Episode 507 - History of Homicide (Encore Presentation)

You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand, KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app On any given day in southern California, hundreds of investigators are working more than ten thousand unsolved cases. That's thousands of friends and families who have lost loved ones, thousands of people who got away with a crime, and thousands of murderers who still walk the streets. Killers who may be your neighbor, go to your church, or could be dating a close

friend. For the next two hours will highlight cases that have gone cold, baffled investigators, or just needs that one witness to speak up. This is solved with Steve Gregory. In this episode, we go back to the beginning of the La County Sheriff's Department's Homicide Bureau. In twenty twenty two, the modern day version of the bureau celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. In fact,

I am ced the event. That's where I met Mike Fratton Tony, a department employee who was also the curator of the Sheriff's Museum, which is situated on the ground floor of the historic Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles. Fratten Tony insisted we sit inside the small museum, which is surrounded by decades of badges, uniforms, log books, crime scene photos, and a row of actual jail cells that sat on the top floors of the building when it

was built in nineteen twenty five. Fratton Tony takes us back to the very first day the La County Sheriff's Department opened for business, April first, eighteen fifty. So the first Monday of April eighteen fifty, Sheriff George Burrowell first sheriff, and our department just consisted of a sheriff, his deputy, his jailer, and basically a matron who ran the female part of the jail and the juvenile part of the jail, even though they were basically all in the

same building, and they covered a huge territory. Today we look at Los Angeles County with the four thousand square miles, we don't realize that Ellie County in eighteen fifty also comprised of Riverside County, San Bernardino County, Ventura County, current county, And they say San Bernardino I did so, so you have all these counties that Elle County covered. So that's a huge area for one sheriff and one deputy to cover, so massive, massive, if you

want to say reporting district at that time. Any idea what the population would have been back then? The population of Los Angeles County as far as we could tell in the census, only a couple of thousand people, a couple of thousand. And fast forward to today with what what are we eleven million? Yeah, yeah, eleven million. So this department gets going and it is still the West, so it's still considered the wild West. Yes, back then, So when did homicide investigations become a thing? I mean,

did the sheriff's department have a homicide division or bureau from day one? No? No, So early on overall the sheriff's department really didn't investigate homicides. That was overall the coroner's job. And at that time, and it's kind of confusing alle history, the corner was under the sheriff's office, sure, but the corners investigators overall investigated the death, the circumstances the death, will not the sheriff was more or less apprehension of the criminals and housing the criminals.

And then also between eighteen fifty and eighteen eighty nine executing if there was an execution or the condemned prisoners were executed by the sheriff. That was before the state took it over in eighteen ninety. And one of the areas here in the museum is dedicated to the coroner's office. Yes, yea and so, and they're still to this day a law out of sheriff's corner operations out

there where the sheriff does act as the coroner. Yes. Yes, in other counties, yes, but now in La County that is evolved into how there's a medical examiner. Yes, it's a different it's a different agency, but there is still a part of this museum dedicated to that. And we're actually sitting in where the coroner's office used to be. Where we're sitting now was actually the room where they did the autopsy. So this was between nineteen

twenty five to nineteen seventy two. This is where the Coroner's office operated out So we're actually sitting where they did all the autopsies. Everyone from Robert Kennedy to Marilyn Monroe, the Black Dahlia Bugsy Siegel, we're all autopsy right basically where we're sitting. So this was hold. So the building was erected in nineteen twenty five. Yea, it was completed in nineteen twenty five. The final construction of the jail went into nineteen twenty six, but the department started

moving in in the end of twenty five. Wow. And then it closed. Yes, And that was also back when you were talking to me about the jail sales and you were walking me through this. The jails used to be up on the top of the building, yes, correct, tenth floor to the floor, yeah, to the roof yep. Why uh, security reasons. Initially, when the Allied architects were constructing the building, they they made it known that not a good idea to put the jails on the upper

floor because of the weight. The Sheriff's department chimed in basically said, well, we're thinking about security, even though within the first you know, month, month and a half, we had a dozen plus escapes out of the building, so it really didn't help that it was on the upper floor.

But ultimately that that what we heard later on when when the engineers went through this building after the ninety four earthquake, they're saying that's what caused a lot of the damage was the weight on the upper floors, so when the building started shaking, it didn't stop, and that's what caused a lot of the concrete and you know, overall cosmetic damage. The frame of the building wasn't

damage. It's built so well, it held up. But overall the concrete and a lot of the upper floors, the floor stuff crack because of that. And you were talking about this being the corner's office and a lot of the historical cases and people who went through here, but it also was the courthouse. Yes, so also between the seventh and eighth floor where the courts. The district attorney was on the sixth floor, so you had you had

full on courts operating, Superior court operating out of there. I guess you would say that probably the most famous case, or the last major case to come out of there was the Manson trial was held here in nineteen seventy one. But everything from you know, our early cases, the nineteen twenties, thirties, fourties, any major case you could think of was was basically tried out this building. The old courthouse which sat across the street was the eighteen

eighty eight to nineteen thirty six courthouse. By the time this building was built, that courthouse was pretty much just doing small cases. And eventually it just became, i think at the end, like storage looking at some of our records, we were just storing stuff there. DA's had offices there. So when did the department shift from just being sort of a law enforcement arm becoming

an investigative arm. So overall with in the eighteen fifties, and I'm gonna talk about some dark history here in the eighteen fifties, with the crime as bad as it was in Los Angeles. By the mid to late eighteen fifties, crime was bad. I mean, even if you read the East Coast newspapers, they described Los Angeles as this outpost, this lawless place, this this awful place where outlaws just run amuck. Between in eighteen fifty seven and

eighteen fifty eight, both of our sheriffs were killed. In nineteen fifty seven, sheriff Sheriff Barton was killed along with several of his deputies out in Orange County. And in eighteen fifty eight, Sheriff Getman was killed just about a block from where the Hall of Justice sits today. And because of that the citizens of Los Angeles were fed up. They were disgusted with the crime businesses

and operate. So ultimately there was a vigilance committee that was created. Vigilance Committee that was created, and the Vigilance Committee basically held secret court, and during this court they would determine the guilt of a prisoner. Didn't matter what the courts said, but if the vigilance Committee just determined they were guilty,

they would deal with him during that time. I guess one of the one of the suspects in the Sheriff Barton murder was actually taken from the La County jail in eighteen eighteen fifty eighteen fifty eight and he was hung, and he was hung by the vigilance Committee. They basically banged on the jail door and they said, he's guilty in our court, and they took him out and they hung him up on one of the carrals. Yeah, swift justice, swift justice. But hold on. I want you to hold that thought,

because wouldn't come back. This sounds very interesting. Vigilance Committee. We're talking with Mike Frenton Tony with the La County Sheriff's Department's Museum. We're here on the ground floor of the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles. But first, this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on kf I AM six forty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere

on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. Welcome back with Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's headquarters in downtown Los Angeles known as the Hall of Justice. We're inside this historic building that was built in nineteen twenty five. We're in the ground floor in what is the museum now but used to be where the corner did autopsies. And joining us as Mike Franton Tony he

is the curator of this museum. And before the break, Mike, you were talking about the Vigilance Committee. Yes, yes, so it was. It was a committee put together by prominent citizens of Los Angeles. Ultimately, I guess they felt it was the way to deal with with with a I guess an unfair They felt an unfair court system. As everything, as we

could always look back at history, everything comes to a head. At that time, it was popular because crime was bad but as time goes on, things get out of hand, and ultimately this vigilance committee and that attitude of dealing with criminals this way all came to a head in eighteen seventy one when a Los Angeles I believe it's the Los Angeles Ranger was shot. It was he was actually shot kind of in the crossfire of two Chinese gangs. With

that said, sparked riots here in Los Angeles. These riots turned into a massacre who was known as the Chinese massacre in October of eighteen seventy one. So pause the riot was in support of what was the r So basically what happened was the the people were tired of the lawlessness, they were upset or the copying shot killed. Yeah, well there was a protest over a copying.

Yeah, it wasn't a copies. Basically, the Los Angeles Ranger, which was still law enforcement and that was that was killed, and ultimately the public was fed up with that. I think it was just another excuse for them to riot, another excuse for them to to to do harm to a certain group. You know history, they always want to blame a certain group.

At this time, it was the Chinese and ultimately it led to this, this this horrible riot um where so many innocent people were pulled from their homes and hung and at that point the sheriff lost control, the absolutely lost control of the city. Federal troops had to come in to finally get it under control. And ultimately no one really was tried for this. I mean there was people put on trial, but nobody was ever convicted or sent to

prison behind it. And you have between the lowest number is eighteen the highest number is one hundred deaths. We don't really know because records are really poor at that time, but ultimately there there wasn't a thorough investigation into this. Who would have investigated this? The corner the corner, yes, Okay, So at that time sheriff was elected. UM Shortly thereafter a guy by the name of Roland Sheriff, William Roland is elected. He's our youngest sheriff.

He's twenty five years old. He's he's he's from a prominent family. He's he's Anglo on his father's side, Latino on his mother's side. Roland Heights was basically his property, um named after him. And he comes in and really brings professionalism to the department. And one of the things that he takes over his investigations of murders. So how big is the department by now? Oh? Very small, still less than ten deputies on the department. Yeah,

so very very small. At that time. In eighteen fifty three, San Bernardino became its own county, So county started breaking up by the eighteen seventies. In Orange County was the last county to break up, I want to say, in eighteen eighty nine. But so so we still have a large territory, but overall our crime is starting to diminish. After the Chinese massacre, a lot of people see the wrongs that that we're done. During that a lot of innocent people were killed. And with that, Sheriff Rowland

says, I'm going to bring more professionals department. One of the things he does is we're handling these investigations to make sure they're thoroughly done. If I'm handling the people voted for me, they entrusted me to do this, I'm overall going to make sure that these are done thoroughly. And overall, between the eighteen eighties and the eighteen nineties, crime is very very low in Los

Angeles. We go through some of our jail ledgers from that, those from those decades, and there's like three murders in one year, and most of them are just are you know, they knew each other. It's not your random yeah yeah, domestic issue or yeah over money or something like that. But there's no more of that just shooting each other in the street. Overall, the outlawed gangs or are starting to you know, dissolve, and and

Los Angeles is becoming basically a nice place where people live. Businesses are doing very well. And that that that rolls well into you know, the turn of the century. Um that that that type of uh professionalism moves on into the into the turn of the century. Let me ask you what you're talking about the vigilance committee before. It's kind of a trick question. How do

you think a vigilance committee would go over today? I don't think it's ever ever a good idea, I honestly, I just you know, people can say courts are fair, unfair, whatever it is, but it's it's the best thing that we can do sure as human beings. Where we're all flawed as human beings. There's you know, but but least you're presenting evidence, You're doing all you can for them to come back and backdoor that and say, well, we think he's guilty based on whatever the reason might be.

Committee never had transcript of their court, so we don't know why it could have been, Hey, we don't like that guy because he's buying land next door. You know, we don't who, We don't know what their motives were. Who made up the Vigilance Committee, prominent members of the of Los Angeles. One of them that we know for they were just citizens. They weren't They weren't a lot of people. No, Nope, one of them

that I guess I could put put the name out there now. The family has has given me some letters and what not to read over regarding that. But one of the guys that we know on the committee was Thomas Sanchez, who if you go to Glendale the Sanchez Adobe since that was his house. He actually was sheriff from eighteen sixty to eighteen sixty seven, so he was very well liked because of the Vigilance Committee. Yeah, he was a violent sheriff. I mean he ultimately he he was you know, he wasn't kind

of an outlaws sheriff. And people wanted that. That's what the public wanted. That's why they voted for him. You know, for during for eight elections, he voted eight in eight times. Wow, and that's unheard of at that time, but he was very popular because of that. We're sheriff's terms the same back then as one year, one year, one year terms. So he won eight elections. So eighteen sixty to sixty seven. Can you imagine having the campaign every year for your job, Like yeah, wow.

I mean going through some of his his items and letters and stuff that the family showed me, there's he was a shoe in almost every year. They he really didn't have me just on his name alone. He was he was, he was in and you know, he was also sheriff during the Civil War, so there was a lot of you know, termoil going on in the nation and people were very afraid of what was going on out there. So I think that was a distraction a lot. With turning the elections.

I just think people, whatever was there, we want to keep it. Just Yeah. So I think that I can't go back in a time machine and go into people's heads. But that's kind of the feeling I get, just based on what I've read. When we come back, let's talk about then how this new idea with investigating the crimes within the department, how that started and how it went and how it evolved. But first, this

is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on k if I AM six forty. You're listening to KFI AM sixty on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory. This is Unsolved. Welcome backward. The ground floor of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department headquarters inside the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles. Were speaking with Mike Frt and Tony He is the curator of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Museum, and we are sitting where the

corner's office used to be decades ago before the break. You know, you're sort of wrapping up sort of the history of the sheriffs along the way and how the approach to investigating crimes evolved. Now we're up to where you had Sheriff Rowland and you said that he wanted to sort of do investigates in house. So how did that look back then? I mean, overall some of the Uh, the investigations still exist. Between the Huntington Library and the State

Archives, you can actually get original documents. The investigations were as thorough as they can be back then they were. They were, in my opinion, very very well done. I mean there's as far as how do you but but there was no precedent set on how to investigate a crime, right, No, No, it was. It was basically just going out there and and doing interviews, um, talking to to the people in the public. Uh, the stuff you see, there's basically this stuff you see today,

very very basic investigation process. There wasn't you know, nothing there no science involved or anything like that. Ultimately, just talk to people. And you got to realize Los Angeles a lot smaller back then. So if something happened, someone knew something new, somebody knew something. Witnesses were you know, readily available. Uh you know people I think and cooperated a lot more back then with the sheriff. You see a lot of cooperation. People are very

quick to to witnesses to come forward and whatnot. So they had those advantages as disadvantages they didn't have. Obviously, are cameras, forensics, DNA, all that stuff. Obviously they had to just go on what they had, and you know, overall there there is you know, the acquittals are are in my opinion, are high for the time because if they didn't have enough evidence people they just didn't get convicted. And it's weird as far as sentencing

too. Sentencing sometimes guys are hit with a harsh sentence for something you think is minor, and then for a major crime there they get, you know, five years in state prisons. So it's just it all depends on the time. It's kind of a cycle that goes through. So it's interesting when you read these, uh these records from the time and you're expecting, well, everyone, you know, sentences were so harsh back then. No, it's a cycle. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't, so kind of

the mood of the day, that's it seems like a yes. So, um, as this evolves in this Sheriff Roland model evolves into investigating in house, when did a more formalized sort of like you know today we know we know it is homicide Bureau, but when when did there When was there a first sort of formalized gathering of investigators or detectives. So so there was a murder in nineteen oh one. It was a murder in Downey. It was a triple murder husband, wife and the baby and brutal murder and the murder

of a baby. I mean, today, no one's ever going to be desensitized to that. That's something that's horrible. Don't matter when it happened, but at that time it was just it was unheard of. I can't find another case one hundred years before that or a hundred years after that where somebody just comes into a house and murders a husband, wife and a baby and brutally. So this murder was in Downey in nineteen oh one. Sheriff Hemil was a sheriff of the time. He handled the case. The case,

they had a suspect. Unfortunately, you know, he had a motive. It was it was his ex wife. There was he had made threats are in the past, but there just wasn't enough evidence to convict him. They couldn't put him there at the farm that day. And they just they tried everything they could at that time. But overall the case was handled by the sheriff and the under sheriff. They both worked on the case thoroughly and that continued on until until nineteen ten. In nineteen ten there was the the La

Times bombing. Two brothers Mcamara brothers who were unionists who are very much against what the LA Times had set about. These union groups set a bomb behind inc aalley at the LA Times building and this bombing was the largest at I think to this day's the largest terrorist attack at Los Angeles. I want to say well over twenty plus people were killed in this bombing, mostly guys had worked in the LA Times building, writers, printers, janitor or stuff like

that. Their ultimate goal was they didn't like General Otis who ran the La Times. But in the end they ended up killing just a bunch of innocent people. This investigation was thoroughly handled by the La County Sheriff, William Hemmel at that time, and it involved This case just blew up because it involved over a hundred conspirators. It went from state to state. It was a long drugout investigation, and by the time everything was said and done, Sheriff

Hemmel was exhausted. He was done, and he's getting ready for it. You know, there's an election coming up and he's focusing on this homicide case and this is when he decides he's going to create a criminal division, and a criminal division was the first detective bureau now at that time, Criminal Division, which was created in nineteen eleven, a year after or I would say eight months after this bombing. Criminal Division handled every case, so there was

no specific to homicide. So one day you could show up to your desk and you have a burglary, the next day you have a murder, the next day you have h you know, a stolen horse. There was no consistency, so there was no specialized training. So overall Criminal Division was just detectives that would come in and handle whatever fell on their desk, and you know, they did a good job early on. They you know, we had good detectives at that time who did the best they could. They also

worked with detective agencies. You had your Pinker Tins, you had Nick Harris detectives, which are still in business. I think they're still work out of West Hollywood, m and they would work with them as far as h these agencies, paying informants and getting information from people on the street and whatnot. So they did do the best they could for what they had at the time, but there was no specialized training in homicide. Right, so when did

that come into play? Where? Where does now it's safe to say, I don't know if you know this, is it safe to say that the La County Sheriff's departments at that time you say, the criminal vision, do you think that's probably one of the oldest in the country. No, no, no, god no. There were others that started along with Oh yeah, yeah, but East Coast had it down, San Francisco had it down. Um. LAPD had a detective Beer I think going back to eighteen eighty

eight. Um. But overall, Um, the Sheriff's department handled even in the city like the La Times bombing. We worked with LAPD on that case, but overall we did all the out of state investigations were all done by the Sheriff's office because I guess probably of funding that we had more funding, more resources than than than the police department did at that time. Um.

But overall, yeah, we uh um. We didn't really have a really need for a homicide a detail or special specialized detail until the blue Beard Watson murdered in nineteen twenty. That's really okay, we'll talk about that, but first we're gonna take a quick break This is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on caf I AM six forty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand kf I AM six forty lie everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory.

This is Unsolved. We're inside the Hall of Justice down on the ground floor where the museum for the La County Sheriff's Department is housed. We're speaking with Mike Frent and Tony, the curator of the museum. And you did an excellent tease before the break, Mike talking about the big the big one, the big murder case that sort of started I guess the homicide Bureau, right, yes, yes, Okay, what was it? So a call comes into the Sheriff's office in nineteen twenty, I think it was April of nineteen

twenty, and there's a woman I think her name is Kathleen Wombacher. She calls she's married to a guy we know as James Watson or James Bluebeard Watson, and I'll go into that in a little bit. And she she had made a phone call to the Nick Harris Detective Agency and she basically said she she just married this man. She feels like he might be cheating on her. So they're looking at a bigamy case here. Not a big deal, I mean, it's I think back that sounds like thirty days in the county

jail or something like that. But so Nick Harris detectives asked the Sheriff's department for assistance on this. So the Sheriff's department starts following him and they notice everywhere he goes he goes with these steamer trunks. Long story short, I guess you know, obviously not the same rules we have today with search and seizure. They basically they're suspicious of them. It's enough to open the trunks, and inside the trunks they discover wedding rings, wedding certificates, photographs,

you name it. They find it in there, as far as women's property, women's clothing. They start questioning about these trunks, and Watson says, well, I'm I'm an agent with the Secret Service and I'm investigating this swindler who swindles these women out of money. He marries these women and swindles amount of money. So at that time, the two detectives out of Criminal Division, Harvey Bell and Robert Coots ask him for credentials, and he said,

well, I don't have credentials. They're they're not omni, but they're in a lockbox, in a safety deposit box in San Diego with a lot of my investigative files. So they said, okay, we'll take a trip down to San Diego. How does that help? They all jump in the car. They're driving down to San Diego. And the interesting thing about this is this whole trip is photographed. We actually have the photographs of the entire trip. They brought in a photographer from the La Times. They contracted him and

he took some time off and basically just came down and photographed this. Why don't we don't know? So, you know, it's funny because I always found a history, the history of this department interesting in that insane with LAPD that you used to use La Times photographers for crime scene photos. Yes, them, the Examiner, Yeah, any photographer that was used the news media to help archive or memorialize your cases. Yeah. So we don't know why

for a bigamy case they decided to take them out. More or less, I think they just the photographer wanted to get out of get out of his house. For a weekend or something. So this is where the case starts out as kind of a nothing and really the detectives really get suspicious on this. As they're driving down to San Diego, James Watson cuts his own throat and he survives a suicide attempt, but in the car. Yes, so we have photographs of a lot of stuff. We have even photographed him in

the hospital with his neck bandage you want. So at that time, Bell and Coots, the two detectives are very suspicious of that. There says, some thing is not right with this, Why would this guy commit suicide? When they get down to San Diego, they discovered there's no safety deposit box.

Watson is not cooperating with them at all. So what they start doing is they start looking into these missing these these women uh cases, if they're if they're missing women or you know where they come from, where you know they're They're starting to discover that a lot of these women are not from California. Most of these wedding rings, wedding certificates, uh photographs where were taken in different states, so Iowa, Idaho, um, some in Canada.

So they're discovering that there's a whole trail of these women that he had married or whatever. No, it's all these wedding rings his or they well they're in his possession, so they're so they're they're they're little suspicious. Okay, how does he have all these rings from all these different women from all these states, all these marriage certificates and whatnot. And what they just start discovering are these these are missing persons. All these women are missing persons. So

now they're suspicions are really growing. And as they start questioning blue Beard more and more and more, he finally breaks. They said, we know you killed these women, we know you took their money, we know you did. And there's saying if you are convicted, they're gonna hang you. They're gonna this California, They're going to hang Finally he breaks, and when he breaks, he starts admitting to the murders of all these these women. These

were these women that he actually married. So he'd actually meet these women in the newspaper on the lonely Hearts ads and stuff like that, he would marry them and they would go away for their honeymoon, and ultimately he would kill them and dispose of their body. So of course the detectives want proof. They said, well, show us a body. And he said, well, most of them I sunk in rivers or I burned them up and I couldn't get their bodies. But there is one I killed recently here in Signal

Hill and I buried her out in Imperial County. I could take you where where she was buried. And he said, I just need a couple of days to recover it. Like, yeah, no, you're not going to recover. They drag him out of Bank of Early Walk the hospital bed and they take him down to the to the site and first sight he goes to it's the wrong site. They dig there, he goes, now, this is not it was this other rock formation. Long story short. Um.

By the end of the day they get to the right location. They start digging and they discover a body. And this body is horribly mutilated. He had he had tortured her, he had um cut her up, he had disfigured her face. Um, he had done a really awful number on her. And this is one of his wives. This is one of his forty wives. A man was married forty four zero. The man was married forty times. And this is one of the possibly twenty two to twenty six wives

that he had killed. Now with the body and everything, Uh, they have a case. Um, he's overall convicted. Um he beats he beats the gallows. Um, he beats it. He doesn't go to they don't hang him. He gets a life sentence in san Quin. Ultimately he dies in and Quentin prison and he's buried out there in some grave that's overgrown with a tree and growing through the center of the tombstone. But overall, he does an interview blue Beard Watson does an interview with True Detective Mysteries about you

know that prison is the best place for him. He says, this is this place is where I belong. I don't belong on the outside, but I'm ever released. I'll never stop doing this again. So back to the whole detectives. Detectives come back and they talk to at that time, the chief of Criminal Division, Harry Wright, and they said, Chief, this guy almost got away. This was a very complicated case that involved multiple jurisdictions

that we're calling police stations and Iowa that don't even have telephones. You'd have to call the post office and tell the postmaster to go out there and get the local sheriff of the local police chief to talk to them about these missing

persons. With the complication these cases, we really need a unit that specializes in homicides, and especially with the growing population of Los Angeles, the large transient population, the murders are not so much you know me and you know domestic or I know this person used to be Yeah, now it's more just they're just random. So with these so let's pause there for a quick minute. When we come back, we'll talk about the birth of Homicide Bureau.

Yes, that's right, but first, this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on kf I AM six forty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand k I AM six forty heard everywhere live on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. If you're listening on the app, you can send us a tip about a case, a story, idea, or a comment about the show. Just tap the red microphone on the app and record your message. Welcome back Worth the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's headquarters inside of

the Hall of Justice, downtown Los Angeles. Talking with Mike Fratt and Tony, who is the curator of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Departments Museum, telling some amazing stories. In fact, before the break you were wrapping up the James Watson case had forty wives. Forty wives tried to slit his own throat while in the customer detectives in a car headed to San Diego. Um, but we know one thing I didn't ask you before the break is he was

known as blue Beard. Why blue Beard? That was a saying for somebody who would swind to women, like a kind of like a player or a con man. Really, that's a that's an old term. M Yeah, not he's much anymore. But if you read the old detective magazines, you'll see blue Beard of Cleveland or blue Beard of New York. So though, that's how they would title them, the guys that would swind to women.

So this was the first big case that convinced the sheriff that a more formal homicide bureau needed to be created, right, yes, okay, so what year are we talking about? Nineteen twenty one, twenty one? So initially, so well, let me let me rewind a little bit. So at that time we had a Sheriff John C. Klin, who was the one that was putting together the Homicide Bureau of the nineteen twenty John C. Klin

ends up resigning as sheriff due to some corruption issues. He's replaced by William I. Trager, who, in my opinion William I. Tregar was one of our greatest sheriffs. William II. Tragar comes into the department as a reformer and he says, what is this department need? How do we improve this department? And his main goal, Tragar's main goal is transformed this department from a frontier style sheriff's department to like a professional police department. I want

to have the best of everything. We are the La County sheriffs with the biggest sheriff's department in the world. We should have the best of everything. And that's ultimately what he does. One of the first things he does in July of nineteen twenty one is he funds what they call the homicide Squad and what the homicide squad is, and I said, that kind of history repeats itself. The homicide squad initially was five detectives, handpicked detectives from the DA's

office. The Sheriff's Office and Los Angeles Police Department and all the major cases they would work on together. Just the major cases, the cases that were the simple that not that who've done it would be handled by the individual departments, but the homicide squad. So that's the first squad that's put together. We're five detectives, a stenographer, was five detectives, a stenographer and a and basically a secretary run the run, run the detail, and it's with

the captain oversea. And the first captain was Captain Bill Bright or William Bright. And overall, nineteen twenty one's kind of interesting because we're just out of Bluebeard, Watson and um ELA's first female serial killers. So male and female serial killer. Uh what was her name? God names escapes me right now. But long story short, we have both male and female serial killers. First time that the word serial killers not used at the time of mass murder

or spreek whatever they use at that time. But overall, it's it's getting the public interested and stuff. They're realizing that there's predators out there and that these people need to you know, need to be investigating on any professional to investigate them. So you can't just have you know, Joe off the street investigating these cases. They're a lot more complicated. These these criminals think things out a lot more and you're dealing with literally predators. So what that said.

The Sheriff's Apartment forms it's homicide squad in nineteen twenty one. Shortly thereafter we have the case like Clara Phillips, the Hammer Murder's case. In nineteen twenty two, you have William Desmond Taylor, one of the Hollywood's first movie moguls, He's Murdered nineteen twenties, has a lot of big cases, and we kind of shift between the homicide squad and a homicide detail, and I could go into that. It's kind of more a lot more complicated than that.

But we have several issues where where lpd's Homicide does things at the Sheriff's Apartment doesn't agree with. One of the things was working over suspects, working over stuffs, So working over suspect was when you needed that final confession. It kind of just you know, work them over a little bit. Sheriff. Sheriff Tragger was not about that. He said, we don't operate like that. It's interesting because in a lot of these interviews in the nineteen twenties.

They're talking about constitutional rights. They're asking if your constitutional rights were violated during this interview. This is before Miranda, this is nineteen twenty five, twenty six that they're putting it in our actual reports. So with that, we broke away from LAPD and we started investigating cases separately. So that's when we went from the homicide squad to the homicide detail, and the homicide detail

did not work with LAPD any longer. They worked separately from them. We didn't work again with LAPD until nineteen twenty seven with the William Edward Hickman case. And that was a case where a former banking player wanted to get back at a bank president who had who had basically turned him in for stealing checks from the bank. As a revenge plot, he kidnaps this banker's a twelve year old daughter and ultimately mutilates her and murders her. I mean, it's

a horrible crime. At the time, he ends up escaping up to Oregon. That case was such a big case and this public was so outraged that the sheriff and LAPT kind of put their issues aside and worked together and capturing Hickman. Ultimately, Hickman was captured up in Oregon and tried and convicted here in California. Let's go back, because you were talking about the first female serial killer, did you whatever came of that case, So that's a little

I couldn't think of the name. Louise Pete. Was her name, Louise Pete. Yeah, so Louise Pete had killed Sarah, she had killed in Texas, she had killed here in California. She actually, she only gets convicted of one murder here in nineteen twenty. She's released from prison. In the forties, there's there's a women's group that felt that she deserved a second chance. There's a woman that lived out in Pacific Palisades who really fought for

her parole. Overall, Louise Pete is paroled and she actually lives with this woman. Ultimately, she kills this woman and puts her in the flower pot in the house, and eventually they realized there was no fixing Louise Pete. She was not fit for society, and she was executed, I believe,

in nineteen forty eight in the gas chamber. So so, yeah, so in nineteen twenty, you basically have the first male if you want to say, they're not defined as that, but the first male and female serial killer in the same year in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, even though they weren't identified as that. How um, I mean, I don't know if any any of the research would tell you this. But back in the day, I mean, was record keeping pretty thorough? Yes? Were they pretty

good about keeping notes? And they did. They did a better job of creating records, and we did maintaining them a lot of a lot of the failures came later on in the seventies eighties, when they started purging stuff that they just felt wasn't important. They said, this case is sold, why do we keep this stuff. When we look back to the stuff, we are shocked and how thorough these cases were. Some of them are eight nine hundred pages long, and it's one detective work in the case. The interviews

are very thorough. We're shocked. We were. We did not know what to expect of how investigations would be done, but they were very, very thoroughly done back then. And our salvery was high. At one point in the nineteen twenties thirties, we had a ninety nine percent salve Ry, which now once again I know, yeah, things were different, different different,

Yeah, okay, Yeah. We're talking with Mike Fratten Tony he's the curator of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Departments Museum, and we're inside of the actual spot where it used to be the Coroner's office, down in the ground floor of Pall of Justice. More with mister Fratt and Tony Butt. First, this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on k I AM sixty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the

iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved Worth the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Departments headquarters inside the Hall of Justice. Were down on the ground floor inside the museum, which is led by Mike Frentontoni, and mister Frantoni has been telling some amazing stories about how the homicide detail started and before the break you were kind of telling this the detail has been created. Now, so how many investigators, I mean, were they actual detectives at this point or

investigators? Yeah, so they're actually they're actually investigators, They're they're they're paid an additional salary, So their salary I think it was like an additional fifty dollars a month or something like that, which is good money. M they Initially we started out with five detectives. As time goes on into the twenties, mid twenties, we're right about eight detectives. By the end of the

decade, we're at ten detectives. I think today we have well over one hundred rum but overall our caseload is not as big as you would think. But at the same time, we respond to everything, respond to every dead body call, every you know, stuff that we probably wouldn't respond today. Responding to everything wow um suicides, old people that just you know, pass away from natural cause. It's clearly a natural cause case. We're responding to

everything. So so overall the detectives do have a large as far as response, but they a caseload is not as big. So we're now in the early to mid twenties, nineteen twenties. What's the next sort of big innovation that comes into the homicide detail. So so the two things is the one

is a murder book. We have to we have to basically break down the investigation prior to nineteen twenty four, we're just basically throwing everything in a box and letting the DA sort it out with At this time, we're actually taking from the first report all the way till the final court dispo is all in this book, and it's indexed and it's easy to find everything. So from your witness interviews to your corners report is all in this book. That's literally

put together by the detective. So that's that's an innovation because that's something we did before l EPD did, and I think a lot of other agencies in this state we did. I think we're the first ones to do the murder book. So what that said, that's an innovation that was created by Captain Bill Bright. Another thing was what we noticed is trying to explain jurors explain

to jerrors about a scene what a scene looked like. A lot of times we're taking jurors to the scene, but the bodies are gone, the scene is cleaned up. They don't really get an idea of what the scene looked like. So what we started doing is following the guidelines of the La Times Reporter guide by the name of George Watson, who was the first UH staff photographer for the La Times. He starts training our detectives to photograph scenes.

And he said, but your your photographs have to tell a story. Because he's a newspaper photographer, he knows how to let his photographs tell a story. And he said, with your photographs, you could put him on this board and basically, the jury could be at the crime scene. You have a photo of the scene, you have a photo of the victims, you have you have a layout. And then a lot of times back then, they would even give the suspect the gun and he would pose, uh,

you know, pose basically do a reenact with murder. Yeah, I'm looking, which is ridiculous, I mean, absolutely ridiculous thing about that. But yeah, he's i mean incriminating himself basically. But uh but yeah, so and you see, and and we included some of those photos in the in

the pro in the in the one hundred Year of Homicide program. But that's something that would would give the jurors an idea of what went on at the scene, give him it's kind of like a movie, um, and and and give him a better idea of people that were altered and didn't see this stuff. Today we see this stuff in movies documentary people were a lot more sheltered back then, so this gave them basically a storyboard of what happened at the scene. So so you create like a photo units. Yes, photo

units created and our photographs starts in nineteen to twenty six. So I'm looking at this and you're talking about this program. It's the one hundredth anniversary Homicide Bureau. In this program, all it says the Sheriff's detectives have suspect re enact murder of his wife nineteen forty eight. Now, I wanted to ask you this because there is what appears to be a woman on the floor. Yeah. Yeah, is that the actual get body? Yep, that's that.

That was a Norwalk case. A husband I got tired of his wife. She would guess he was gallant, Adam consolet. He went into the room, got a shotgun and shot her right as she turned to run out the door. He shot her. He basically calls it in and says, I killed my wife. It's an at The gun is on the table. The detectives get there and they said, okay, pick up the gun and show us what you did. And they photographed and that's what you see in

that still. It is a Crystal Clare black and white photo of this man standing just in There's a chair that's been knocked over. It looks like a dining room table, and he's just sitting there with a shotgun in his hand. It's I can't even imagine how that would go over today. But there were other countries, or are countries that still do this, I'm sure, and Maria does this, I know, I mean other countries in Asia do

this. I just think today defense attorneys would pick that card. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely, But back then they were just looking at Oh this is a good tool for the jury to see what went on that day. So what else happened? Now at this point, what about forensics? Did forensics? Photographs are part of forensics? What about collecting evidence and things like that? So we started doing evidence collection relatively early, but it was contracted.

It was a guy by the name of Arthur Moss, who was a chemist with the USC would do evidence collection, and this one on the nineteen teens, all the way up into the nineteen twenties. By nineteen twenty four, we had a criminalist who wasn't officially a criminalist he was a guy with a chemistry degree worked out out the Dena station who would basically volunteer his time collecting evidence in one this guy was his name was Frank Gombert, and Frank

Gombert was actually he was brilliant. He was when it came down to u to forensics. He's truly a pioneer in forensics. UM, it's not until nineteen twenty eight that our crime lab is actually officially formed. At that time, the Sheriff's Department crime Lab is known for hair comparison. We according to the literature of that time, UH forensics magazines and whatnot, that Frank Gompert is basically his pioneer in hair comparison and one of the cases that he does

hair comparison is is the Gordon Stewart Northcott case. If you saw the movie Changeling with Angelina Jolie about the kids a murder farm out in Riverside, Gompert worked on that case. There was actually two boys kidnapped in Pomona, these brothers, Winslow brothers. When they were when they were kidnapped, they were taken to the to the farm ultimately murdered to the farm. They never recovered

their bodies. But they did recover hair. They did hair inside the chicken coops on the near one of the pillows, and what they were able to do was take the hair from that pillow, go to the kid's bedroom, take a pair off the comb, and he was able to compare compare him under a microscope. Now, I'm not a scientist. I don't really know how it works. He's one of a forensic question. But I know involved density of the hair, involved the fibers, because the fiber density involved the

thickness of the hair. So he would put him on a microscope. Basically, he claimed it was like a fingerprint. In nineteen thirty one, we have a article where he is training FBI agents in hair comparison. Really so yeah, So he's truly a pioneer in that. Frank Gompert is very different from LAPD's Ray Pinker, who really promoted himself. Gomper was a very quiet guy. He did not promote anything he did really to the public. He was He didn't like to do interviews, he didn't very rarely did he go

in magazines or unless it was internal stuff or benefited the science. He really wasn't a self promoter, and that's epping On Pinker. Pinker was a phenomenal scientist and he you know, his name is famous. You know, he ran the crime lab, the crime lab at at cal State after he retired. But overall, Pinker more promoted himself while Gompert stood at his you know, his room in the corner at the Hall of Juice, of homicide. Chemistry. Yeah, and just a chemistry nerd. That's all he did.

He lived for it. We're talking with Mike Frent and Tony with the La County Sheriff's Department's Museum. We're here on the ground floor of the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles. This is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on kf I AM six forty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio Appum. I'm Steve Gregory. This is Unsolved. We're talking with Mike Frett and Tony. He is with the

La County Sheriff's Department's Museum. He has welcomed us inside. Where we're sitting. I don't know. I guess this is sort of the center of the operation. We took an amazing tour of the old jail cells, the original jail cells. And he told us early on in the show that we're actually sitting on the spot where the coroner's office was, So I can't imagine how many autopsies happened in the exact same spot we're sitting. You can't even camp.

And then it is thousands. Is it true this place is haunted? I can't. I have no clue. That's that's what they tell me. They tell you that I never talked those stories here. That's the one thing I never I will lose all credibility. I cannot. I cannot talk. I can't imagine, though, what a place like this, how creepy it could get it because I've heard others tell me in this building there are ghosts here and it's haunted. But that's that's another show for another day. Unexplained.

Weird things happened, but that really, yes, weird things happen. Okay, So we're talking about the basically the formation of homicide bureaus. We know it today, but you have taken this on this amazing historical journey of how not only the department started, but then how forensics started to weave into investigations, and we had the homicide detail, we had the criminal division, and now we were talking about photo section came into play the crime lab.

Now, um, so, how many people are in the department by now we're in the we're in the late twenties, by now we're in the early thirties. Yes, so we have we're hitting nearly a thousand deputies total. Wow, and about ten ten plus at homicide and so, um, what's crime like in LA around that time? Bad prohibition? Prohibition prohibition, So

so you're you're talking the at that time. I think it was the largest number of police officers murdered during that time prohibition, between nineteen twenty and nineteen thirty three. Um, not so much. Our department LAPD gets hit harder than we do. But cities like Chicago, New York in some cases I think New York has three or four officers killed in a month. Um. So, So because of that, bootlegging um is big business here in Los

Angeles. There's a lot of corruption behind it obviously, and uh and and a lot of ran and murders because now you have what you have organized crime. So with organized crime goes a lot of unsolved murders. Yeah, that's right. I guess a lot of that, a lot of those games, a lot of those um. I guess that here around the time mafia starts to take hold. Yeah, yeah, coast in the West Coast, they're trying. They're not really doing too well out here, but you are seeing

some guys like like you know, a lot of union stuff. Yeah, yeah, you're saying. But overall, the corruption is so high here with among the political figures that not even the mafia could run here in Los Angeles. It's it's it's it's a it's a rough period. But you know, and you and you would talk about all the murders at that time. You look at the mob boss Joe Ardenone was killed out in um. He was killed somewhere between uh Tahunga and uh Atawana which became Rancho Kucamonga. Most likely

his body dumped down one of the old wells there. But his case has thoroughly worked on. And it's just funny when the detectives I read through that that that case, and when the detectives try to work on the case, these guys will not say a thing. The old school black hand would not. They just they don't. They don't say anything to the police at all. They don't give any information. They don't they are true. They'll do a life sentence. You could, you could hang him at san Quent and

they're not going to say a word. So they just truly stick to their code. So these cases become very difficult. And if you look at that time, a lot of those mob murders or black hand murders are unsolved both with US and LAPD because there's just absolutely no cooperation. So when did um, I'm glad you brought that up, so you know, I know today you have a cold case unit made up of retired detectives. But back then, when we're talking about in the thirties and into maybe into the forties,

did you have a missing persons unit? And did you have an unsolved Yeah? So what missing persons started in nineteen twenty three when they realized that homicide detectives realized there's a connection between missing persons and homicides. A lot of times these persons that end up missing become either a body dump they've discovered their bodies somewhere, or or there's a con fashion later down the line. So they wanted to get an early start on it. So missing persons does go under

homicide in nineteen twenty three. Also, another thing was the other question was I was talking about unsolved, and so we don't have an officially an unsolved unit at that time. But it's interesting because at that time they felt once a case was unsolved, if it went over a month a year, there's no point unless there's a confession, we're not going to solve it. So we'd shelve it. But the guy that there's a guy at homicide by the

guy named by the name of Joseph Pulvida and Joseph Paulvida. He gets on the department in nineteen oh three, and when he gets on the department, he actually looks into that nineteen oh one Downey case again and goes nowhere. Years later, he's going through records again and finds a case again and finds out the suspect in that case is sick, he's dying, and he tries to get a deathbed confession at him. He doesn't, but overall he does

open the case. So he is the first detective. I would say Joe Sphpulvida is the first detective to start reopening old cases because back then, unless there was a calling or a lead, they wouldn't just randomly open cases. It's not like there was any new technology that came in. They unless there was a confession or something else, there was no reason too. Yeah.

So he's the first one that really starts opening up unsolved cases. And he starts doing that in the nineteen twenties, I would say about nineteen twenty five twenty six he starts doing that. And is he having a pretty good success rate? No? No, no, well he doesn't have even today. I mean, you think about how long unsolved cases have gone on just with

recent technology and familiar DNA and things like that. Are they now just starting But it's technology because a lot of people involved in these cases are dead. Yeah, yeah, and or their descendants are dead or something. You look at that Montana murder from nineteen fifty one, I think they just saw it and that one. They reopened that case I think eleven times and they finally got it on familiar DNA. So it's it's not the detectives didn't try and

a lot of times they have the suspect. They think in that case they had the suspect. They just didn't have enough to get them. So you know, you look at if any of these old cases, if evidence still exists in some of these cases from the thirties and forties, Ken, you solve them. I guess you, Ken, But is there really going to be I guess all you could do is close them. There's going to be

no convictions. All the suspects are dead at that point. Well, and I can't tell you how many times I've interviewed detectives on this show, and to what you just said, A lot of times they have their person, they know exactly who they're going, Yester, And a lot of times on the show, we can't even talk about that, yeah, because they don't want to go there. But they'll tell me off Mike. Yeah, we already know who did this. We just need this little piece of information.

We need a witness to come forward, we need DNA, we need it's always one little tiny piece and push it over the edge. And that seems like a lot even back then. Is they have they know who did it, they just can't prove it, and there's no point going to court and letting guy get it not guilty and then never me, I go charge me. Yeah, and then not be able to charge them again, right because that and probably disappear and you know, everything gets blown up in exactly.

So now we've got a homicide bureau. You say, Now we're pushing up into the fifties right now, from the forties up to nineteen fifty then yeah, yeah, so so between that time pass pro at the end of Prohibition. Well, you know, let's stop there because I'm gonna take a break and when we come back, we'll wrap this up. But first, this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on kf I AM six forty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand, kf I AM six forty live everywhere on

the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. Welcome back with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Departments headquarters in downtown Los Angeles known as the Hall of Justice. We're inside this historic building that was built in nineteen twenty five. We're in the ground floor in what is the museum now but used to be where the corner did autopsies and joining us as Mike Frent and Tony he is the curator of this museum. So we're depression era, and this is

where things kind of get get a little muddy. For for homicide in nineteen thirty four, they're major budget cuts within the County of Los Angeles. There's shore falls in tax collection and just we're in the middle of depression. Nineteen thirty four, the county says the Sheriff's department has to cut everyone has to take a pay cut, including the sheriff. I think the sheriff takes almost

a fifty percent pay cut. With that said, they now break up Homicide Bureau or Homicide Details sorry to Bureau of Investigation, and they basically consolidate everyone. So it's almost like we're going backwards. We're going backwards again and going back to how we started, almost like a criminal division, but because of budget cuts, we have to do this. So with that said, kind of detectives are they're signed a buer of investigation, but they're handling different cases

as they come along. But then World War two hits. When World War two hits, different story. We have guys that let leave fight, go out and fight in the war. Crime prevention brings some people into homicide, and ultimately we have this unexpected rash of unsolved murders. We call lot murders of these women, going from starting in nineteen forty two all the way, I would say, to post World War two nineteen forty nine. And this

includes the Black Dahlia. Our famous case is Georgia Bauerdorff, who is an oil heiress who was killed in West Hollywood on Fountain in nineteen forty four. She's killed in October forty four. Her case still remains unsolved. So with that said, we have all these murders of these these women, majority of them are unsolved. All almost all of them, in my opinion, are random. I don't even think the same I did it. That's just my opinion. I don't think the same guy did all the all these murders.

But with that said, um, there's a lot of pressure on the sheriff's bar, and why aren't you solving these cases women? You know, there's this case in Hawthorne, or woman just walking down the streets. She's dragged into this empty lot. She's she's raped and murdered. Bisculus is getting a lot of pressure, especially after the war. Once the war is over,

people are not making there's really no excuses any anymore. So biscl Is with all this pressure of of really uh solving these cases, he has to kind of bring professionalism back to what they they felt they lost during the depression era with breaking up homicide. So there's a grand jury that comes through in nineteen forty nine going into nineteen fifty which investigates the black Dahlia and were these cases handled properly? And one of the questions comes up to Sheriff Biscalus, will

how do your homicide detectives work? Like, what's show us Emmanuel? Where did they go by? What's how do they? How do they train? And he said, wow, I really have an answer. The kind of detectives each do their own thing and they kind of investigate the best way they can. And he really doesn't have an answer, and it's embarrassing. Bisclus goes to his chief of detectives, Norris Stensln at that time, and Norris Stenslan's an interesting character. Norris came from Chicago, came out here to Los

Angeles in nineteen nineteen. He was he has his father passed away when he's very young. He grew up in a very very poor part of Chicago known as Little Hell. Later on he got the nickname from the department Little Satan, because they're saying little only Little Satan could survive Little Hell. He was also known as the human Bloodhound because of his detective skills were on another level.

Now, this is a guy who barely barely got out of high school, came here as a criminal bailiff, but sitting in the courts from nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty one, he learned how criminal case has worked, He learned how investigations work, and early on in homicide he was appointed as a detective. First he would just go out to the scenes and assist detectives. Eventually he got to Hama Side in nineteen twenty three. When he got there

in twenty three, he just was one of these all stars. He just shined. He was just had a knack for for interviewing people, catching liars. And I think it was because where he grew up. He grew up in the streets. He had to hustle a lot as a kid. He kind of knew bs when he saw it and I think he has had that mentality. But at the same time, he was a very humble guy, very soft spoken, and very well liked. He was very well well liked

by the public. A lot of good feedback from detectives who worked under him said he was treated everyone with kindness in respect even his secretaries. Found some write ups of his secretaries talking about how he was just one of the kindest menu you know, in the department. At the same time, he's a living legend everyone walked in, would you know bout him? Because God,

this is a homicide detective who solved all these big cases. So what that said, bisculous puts Stenzlein in charge of creating this homicide bureau, this professional bureau. And with the creation him that bureau, he creates the manual. So there's now a training manual. Everyone that comes in through homicide has to go through this training process. How many pages in the manual I think the initial manuals only I think twenty something page, so it wasn't that long.

But it breaks down how to do the investigation. It breaks down about you know, because the first time they're talking about really closing off the crime scene, and that's when you see less of the news photographers stepping on the crime scene. He started topet on our ability to exactly exactly, so it talks about preservation the crime scene. It talks about collection of evidence, it talks about interviewing of witnesses, report writing, all this stuff, testifying and court.

All of that's in the in the original manual. I don't know what the manual looks like today. It's probably very different. Do you have a copy of that original manual? We do, We do have it, Yes, we do have it. In God. Yeah, it's it's it's very it's not very detailed, but it's it's it covers what they need to do during the investigation. So that that said, um, Stensln creates a homicide bureau that now has, uh, there's an accountability and there's also a structure

to it. There's there's you know, from A to z, he what what you do to during an investigation. There's no this detective does it this way, this detective does it that way. It's very structured from from start to finish. Uh. With that said, um, it's kind of interesting with with stenslan Um. After he creates his whole uh, the whole homicide bureau or modern homicide bureau. Uh. He he doesn't tell anybody, but

he's sick. He has cancer. He's he's he's he's not doing well physically, so he without anyone expecting, and he he files for his retirement, and everyone's by Stenson retire. He doesn't say um, but he said it's basically it's time for me to go. But I'm gonna have this press conference.

So everyone's gathering around for this press conference, and they are expecting Stenslan to make this long speech about his long career, going back to nineteen nineteen and working through prohibition and dealing with all these uh, dealing with all these famous murders. And he goes up there and he lights his cigar and he basically makes this a online statement. He basically says, um, I think this, I think this, this department who's I love so much, and

I now leave it in capable hands. And he lights his cigar and says, thank you everyone. That's it. He's gone. Typical Stenslan, just a man of few words and all actions. So he goes on, goes down, in my opinion, as kind of the pioneer of modern homicide of what they do today with the training they go through today, the manual, the the structure of homicide bureau. He is the creator of that. He's not the creator of the homicide overall, but the creator of I would say

modern homicide, yes, so and and Stenslin. It's it's sad because overall he's not really remembered. You don't associate him with famous homicide cases, you know, if you think of more of the LAPD officers or you know, there's more famous names that go with with you know, Finnis Brown and all these famous times. This department has always sort of lived in the shadow of the sexiness of the LAPD they did. And even even when James Elroy did

the movie LA Confidential. Uh, the character Dick Stenslyn is named after Stenslan. About that, Yes, he's but he's named after an lap all right, it's it's it's a character of the it's an lap GAP Sorry, he's named after a sheriff detective. But it's for an LAPD detective. So even we don't even get credit when we deserve it. Well, listen, Mike, this has been a fascinating, fascinating journey with you and I have thoroughly

appreciated this. I know our listeners enjoy it too. But we want to do this again, please, OK, absolutely, and that's going to do it unsolved with Steve Gregory. The radio show is a production of the KFI News Department for iHeartMedia, Los Angeles, and is produced by Steve Gregory and j Of Gonzalez. Our field engineer is Tony Sorrentino and our digital producer is

Nate Ward. To hear this and other episodes, just download Unsolved with Steve Gregory on the iHeartRadio app or where were you listening kf I AM six forty on demand