BURN BABY, BURN!

It would seem little has changed ... and yet, so much has ... maybe its just that knotheads will always be knotheads!

Los Angeles, California - August, 1965

A bomb ready to explode, racial tensions that have been building for years in Los Angeles, California explode during a traffic stop that quickly moves from routine to a riot!

Watts Burns

On a sweltering August evening that has temperatures approaching 100 degrees, riding his motorcycle near the south boundary of the city of Los Angeles, 31-year-old white California Highway Patrolman Lee W. Minikus is informed by a passing black motorist that a car is driving recklessly through the neighborhood.  Reacting quickly, Minikus chases down the car and pulls it over at 116th Street and Avalon, in a predominately black community.  Inside, the vehicle is occupied by its driver, drunken (he fails the field sobriety test he is given by Minikus) 21-year-old Marquette Frye, and his 22-year-old brother, Ronald.  It is 7:00 in the evening.   

Sticks of Dynamite

Marquette Frye, Rena Price, and Ronald Frye

After failing the field sobriety test, Minikus informs Marquette that he is under arrest for drunk driving, calls his motorcycle partner to arrange for a car to take Frye to jail and a tow truck to remove the car ... while letting Ronald know that he will not be allowed to drive the car home after his brother's arrest.  And so Ronald decides to walk the two blocks or so to his nearby home and see if his mother, Rena Price, can have the car turned over to her (and it is her car, a 1955 Buick that her son was using).  Arrest car, tow truck, Price and her son, and another motorcycle officer all arrive at roughly the same time, around 7:15 in the evening ... and as a crowd of on-lookers interested in what is going on on their streets swells from 25 people to a mob of 300.  And then Rena Price sets off what will come to be known as the Watts Riots!

Life Magazine

Berating her son about his driving under the influence, the peaceful and cooperative Marquette (egged on by the crowd) reacts to his mother's presence by pushing her away, screaming he will have to be killed to go to jail, and trying to escape into the growing crowd on the street ... actions that cause Minikus and his partner to react, which in turn causes Ronald to get involved in trying to free his brother, and Ronald becoming involved gets Price to lose her cool and she attacks the arresting officers, jumping on the back of one and trying to tear his shirt off as Marquette is hit in the head with a night stick. Screaming, yelling, lots of pushing and punches eventually thrown, all three family members are eventually arrested and removed from the scene, but the damage has been done ... a shotgun is pulled on the mob, calls are made for more officers to come to the area, a woman is arrested for spitting on the cops, another for inciting the crowd to riot, and by the time the police withdraw from the scene at 7:30 to stones being thrown at their vehicles, a false rumor spreads through the crowd (now around a 1,000 people) that the cops have beaten up a pregnant black woman!

A Typical Scene

In the 144 hours of mayhem that ensues from the Wednesday night traffic stop, white drivers passing through the area are pulled from their cars and beaten, businesses are looted, buildings are burned to the ground, and the hatred of many of the residents of the area (a 46-square mile region) for the Los Angeles Police Department is put on display for the whole world to see ... rocks, fists, Molotov cocktails, knives and guns will all make appearances before peace is restored to the community on August 17th (it will take 3,900 National Guard troops, 934 Los Angeles police officers, 718 members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and over 500 firemen) ... and American culture will have a new catch phrase to ponder ... "BURN BABY, BURN!"

Up Against The Wall

Turn Left Or Get Shot!

L.A. On Fire

Martial Law

By the numbers, the civil disturbances known as the Watts Riot will result in 34 deaths (one is a fireman, one is a deputy sheriff, one is a Long Beach police officer, and the others are civilian residents of the area), 1,032 reported injuries (90 police officers, 136 firemen, 10 members of the National Guard, 23 government officials, and 773 civilians), and 3.438 adults being arrested (over 31,000 are estimated to have participated in the disturbances) for a variety of charges (71% are for burglary and theft).  Beyond the human toll of the rioting, the madness will cause property damages totaling over $40 million ... striking places where Christmas can be found in August (most of the rampage is released against liquor stores, furniture stores, food markets, clothing stores, department stores, and pawn shops), almost 1,000 buildings will be destroyed or damaged (service stations, automobile dealers, libraries, schools, churches, and homes are for the most part spared).  And its all broadcast live on local Southern California television!

National Guard Directing Traffic Out Of The Area

Headlines!

Lots of Looters!

Main Street

Fifty years ago today ... 8/11/1965 ... and based on the madness and hate still infecting this country, will it also be happening fifty years from now ... hard to say, but at the present I'm not optimistic at all!

Watts

Madness!

ROUND ROCK DEATH

7/21/1878 - Hoping to repeat the early career success of taking $60,000 in gold coins (worth a cool $1,428,571,43 based on 2015 inflation) from a Union Pacific train bound for San Francisco outside the town of Big Springs, Nebraska, the Sam Bass outlaw gang descends on Round Rock, Texas to rob the county bank there ... unaware that one of the gang members has betrayed the bandits' plans to the Texas Rangers! 

Young Sam

Dealt life blows early (his mother, Elizabeth, dies giving birth to her 10th child when Sam is 10, his father, Dan, takes ill and dies three years later, and his Uncle David uses Sam on his farm as a day laborer), at 18 Bass runs away from Indiana and starts roaming the West ... gaining experience as a mill hand on the Mississippi, handling freight for Sheriff William "Dad" Egan in Denton, Texas, cow punching on various ranches, and racing a horse he owns called The Denton Mare.  When funds run low though in the summer of 1876, he begins robbing stage coaches out of Deadwood, South Dakota with a cowboy buddy named Joel Collins. 

Train Robbery

When hitting heavily armed Black Hills coaches proves less lucrative, and much more dangerous than anticipated (in one robbery, the driver, Johnny Slaughter, is killed and the coach runs back to Deadwood ... for a ZERO net for the outlaws, on another run they come away with only $11), Bass and the collection of hard cases he leads (Jack Davis, Jim Berry, Collins, Bill Heffridge, Tom Nixon, Robert McKimie) move up to trains, and then banks,  By 1878, the gang has robbed five trains, another stage coach, and escaped a gun battle with Rangers and local lawmen near Salt Creek, Texas ... and top the list of desperadoes the Rangers want to shut down.  The bank at Round Rock is thought to be the tonic for the gang's misadventures ... an easy score from a town of barely 1,000 people with a very small law enforcement presence.  They could not be more wrong!     

Sam Bass & John E. Gardner (BACK, L-R), Joe & Joel Collins (FRONT, L-R)

Trapped into giving information on the gang when his ailing father is refused medical treatment and threatened with arrest for harboring members of the Bass Gang (and for leniency come trial time), new recruit (Collins and Heffridge are dead in a shootout with soldiers out of Fort Hays, Kansas, Berry is killed in Mexico, and Nixon and Davis vanish after a robbery and are never seen again) Jim Murphy betrays his comrades and gets detailed information to the Texas Ranger Major John B. Jones on the gang's plans for Round Rock ... and the town is soon secretly full of lawmen waiting for Bass and companions to appear.

Judas Jim Murphy

And appear they do ... establishing a camp site in the woods outside of town, the gang (Bass, Seaborn Barnes, Frank Jackson, and Jim Murphy) prepares their weapons and scouts the bank twice.  Ready, on Saturday, in the heat of a blistering hot afternoon, the men mount up and ride into town.  But before hitting the bank, Bass, Barnes, and Jackson decide to visit Koppel's general store (next to the bank) for some tobacco, while Murphy heads to the livery for some grub for his horse, although he is actually making himself scarce to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of what he knows is coming.  Noticing armed men entering the store, but not recognizing them as members of the Bass Gang, Deputy Sheriffs Ellis Grimes and Morris Moore decide to question the strangers ... a big mistake!

Sam Bass

While Moore stands by the door of the store, Grimes walks up to the men as they haggle with clerk Simon Juda over the cost of tobacco, "I believe you have a pistol," the lawman tells the outlaws.  As one, the gunmen admit they do, turn, and begin blasting away with their weapons.   Hit point blank in the chest by multiple rounds, Grimes never gets his pistol out of his holster, staggers backwards, and drops dead in the store's doorway (afterwards, many will question why the lawmen approached the men, guns in their holsters, when the Rangers' plan was to have the two deputy sheriffs only observe and notify of the arrival of any strangers ... many believe the mistake comes from not wanting to split any reward money with any other officers).  Moore however is able to pull and shoot, wounding Bass in the hand and side as the outlaws fly out of the store for their horses in the alley ... and he in turn is shot through the lungs (he will survive his injuries).  Grimes leaves behind a wife and three children.

Reward Poster

And of course, the sound of gunfire draws other lawmen and armed citizens to the outlaws ... along with lawmen firing from various positions on the street, Albert Highsmith blazes away at the badmen from the back of his livery stable, while F.L. Jordan shoots at the outlaws from a nearby saloon.  Too much lead to avoid, Bass is hit by a bullet that tears through his kidney and exits his body near his navel and Barnes is killed by a slug from Ranger Dick Ware that hits the outlaw in the head as he is mounting ... only Jackson is missed in the deluge of lead that sweeps the streets.  Helped by Jackson, Bass and his buddy make it out of town and back to camp ... but the outlaw leader's wounds are mortal and he orders Jackson to flee without him.  

Major John B. Jones of the Texas Rangers

Eventually found sitting under a tree, Bass is hauled back to Round Rock in a wagon and placed on a cot in August Gloeber's tin shop (the local hotel has refused to provide space for the wounded outlaw). "The world is bobbing around," are the bandit's last words before slipping into unconsciousness and then death.  Bass is 27-years-old when he dies on his birthday! 

Round Rock Grave Site

THE DALTONS AT ADAIR

7/15/1892 - Seeking funds to use to escape American law enforcement by relocating south to Mexico, the Dalton Gang (a rogue's gallery of pistoleros and thieves consisting of 23-year-old Bob, 31-year-old Grat, and 21-year-old Emmett Dalton, 34-year-old Bill Doolin, 26-year-old George "Bittercreek" Newcomb <so named for continually singing a popular cowboy ditty, "I'm a wild wolf from Bitter Creek and it's my night to howl!">, 26-year-old Charley Pierce (Newcomb's best friend), Dick Broadwell of Hutchinson, Kansas, and former Bar X Bar Ranch cowboy Bill Powers) rob a northbound Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad train at the town of Adair, Oklahoma (in the northeastern part of the state, not far from Oklahoma's borders with Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas).

Robert Rennick "Bob" Dalton

Planned while hiding out after their Red Rock robbery of a Santa Fe Railroad train at the Dunn Farm near Ingalls, Oklahoma (the place where the Dunn Brothers will betray and kill their former friends, Bittercreek Newcomb and Charley Pierce over a money dispute, and the affections of the Dunn's sister, Rose), lawmen learn of the raid and plan to ambush the gang by loading the train with a dozen gunmen interested in the rewards for various members of the band.

Grat Dalton

Totally confident in their abilities, the gang arrives at Adair at around 9:00 in the evening and immediately goes to business by holding up the local railroad agent and ransacking the station for cash and valuables, then calmly selecting comfortable seats around the station, cradling their Winchester rifles, await the 9:42 coming of passenger train #2. 

Doolin

Jumping into action when the train pulls into the station, Emmett and Grat Dalton swing themselves into the engine cab and cover its occupants, Powers, Broadwell, and Bob Dalton position themselves on the train platform in front of the door to express car, and Doolin, Bittercreek, and Pierce set up to persuade anyone in the passenger cars from interfering in the robbery ... which does indeed happen moments later!

Emmett Dalton

Realizing the train is being robbed, Marshal Sid Johnson of Muskogee (a former friend of Bob Dalton's when they served as peace officers for Judge Parker in Fort Smith, Arkansas), Indian Police Chief Charley LeFlore, and railroad detective J.J. Kinnet grab their rifles, jump off the train, take firing positions behind a coal shed, and open up on the gang. Unfortunately for the cause of law and order, the other ten men in the posse decide that risking life and limb against the gang of desperadoes is a fool's game when confronted by the actual outlaws, and hide in the darkened train, firing only occasionally at the shadows on the train platform.  And maybe wisely so, for the outlaws start immediately blasting away at the coal shed and soon silence the trio of lawmen there ... Kinnet takes a slug in his right shoulder, Johnson suffers a painful flesh wound, and LeFlore has the stock of his weapon hit and is put out of action by his hands being filled with splinters.

Covering the Engineer!

Opposition quieted for the moment, the outlaws break into the express car and find the agent inside, a man named Williams, reluctant to open the train's safe, claiming he doesn't know the combination.  A lie, as if he knows Hollywood will one day make movies about the gunslingers of the Old West, Bob Dalton convinces the man to open the safe by drawing his pistol and snapping off a shot at the agent's head that comes within less than a inch of being brain dead fatal.  Presto, the safe is opened and the gang rides out of town $40,000 richer than they were earlier in the evening (but not enough for Mexico, causing Bob Dalton to decide one more robbery is necessary ... a job that will best Jesse James and show the town he grew up in that he can't be looked down at any more ... the gang will take the two banks of Coffeyville, Kansas at the same time).

Bob Dalton

Gang gone, robbery complete in less than 15 minutes, the unfortunate evening is however not over for the town of Adair.  Playing cards at the local drugstore, 65 yards away from the railroad station, Dr. W. L. Goff and Dr. T.S. Youngblood are both hit by stray bullets from the short fight between the outlaws and the trio of fighting lawmen ... Youngblood is hit in the right foot (a wound that will cause part of the foot to have to be amputated), while Goff is struck in the thigh, a bullet that severs the physician's femoral artery and causes him to bleed to death before help can arrive.

Bittercreek Newcomb

A clean getaway from Adair, but not from reaping what they have all sown leading outlaw lives ... Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, Dick Broadwell, and Dick Powers will all perish in a Coffeyville alley, Emmett Dalton will be wounded 23 times at Coffeyville and receive a life sentence for his actions there (he will serve 14 years before being pardoned), Bittercreek and Pierce perish at the hand's of the reward seeking Dunn Brothers, and Doolin will be riddled by buckshot when he refuses to surrender as he is about to leave for Mexico with his wife and child from his in-law's farm outside of Lawson, Oklahoma.

Powers, Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, and Broadwell - October, 1892

Wounded Emmett - October, 1892

Newcomb & Pierce - May, 1895

Doolin - August, 1896

7/15/1892 - just another violent day in the Indian Territory!

GOODBYE BILLY!

7/14/1881 - One of the most famous deaths in Wild West history takes place when William Henry McCarty, Jr., also known as William Antrim, receives a fatal slug in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  Huh?  Never heard of him you might be saying in confusion ... well, 21-year-old dead William is better known by his outlaw moniker ... the one and only, Billy the Kid.

 Billy

In hiding after his escape from a Lincoln, New Mexico jail (in which he killed his two guards, Deputies James Bell and Robert Ollinger, on April 9th of 1881), Billy the Kid makes the fatal mistake of seeking a late night steak dinner after having sex with his longtime sweetheart, Celsa Gutierrez (instead of doing the wise thing and fleeing to the safety of Mexico).

 Ollinger gets blasted

Entering the Fort Sumner home of Peter Maxwell at around midnight to obtain the key to his friend's meathouse, hatless, wearing socks, and carrying a butcher kife with his six-gun in his waistband, the Kid has the misfortune to enter a dark room in which Sheriff Pat Garrett is in the very process of questioning Maxwell about Mr. Bonney's whereabouts.  

 Sheriff Pat Garrett

Alert to possible danger of a shadowy figure in the room, Billy calls out "Quien es?" twice, his last words, for Garrett, recognizing the voice of his former drinking buddy, and knowing the lethal speed of the Kid's draw, lets loose immediately with two shots from his weapon before running out of the room.  One slug all that is necessary, a hot round from Garrett's .45 finds its target in the center of Billy's chest, just above his heart, and the outlaw dies instantly ... and a legend is born.

 Tombstone at Fort Sumner

Mission accomplished, Garrett allows Billy's body to be taken by friends to a nearby carpenter's shop ... where a box for the Kid is prepared and a wake is given celebrating the popular outlaw's life ... all twenty-one years of it.  

 Dime Novel Billy

Glad to be rid of a menace to the region he patrols, 31-year-old Garrett finds the notoriety that comes from questions about the manner of the bandit's death extremely unpleasant ...  over the years he will lose numerous elections for a variety of law enforcement positions, eventually becoming a rancher.  And it is while ranching in 1908 that the law man gets gunned down himself under mysterious circumstances involving debts, goats grazing on his property, and the presence of western hitman Jim "The Killer" Miller in the neighborhood.  No one knows for sure who gets Garrett, but whoever takes him out, they make sure that the shooting is final ... pumping fatal doses of lead into his stomach and head.  He outlives Billy by 26 years.

Vigilante justice for Miller and associates (Miller is far left in black hat)

Rest in Peace, Billy!

A MONSTER NAMED SPECK

7/13/1966 - No father since six, a step-father with a 25-year criminal history, drinking by the age of twelve, a daily drunk by fifteen, a drop-out from the 9th grade by sixteen, twenty-four-year-old Richard Benjamin Speck is a total loser with 41 arrests on his resume by the time he leaves Texas for Chicago (where his sister lives) in 1966 (fleeing a 42nd arrest warrant for stealing 70 cartons of cigarettes from a grocery store).  In Chicago, moving up from petty crimes like public drunkenness and vagrancy, Speck will molt into the monster he is ... raping and murdering 32-year-old barmaid Mary Kay Pierce on 4/19, before his crime-of-the-century moment of wanton slaughter comes on this day at a dormitory for student nurses located at 2319 East 100th Street of the Windy City.

Speck

Drunk and flying high on speed, after an unsuccessful day and evening trying to get transport work at the National Maritime Union hiring hall (an occupation that doesn't suit him, on his first assignment he will be sent back to shore after suffering an appendicitis attack, on his second he is fired for fighting with one of the ship's officers ... there never is a third sea mission), dressed in a black jacket, t-shirt, pants, socks, and shoes, and armed with a cheap stolen .22 caliber Rohm pistol and switchblade knife, at 11:00 Speck makes his way over to a townhouse he has seen pretty young women entering and leaving, knocks on the door (the two-story townhouse holding the dormitory is only 150 feet away from the hiring hall) ... and sadly, the door opens.

First Box At Left

Claiming he won't hurt anyone and is just going to tie up the women while robbing them of enough money to go to New Orleans, Speck brandishes his pistol and switchblade about, cowing the six women in the house into allowing themselves to lie on the floor and be bound around the hands and feet with strips of bed sheets the killer tears apart (tied with nautical knots he has learned during his brief time as a sailor).  Speck's captives are 23-year-old Corazon Amurao from the Philippines, 23-year-old Valentina Pasion and 22-year-old Merlita Gargullo, both also from the Philippines, 20-year-old Pamela Wilkening (only 19 days away from her 21st birthday), 20-year-old Patricia Matusek (a swimming champion), and 24-year-old Nina Schmale (a Sunday School teacher for four years).  At 11:30, when 22-year-old Gloria Davy returns to the townhouse after a date (she is president of the Illinois Student Nurses Association), she joins the others upstairs in bondage, as do 21-year-old Suzanne Farris (one of three children born to a Transit Authority worker) and 20-year-old Mary Ann Jordan (one of six children born to a local civil engineer), when they enter the residence shortly after midnight.  Nine powerless young women and one piece of human garbage, a formula for an epic tragedy.

Eight of the Nine Nurses

Power, madness, hate, and lust ... Speck unties Wilkening, takes her into another room, stabs her in the left breast, then strangles her to death with a torn bit of bed sheet ... a killing that stimulates the monster, but sadly doesn't satiate him ... and so it is on to victim #2. Following a horrible pattern, one by one, Speck will take the women to another area of the home where he spends about 20 to 25 fatal minutes with each (a scumbag through and through, Speck will blame his victims for their deaths, claiming none of the killings would have happened if Wilkening had not spit in the maniac's face when he started pawing her breasts), then he washes up and repeats the process ... Mary Ann Jordan is stabbed in the neck, breast, and eye, Farris fights back and is stabbed eighteen times before being strangled to death, Schmale is stabbed in the neck and strangled, Pasion is stabbed in the neck, Gargullo is stabbed and strangled, Matusek is kicked in the stomach and strangled to death, and Davy is raped, then taken downstairs naked, raped again in a manner that mutilates her anus with a foreign object and strangled to death. Done, Speck lets himself out the front door and makes his way over to the skid row on Madison Street, where he starts a new drinking binge.  He has made a mistake though and allowed a potential victim to survive ... a witness that will send the killer behind bars for life ... Corazon Amurao!

Amurao

Terrified, but keeping her wits about her, during Speck's evening of slaughter, Amurao manages to squeeze under a bed when the killer is out of the room ... where she listens to the final words of her friends, has the rape of Davy take place on the bed she is beneath, hears eight murders take place and is saved from becoming number nine when Speck loses track of how many victims he'd taken hostage.  Remaining motionless and silent beneath the bed until 6:00 in the morning, Amurao steps over bodies (trying to avoid looking at the carnage all around the townhouse), breaks out a screen window, and climbs outside on to a ledge where she begins screaming for help.  "Help me!  Help Me!  Everybody is dead!  I am the only one still alive on the sampan!  My friends are all dead, all dead, all dead!  I'm the only one alive, oh God, the only one! My friends are all dead!"  A neighbor, Mrs. Betty Windmiller, and a man out walking his dog, Mr. Robert Hall, are the first to hear the news.  Minutes later the police arrive and begin their murder investigation ... an easy "gotcha" considering Speck has left a witness (who will accurately describe the killer to a police sketch artist at the hospital she is taken to), 30 fingerprints about the house, many bloody, and a t-shirt wrapped in Davy's panties. Fingerprints a match to Speck, the police arrest the killer on the 16th of the month, after the drunken monster makes a feeble attempt to commit suicide by slashing his right wrist and left arm and is taken to the emergency room of Cook County Hospital, where he gives his real name as he is checked in.

A Victim Removed

Crime Scene

The Knife

Brought to trial the following year, with a confession in hand, a witness that identifies the killer in court, and a fingerprint expert providing testimony that Speck produced the prints, the jury deciding Speck's case finds him guilty of all eight murders after only 49 minutes of deliberations.  Guilty, Speck is sentenced to die on 11/22/1968 in the state's electric chair ... but escapes execution when the United States Supreme Court rules his death penalty is unconstitutional because 250 potential jurors were kept out of the Speck jury pool over being opposed to the death penalty because of religious issues.  No death, but no out either ... upon re-sentencing, Speck is given 8 consecutive sentences of between 50 to 150 years ... a maximum sentence of 1,200 years.  After a massive heart attack, one day before his 50th birthday, at the age of 49, on December 5, 1991, wearing his "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo, maggot Speck departs forever for Satan's infernal regions of Hell.

Life Behind Bars

As for Amurao, trying to make as much of the rest of her life as normal as is possible, in the years that follow, she will spend time in the nursing departments of Far Eastern Hospital in Manila and Georgetown University Hospital in Washington D.C., marry businessman Alberto Atienza, have two children, and beyond the $5,000 reward she is given for providing the information that gets Speck arrested, refuses to sell the story of her horrific evening for profit!  With a huge assist from her guardian angel, she is currently 72 years young! 

One Tough Cookie!