There’s a Woman Bites Cop story and a local murder mystery with all sorts of twists. We also have one of the oddest, most ironic traffic deaths ever witnessed. It’s a doozy.
C’mon. Through the shimmering time portal into wide open spaces and oak trees galore…
(CAPTION — On July 12, 1900, the little village of Newhall had its first-ever telephone installed. It would be 13 years later when the second one got put in — and then, they took theirs out and we had just one phone until 1914 again. Hard to imagine. I know folks with three cell phones.)
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN —
— On July 14, 1876, a Chinese rail worker in an all-rubber suit struck his pick through a wall. What did he see? Another Chinese rail worker in an all-rubber suit. Thus, the Newhall-San Fernando Rail Tunnel, one of the longest in the world at about a mile in length, was completed.
— And on this date, Rudolph Nickel beat The Mighty Signal to the punch by nearly 30 years. He published the first regular newspaper on July 15, 1891 — The Acton Rooster. Off and on over the years, it was die off and start up again, under new owners.
JULY 14, 1921 —
— The U.S. Army, L.A. County Fire Dept. and Signal columnist and forest ranger, AND this valley’s first cowboy poet, Thornton Doelle, all joined forces to battle a huge brush fire in Bouquet Canyon. Several of the firefighters suffered from an unscheduled visit with some heavy poison oak shrubbery.
— All these thousands of editorials The Formerly Mighty Signal has penned and they never seem to influence anyone. On this date, this newspaper came out strongly against people speeding in the valley. “Speeding is a disease – one which cannot be cured by persuasion.” The Signal noted that tourists fly through downtown Newhall. “Forty to 50 miles an hour is by no means, uncommon.” The Signal urged the formation of a local vigilance committee to deal with the matter.
— Ed Abbott, who ran the local hardware store, had a new shipment of rifle ammo. He advertised it would be sold, “…at big city prices!”
JULY 14, 1931 —
— The Jones’ ranchhouse burned to the ground on this date. The expensive Mint Canyon home, valued at $32,000 (a lot of money back during the Depression) was razed to the ground after Mr. Jones accidentally started a fire while cleaning his kitchen floor — with gasoline.
— Just over the hill, same week, the Smith ranch burned to the ground. The Smiths lived in less tonier digs. Their damage was accessed at $5,000. Everything they owned — from piano to clothes — was lost in the blaze. Locals passed the hat to try to get the Smiths back on their feet.
— Burglars took $20 in cash and a few cartons of cigarettes from the Safeway on San Fernando Road. They caused about 50 times that in the damage they caused, breaking in through the roof and destroying the cash register.
— Gene Holder had himself a Daniel Boone moment. Holder, working on a federal biological survey in Arizona, did more than survey. He went mountain lion hunting. Treeing the big cat, Holder took aim, slipped, fired and wounded the puma. It pounced from the tree and landed right on top of the Saugus biologist. He and the cougar had a terrific bar fight and Holder ended up killing the cat with his hunting knife. Then, Holder had to ride for three days to Flagstaff to get medical treatment for his 10,000 bites, cuts, gouges, scratches and missing skin.
JULY 14, 1941 —
— Both the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and local Newhall officer Charles Rittenhouse were on the hot seat. Rittenhouse had discovered hundreds of incidences of LASD corruption and had gone to the grand jury. Shortly thereafter, Rittenhouse was written up on 60 different charges, from taking bribes to protecting gamblers. On this date, Rittenhouse’s attorney, Sam Rummel, found a “bug” in his L.A. office. Rummel traced the wire, went upstairs to the next floor and tossed a large chair through a glass door. There, he found three Sheriff’s detectives with eavesdropping equipment.
— We’ve had many a strange auto accident over the last two centuries. This was one of the oddest. Mrs. Rose Bender had been despondent and had talked of taking her own life. To give her a change of mind, her son, Victor, took his mom on a scenic drive along the old Ridge Route. Victor also brought along his girlfriend, Beatrice Hill, 21. Both women had fallen asleep well into the drive. Victor was starting to pass a slow-moving truck carrying pipe when his mother, in the passenger seat, woke with a start. She grabbed the wheel and swerved it into the truck. A section of pipe went through the windshield. It struck Victor’s fiancé in the face, killing her instantly. Son, and suicidal mother, were unhurt.
— Dogs and cats together. A man dancing with his wife. Add to strange pairings, the CHP used to share offices with the L.A. Sheriff’s for a while until the CHiPsters new digs were being built. On this date, the new Highway Patrol HQ held its grand opening on San Fernando Road, just south of Newhall. The lot was donated to the state by Wm. S. Hart and local businessmen. The CHP headquarters were started in October of 1940 under a Roosevelt WPA grant.
— Tell Chris Allensworth. Mid-July, 1941, was the deadline for dog tags. Cost? A buck a mutt.
— The SCV Gay & Lesbian Club might get a kick out of this one. A local newspaper entertainment story carried the headline: “Gay Comedy Is Scheduled.” “Gay” meant something entirely else back in 1941. In this case, it was the Merle Oberon movie, “Affectionately Yours.”
— Over 1,000 women from the Women’s Reserve Corps were camping out in Bouquet on maneuvers.
JULY 14, 1951 —
— The mercury topped the 110 mark in some spots and adding insult to injury, some rogues managed to steal 40,000 gallons of precious water from the Val Verde hillside storage tank that fills the park pool and services the community. The water was only valued at $15.60, but was viewed as more precious. Irrigation had been temporarily banned in the water-starved community. How do you steal 40,000 gallons of anything?
— The drought and heat punished the SCV, whose economy was based on agriculture then. Farmers were hastily digging their wells deeper. A chance thunderstorm in July dropped a scant amount of rain on the valley, serving only to keep fire danger down for a day or two at most.
— It was one of the most heinous murders of the 1950s in Newhall. The remains of Betty Jean Hanson, a beautiful auburn-haired 20-year-old, were discovered in Beale’s Cut. She had been there for as long as a week. The murderer? Her stepfather, 48-year-old ex-con, Frank Kristy. Police pretty much got the clue to that with the footprints around the corpse and the fact that Frank left his autographed cigarette lighter at the scene. Kristy was later apprehended in Sterling, Colorado, where he was arrested while painting a house. What gave the murderer away was his distinctive tattoos on both forearms — as described in a national all-points bulletin. He said he murdered his step daughter after an argument. They were supposedly going to run away from his wife and her mother and start a life together.
— The Hanson murder was also the source of temporary, but excruciating torment for local businessman, Dennis Hill. Hill’s wife had left him two days before the Hanson corpse was discovered. When the body was found, the description perfectly matched Hill’s wife. In fact, Hill was taken to the scene to identify the body and broke down in tears several times before being able to recognize it was not his wife, or, still sadly ex-wife.
— An odd coincidence on that Hanson murder. The body was found by a tourist family — named Hill.
JULY 14, 1961 —
— Long before the City of Santa Clarita held its beloved Concerts in the Park series, there was the Summer Music Series at Newhall Park. On this date, the San Fernando Men’s Chorus sang a selection of, “… show tunes, sea chanteys, classics, folk songs, hymns, spirituals and most every type of song that appeals to the heart and fancy,” or so the program said.
JULY 14, 1971 —
— On this date, the Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) was disbanded. The SEB had long been controversial, especially in the SCV, after several reports of strong-arm tactics, including the arrest of a Signal reporter and beating up a local baseball coach. The 90 specially trained deputies were reassigned.
— A man, posing first as an immigration officer, then, as a doctor, forced his way into the home of an unidentified Hispanic woman and began groping her before she ran away.
— This is not a specific note or event, just a general observation. We had many more hitchhikers in the SCV 30 years back than we do today. One of the busiest spots was the Lyons Avenue offramp. Perhaps because it was the ’70s, you’d see folks of all ages thumbing rides. We had more rapes and murders of hitchhikers, too. Pass that on to the kids…
— Some consumers were crying fraud over a drawing at a local Saugus store. Various big prizes, from TV sets to vacuums were used to draw folks in to the establishment, including $100 worth of dining certificates. Problem was, when folks opened the envelope, the dining tickets were 2-for-1 dinners in such far away places as San Diego and Stanton.
— Man Bites Dog. Woman Bites Marshal. Two of the more succinct headlines in journalism history. In the latter, Marshal Walt Shiller had a human lamprey scar on his upper inner thigh. Shiller had shown up at the home of Betty Taylor to evict the woman for non-payment of rent. She started throwing furniture around the room (none of it was hers). Ala Keystone Kops, Walt and his partner chased her around the house for about 16 bars of piano music. When they tried leading her outside, Betty bit Walt. So darn hard, her teeth tore through his britches and into his skin, drawing blood. And who said cops are thick-skinned…
JULY 14, 1981 —
— Twenty years ago, The Signal penned a front-page feature. It was about our dwindling agricultural lands and how more and more local farms were going out of business. The story was rather prophetic. Now, except for Lombardi’s up Bouquet Canyon, I’m hard-pressed to think of any other full-time working farms left in the SCV…
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Well folks. That about wraps up this Sunday’s time ride through Santa Clarita Valley history. It sure has been nice riding with you. See you next Sunday. I’ll bring the horses and trail map. You bring the coffee and cinnamon buns. ’Til then — vayan con Dios, amigos!