at Ray’s Inn earlier in the day. His wife was a barmaid there. Mr. Depew got into an argument with the owner. The owner ejected Mr. Depew a few hours before the incident.

  Mr. Depew was arrested immediately. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to a short prison term.

  Sheriff’s Homicide handled both cases. Their last three El Monte murders got cleared in fucking record time.

  The Jean Ellroy job was running longer already.

  3

  The Times, Express and Mirror gave it page-two play. It made the local TV news for five seconds.

  The redhead rated zero. The Johnny Stompanato snuff was the real goods. Lana Turner’s daughter shanked Johnny back in April. The story was still hot news.

  The Mirror ran a shot of the redhead smiling. The Times ran a picture of the kid just after the cops gave him the word. Jean Ellroy was the twelfth county murder victim of 1958.

  Armand Ellroy went down to the Coroner’s Office early Monday morning. He identified the body and signed a Health and Safety Code form to release it to the Utter-McKinley Mortuary. Dr. Gerald K. Ridge performed the autopsy: Coroner’s Case File #35339-6/23/58.

  He ascribed cause of death to “asphyxia due to strangulation by ligature.” His anatomic summary noted the “totally occlusive double ligature” around
the victim’s neck. He noted that the victim was in her menstrual phase. His smear for spermatozoa turned up positive. He found a tampon at the rear of the vaginal vault.

  He noted the “surgical absence” of the victim’s right nipple. He diagrammed the scrapes on her hips and knees and the bruises on the insides of her thighs. He described the body as being “that of a well-developed, well-nourished, unembalmed white female.” His external examination notes cut straight to the two garrotes:

  There is a double tightly occlusive ligature about the neck, producing deep grooving of the soft tissues. This ligature is comprised of both a length of apparent clothesline cord, which has apparently been placed first about the neck and knotted tightly in the left posterior region. The ends of the cord are free, one extremely short and apparently having been broken loose at the knot, while the other one is of moderate length and extends inferiorly. Apparently applied over the first ligature is a tightly knotted nylon stocking, the knot likewise located in the left posterior lateral surface. The nylon ligature overlies the long limb of the clothesline ligature at that point. The nylon stocking appears to have been tightly affixed by the usual overhand knot first and in the formation of the second knot, one limb of the free end has been looped under a partial slip knot, which is quite tightly drawn up.

  Dr. Ridge removed the ligatures and noted the “deep pallid groove” around the neck. He shaved the victim bald and described her head tissues as “Intensely cyanotic and suffused with dark bluish-purple discoloration.” He cut the scalp down to the skull and pulled the flaps back. He diagrammed eleven wounds and labeled them “intense red deep scalp ecchymoses.”

  The doctor sawed off the top of the head and examined the victim’s brain tissue. He weighed it and found “no evidences of injury or other intrinsic abnormalities.” He cut open the victim’s stomach and found whole kidney beans, meat shards, orange-yellow masses resembling carrots or squash and yellowish masses resembling cheese.

  He examined the rest of the body and found no other evidence of trauma. He took a blood sample to be held for chemical analysis and removed portions of the vital organs for potential microscopic study.

  He extracted food particles from the stomach to be held and analyzed. He froze the spermatozoa smear—to be held and blood-typed.

  A toxicologist took a blood sample and screened it for alcohol content. His reading was low: .08%.

  A forensic chemist checked the body. He found small white carpetlike fibers under the victim’s right middle fingernail and bagged them as evidence. He took the two garrotes, the victim’s dress, right stocking and brassiere to the Sheriff’s Crime Lab. He noted that the unraveled strangling cord was 17 inches long—yet had tightened to 3 inches around the victim’s neck.

  Dr. Ridge called Ward Hallinen and summarized his findings. He confirmed asphyxia as the cause of death and said that the victim had been struck in the head at least six times. She may have been unconscious when she was strangled. She’d engaged in recent sexual intercourse. She had probably eaten a full meal one to two hours before her death. It was most likely Mexican-type food—she had partially digested beans, meat and cheese in her stomach.

  Hallinen wrote the information down and called Sheriff’s Metro. He laid out his case to the squad lieutenant and requested two men to canvass bars and restaurants in the El Monte/Rosemead/Temple City area. The lieutenant said he’d send out Bill Vickers and Frank Godfrey. Hallinen said they should stress three things:

  The victim ate Mexican-style food Saturday night or very early Sunday morning. She might have been out with a Mexican or a Latin-type Caucasian—possibly named Tommy. The victim was redheaded—the two probably stood out.

  The lieutenant promised priority service. Hallinen said he’d be out canvassing himself. Lawton and Hallinen connected at the El Monte Station. They split up and started working separate canvassing beats.

  Jim Bruton teamed up with Captain Al Etzel. They drove to 700 Bryant and reinterviewed George and Anna May Krycki. Mrs. Krycki stuck to her Jean-didn’t-drink/Jean-didn’t-go-out-with-men story. She said that Jean answered a newspaper ad and rented the little back house impulsively Jean liked the fenced-in yard and thick foliage. She said the place felt safe to her. The Kryckis had a hunch that Jean was hiding out in El Monte.

  Jean did not have a telephone. She used the Kryckis’ phone for local calls and made her other calls at work. The Kryckis received a few calls to her. They were strictly calls related to her job.

  Bruton asked Mrs. Krycki if she had any more photos of Jean. She gave him six Kodachrome snapshots. Etzel asked her to go through the bungalow with them. They needed to inventory Jeans things and determine the shoes and purse she had with her Saturday night.

  Mrs. Krycki walked Bruton and Etzel through the house and examined the victim’s belongings. She drew a blank on the purse and said Jean’s clear plastic high heels were missing.

  Bruton and Etzel drove to the El Monte Station and dropped the snapshots off for reprinting.

  Hallinen met up with Lawton.

  Their canvassing runs were unsuccessful. They hit numerous bars and nightclubs—but nobody recalled a redhead and a dark man out Saturday night.

  They drove to the Airtek Dynamics plant. It was just south of downtown L.A.—a big six-story structure. The personnel director was named Ruth Schienle.

  She’d heard about the killing. She said the news was buzzing all over Airtek. She said she was friendly with Jean. Jean was a well-liked Airtek employee.

  Airtek was a division of the Packmeyr Gun Company. They manufactured window casings for military planes. Jean was the plant nurse. She hired on in September ’56.

  Mrs. Schienle said she knew very little about Jean’s private life. Hallinen and Lawton pressed her.

  She said Jean had very few close friends. She was not much of a socializer and only an occasional drinker. Her friends were mostly older couples, dating back to the time of her marriage.

  Hallinen and Lawton described the blonde and the dark man. Mrs. Schienle said they didn’t sound like Airtek people— or any of the friends Jean told her about. The name Tommy did not ring a bell.

  Hallinen and Lawton left her a card and said they’d be in touch. They told her to call if she picked up on anything suspicious.

  Mrs. Schienle assured them she’d cooperate. Hallinen and Lawton headed back to El Monte.

  The Metropolitan Detail was a loan-out unit. It had one function: to assist the Headquarters Detective Bureau in major investigations. The assigned deputies wore plainclothes and were skilled at canvassing.

  Frank Godfrey locked in to the Ellroy case on Monday afternoon. Bill Vickers was set to start soon.

  Godfrey canvassed with a photo of the victim. He queried waitresses, carhops, bartenders, restaurant and cocktail lounge managers. He stressed the redhead, the blonde and a dark man who might be named Tommy. He said the redhead ordered Mexican food or a chili size with cheese.

  He hit Staat’s Cafe at Meeker and Valley. A waitress said the redhead looked familiar. She said a party of four came in Saturday night and ordered chili sizes. Pearl Pendleton waited on them.

  Pearl was off today. Godfrey got her number from the manager and called her. Pearl listened to his questions and said that none of her Saturday-night customers resembled the people he described.

  Godfrey hit Dick’s Drive-in at Rosemead and Las Tunas. Nobody there was working Saturday night into Sunday morning. The manager was not on the premises.

  A carhop gave him some names: Marlene, Kathy, Kitty Johnson, Sue the counter girl. They were all working Saturday-Sunday graveyard and would be rotating back on duty Wednesday.

  Godfrey walked across the street and checked out the Clock Drive-in. The manager said none of his on-duty crew was working late Saturday night or early Sunday. He checked his 6/21 roster and kicked loose some names and numbers: two dining-room girls, one hostess, one counter girl and four carhops.

  Godfrey circled over to Five Points and hit St
an’s Drive-in. The manager said his Saturday-Sunday girls were all off now. Godfrey wrote down their names and home numbers:

  Eve McKinley / ED3-6733; Ellen “Nicky” Nichols / ED3-6442; Lavonne “Pinky” Chambers / ED7-6686.

  It was 4:00 p.m. Godfrey swung south on Garvey and stopped at the Melody Room.

  The owner introduced himself as Clyde. He heard out Godfrey’s questions and told him to contact Bernie Snyder, the night barman. Bernie closed the place at 2:00 a.m. Sunday. Call Bernie and talk to him.

  A customer butted in. He said he was here Sunday morning—and he saw a ponytailed blonde huddled up with a dark-haired guy. The guy was thirty to thirty-five. The ponytail and him were acting real nervous.

  Clyde said the ponytail sounded like a regular named Jo. She worked for Dun & Bradstreet in L.A. He called the woman a “bar lizard.” The dark-haired guy didn’t come off familiar at all.

  Godfrey took down the customer’s name and phone number. Clyde urged him to call Bernie Snyder—Bernie knew all the faces.

  Godfrey called from the bar. Bernie’s wife answered. She said Bernie wouldn’t be back until 5:30—try him then.

  It was 4:30 p.m. Most of your local nightspots didn’t open until 6:00 or 7:00. Godfrey was running up a long phone call list.

  The Desert Inn was a hillbilly joint. It used to be called the Jungle Room and Chet’s Rendezvous. Myrtle Mawby bought the place for her kid brother, Ellis Outlaw. Ellis renamed it Outlaw’s Hideout.

  Ellis was always in trouble with the cops and the fucking Internal Revenue Service. The Feds shut him down for skimming withholding money from his employees—then let him reopen so he could pay off his debt. Ellis brained Al Man-ganiello with a bottle back in ’55 and narrowly avoided a jail stretch. He just couldn’t make the Hideout turn a steady profit.

  He sold it back to Chet Williamson. Chet renamed it the Desert Inn and let Ellis run it. Ellis came from a barkeeping family. His sister Myrtle shot her husband in the ear once and got two cocktail bars in the ensuing divorce settlement.