The Press: Modern Los Angeles

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Year ago in Los Angeles appeared a new local monthly magazine called The Critic of Critics. Its announced aim was "to rid the city of such persons as Mayor Porter, Rev. Robert ["Fighting Bob"] Shuler, and show up other long hairs who try for fame or money by limiting personal liberty of Americans." In ensuing months the scope of the publication grew wider, its purpose less clearly defined. A typical article of last month's issue was "Guy McAfee, 'Capone' of L. A."—an expose of the purported vice-reign of Former Policeman McAfee. The magazine had a financial backer in portly, grey-haired Charles H. Crawford, a local political boss who had been involved in many an unsavory mess. And last February it acquired a new writer: Herbert F. Spencer, a coast newspaperman of good repute, six years city editor of the Los Angeles Express (until Paul Block purchased it).

On the magazine's first birthday last week. Spencer was conversing with Crawford in the latter's Hollywood Office. A third man called, was closeted with the others. Presently there were sounds of angry voices; a scuffle, pistol shots, a fleeing figure. Spencer staggered out in pursuit, fell dead. Boss Crawford lay beside his desk, died four hours later.

Readers of The Critic of Critics (claimed circulation 15,000) immediately recalled a boxed announcement which had accompanied the Capone-McAfee article: ". . . If any member of the staff of this publication is molested in any way it will be the signal for the opening ... of a well-filled safe deposit box now reposing in the vaults of a certain bank." The same thought occurred when Widow Frances Spencer cried hysterically: "Ask Guy McAfee who did it!" But no safe deposit box was found; and McAfee established that he was in the Hall of Justice at the time of the killings. He was, however, placed under "technical" arrest.

Meanwhile District Attorney Buron Fitts had an entirely different clue. He showed to Crawford's stenographers the photograph of a tall, athletic young man with a blond mustache. . . . Next day David Harris Clark, former deputy district attorney, candidate for municipal judge (backed by McAfee) in this week's election, walked into the Hall of Justice and surrendered to his recent chief. Wise to the ways of prosecutor and press, he would make no statement. But with the information that Candidate Clark had bought a .38 calibre revolver the day before the killing (and paid for it with a worthless check) and that he had not gone home since then, District Attorney Fitts charged him with murder.

Here was a murder difficult of classification; possible motives, innumerable "angles," sprawled like tentacles through the redolent demimonde of Los Angeles politics. The memory of Chicago's Racketeer-Reporter Jake Lingle was still too fresh to allow a repetition in Journalist Spencer's case of the public error of canonizing him too soon as a martyr, a public crusader like Canton, Ohio's revered Editor Don R. Mellett.