“. . . a riveting portrait of early 20th-century LA . . . a well-paced and well-researched account . . . with ample photos, maps, and newspaper clippings. . . . a complex portrait of a brave cop beset with his own demons. . . . An exciting addition to the true-crime history of Depression-era LA.” — Kirkus Reviews (CLICK HERE FOR FULL REVIEW)
“This colorful anecdotal history of crime in pre-war Los Angeles presents a lively cast of cops, criminals and reformers who, for better or worse, gave us modern Southern California. Most of the action is seen through the eyes of Harry Raymond, a police detective and private investigator, who is involved in many of the period’s key cases. Raymond gains and loses many jobs due to the turbulent politics of the time, when the line could be vanishingly thin between policeman and felon. The corruption eventually boils over into a violent confrontation that almost costs Raymond his life, and marks the end of an era. . . . Fans of both history and noir fiction will revel in the many true-life crime accounts in pre-war Southern California.” —BookLife Reviews (CLICK HERE FOR FULL REVIEW
Patrick Jenning’s riveting The Long Winding Road of Harry Raymond is a combination regional history, true crime, and biography centered around an early twentieth-century detective’s ambiguous career. . . .
Los Angeles, a gritty, once isolated city, is captured in painstaking detail, including its turn-of-the-century con men, the Tenderloin District, the rise of vice leaders, and criminal cases, including the attempted kidnapping of actress Mary Pickford. — Karen Rigby, Clarion Reviews (CLICK HERE FOR FULL REVIEW)
“. . . [packed] with lively stories filled with “goons” and “coppers”….a fascinating blueprint of the rise of power and corruption in civil service…. “Extensively researched and annotated” — Blueink Review (CLICK HERE FOR FULL REVIEW)
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10:15 P.M., JANUARY 13, 1938
Detective Harry Raymond rode down the elevator of the Civic Center Building in downtown Los Angeles and crossed to the east side of Broadway. Five feet six and one-half inches, he was powerfully built, with hazel eyes and brown hair that the years had thinned, leaving him partially bald. Now in his late fifties, he walked with a cane, limping slightly, his leg still sore from a break sustained in an automobile accident two years before.
It had been a warm winter’s day, the kind that made the retired farmers idling on the benches in Pershing Square gloat over their good fortune in escaping the Midwestern cold. Now the night was turning cool, with a gentle breeze drifting in from the ocean. A storm was advancing from the northwest and the first clouds already shrouded a nearly full moon. The diffused moonlight, together with street lamps and storefront neon signs, bathed the city in a soft glow.
Raymond’s new Chrysler Royal was parked in a large outdoor lot in the center of the block where a few years before the old Los Angeles City Hall stood. He scanned the lot for suspicious characters and then made his way carefully to the car. The parking attendant kept an eye on it for him. Still, Raymond took a few seconds to check for signs of tampering before he unlocked the door. Tossing his cane before him, he climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the switch key, and pressed the starter button. The engine hummed into life.
His home was only a few miles to the east but he took his time getting there. After entering Broadway from the parking lot, he turned left on Second Street and drove through the tunnel before heading south on Figueroa. For a few minutes, he meandered through the downtown streets while studying the headlights in his mirror. Several times, he swung down a side street, pulled to the curb, cut his lights and watched to see if a car stopped behind him.
Shortly before eleven, he reached his house at 955 Orme Avenue, a two-bedroom bungalow he had rented for three years. His driveway was the Hollywood or ribbon type, a pair of concrete strips divided by grass that sloped to a small garage seventy feet from the street. Leaving the motor idling, he unlocked the padlock on the twin barn-style doors and drove the car in slowly, stopping just before the front bumper touched the garage’s rear wall. The big Chrysler’s passenger side fit snugly against a wooden shelf, where a rolled up bag and some old clothes were piled. Raymond switched off the engine, climbed from the car, and locked the automobile. After closing the garage doors, he locked them with the padlock.
His wife Beulah was asleep in the rear bedroom. For a while, he sat up, smoking and listening to the news on the radio. We can guess what the radio reported that night from the newspapers that day and the next. A US Navy minesweeper had found the wreckage of the Pan American Samoan Clipper off Pago Pago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Famous Los Angeles criminal lawyer Jerry Giesler was defending an airport executive who awakened from a drunken sleep in his bedroom, observed his wife fellating his best friend on a piano bench in the front room, and killed them both. The Senate just confirmed President Roosevelt’s nomination of Joseph Kennedy as Ambassador to Great Britain. Los Angeles’ Superior Court judges were squabbling over the selection of the new grand jury.
After the news, Raymond put out his cigarette and retired to his bedroom in the front of the house to sleep.
12:30 A.M., JANUARY 14, 1938
Across the street, Mary Sakalis awoke to the sound of her husband’s voice. He had gone to sleep in the rear bedroom around 7:30 that evening. George Sakalis was a grocery peddler who delivered produce from the back of his truck. He had to be at the Seventh Street Produce Market before dawn and he needed his sleep. Mary got out of bed, glanced at her two sleeping children and went to the other bedroom.
George was leaning into the window that faced the alley on the side of their small, five-room bungalow. She heard him shout in his thick Greek accent that he was going to shoot somebody with a shotgun if they didn’t leave him alone and let him sleep. Mary peered over his shoulder at the alley. Three men stood there, part of a group that had moved into the courtyard apartment across the alley shortly after George and Mary and their children moved into their house a few months before. They said they were “radio” men but neighborhood women suspected they were police of some sort and called them “G-Men.” Aside from the first few weeks when they busied themselves running wires up telephone poles, the G-Men were usually quietand kept to themselves. But now they were keeping George awake. The men looked at George for a few seconds. Then they turned and walked through the back door of their apartment.
George closed the window and crossed the hallway to the other bedroom. Mary stayed in the rear bedroom, seated in a chair where she could look out the window. She was still there around 2:30 when George awoke, dressed, and left for work. Mary watched him back his truck down the alley. In the G-Men’s apartment, the lights were on. She could hear voices. Unable to sleep, she remained in the chair, listening to the men talking. Around four, she heard whispers and footsteps crunch the gravel of the alley, moving toward the street.
4:15 A.M., JANUARY 14, 1938
Beulah Raymond awakened to the growl of her dog. A month earlier, he had growled and climbed upon the bed to peer through the curtains. She had followed the dog’s gaze toward a man a few feet away shining an amber-shaded flashlight up and down the corner of the garage. Harry had not been home so she called the police, but by the time they arrived, the man had vanished. Tonight, the dog was not insistent and Beulah did not look out. After a minute she dropped back to sleep.
Inside 955 Orme, Harry Raymond slept. Beulah Raymond slept. Even the dog slept.
* * *
As for the rest, we can only speculate. About the time Beulah’s dog growled, a dark figure slipped down the driveway of 955 Orme Avenue. Somehow, the padlock on the garage door was sprung. We will never know how this was done but it was not a difficult job for hands skilled at such mischief. Perhaps one G-Man himself did the deed, but it may have been a hireling, somebody engaged only to unlock the shackle. The G-Men would know where to find a man with such a talent. If we could compare a list of all picklock thieves in Los Angeles at the time to a list of all departing passengers on trains during the next forty-eight hours, we might be able to guess. In any case, we can assume that, with the padlock removed, there remained a short time—seconds, minutes, or maybe an hour—before the garage doors were opened and the work began. The automobile’s hood was center-hinged, allowing one side to open independently of the other. It was easy to expose the driver’s side section and wedge the bomb, 6-inches of pipe capped at both ends and filled with smokeless powder, between the engine block and floorboards. Two wires, one black and one white, which extended from a hole in one cap, were quickly twisted around wires of the engine’s starter motor. The hood was lowered and the garage door closed quietly. The padlock snapped shut. The dark figure stole across the street to the alley.
What we know is that, in the days that followed, Harry Raymond, already known as “the most feared copper in California,” would be celebrated throughout the nation as a tough, defiant man unafraid to take on the powerful political and criminal forces that tried to kill him. The pipe bomb that exploded when he started his automobile that morning drove several hundred pieces of metal into his body, fractured both his ankles, and left him with multiple lacerations, including two puncture wounds in his chest. For days, newspapers across the country ran photographs that showed him stalwartly smoking a cigarette while doctors removed shrapnel from his legs. Before the year was over, his defiance would lead to the indictment of officers in a secret Los Angeles Police squad, the recall of the mayor, the dismissal of twenty-three senior officers in the LAPD, and the migration of many of LA’s underworld figures to Las Vegas, where they would create a legal gambling empire. For many, Harry Raymond would go down in Los Angeles history as a true knight in the story of LA’s corrupt days, a detective hero like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Others, looking back at the years before he pushed his automobile’s starter button, would regard him as the kind of cop Marlowe hated: brutal and corrupt.