Monthly Archives: October 2018

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 52)

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His whereabouts from that day until September 10, 1927 are again unknown, although it would probably be safe to assume that he was traveling by car or train and keeping a very low profile.  Shortly after he disappeared from Pomona the LAPD apparently put together enough information on Leo to make an inquiry back to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.  They asked for any details that might be available although what response they received, if any, in also unknown.

Marianna FL courtesy mariannaonline

Marianna FL courtesy mariannaonline

What we do know is that on September 10th Leo pulled into a motel in Marianna, Florida and registered under the name of Robert O’Hara.  A surprisingly diligent clerk noted on the registration paper that he “appeared a bit nervous or drunk”, and had asked for a room with, “a clear view of the road.”  It is impossible to know if he was actively running from a crime he had recently committed during his flight from Pomona or if Leo had just picked up a healthy dose of paranoia.  He was given the key to Room #7 and proceeded to settle in to his new base of operations.  

Marianna is a town located in the panhandle area of Florida, a place that in its past had been the location of many plantations due to the fertile soil provided by the Chipola River.  When Leo arrived those days were long gone although farming still remained a major part of the area’s economy.  It was a quiet town, certainly much more tame than the places Leo usually chose to stay, and he may have been hoping to remain undetected in such a rural location.   If that was his intention, his actions while in Marianna would not serve him well.

Once he was settled in at the motel Leo, as usual, started to plot out a way to make money.  He was dreaming bigger than usual and took several days to survey the two banks in the town, taking detailed notes of everything that he observed.  He also found out that there was another bank under construction, one which was due to open in a few weeks, and that fact greatly intrigued Leo.   He had a notion that if he could get some experience and knowledge of what a bank looks like while it is under construction, he may be able to use that to plan out his own successful robberies.  The idea of being able to take a large amount of money on a few jobs and then spend months living good and spending big appealed to him.  It would be much better than trying to muddle along picking up small sums on a large number of jobs, constantly exposing himself to the danger of arrest.  If he realized, or thought at all, about the fact that robbing banks would command much more focused attention from law enforcement, is something we will never know.  What he did do though is attempt to get into the construction site.

To try to accomplish this he entered the site one day and struck up a conversation with the foreman.  He told the man, a stocky and well-tanned Italian-American, that he was a civil engineer and had been asked to look over the building for any potential construction violations.  That statement did not sit well with the foreman who told Leo to leave and come back with written permission to walk the site.  Two days later, Leo tried again and this time the police were called although Leo was gone when they arrived.  After that, getting desperate for money, he returned to some of his usual schemes, this time working with a car theft gang.  

1927 Florida license plate

1927 Florida license plate

 

1925 Chevy truck

1925 Chevy truck

This particular criminal operation ran two different crews, one that actually stole vehicles and another, the one that Leo ended up working with, that would steal vehicle tags.  This gang was well-known to local law enforcement and kept under close observation when possible.  It only took three months before Leo was seen lifting a tag from a 1925 Chevy truck and pursued by the police.  He did manage to escape although he left everything he owned behind at the motel and arrived five days later in Selma, Alabama.  

His journey of one hundred and seventy-five miles was exactly equal to how much money he had in his pocket and the fuel he could purchase with it.  Completely broke when he drove into town at six o’clock in the evening of December 10th, 1927, Leo’s vehicle ran out of gas on Selma Avenue and he pushed it to the side before abandoning it.  He was exhausted and hungry by this time, neither condition of which he had the means to correct properly, so he walked to the nearest open space he could find and fell asleep under a grove of sugar maple trees.  He awoke in the middle of the night, bothered by some ants that were crawling on his face and the growling of his stomach.  Unable to get comfortable again, Leo sat up until morning plotting what to do next.  

His immediate need was of course money, which he solved temporarily by pawning his gold watch. That allowed him get a meal at a diner and then to rent a room at a boarding house located right at the edge of Selma on Summerfield Road.  He registered as Lee O’Dare, perhaps forgetting about the warrant issued under that name for him in Kansas City, a fact which would almost cause him some trouble later.  Then he took up his usual routine of plotting schemes and seeking out the criminal element in the area around where he lived.  This time Leo accepted that he would need to start small again, and he took up an invitation to be part of a local gang that committed a wide variety of crimes in and around Selma.  He did feel slighted though, having to start all over again despite what he had accomplished in the past.  To try to make up for this, and establish himself properly, he bragged often about his, “time with Pendergast in Kansas City,” and having run his own gang in Bakersfield.  He also spent his spare time scouting local banks and eventually recruited two other men into his scheme to pull off a double robbery.  

…to be continued

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 51)

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It took another eight days of waiting but, with Lester finally feeling better and having traveled to the Sleepy Hollow resort area to make the call, the police had the opportunity to put their plan into action.

“Barnett.”  The detective, tall and handsome with thick black hair and sharply cut features, answered the desk phone in his usual clipped manner.

“I’m calling about the investigation into Robert Lester,” Leo stated, “I need to know if he has been found.”

Detective Barnett, who was not assigned to the case but was well aware of the plan, waved at his colleague Dan Robbins.  

“Go ahead, what was that again?” he asked, stalling for a little time.

“You know what I asked,” Leo snapped back, “do you have Lester in custody?”

“Robbins here, this is Leo, isn’t it?” the other detective asked, picking up the second extension.

“Yes, of course, now answer me!”

“Ok, I had to see if it was you.  We try not to give this information out to everyone, you know? It’s been awhile since we heard from you Leo.  I had started to wonder if you still cared about this case.”

“Of course I do, the man tried to kill me!” Leo replied angrily.  “Now, tell me what is going on.”

  “Ok, settle down a bit.  We did finally apprehend him two days ago.”

“Two days? Why wasn’t I notified?” Leo responded angrily.

“Well, I’m sure we would have if we knew where you were.  I’ll come talk to you now though.  Where are you?”

Leo had realized his mistake as soon as he spoke.  “Never mind that,” he said, “so you got him then? That’s good.  Now shoot him and throw the body in a shallow grave.”

Robbins chuckled before replying, “You know that’s not how this goes Leo.  We need you to come in though and give us another statement.  It’ll help get this wrapped up quickly just like you want it.”

“I already gave you a statement, use that.  Are you sure you have him?” Leo asked warily.  “He’s in jail, right in Pomona?”

“Yes,” Robbins replied.

“Let me talk to him.  I want to talk to him.”

“Again, that’s not how this works.” 

“You need to take care of him, get him locked up for good.  He tried to murder me.”  Leo’s voice was rising as he spoke.  “Get him locked up for a good long time.”

“Yes, that’s what we are trying to do, “ Robbins replied.  “Now listen, because like I said, you can help us get this wrapped up.  We need you to come down here.  If you won’t come today then you need to be at the courthouse for sure on Monday, next Monday the first, at nine in the morning, ok?  He’ll be there for arraignment and we may need you to provide some testimony so he doesn’t end up back on the street.”

“Well, I mean, I don’t know, what if you’re just foolin’ me?  Is this some kind of a set up?  Why can’t you use the statement I already gave you?”

“Leo, we have him and if you want him in jail so damn bad you need to be there, ok?”

“Prove to me you have him.  Can I see the, damn, forget that.  How do I know you have him?”

“We’ve been working on this case Leo, for you, to get justice for you.  You’ve called before and we never said we had him, did we?  If we were trying to trick you we would have tried that already.  We just arrested him and now you need to come in and help us convict him.  You need to be there, you understand?”

“Well, ok,” Leo responded in a half-hearted way before slowly hanging up the phone.  

August first was just a few days away and Leo thought about what to do during his entire ride back to Pomona.  By that night he had managed to give himself quite a severe headache from the constant worrying and collapsed into bed hoping to put it out of his mind.  That did not happen and he was back up again at two a.m., pacing his room.  Leo was consumed by the conflict between making sure Lester received full punishment and his fear that the entire thing was a set up.  He wished he had better contacts in Pomona, ones he could check to see if there was a record of Lester’s arrest, but he did not and his need to lay low made any real inquires difficult anyway.  He spent the next two days that way and it was ten p.m. on Sunday when he found himself sitting in his easy chair, exhausted and staring up at the ceiling.  The streets were mostly quiet with the faint sound of a dog barking carrying into his room along with the hum of a radio playing in another part of the boarding house.  Leo was almost there, right on the edge of complete exhaustion, finally about to fall asleep, when a devastating fact occurred to him.  He realized that his call from the Kress building had likely been traced somehow, that the police knew he was nearby and had set up a trap for him.  They did not have Lester after all but were sure to get him if he showed up at the courthouse on Monday.

Energized completely now despite his lack of sleep Leo packed up a valise with his cash and the few items he had purchased since arriving in Pomona and waited impatiently for morning.  Once it arrived, he flagged down a passing oil truck and hitched a ride out of town.

San Bernardino Sun article on Humbert and Lester court appearance

San Bernardino Sun article on Humbert and Lester court appearance

Leo ended up being only partially correct.  The police did in fact have Lester, who had been arrested on July 27th in northern California and brought back to Pomona, and they did bring him to the courthouse on Monday, August 1, 1927.  His arrest had been a fortuitous addition to their plan as it initially was just to lie to Leo and see if they could get him to come in if he thought they had arrested the person who tried to kill him.  Lester had other issues that day in addition to the potential attempted murder charges involving Leo, as the Portland police also came down to serve a warrant on him.  There was also the plan to arrest Leo, both by the Pomona and Los Angeles police, who had sent officers to arrest him for the gas station robbery.  Ultimately though, Lester ended up back in jail and facing extradition to Oregon, while Leo escaped into the unknown thanks to his last minute realization.  

…to be continued

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 50)

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Kress Building Pomona California

Kress Building Pomona California

Exactly why Leo thought it would be a good idea to return to Pomona is unknown, but it likely had something to do with his desire to keep track of the investigation into the shooting and Lester.  He realized that he was in danger by returning and vowed to keep a low profile, checking into a boarding house just down the street from the newly erected Kress Building under the name Lee O’Dare.  Knowing that he had enough money to support himself for awhile, he spent most of his time in his room, reading and day dreaming.  When he did venture out he used a variety of disguises and limited how much time he was actually on the street or in other public areas.  He made no friends and brushed off attempts by others to speak with him.  He was very aware of everything around him and would observe the streets outside for long minutes before leaving his room or a store he had reason to visit.  

Leo was actually in more danger than he knew even with his heightened sense of paranoia.  The Los Angeles police detective who had questioned Tom Brinnegan was energetic and resourceful, a veteran of twenty years on the force with a solid reputation for solving cases.  The information he had obtained from Brinnegan made him fairly sure that the Leo O’Malley who had been involved in the robbery was not local to Los Angeles and had likely used a false name.  Also, Leo had slipped up a few times, revealing some small details which would not have meant much except for the fact that Brinnegan proved to be an astute observer and recorder in his own right.  He was able to recount for the detective all of these small facts and that led the officer to start asking around at departments in surrounding communities.  Once he made it to Pomona it did not take long for him and the detectives there to link up the O’Malley and Humbert identities and to conclude that they were likely dealing with the same man.  The two departments agreed to work together in efforts to catch this criminal who had stained both of their communities and also to see what else they could learn about his past history.  All of this had happened in the ten days between the robbery and the day of Leo’s first phone call to the Pomona police department.

He had, of course, thought about it before calling.  He remembered telling the Pomona detective that he was planning to move to Los Angeles but wanted to be kept up to date on the Lester investigation.  He also realized that there was a possibility that his activity in Los Angeles might be linked to his past identity in Pomona, although he thought that was fairly unlikely.  He was confident that he had gone mostly unnoticed while in the bigger city and that Brinnegan knew nothing about him that could identify him.  Mostly though, Leo was driven at this time by his intense desire to see Lester punished for trying to kill him.  That action, that attempted murder, had been a step way beyond anything that Leo was used to or considered to be proper.  He and Lester may have been at odds but they were, after all, fellow members of the criminal world.  There had to be some justice for Leo after such an insult.

Granada Theatre Ontario CA

Granada Theatre Ontario CA

He was careful about it though, hiring a car to drive him to Ontario, California on June 25th and calling back to Pomona from a phone in the lobby of the Granada Theatre.  The conversation was short, with Leo asking for updates and the detective trying to get Leo to say where he was currently residing.  After five minutes Leo hung up in frustration after yelling into the phone, “You better find that murderer and get him locked up!  I’ll be calling you again!” 

That began a game of cat and mouse between Leo and the police department.  While continuing to live at the boarding house in Pomona, he would travel to other cities and call back to the department to insist on updates.   During this time Leo started to have problems sleeping, mostly due to a series of nightmares that replayed the shooting incident, often with the embellishment of his actual death or more prolonged suffering being included.  This lack of sleep eventually led to Leo becoming very ill with a range of symptoms including high fevers, nausea and loss of appetite.  He avoided any interaction with doctor’s as he feared this would lead to his identity being revealed and by July 20th he was weak and delirious along with desperate to get the nightmares out of his head.  Too ill to travel anywhere, Leo could not wait any longer for an update so he walked down to the Kress building, which housed a five-and-dime store, and called the Pomona police from their pay phone.  

1927 Public Pay Phone

1927 Public Pay Phone

That, of course, proved to be a mistake although Leo would not realize it for a couple weeks.  He knew at the time that making the call was not a wise decision but he was so desperate for information that he took the chance, limiting his time on the phone to two minutes.  Although he felt that this was too short of a time for the police to get any useful information on his location, it turned out that the Pomona police were a few steps ahead of him.  Based on some advice from the LA detective, they had alerted all of the city’s operators to take careful note of the origin of all calls requesting the detective section of the Pomona police department.  The operator that day dutifully noted the Kress building as the location where the call came from and the next day the detectives got that information from her.  Realizing that their suspect may well be right back in Pomona, they developed a plan to lure him into the station.  

…to be continued

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 49)

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Tom did try to escape, making a break toward the same back office area where Leo had gone, but the officer was telling him to halt or be shot before he made it through the door.  He was taken into custody and, after several hours of unresponsive interrogation, finally told the police most of the truth including that Leo O’Malley had been his accomplice.  A detective took everything down before returning Brinnegan to his cell, stating that he should probably plan on being locked up, “for a good long while.”  

Leo, who had scouted out a secondary escape route to be taken on foot if things went badly, managed to use the alleyways of the area to elude capture.  It had helped that the officer who returned unexpectedly to the station had been alone, and that it took ten minutes for more police to respond to his call for assistance.  By that time Leo was almost a mile away at a city planning commission meeting, an event he had thought might be a good cover during any possible emergency escape from the robbery.  He had actually used the session as part of his planning, a fact he had not shared with Brinnegan, and slipped into the back row just as the chairman called the meeting to order.  He sat their dutifully for the next two hours of discussion, getting sleepy as the adrenaline eased out of his system, nodding off a few times before stepping out to use the restroom.  There, after closing himself into one of the stalls, he got to work.  Breaking the small clasp lock on the briefcase using a pliers he had brought with him, he transferred the money and his now unloaded gun to a black drawstring bag, and then wrapped the briefcase inside a burlap sack.  Stepping outside, he placed the the burlap package behind some large bushes next to the building, tossed his jacket into a trash can and then walked off down the road.  He had taken his glasses off to further alter his appearance, which made for a few challenges as he could not see well without them, but he managed to walk another two miles without incident.  Checking into a nondescript, but not too seedy, motel he drifted off to sleep with the black bag full of money under his pillow.   

The next morning he had some thinking to do.  He realized that he had been fortunate to escape capture the day before and that he was unlikely to get that lucky again.  He did feel a sense of accomplishment despite what had happened, as he felt his back-up planning had went well and he had anticipated possible problems.  The pliers, burlap sack, secondary escape route and hiding in plain view at a public meeting were all things he was sure he would not have thought of earlier in his criminal career.  He was becoming more accomplished and that made him feel good, plus he had all of the robbery money to himself.  Leo knew though that Brinnegan would give him up, in fact he probably already had, and that he needed to inconspicuously leave the area very quickly.  

Diner

Diner

Leo pondered all of this while sitting at a small diner that was associated with the motel, and he was interrupted by a small, thin man who was sitting at the table next to him.

“Hey friend, hey, hello, hello.”  

Leo shook his head, realizing that someone was talking to him.  He looked over and saw the man, dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, a red necktie hanging loosely around his neck.  

“What?” Leo replied.

“You, I was just trying to get your attention but you were way, way off in your dreams, I think?”  The man spoke in a rushed, clipped manner and his voice tended to squeak a little at the end of sentences.  It was fairly irritating.

“I’m thinking, not dreaming.  Leave me alone.” Leo turned his head away as he spoke.

“It’s ok, ok, no problem.  I just figured, you know, just wanted to make sure you were ok.  You were staring off into space for a long time, long time, maybe ten or fifteen minutes.”

“What’s that to you?” Leo snapped back.  “Leave me alone.”

The man inched his chair a foot closer to Leo, blocking the aisle way between the tables.  “Ok, ok, I just thought that maybe you were, you know, like me, out on the road too much and thinking of home.  I do that a lot, you know, a lot of thinking about home.  It’s hard to be out on the road so much isn’t it?
“Who said I’m out on the road?” Leo asked.

“Well, I guess, well I did, you know, because I thought you might be, I am.  I am on the road a lot.”  

Just then a waitress approached and the man had to slide the chair back toward his table.  Leo hoped that would be the end of it, but it was not.  As soon as she had sauntered past, poured coffee two tables away and then walked back, the man pulled his chair right up next to Leo.

“Like I was saying, I’m on the road all the time, all over the place.  Just leaving here today and gotta go to Pomona next, then San Bernadino, Palm Springs, it never ends you know.  But you know, you know, right?  You’re a salesman too, I bet.  What’s your product?”

Leo was very annoyed at this point but had heard one thing that caught his attention.  

“You say you’re going to Pomona?”

“Yes, yes, you going there too?  Maybe we can meet up after the day, you know, have a drink or dinner?  What’s your line, anyway?  Vacuums?”

“Actually, I’m needing to get to Pomona myself.”  Leo was thinking quickly as he spoke.   “My vehicle broke down here the other day, gonna take a few more to have it ready I guess.  You wouldn’t mind giving me a ride, would you?  I could pay for gas, I’ll even buy your breakfast.”

Pomona 1927

Pomona 1927

The man, who then introduced himself as Chuck Creely, eagerly accepted and then talked Leo’s ear off all the way to Pomona.  Leo never did mention what he might be selling or why he needed to get to Pomona, but Creely hardly seemed to care as it was clear he was just lonely and wanted to talk.   When Leo was dropped off, with a false promise to meet up for dinner at five o’clock, he almost felt bad for the man.

…to be continued