Chabad Synagogue Bombing - 17th St., Santa Monica

Initial investigative conclusions have been revised, determining that an explosion at the Chabad House in Santa Monica on Thursday, April 7th, was, in fact, an intentional act caused by a pipe bomb. Officials are now searching for suspect Ron Hirsch (aka Israel Fisher), a transient known by police to frequent Jewish centers in the area, reports the Los Angeles Times.

"The blast sent a 300-pound metal pipe encased in concrete hurtling through the air and crashing through the roof of a home next door to Chabad House. Originally authorities had said they believed the explosion was a freak industrial accident. But on Friday, bomb technicians and detectives scouring the scene discovered evidence that the blast was caused by an explosive device, police said. Items found nearby were linked to Hirsch..."

Suspect Ron Hirsch (aka Israel Fisher)

http://santamonica.patch.com/articles/synagogue-bombing-suspect-located-police-have-set-up-barricade?ncid=wtp-patch-headline


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-synagogue-pipe-bomb-20110410,0,7321645.story


http://laist.com/2011/04/09/increased_security_around_jewish_pl.php


http://www.latimes.com/news/la-mem-bomb-suspect-20110409-m,0,7403147.story?track=rss

"Onion Field" Killer Gregory Powell Dies in Prison 2007

At Gregory Powell's parole-board hearing on January 27, 2010, he was denied parole. In a January 21, 2010 letter to state corrections officials, L.A. police union President Paul Weber urged the board to deny parole, calling Powell a "vicious murderer who has not yet paid his debt to society." Smith was initially released in 1982, but returned to prison several times on drug-related parole violations. In December 2006, he failed to report to his parole officer and a warrant was issued for his arrest. In February 2007, a man matching Smith's description was detained by police in Los Angeles' Skid Row area and eventually identified as Smith. He was arrested and charged with violating his parole, and sent to the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, California. On April 7, 2007, while in that facility, he died of an apparent heart attack at age 76.

Crime

On March 9, 1963, LAPD officers Campbell and Karl Hettinger pulled over a car containing two suspicious-looking men on a Hollywood street. The two men, Jimmy Lee Smith (aka "Jimmy Youngblood") and Gregory Ulas Powell, had recently committed a string of robberies. Powell, the driver, pulled a gun on Campbell and ordered Hettinger to surrender his gun to Smith. The two officers were then forced into Powell's car and driven to an onion field around Bakersfield where Campbell was fatally shot. Hettinger was able to escape, running nearly four miles to reach a farmhouse. The killing occurred primarily because Powell assumed that the kidnapping of the officers alone constituted a capital crime under the state's Little Lindbergh Law. However, Powell's interpretation was incorrect, as under the Little Lindbergh Law kidnapping became a capital crime only if the victim was harmed. (Today, kidnapping in California, where there is bodily harm short of death, is punishable either by imprisonment for 25-years-to-life, or by life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.)

Aftermath

Powell was arrested on the night of the murder. The following day, Smith was apprehended as well. The lead LAPD investigator on the case was Sergeant Pierce Brooks. Both suspects, convicted of murder and sentenced to death, ultimately received life-imprisonment sentences following a court decision that for a period abolished executions in California.

Though Hettinger was able to escape, he was scorned by his fellow officers and suffered severe emotional trauma for both the initial incident and following fellow treatment. Eventually a police training video was made using his experience as example of what not to do when stopping and approaching a vehicle.

Hettinger was forced to resign from the LAPD in 1966 after being accused of several acts of petty theft and abusing alcohol. Years later, Hettinger was appointed to serve as a Kern County Supervisor for Bakersfield, CA where he served multiple consecutive terms. He was later divorced and died of a liver disease in 1994 at the age of 59.

The Onion Field is a 1973 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the kidnapping of two plainclothes LAPD officers by a pair of criminals during an evening traffic stop and the subsequent murder of Officer Ian James Campbell.

The book was adapted into an eponymous 1979 film directed by Harold Becker. It starred John Savage, James Woods, Franklyn Seales and Ted Danson.

L.A. Incorporated 1850

 

April 4, 1850 – Los Angeles, California is incorporated as a city.

 

Los Angeles City Hall, completed 1928, is the tallest base isolated structure in the world. It is the center of the government of the city of Los Angeles, California. It houses the mayor's office as well as the meeting chambers of the Los Angeles City Council. It is located in the Civic Center district of Downtown Los Angeles in the city block bordered by Main, Temple, 1st, and Spring streets.

History

The building was designed by John Parkinson, John C. Austin, and Albert C. Martin, Sr., and was completed in 1928. It has 32 floors and, at 454 feet (138 m) high, is the tallest base-isolated structure in the world, having undergone a seismic retrofit that will allow the building to sustain minimal damage and remain functional after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake. The concrete in its tower was made with sand from each of California's 58 counties and water from its 21 historical missions. The city hall's distinctive tower was based on the purported shape of the Mausoleum of Maussollos, and shows the influence of the Los Angeles Public Library, completed soon before the City Hall was started. An image of City Hall has been on Los Angeles Police Department badges since 1940.

Due in part to seismic concerns, prior to the late 1950s the City of Los Angeles did not permit any portion of any building other than a purely decorative tower to be more than 150 feet (46 m) high. Therefore, from its completion in 1928 until 1964, the City Hall was the tallest building in Los Angeles, and shared the skyline with only a few structures having decorative towers, including the Richfield Tower and the Eastern Columbia Building.

The building was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1976.

Usage

An observation level is open to the public on the 27th floor. The Mayor of Los Angeles has an office in room 300 of this building and every Tuesday, Wednesday and Fridays at 10:00am, the Los Angeles City Council meets in their chambers. City Hall and the adjacent federal, state, and county buildings are served by the Civic Center station on the Metro Red Line.

Popular culture

The building has been featured in the following popular movies and television shows:

Adventures of Superman - as the Daily Planet building beginning in the second season of the 1950s TV series. At the time the TV program was broadcast, the show's "Daily Planet" building (Los Angeles City Hall) was frequently confused with the similarly designed Pennsylvania Power & Light Building in Allentown, also built in 1928. Additionally, the exact design of this building is used as the Newstime magazine headquarters in the Superman comic books.

Alias - a CIA black ops unit is located behind a maintenance door at Civic Station.

Dragnet - the building appears as itself in the TV series. The first episode of Dragnet (1951) Season 1, Episode 1: "The Human Bomb," Original Air Date: 16 December 1951 was filmed at Los Angeles City Hall. It was embossed on Sgt. Joe Friday's famous badge number 714 that was displayed under the credits.

Adam-12 - During the Seventh Season opening credits montage, City Hall is shown directly at the end, as the building that officers Reed, and Malloy drive away from, it is also shown on the embossed badges, numbered 744 (Malloy), and 2430 (Reed).

The 2003 Dragnet series - used the L.A. City Hall building aerial shot and badge throughout its introduction.

War of the Worlds - the City Hall was destroyed in the 1953 film version (although the H.G. Wells book has the aliens attacking London, the setting was changed to Los Angeles for the film).
and also in the following other media:

Midnight Club: Los Angeles video game as part of Downtown Los Angeles of the city of Los Angeles.

Mission impossible :"Ultimatum" 1972 Thermonuclear bomb planted under City hall in sewer duct by frustrated nuclear scientist, in order to blackmail the US government into "change" of its foreign policy and replacing some "corrupt" congress and cabinet members. If demands are not met..the 50MT bomb will detonate--destroying all of Los Angeles county. The IMF must locate and defuse the bomb before it is too late.

GTA:San Andreas video game as part of the city of Los Santos.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (Japanese manga series) - the building serves as the headquarters for one of the main occupation armies of the antagonist Principality of Zeon, under Garma Zabi.

Miss Murder, music video by the band AFI (April 2006)

Escape From L.A.- The building is shown sunken, along with the ruins of Los Angeles, as Snake

Plissken operates his submarine toward the prison.

SWAT 3 - One mission has the player rescuing hostages and defusing a bomb within the top floors of the building.

 

 

Jury Recommends Death for Manson Family 1971

On January 25, 1971, guilty verdicts were returned against the four defendants in the Charles Manson murder trial on each of the 27 separate counts against them. Not far into the trial's penalty phase, the jurors saw, at last, the defense that Manson—in the prosecution's view—had planned to present. Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten testified the murders had been conceived as "copycat" versions of the Hinman murder, for which Atkins now took credit. The killings, they said, were intended to draw suspicion away from Bobby Beausoleil, by resembling the crime for which he had been jailed. This plan had supposedly been the work of, and carried out under the guidance of, not Manson, but someone allegedly in love with Beausoleil—Linda Kasabian. Among the narrative's weak points was the inability of Atkins to explain why, as she was maintaining, she had written "political piggy" at the Hinman house in the first place.

Midway through the penalty phase, Manson shaved his head and trimmed his beard to a fork; he told the press, "I am the Devil, and the Devil always has a bald head." In what the prosecution regarded as belated recognition on their part that imitation of Manson only proved his domination, the female defendants refrained from shaving their heads until the jurors retired to weigh the state's request for the death penalty.

The effort to exonerate Manson via the "copycat" scenario failed. On March 29, 1971, the jury returned verdicts of death against all four defendants on all counts. On April 19, 1971, Judge Older sentenced the four to death.

On the day the verdicts recommending the death penalty were returned, news came that the badly decomposed body of Ronald Hughes had been found wedged between two boulders in Ventura County. It was rumored, although never proven, that Hughes was murdered by the Family, possibly because he had stood up to Manson and refused to allow Van Houten to take the stand and absolve Manson of the crimes. Though he might have perished in flooding, Family member Sandra Good stated that Hughes was "the first of the retaliation murders."