White Jazz

Shock waves have spread through Hancock Park and indeed the entire Southland, and a memorial service for Christine and Laura Herrick drew hundreds at Occidental College, where they were both enrolled in graduate programs. Locksmiths citywide have reported a tremendous business upswing; guard dog sales have doubled locally. Private security patrols for Hancock Park are being considered, and meanwhile police are jealously guarding investigatory information.

The Herrick investigation is being headed by Lieutenant David D. Klein, the commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Administrative Vice Division, recently in the news when a Federal witness he was guarding committed suicide in his presence. Lieutenant Klein has detached a half dozen men from the Department’s Internal Affairs Detail to work under him, along with his aide, Officer Sidney Riegle.

Chief of Detectives Edmund Exley defended his choice of Lieutenant Klein, 42, a 20 year officer with no Homicide Division experience. “Dave Klein is an attorney and a very savvy detective,” he said. “He has worked on a burglary case that may be tangentially co

Lieutenant Klein addressed reporters at the LAPD Detective Bureau. “This investigation is proceeding rapidly,” he said, “and progress has been made. Many known associates of the Herrick family have been questioned and eliminated as suspects, and extensive canvassing of the area surrounding the murder scene yielded no eyewitnesses to the killer entering or leaving the Herrick home. We have eliminated robbery and revenge against the family as motives, and most importantly eliminated the Herrick’s Chino escapee son Richard as a suspect. He had been our initial major suspect, and we had issued an all-points-bulletin to aid in his capture, but we have now lifted that bulletin, although Richard Herrick is an escaped felon and we would very much like to talk to him. We are now centering our search on a sexual psychopath rumored to be seen near Hancock Park shortly before the killings. Although the three victims were not specifically sexually assaulted, the crime has the earmarks of being perpetrated by a sexual deviate. I, personally, am convinced that this man, whose name I ca

And, meanwhile, fear besieges the Southland. Police patrols in Hancock Park have been doubled and the current boom in home security measures continues.

A funeral service for Phillip, Laura and Christine Herrick will be held today at St. Basil’s Episcopal Church in Brentwood.

L.A. Times, 11/21/58:

Citing crime statistics and current rumors, U.S. Attorney Welles Noonan stated today that Southside Los Angeles is “boiling over with violent intrigue” that may well be “co

Noonan, heading up a much-publicized Federal rackets probe centered in South Central Los Angeles, spoke to reporters at his office.

“During the past four days eight violent deaths have occurred within a three-mile South Los Angeles radius,” he said. “This is double the average of any one-month period of any given year going back to 1920. Add on the curious heart attack of a supposedly healthy young policeman at a nightclub later burned down, and count as perhaps curious the mutilated body of an unidentified man found two miles further south on the Compton—Lynwood border. Collectively, you have fodder for much interesting speculation.”

Noonan elaborated. “Three nights ago an unexplained shootout at an illegal after hours club in Watts occurred,” he said. “Two Negro men and three Negro women were killed, although rumors persist that one of the victims was white. The following morning a young LAPD officer named George Stemmons, Jr., was found dead, allegedly of a heart attack, in a back room at the Bido Lito’s jazz club. A scant day and a half later Bido Lito’s burned to the ground. Federal agents overheard an eyewitness tell LAPD detectives that he heard a Molotov-cocktail—like explosion moments before Bido Lito’s caught fire, but the LAPD Arson Squad has now attributed the blaze, which took three lives, to a carelessly tossed cigarette.”

Reporters interrupted the impromptu press conference with questions. Repeatedly stressed: the Federal rackets probe is specifically targeted to discredit the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southside enforcement measures; isn’t the U.S. Attorney taking an adversarial position predicated on incomplete information?

Noonan responded. “Granted,” he said, “that unidentified body found in the L.A. County Sheriff’s jurisdiction may be a non sequitur, but I ask you to consider the following.

“One, remember what I told you about that eyewitness to the Bido Lito’s fire. Two, consider that the father of the young policeman who expired of alleged heart failure at Bido Lito’s earlier, himself a high-ranking Los Angeles police officer, stated that he thought his son was murdered. That man has been suspended from duty for his open criticism of Chief Ed Exley’s handling of the situation, and is rumored to be resting at home under doctorordered sedation.”

Reporters pressed: isn’t the Federal-LAPD quagmire coming down to a battle waged by two highly respected, nationally known crimefighters: himself and LAPD Chief of Detectives Edmund Exley?

Noonan said, “No. I will not let personalities or political ambitions dictate the thrust of my investigation. What I do know is: after hours clubs are allowed to flourish in Watts under unofficial LAPD sanction. Five Negro citizens died as a result, and despite assigning a dozen officers to the case, Ed Exley has not been able to come up with a single arrest. He has shoved the suspicious death of a Los Angeles policeman under the carpet and has deliberately misrepresented the facts in a triple-homicide arson case.”

In related developments, Noonan refused to comment on the persistent rumor that LAPD Narcotics Division officers are soon to be called in for questioning, or whether Abraham Voldrich, a rumored Federal witness recently deceased, was murdered or committed suicide.

“No comments on those questions,” he said. “But on the topic of witnesses, let me state that when it comes time to present evidence to the Federal Grand Jury, I will offer a major surprise witness with extraordinary cachet and another witness prepared to give astonishing testimony.”

Edmund Exley responded to the U.S. Attorney’s accusations: “Welles Noonan is an unscrupulous hack politician with spurious liberal credentials. He has no grasp of the situation in Southside Los Angeles and his smear campaign against the LAPD is based on lies, fatuous rumors and i

Dues time/time ru

Herrick 187PC—six lA men and SidRiegle co-opted. Forty-eight hours in:

No eyewitnesses, no vehicle pegged. No prints, no Richie-to-Mom letters found. Confirmed. ihe dogs sucked stelfactiznide chloride.

Background check:

Laura and Christine Herrick—nice girls. Good students, square boyfriends—almost Hancock Park wives.