Tony_Valdez's Blog

On Saturday, December 6, 2008 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., George Putnam's family and friends will gather to commemorate his long life and all the ways he touched ours.

The Remembrance will be at:

The Jeffers Estate
1823 Foothill Boulevard
La Cañada, California

Driving information:  Go north on the Glendale Freeway (California State Route 2) to its end at Foothill Boulevard.  Turn left and look for 1823 Foothill Boulevard on the right)

Over the decades I've written several obituaries for friends and colleagues, but none of them was ever as difficult as the one I wrote for George Putnam.  In an era when a typical television news report is less than two minutes long including the reporter's intro and tag, it was very gratifying when KTTV's News Director Jose Rios approved my script for George's obit which ran 4 minutes and 26 seconds long.

A time like this brings back many memories.  I recall seeing George on television for the first time in the summer of 1951.  Like most Angelenos back then, the first television sets I saw were in the huge display windows in the department stores along Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles.  The stores closed at 6:00 p.m. back then, but the television sets in the windows were left on, and there was a speaker outside so we could hear what was being said.  On many nights, there could be a couple of hundred people trying to watch their favorite TV shows.  On a late afternoon when I was hoping to watch Sheriff John on Channel 11 I discovered George Putnam instead. 

Before George, television news in Los Angeles was done like the newsreels we saw between double features at the movies.  KTTV's were narrated by George Martin, Jr. who was very rarely seen on camera.  When George was hired by KTTV in 1951, the newscast was built around his on camera presence.  The city loved it and George wouldn't have any significant competition until Jerry Dunphy arrived a decade later.

By the mid-1960s, Los Angeles' top anchors were George at KTTV, Dunphy at KNXT (now KCBS) and Baxter Ward at KCOP.   Back then a television critic famously observed that "Jerry Dunphy reads the news, Baxter Ward ignores the news and George Putnam acts it out."

George was first and foremost a journalist.  He personally covered at least one of the stories in each day's newscast.  Around 1955, George went to East L.A. to report on the gangs in that part of the city.  He went to White Fence, a neighborhood where the gang's roots date back to the late 1800s, making it arguably the oldest gang in Los Angeles.  George was talking to some of the boys when someone in the crowd accidentally discharged a zip gun.  The small .22-calibre bullet hit George in his posterior doing more damage to his sense of being invincible than it did to his gluteus maximus.  Years later, when George was telling me this story, I had to confess that I was living in that neighborhood when he was wounded.  He gave me a long,scrutinizing look and then announced that I didn't look like the kid who shot him.

After more than 20 years of unequaled success at KTTV, George moved on to KHJ Channel 9 (now KCAL), KCOP Channel 13 (now the other Fox-owned station in Los Angeles) and KTLA Channel 5.  I met George when he was doing "Talk Back" at KTLA in the 1970s.  In many ways, "Talk Back" was the forerunner of today's AM talk radio.  "Talk Back" was a live, nightly free-for-all that pitted the team of George Putnam, Hal Fishman and Larry McCormick against a studio audience on the KTLA lot.  George, Hal and Larry would talk about the day's news and the studio audience would "talk back" to them with their opinions.  It was always noisy, always contentious and occasionally bordered on anarchy.  On nights when there weren't many people in the audience at KTLA, several newsroom people were given rolls of $5 bills and sent across the street to the Ski Room and next door to VJ's to "recruit" people for the audience.  One of my life's thrills was working and becoming friends with all three of those distinguished gentlemen.  I have now writen obituaries for all three of them.

George returned to KTTV in the early 1980s to do his famous "One Reporter's Opinion" commentaries.  After the newscast one night, George and then-news director Larry Attebery drove over to the Brown Derby on Vine Street for a late dinner.  As they were returning to their cars, a man approached them in the parking lot brandishing a knife and demanding all their money and jewelry.  When they refused, the man started slashing at them.  George gave the guy's arm a karate-type kick as he tried to knife Attebery.  The crook was stunned and injured and ran away into the darkness.  Driving home to Chino afterward, George noticed something squishy in his right boot.  He figured he had stepped in a puddle in the parking lot during the fight, but a little later when George took off his boots at the ranch, he discovered that the right one was filled with blood.  The would-be robber had slashed George's leg with a very sharp knife as George delivered the kick that sent him running. 

George was a life-long Democrat who was proud to be a dues-paying member of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

On Thursday, doctors at the Chino Valley Medical Center had decided that George could go  home to the ranch on Saturday if his condition remained stable.  At 3:30 a.m. the next day, Friday, September 12, 2008, George died of heart failure.  He was 94.

A public memorial service is being planned.  I'll post details here as soon as they have been finalized.

George's longtime friend and producer Chuck Wilder will be playing back the best of George's radio programs on the Cable Radio Network.  It's unclear how much longer Chuck will be able to do that.

A tribute to George Putnam would not be complete without a tribute to Sal, his companion of more than 50 years.  George was very fortunate to have shared his life with such a devoted and loving woman.  Whenever George spoke her name, there was always love in his voice.

    In a metropolis where, on average, three people were murdered every day of the year, the death of Dale Okazaki was definitely unique.  She was murdered in her Rosemead condominium in the early morning hours of Sunday, March 17, 1985.  Outside the condo, the gunman tried to shoot Ms. Okazaki's roommate, but when she raised her hand to cover her face, the bullet was deflected off her key chain and she lived to tell about her encounter with the gunman.  On the ground outside the condominium, detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau found a blue baseball cap decorated with the logo of the heavy metal band AC/DC.
    At the time no one had any reason to believe that the murder of Dale Okazaki was anything but an isolated and unusually violent murder.
    Four nights later in nearby Monterey Park, Tsia-Lian Yu was forced out of her car on the street and shot to death with a small caliber hand gun.  After the autopsy several hours later, investigators were told that Ms. Yu and Ms. Okazaki were killed with the same gun.  Were these two random crimes that escalated into murders or the work of a serial killer?
    The answer came on the morning of March 27.  Sixty-four year old Vincent Zazzara was found dead of a gunshot in the den of his home near Whittier.  His wife Maxine was found dead in their bedroom.  It was obvious that she had  fought with the intruder.  Just as obvious was the fact that both of her eyes had been gouged out of their sockets.  The bodies had been stabbed several times.  The Zazzara home, adjacent to Rose Hills Memorial Park, had been ransacked and burglarized.  Investigators found evidence of forced entry into the house.
    All of the murders had been assigned to Detective Sergeant Frank Salerno and his partner, Detective Gil Carrillo.  Salerno was a veteran of the LASD Hillside Strangler Task Force.  He of course had no way of knowing at the time that this new serial killer investigation would cross jurisdictions with the Los Angeles Police Department like the Hillside Strangler investigation did.  
    For the record, the Hillside Strangler was actually two men, Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono.  They were found guilty of murdering and torturing 10 young women from 1978 to 1979.  Their youngest victims were 12 years old.
    After murdering four people in 10 days, the killer suddenly stopped.  Detectives didn't know if he had experienced a change of heart or if he had moved or been arrested or become the victim of someone else's violence.
    The guessing stopped on April 15, 1985, when the killer broke into William and Lillian Doi's Monterey Park home.  Sixty-six year old William was shot in the face, beaten and left to die.  Instead of killing Doi's wife right away, the gunman used thumb cuffs to restrain her while he looted their home for valuables.  During that time, William managed to crawl to a telephone and dial 911.  Because of his injuries he couldn't talk but the caller's phone number display told dispatchers where to send an ambulance and police.  The fast intervention saved Lillian Doi's life and she was able to describe the man who attacked her.  William died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
    After that second attack in Monterey Park, the killing stopped again.
    Coming up in part two of The Night Stalker: A Fox Flashback, the murders resume while police and the news media compete to give the killer a  nickname.  
  

Tehachapi, California 1952

It was pitch black and noisy, as though a high speed freight train was rumbling through our house in the middle of the night.  Maybe that's what woke me up.  Or maybe it was the shaking.  For a long moment I wondered why I was face down on the floor instead of curled up on the old sofa where I slept.   Somewhere in the distance I heard a woman screaming "we're all going to die."

It was 5 o'clock in the morning on Monday, July 21, 1952. 

Somebody had an old portable radio, the kind that had tubes inside instead of transistors and used a dry cell battery for electricity.  When the tubes warmed-up we could hear KMPC reporting that a quake had just hit in Tehachapi, a railroad town a little more than 100 miles north of Los Angeles.  I remember wondering if a classmate's mother had been hurt or if she had escaped from the women's prison which was the only other thing Tehachapi was known for.

By the time the afternoon papers hit the street, there were headlines that roared "TEHACHAPI QUAKE 8.1."  Many of the big office buildings in Downtown Los Angeles had lost some of the ornamental designs that had been shaken loose.  The city ordered that everything which hadn't already fallen from the buildings had to be removed immediately.  No one wanted people on the sidewalks to be hit by chunks of falling marble or granite.  Other than that, Los Angeles survived the Tehachapi earthquake with relatively little damage.

When the dust cleared rescuers found that twelve people lost their lives in Tehachapi.  Two more were killed in other parts of Kern County.  Almost all of the city's buildings were damaged and many were destroyed.  Over the next two months there were 188 aftershocks, some of them as powerful as a magnitude 5.

The calamitous quake in China last week has led to reminders from all the seismic folks that a Big One is not just inevitable but probably overdue.

The Tehachapi quake was a technical challenge to nearly all of the Los Angeles television stations.  Most of them had the ability to use microwave relays to go live in much the same way that we do now, but moving those huge dishes around and getting them lined-up was not a project that could be completed in a few hours.

KTTV's jack-of-all trades Bill Welsh shot film reports that were rushed back to Hollywood to be developed and edited for broadcast.

The Tehachapi quake is now officially listed as either a 7.5 or a 7.7, depending the reporting agency.  No matter which number you use, Tehachapi remains California's biggest seismic event since The Great San Francisco Earthquake in 1906 which had a magnitude estimated to be somewhere between 7.8 and 8.3.  Compare Tehachapi  to the 1933 Long Beach quake, a 6.25; the 1971 Sylmar quake, a 6.6; the 1989 San Francisco-Loma Prieta quake, a 6.9 and the 1994 Northridge quake which was a 6.7.

It's worth noting that in 1857, there was a huge earthquake at Fort Tejon between Gorman and the Grapevine portion of Interstate 5.  Scientists guesstimate that it was a 7.9 quake along the nearby San Andreas fault.

The biggest earthquake in recorded history was a 9.5 that hit Chile on July 22, 1960.  As many as 6,000 people lost their lives there.

The next time you hear Dr. Lucy Jones warning that a big one is coming and that we should all be prepared with emergency supplies and contingency plans for our families, pay attention to what the iconic lady from the U.S. Geological Survey is saying.  For information on practically everything you'll need to know about surviving an earthquake go to www.earthquakecountry.info.  Be sure to read it now.  If you wait to read it after we've been hit by a quake, it'll be too late then and there probably won't be electricity to charge up your laptop

Footnotes:  The woman in the prison at Tehachapi was the mother of a guy I went to school with.  A couple of years earlier she had been accidentally electrocuted at a beauty shop.  She had gotten a perm and the stylist put her head into one of those metal hair dryers that looked like helmets.  Apparently one of her metal curlers touched a heating coil and caused a short.  After she was released from the hospital, her behavior was erratic and oftentimes violent.  I never knew the details about what she did to end-up at the women's prison in Tehachapi.  Years later when I got home, I heard that my former classmate died in Vietnam.  No one knew what happened to his mother.  The woman I heard screaming "we're all go to die" was my mother who suffered what doctors back then described a a nervous breakdown.

                 The next time you hear a traffic reporter talk about congestion on the South Bay Curve or an accident at the El Toro Y, you’re listening to echoes of Bill Keene. 

The man who invented broadcast traffic reports as we know them today, retired from KNX Radio 15 years ago this month and I had the honor of covering his last day on the job.

Long before traffic maps and our own Fox-11 Realtime Traffic on the Internet, Bill was telling southern California drivers about conditions on our freeways.

Bill was already a trusted television “weatherman” when KNXT (now KCBS) launched its landmark newscast “The Big News” in 1960.  Television being what it is, the popularity of “The Big News” waned over the years.  Bill survived however, doing weather reports for KNXT’s sister station, KNX-AM.

Every morning from about 5:00 to 10:00 a.m. and every evening from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. Bill updated the weather a couple of times every hour.  When temperatures were forecast to be chilly, Bill told us that it was going to be “colder than a well-digger’s lunch bucket.”  Likewise, a dramatic change in temperatures from night to day might inspire Bill to say “it’s going to be cold tonight and hot tamale!” 

What did Bill do for those five hours between shifts?  He played golf, of course (which is exactly the kind of pun Bill would have dreamed up).

For a number of years, Bill teamed up with Gil Stratton to do “sports and weather together.”  Gil frequently accompanied Bill to the links.

The weather reports evolved into “traffic and weather together” a slogan that spread to radio stations across the nation.  The addition of traffic required more frequent reports, every 10 minutes or so.

The traffic reports gave Bill’s creativity and sense of humor plenty of opportunities to shine.  A car that had spun out on the freeway was “cattywampus to the world.”  A load of fish spilled on the freeway made for “fish and CHiPs”

On Bill Keene’s personal map of Los Angeles, the Sepulveda Pass was “Poop out Hill” while the junction of the Orange, Garden Grove and Santa Ana Freeways was “The Orange Crush” and the East L.A. Interchange where the Santa Ana, San Bernardino and Pomona Freeways meet was “Malfunction Junction.”

As KNX added more traffic programming, Dona Dower and CHP officer Jill Angel took up the extra duties.

The Tipster Line may be Bill’s most enduring contribution to broadcast traffic reporting.  Long before cell phones, Bill installed a telephone in the tiny booth he used at KNX.  He encouraged drivers to call in with information about accidents, stalled cars and anything else they saw.

Bill retired from KNX on May 27, 1993.  During a break that morning, Bill walked up to the roof of Columbia Square and watched as some of the helicopters and fixed wing planes used by airborne traffic reporters flew over the building in a salute to him.

Bill died in 2000.  Six years later, the downtown four level interchange was named for him.  I travel through there several times a week, but I have never seen a sign that designates this as the Bill Keene Memorial Interchange.

Bill’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 1541 Vine Street, just north of the Borders store.

Pesach is the Hebrew word for Passover. If the idea of Passover in East Los Angeles sounds incredible, it’s because so many of us have lost our sense of time and place.


Boyle Heights is the euphemism frequently used today to refer to East Los Angeles, specifically the parts of it that are within the Los Angeles city limits. But back in the mid-1800s Boyle Heights was the name of Los Angeles’ first Jewish community (a “ghetto” in the true meaning of the word) built above the east bank of the Los Angeles River and overlooking the growing city beyond it.


After World War II, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency red-tagged about a dozen neighborhoods as “blighted.” Everyone who lived in those neighborhoods was supposed to move out so all the old buildings in the area could be demolished. Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles and parts of Chavez Ravine near today’s Dodger Stadium were the only ones that were hit by wrecking balls. As a result, my family had to move into a housing project in East L.A. where we lived until my father, a partially disabled WWII veteran, could find affordable housing again.


I will forever be grateful for those years in the projects because it was a real American melting pot. People of every race and every creed lived within a few doors of each other in those apartments.


It was in the projects that I learned about Passover because many of our neighbors were Jewish. Christianity in most of its variations was represented in the projects too. Japanese-Americans interned during the war hadn’t come home yet, but we had several Chinese neighbors who were Presbyterians. Because we were all kids we shared everything, including our religions.


There was always something about Passover seder that made an impression on me. The salt water and bitter herbs, reminders of slavery, captured my imagination as did all of us being sent to watch the front door which was left open just in case Elijah showed up. More than anything else, it was the empty wine glass waiting on the table for Elijah’s return that impressed me. From that one tradition I learned important lessons about hope and trust and devotion that have shaped my life.


Today, a drive along Boyle Avenue between Sixth Street and César Chávez Avenue (originally named Brooklyn Avenue) will show you many of those homes that survive today. Even more interesting is Pleasant Avenue, where it bears left from Boyle, north of First Street. On some of the adjacent streets, Pennsylvania Avenue and Echandia Street, the old houses make it easy to imagine what residential Los Angeles looked like 100 years ago.


About a mile to the east on Breed Street, just south of César Chávez Avenue, the Breed Street Shul is being saved by the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California. The society’s goal is to find ways for the building’s current neighbors to use the grand old brick structure.


Whenever I’m in the neighborhood, I stop by to pay my respects and have lunch around the corner at La Parrilla on César Chávez Avenue. The restaurant’s been there for years because it’s famous for the guacamole made fresh to order at your table. La Parrilla also serves wine, a fact that’s made me wonder occasionally—and respectfully of course— if someone ever leaves an empty wine glass on one of the tables, just in case.


Freylakhn Pesach.

    Oh, how times have changed!
    Hal Eisner and I reported this week on the Olympic Torch's symbolic visits to Paris, London and San Francisco, in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. Everywhere the torch went, noisy, passionate crowds used the occasion to protest China's occupation of Tibet. There were counter-protests of course, many of them organized by the Chinese government according to sources. There are wide-spread concerns about this year's games being disrupted by anti-China, pro-Tibet activists.
    It was very, very different when the Olympic Summer Games were held in Los Angeles in 1984. This was actually the second time that Los Angeles hosted the Olympics. Our often maligned Memorial Coliseum in Exposition Park next to USC was the centerpiece for the 1932 games in Los Angeles.
    That summer in '84, Los Angeles looked like the Golden City of the West. As the whole world watched, the Summer Games went off with nary a hitch. Mayor Bradley's City Hall planners got companies that used trucks to pull them off the freeways during the day and downtown Los Angeles businesses encouraged employees to carpool for the duration of the Summer Games.
    On July 28, opening day of the Olympics, our freeways were moving the way we had always hoped they would. Angelenos were on their best driving behavior right up to August 12, the day of the Olympiad's closing ceremonies.
    At Parker Center that night, LAPD officials were getting ready to breathe a sigh of relief because there had been no major problems during the Olympics. Then at around 7 o'clock we learned that LAPD Officer James Pearson had found and disarmed a bomb on the bus carrying Olympic security officials and the Turkish Olympic team to LAX for the trip home.
    Not only had Los Angeles hosted a "safe" Olympiad, our police department had produced a hero for us to admire.
    I interviewed Chief of Police Daryl Gates that night and he couldn't have been prouder of Officer Pearson.
    But like all good things, Pearson's credibility came to an end. LAPD investigators noticed inconsistencies in his story and when they looked deeper they found Pearson had planted the device to make himself look like a hero.
    Pearson confessed to his misadventure and was arrested. Twenty-four years and six Olympiads later, Pearson's brush with fame is all but forgotten.
    Unless you were fortunate enough to be there.

On Friday, April 7, 1949, there were only about 30,000 television sets in Los Angeles.  By the end of that weekend, virtually all of them were tuned to live coverage of a tragedy destined to become a landmark in television history.


That Friday afternoon, 3-1/2 year old Kathy Fiscus was playing with her sister and her cousin in a large vacant lot just north of Huntington Drive in San Marino.  When the older kids noticed that Kathy had disappeared, they found that she had fallen into an abandoned water well that had not been sealed off.  


Within an hour, rescuers were on scene trying to figure out how they could rescue Kathy from the 14-inch wide pipe.  She was trapped about 100 feet below the surface, wedged in a bend in the pipe.  After attempts to pull Kathy out with a rope failed, engineers decided that they had to dig a separate rescue shaft parallel the pipe and then tunnel over to where Kathy was trapped.


In the early hours of the rescue effort, Kathy could be heard whimpering but as time  went by, her whimpers faded away.  

Television news crews began to arrive Saturday afternoon.  Commercial television was still in its infancy in Los Angeles which made live coverage of the rescue technically challenging.  Engineers were grateful, however, for the fact that they could easily aim their microwave signals from San Marino to the new television transmitters on Mount Wilson, a few miles away.  


I’ve seen old news film of a KTTV remote truck at the rescue site, but I was never able to locate film or kinescopes of Channel 11’s coverage of Kathy Fiscus’ rescue.


When I was at KTLA News in the 1970s, Stan Chambers told me many stories about the rescue.  Stan and Bill Welsh were on the air continously for almost 28 hours, right to the end on Sunday night, April 9, when Kathy’s body was brought to the surface, about 52 hours after she fell into the well.  Kathy had died of suffocation.


Like many other Angelenos, I was in the crowds of people who stood in front of department stores and appliance shops watching the Kathy Fiscus story on television sets that were left on in store windows so that everyone could watch.  In the aftermath of Kathy Fiscus’ death it became apparent that the American Dream in Los Angeles now included a house in the suburbs, a car to commute in and a television set to watch when you got home.


The continuous live coverage of the rescue effort was the first of its kind in television.


A few days later, there was an ironic discovery.  Kathy’s father was employed by the water company that 46 years earlier had dug the well she fell into.  Even more ironic, Mr. Fiscus had  recently testified in support of legislation that would have required abandoned wells to be sealed with concrete.


Before the end of the year, Jimmie Osborne wrote and recorded “The Death of Kathy Fiscus” (King Records 788) a Country & Western song that reportedly sold more than a million copies and was covered by several other C&W artists.


The spot where Kathy Fiscus died is now part of San Marino High School.  Most accounts place the site in today’s football field, however some contend that the tennis courts mark the spot where the abandoned well was located.


The San Marino Public Library features The Kathy Fiscus Rose Garden and a plaque in her memory.


Kathy Fiscus is buried at Glen Abbey Memorial Park in San Diego.  Her epitaph reads,   “One little girl who united the world for a moment.”


Footnote:  In 1951, Bill Welsh joined KTTV as its Director of Sports and Special Events.  He hosted more than 40 Rose Parades over the years on Channel 11.  Bill retired in the mid-1980s and became the president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.  Bill Welsh died in 2000.  Stan Chambers still reports for KTLA.

Let's begin by giving credit where credit is due.  The first woman to work as a police officer anywhere in the United States was Alice Stebbins Wells who wore her LAPD badge for the first time on September 12, 1910.  Back then, Los Angeles police officers on their way to and from work could show their "police man" badge and get a free ride on any of the city's street cars and trollies.  An apocryphal LAPD story tells of Officer Stebbins getting on a trolley, flashing her "police man" badge and being thrown off because the motorman thought he was an imposter.  Shortly thereafter, Stebbins was given LAPD "police woman" badge #1.

LAPD's never been the same since.

Last week, Chief of Police William Bratton sent shockwaves across the Civic Center when he said "I would like to see women in every part of the Los Angeles Police Department and fully expect that we will see women on the SWAT unit... women will, in fact, have the opportunity in this department to serve in any capacity. I am committed to that." The chief's remarks came after published leaks about plans to make it easier for female officers to qualify to become members of the Metropolitan Division's D Platoon, a.k.a. the Special Weapons and Tactics team.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League is on record as opposing any change made to SWAT without advice and consent from the union.  By the way, the LAPPL got its wake-up call a few years ago when Mitzi Grasso became the first female president of the union representing LAPD officers.  The words "in your face" were frequently used whenever there were discussions about Ms. Grasso's leadership style

Back to The Past.  Before the 1970s, LAPD's police women almost always worked only on cases involving women, domestic issues and children.  Police women oftentimes didn't carry a gun and they couldn't promote beyond the rank of Sergeant.

World War II veteran Fanchon Blake ended up changing all that.  After the war, Officer Blake joined the LAPD.  Several years later, when Blake was told she couldn't promote to the rank of Detective, she decided to go to court.  A 1980 ruling forced the LAPD to open its ranks to women.  

I vividly recall talking with dozens of male officers back then who warned that working  patrol with a woman would be as dangerous as being on patrol alone.  There were times when that was true.  Most of the time it wasn't.  

There were also times when having a female partner brought a new dimension to police work.  One night in the mid-1980s, I rolled up on a man under the influence of PCP who was standing in the middle of Ventura Boulevard, near Dupar's in Studio City, stopping traffic.  There were three male officers at the scene, waiting for back-ups so they could swarm the guy.  People under the influence of PCP were notoriously strong and full of endurance.  I looked over at the one female officer and noticed that she was talking to the menacing, hyperactive suspect in a very soft voice.  He slowly  stopped his ranting and started to sway as though he was listening to slow, sensuous music.  The female officer kept talking to him and started to move along with him, much like a snake charmer and a cobra.  The woman slowly lowered herself to her knees and the PCP suspect followed.  Before the back-ups arrived she had talked him down enough so that the male officers were able to hogtie the suspect and put him in the back seat without much of a struggle.

LAPD women have also given their lives in the line of duty.  Tina Kerbrat was the first.  She was shot to death during what should have been a routine stop in North Hollywood on February 11, 1991.  

Tina Kerbrat died because of the career she chose, not because she was a woman.

Why am I not  surprised that Charlie Manson’s back in the news?

In case you missed it this weekend, investigators announced that they believe they have found three burial sites at the Barker Ranch in Death Valley where Charles Manson and his followers were arrested after the August, 1969 murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate (the wife of director Roman Polanski) and several friends.  Manson and family members were also convicted on charges that they murdered supermarket owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary the following night.

A lot more Los Angeles windows and doors were locked at night that summer for fear that the killers would strike again.  We hadn’t yet experienced the much more prolific serial killers who came to be known as The Hillside Strangler and The Night Stalker.

If you’re interested in such things, you should read prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s book Helter Skelter on the Manson case.

In court, Charlie’s presence was practically palpable.  The atmosphere in the courtroom changed noticeably whenever he was there.  I didn’t experience that kind of presence again until I covered the trial of Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker.

It’s important to note that Manson never took part in the murders.  But for ordering them he was as guilty as if he had been there.  Detectives have suspected for a long, long time that Charlie was involved in more murders but they have never had the evidence to sustain a prosecution.

I didn’t see Charlie again until one of his parole hearings in the 1980s.  When he jangled into the hearing room manacled and shackled it was like being back at the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles in the 70s.  If anything the charisma (I hate to call it that) was still going full tilt.  The clerk was told to administer the oath to Manson.  When she asked, “do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” Charlie didn’t answer.  Instead he pointed with his head toward the parole board members sitting on the other side of the table and asked, “what about them?  Don’t they have to swear to tell the truth too?”

It was a classic Charlie Manson moment.

By the way, the tip about the bodies came from Susan Atkins, a Manson follower who was present at both the Tate and the LaBianca murders.  Atkins has the dubious distinction of being the woman who has served the most time in the history of the California prison system.

Manson and the others were originally sentenced to die in the San Quentin gas chamber, but when California’s death penalty was ruled unconstitutional, their sentences were changed to life with the possibility of parole.

If bodies are eventually found in Death Valley and Manson is tried for murder, he could get the death sentence again.

        If you lived in this apartment building in the southeast corner of 7th Street and Bixel in Downtown Los Angeles, you'd need to have a cable system or a satellite dish to watch television. There are no antennas on the roof to catch the signals broadcast by Los Angeles' television stations. The irony of this predicament is that on this exact same parcel of land, the city's very first television station went on the air on December 23, 1931.
        It was W6XAO, an experimental station licensed to Don Lee who was the exclusive Cadillac dealer for Los Angeles. Lee's showrooms and offices occupied most of the eight story tall building at 7th and Bixel. W6XAO's studio and transmitter were on the top floors.
        There were only about five television sets in the entire city and most of them were in the downtown area near W6XAO's rooftop antenna. But as more television sets were installed, viewers discovered that W6XAO's signal didn't reach West Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley.
        In order to reach a wider audience, Lee built a more powerful transmitter and put it high over the city on the peak above the Hollywooodland sign. Don Lee died in 1934, but his son Thomas S. Lee carried on the project. W6XAO changed its call sign to KTSL and signed on as a commercial television station on May 6, 1948, broadcasting on Channel 2. How KTSL (for "Thomas S. Lee") became KNXT and later KCBS will covered in a future Fox Flashback.
        The broadcast facilities built by KTSL are now used by the City of Los Angeles and the peak was named Mount Lee in tribute to the city's first television broadcaster.
The city's other experimental television station was W6XYZ which was owned by Paramount Pictures. On January 22, 1947 it changed its call sign to KTLA ("Television Los Angeles") and became Los Angeles' very first commercial television station, broadcasting on Channel 5.
        Twenty-one months later, on September 17, 1948, Channel 13 became the home for KLAC ("Los Angeles, California") the television side of KLAC-AM. Five years later, the station was bought by the Copley Press and re-named KCOP. It is KTTV's sister station.
Exactly a month later, KFI began broadcasting on Channel 9. KFI was originally owned by Earle C. Anthony, the Packard automobile dealer. He already operated KFI-AM which was the National Broadcasting Company radio affiliate for southern California, but Anthony was destined to have the NBC television outlet for Los Angeles only briefly. KFI became KHJ and eventually KCAL.
        1949 began with KTTV ("Times Television") broadcasting the Rose Parade on January 1. Channel 11 was jointly owned by the Times-Mirror Corporation (51%) and CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System (49%). Look for more about KTTV's history in a future edition of Fox Flashbacks.
        A little more than two weeks later, KNBH ("National Broadcasting Hollywood") signed-on on Channel 4. KNBH became KRCA ("Radio Corporation of America") and eventually KNBC ("National Broadcasting Company")
        On September 16, 1949, KECA began operations on Channel 7. KECA ("Earle C. Anthony") was another of the Cadillac dealer's enterprises. The station became today's KABC, the west coast flagship for the American Broadcasting Company.
        This was the Los Angeles television line up through the 1960s when the first UHF stations went on the air in southern California.
        If you've still got a television antenna or a set of rabbit ears pointed at Mount Wilson, I salute you!

Journalists sometimes describe news as the first rough draft of history. It's an idea that's always intrigued me, so beginning Friday, March 13, 2008, I'll be writing a blog called "Fox Flashbacks." It will feature stories about Los Angeles history and the news events that shaped the world we live in today.