LAPD '53 by James Ellroy

Author:James Ellroy [Ellroy, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non Fiction, LAPD, True Crime
ISBN: 9781419715853
Amazon: 1419715852
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Published: 2015-05-18T12:00:00+00:00

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FREDERICKS

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APRIL 14

We’re back to that “walls-are-closing-in-on-me” job. Richard and Ruth Hilda Fredericks had three kids. Richard was an office clerk. Ruth Hilda stayed home and tended the rug rats. The marriage went bad in the classic ticking-time-bomb manner. Ruth Hilda split and got a cocktail-waitress gig. That was September ’52. She spent a short interval out of the crib and foolishly returned. A doctor from Richard’s place of employment huddled with her, concerned. Fellow employees reported that Richard had been acting strangely. One of them found a gun in his locker. Ruth Hilda and the doctor conferred. Ruth Hilda dropped a dime on Richard and had him committed to the psycho ward at L.A. County General Hospital.

Richard did a quick observation jolt and was cut loose. Tick, tick, tick. The walls are closing in. Now, it’s January 7, ’53. Richard Fredericks could not take it one moment longer. He picked up a croquet mallet and beat Ruth Hilda dead.

He cut off her hands and buried them in the backyard.

He dumped Ruth Hilda’s handless body in the trunk of his car and drove south to Mexico. He took his kids with him. He dumped Ruth Hilda in a gulch off the Ensenada coast road. Ruth Hilda remained there, tagged as a Juanita Doe. A sharp-witted neighbor found Ruth Hilda’s absence fishy and tattled Richard to a pal on the LAPD. Richard had driven his brood to his mom’s place in Maplewood, New Jersey, in the meantime. LAPD launched a missing persons investigation. A detective was working a Jersey-based lead on another job at the time—and had Richard escorted out his mom’s pad by the New Jersey cops. He did not suspect Murder One. He expected reticent Richard to remain reticent during his visit to the local hoosegow. Richard revealed the deadly details—and immediately confessed the snuff as self-defense.

J’accuse, J’accuse—at trial he claimed that Ruth Hilda went after him with a kitchen knife. The jury bought it. Richard was sentenced to one to ten years in prison. That was a rank injustice! And—he got a soft berth at Chino, where soul sax Dexter Gordon jammed regularly with other dope-jailed jazz greats. The Fredericks job was a gas chamber bounce if ever there was one! I can only attribute the namby-pamby sentence to misguided empathy on the judge’s part. He was probably prone to night sweats and visions himself. He probably knew that walls-closing-in-on-you gestalt all too well. †

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