My Dark Places

off of old boxcars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Jean Ellroy job was running longer already.

3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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