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No office holds more power or authority than that of prosecutor. The power of protectoral office comes not only from its intrinsic authority, but from the large amount of discretion that is allowed a prosecutor in the matter of whether or not to press charges. Each prosecutor, then, is responsible to the law as the law relates to the facts of a case, and, more subtly, each prosecutor is also empowered to assess those ambiguous borderlands that can exist between the evidence and the law. The office of the prosecutor is at once based in the traditions and precedence of Anglo-American common law and in the sometimes impenetrable and intractable facts of a case. When a prosecutor is also an elected official, as in the case of the District Attorney of Los Angeles County, yet another factor—society itself, which is to say, the general will as expressed through politics—can be of relevance; for in some cases, neither the law nor the evidence leads inevitability to a clear-cut conclusion, and the values of society must be called upon in the process.

For the People is about the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and some of the extraordinary cases that office has prosecuted over the past hundred fifty years. From this perspective, it is a history of specific district attorneys and their deputies and specific cases. But it is also, by implication, a social and cultural history of Los Angeles. Criminal behavior while consistent in certain ways across the ages, also reflects a certain time and place. While the law is not sociology, it is shaped across the decades by shifting and developing social values and structures. The response of the public to each crime can also vary as society alters and rearranges its attitudes and values. In the case of this history book, it is quite easy to see, for example, a level of social violence in the frontier period, as expressed by a lynching and the massacre of innocent Chinese, that would be unthinkable in a later era.

So many of the early cases discussed in For the People—the Lugo case and the Vasquez case, for instance—deal with the interaction between Hispanic residents of the region and the newly established American hegemony. The temptation to the white majority in these years was the exploitation of the prior residents and vigilantism, as evidenced in the lynching of Michel Lachenais in December 1870. Xenophobia reached its climax in the terrible massacre by a mob of nineteen Chinese in October 1871. This was the low point of Los Angeles public behavior in the nineteenth century and a chilling reminder of how society can degenerate when it detaches from the rule of law.

That rule of law, however, was established in the early years, 1850 to 1899, helped in great measure by a series of distinguished district attorneys. It was as if Los Angeles—a remote, and sparsely settled frontier cattle town through the 1860s—explored its dark side in the 1871 massacres and realized that in this direction there was only chaos. Within a few short years, this same city, which had behaved so abominably, was building distinguished office blocks, paving streets, laying down streetcar tracks, opening schools, constructing its first cathedral and establishing the rule of law.

In the 1880s Los Angeles County entered the first of its many population booms. Between 1900 and 1919, the county absorbed more than a million new residents, while experiencing the profound social transformation of this era. Thus the District Attorney’s Office had to deal simultaneously with the single greatest act of anti-newspaper terrorism in the history of the United States, the bombing of the Los Angeles Times; the effort to clean up local government—born of the Progressive Era—and a series of dramatic murder cases during the 1920s and the 1930s—born of the general social and personal instability of a population of residents from elsewhere, frequently eccentric, even grotesque, unbuttressed by community sanctions.

During those years Los Angeles County earned its well-deserved reputation as a place where crimes of violence could be especially grotesque and sociologically revealing. As this history shows, the record speaks for itself. Los Angeles, at least as far as crime was concerned, earned its reputation as a far-out place. Seventy, even eighty years later, commentators had not tired of pointing to the Madalynne Obenchain case, the Tiger Woman case, the William Hickman case, the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the trial of Norman Selby, the disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson, and the Julian Petroleum scandal as studies in the distinctive, frequently bizarre, social texture of life in Los Angeles County. Indeed, in these tumultuous years, a district attorney himself, Asa Keyes, succumbed to the instability of the times, was tried and convicted and spent time in San Quentin.

All of America has courtroom trials, of course; but so many of the trials in this history are possessed of a vividness, a theatricality, a quality of Grand Guignol—the case of Rattlesnake James, for instance; the case of the lover in the attic, kept there for some ten years; the Winnie Ruth Judd trunk murder cases—that suggest a certain crossover between fiction and reality, the believable and the improbable that has become part of the folklore of the region. Frequently, the cases in this history involve celebrities. A famous theater tycoon, Alexander Pantages and, later, movie star Errol Flynn are charged with rape. Singer Madonna is stalked and put on the stand to face the stalker. Hollywood’s favorite gangster Benjamin Siegel is unsuccessfully prosecuted followed in time by equally unsuccessful efforts to convict Mickey Cohen. Robert Mitchum goes to the slammer, briefly, for smoking marijuana and emerges more popular than ever.

Sadly, ethnically based and ethnically biased prosecutions—the railroading of Pedro Gonzalez or the trumped up Sleepy Lagoon charges, for example—testify to the continuing second-class status of whole sectors of the population. The 1950s was a decade of suppressed tensions and a certain existentialist edge. The trials, convictions, and executions of Barbara Graham and Caryl Chessman captured the popular imagination (and then Susan Hayward played Graham in the movie I Want to Live, with one of the most horrific execution scenes ever) because these two cases revealed, most powerfully, the tensions and texture of the 1950s, at once the era of Ozzie and Harriet and a time bomb waiting to explode. That explosion occurred in the 1960s, beginning with the effort to prosecute comedian Lenny Bruce for obscenity. In such internationally significant cases as the Watts riots of 1965, the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the Manson murder trials of 1969, Los Angeles County was revealed as a seedbed of political and social tensions and dark obsessions that help define an era. The deaths of Ruben Salazar, the murder of Sal Mineo, the rape charges leveled against Roman Polanski, the bizarre rattlesnake trial involving Synanon (the second notable rattlesnake-as-murder-weapon case in Los Angeles County history) continued this cavalcade of cases revealing the underside of America—or at the least, the underside of southern California into the 1970s.

This representative role continues, however begrudgingly, through the last two decades of the century. The cases from the 1980s through the 1990s  have proven even more revelatory of the tensions being experienced by an entire society. America experienced the collapse of its savings and loan sector, and Los Angeles has the Charles Keating trial. America becomes increasingly enamored with celebritydom, and in the cases of actress Theresa Saldana, Rebecca Schaeffer, and Madonna, celebrities are stalked, maimed, and even murdered by obsessed fans. As if to signal the rise of gratuitous murder in the final years of the century, the era opens with the Bob’s Big Boy massacre of December 1980 and continues through the murders, arrest, trial conviction and sentencing of Satanist Richard Ramirez. To this day, the McMartin preschool case still lingers in ambiguity. Despite its inconclusive outcome, the McMartin case holds its place in the unfolding story of child abuse, real or imagined, a sad legacy of the century’s last two decades. And then came the Rodney King beating and the acquittal of the indicted officers, and the riots that followed in which Los Angeles once again, as in the Chinese massacres of 1871 or the Watts riots of 1965, looked the gorgon of social disintegration in the face—and almost blinked.

History is the record of what goes right and what goes wrong. In the cases discussed in this narrative, something went wrong, whether murder most foul, financial swindling, political corruption, or other of the many forms of human misbehavior. In a variety of ways, each of the crimes discussed in For the People illuminates not just the criminal, the victim, or the prosecutor—but society as well. Part of the fascination the rest of the world has with Southern California arises because of the frequently theatrical nature of its crimes and what these crimes tell us about the human condition in general as well as with life in these United States—and how the two confront and affect each other in a place called Los Angeles County.

— Dr. Kevin Starr
State Librarian
Los Angeles, California
July 2000

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• Introduction by Gil Garcetti 10
• Foreword by Kevin Starr 14
• 1 — From Cow Town Beginnings 20
•   Agustin Olvera 23
•   William C. Ferrell, District Attorney 1850-1851  23
•   The Lugo Case 24
•   The Lynching of Michel Lachenais 27
•   Clara Shortridge Foltz 28
•   First Public Defender 30
•   Bureau of Investigation 31
•   Scenes of the Action 32
• 2 — Thieves and Killers 36
•   Tiburcio Vasquez 38
•   The Bob's Big Boy Robbery and Murder 41
•   Lionel Ray Williams 42
•   Haing Ngor 43
•   Louis Bundy 44
•   Caryl Chessman 44
•   Barbara Graham 47
•   Ennis Cosby 50
•  3 — Crimes of the Heart 52
•   Walburga "Dolly" Oesterreich 54
•   Jack Kirschke 56
•   Lana Turner, Johnny Stompanato and Cheryl Crane 57
•   Madalynne Obenchain 58
•   Clara "Tiger Woman" Phillips 60
•   Aimee Semple McPherson 62
•   Christian Brando 64
•  4 — Family Violence 66
•   Griffith J. Griffith 68
•   John David Sweeney 69
•   O.J. Simpson 70
•   Donald James Bohana 72
•   David Helms 73
•  5 — For Financial Gain 74
•   William Edward Hickman 76
•   The Menendez Brothers 77
•   Julian Pete 78
•   Robert "Rattlesnake" James 80
•   L. Ewing Scott 82
•   Billionaire Boys Club 84
•   Charles Keating 85
•   Hector Tapia Anchondo 86
•   Alco Pacifico de Mexico 86
•  6 — In the Limelight 88
•   William Desmond Taylor 90
•   Alexander and Lois Pantages 92
•   Pedro Gonzalez 94
•   Errol Flynn 95
•   Busby Berkeley 96
•   Robert Mitchum 98
•   Lili St. Cyr 99
•   Lenny Bruce 100
•   Roman Polanski 101
•   John Belushi 101
•   Twilight Zone 102
•   The Cotton Club Murder 104
•   Theresa Saldana 105
•   Madonna 107
•  7 — Turmoil in the Streets 108
•   The Chinese Massacre 110
•   The Sleepy Lagoon Murder and the Zoot Suit Riots 112
•   The Watts Riots 114
•   Ruben Salazar 117
•   Rodney King and the 1992 Riots 118
•  8 — Public Corruption 124
•   Frank Shaw 126
•   Asa Keyes 128
•   Buron Fitts 130
•   Arthur C. Harper 132
•   Baldo M. Kristovich 132
•   Peter F. Schabarum 133
•   Art Snyder 134
•   Charles E. Sebastian 134
•   Rampart 135
•  9 — In the Line of Duty 136
•   The Death of Thomas C. Williams 138
•   The Death of Julie Cross 139
•   The Death of Ian James Campbell 140
•   The Deaths of Kevin Burrell and James MacDonald 143
•   The Death of James R. Barton 144
•   The Death of Martin Ganz 145
•   The Death of William C. Getman 145
•  10 — Notorious 146
•   Clarence Darrow and the Los Angeles TimesBombing 148
•   David H. Clark 152
•   Sirhan Bishara Sirhan 154
•   John D. Ehrlichman, G. Gordon Liddy, David R. Young, Egil "Bud" Krogh Jr. 156
•   Eulia Love 157
•   Muharem Kurbegovic 158
•   Raymond and Peggy McMartin Buckey 160
•  11 — Criminal Cohorts 162
•   Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel 164
•   Tony Cornero 166
•   Mickey Cohen 168
•   Synanon 169
•   The Manson Family 170
•   Patricia Hearst 174
•   The Lancaster Skinheads 175
•  12 — Driven to Kill 176
•   Louise Peete 178
•   Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono 180
•   Douglas Daniel Clark 182
•   Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker 183
•   William G. Bonin 183
•   Richard Ramirez 184
•   Winnie Ruth Judd 185
•  13 — Gangs 186
•   Karen Toshima 188
•   Stephanie Kuhen 189
•   The Halloween Murders 190
•   Corie Williams 191
•   Asian Boyz 192
•  Los Angeles County District Attorneys, 1850-2000 194
•  Bibliography 202
•  Index 204
•  Acknowledgments 208
•  Photo Credits 208

 

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A bizarre saga of obsession, sex, and a secret lover in the attic began to unravel on a late-summer night in 1922.

Dolly Oesterreich always had a man in her life—usually more than one. Fred Oesterreich, her husband, was a hard-living, hard-drinking and wealthy manufacturer of women’s clothing, primarily kitchen aprons. The couple first lived in Milwaukee, then moved to Los Angeles. Following them out was Dolly Oesterreich’s secret live-in lover, Otto Sanhuber. In 1913, when Dolly was a housewife in her early thirties, she had seduced Sanhuber, age 17, who was then working as a sewing-machine repairman in her husband’s factory. Oesterreich began the affair by calling her husband at work to tell him that her sewing machine was broken. When Sanhuber arrived at her home to fix the machine, she was wearing only stockings and a silk robe. The owlish, slight Sanhuber, who later described himself as Oesterreich’s “sex slave,” not only became fixated on the domineering housewife but he moved into the house, quietly retreating to the attic each evening when Fred Oesterreich came home from work. And wherever the Oesterreichs moved, for the next decade, so did Sanhuber. During the day, Sanhuber made the beds, did other housework and kitchen chores, made bootleg gin and fulfilled his duties as a lover. He lived on scraps he was fed in the kitchen. At night, in the attic, he lived another, solitary life, reading murder mysteries by candlelight and writing fiction—adventurous tales of lust and romance that he eventually sold to magazines. When the strange tale became publicly known, the newspapers called Sanhuber the “ghost in the garret” and “Bat Man.” The Oesterreichs frequently quarreled, but a particularly loud argument, and the sounds of a physical struggle, finally brought Sanhuber out of his attic late on the night of August 22, 1922. Fearing for his lover’s safety, Sanhuber grabbed two small pistols and came down to confront Fred Oesterreich. The undoubtedly surprised husband recognized Sanhuber from years before, when he’d ordered him to stay away from his wife. Oesterreich grappled with Sanhuber and in the struggle was shot three times, once in the back of the head. The lovers decided to feign an attack by burglars, whom Dolly Oesterreich would claim had killed Oesterreich when he resisted their demands. Sanhuber locked Dolly Oesterreich in a bedroom closet, threw the key into the hallway, hid Fred Oesterreich’s expensive diamond watch, then retreated to his attic hideout. Dolly Oesterreich screamed for her husband—“Fred! Oh Fred!”—but was slumped on the closet floor when police arrived, alerted by neighbors who had heard the gunfire. For almost a year the story held, though detectives were suspicious. For one thing, Oesterreich had been killed by a .25-caliber handgun, a petite weapon that few armed robbers would choose. Dolly Oesterreich, meanwhile, moved to another house in the neighborhood, installing Sanhuber again secretly in the attic. She also struck up an affair with the attorney settling her husband’s estate, Herman S. Shapiro. As a gift to her new lover, she gave Shapiro her late husband’s diamond watch, which he recognized. Oesterreich explained that she’d found it under a seat cushion in the house, but didn’t think she needed to tell the authorities about it. Then Oesterreich added a third lover, a businessman named Roy H. Klumb. From Klumb, she wanted a favor. Would he dispose of an old gun similar enough to the one used to kill her husband that it might be embarrassing if the police found it? Klumb threw it into what turned out to be a shallow spot in the La Brea Tar Pits. She asked a neighbor to do her a similar favor, and he buried the other gun under a rose bush in his backyard. By July of the next year, however, a detective had learned that Shapiro had the watch. And Klumb, after breaking up with Oesterreich, had told police of disposing of one of her guns. They retrieved the first gun from the tar pits. With the case back in the newspapers, the neighbor brought in the gun from under the rose bush. Dolly Oesterreich was arrested for murder. In jail, Oesterreich begged Shapiro to take food to the still-hidden Sanhuber. When he did, and the two men began talking, Shapiro learned of Sanhuber’s ten-year obsession. Shapiro threw him out of the house. Meanwhile, in hearings that dragged over months, Chief Deputy District Attorney Buron Fitts and Deputy District Attorney Harold L. Davis searched for a motive and more evidence, as well as an explanation of how Dolly Oesterreich could have locked herself in her bedroom closet and still deposited the key outside the door. Both guns were also rusted and damaged; it was impossible to prove that either one was the murder weapon. Then Oesterreich became so ill that she was reported to be dying. Eventually she was released on bail. Soon, all charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Shapiro, her remaining lover, moved into Oesterreich’s house, and they lived together  in a tumultuous relationship for the next seven years. Finally, in 1930, Shapiro moved out and told the authorities about Sanhuber, the “ghost in the garret.” Oesterreich and Sanhuber were both arrested this time—Oesterreich being charged with conspiracy while Sanhuber was charged with murder. The jury found Sanhuber guilty of manslaughter, but since it was now a year beyond the statute of limitations for him on a manslaughter conviction, Sanhuber was freed. In a separate trial prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney James Costello, Oesterreich was saved by a hung jury. Lacking more convincing evidence, new District Attorney Buron Fitts ended the long melodrama by declining to try her again. Sanhuber disappeared. Oesterreich apparently bridled her passions, living quietly with the same man for the next three decades, until her death in 1961.

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