Homicide, El Monte, 6 May. This is a detective modelling a mask worn by one of Baxter Shorter’s crew. Shorter was in a gang with Emmett Perkins, Jack Santo and Barbara Graham. The three of them murdered an old woman called Mabel Monohan on 9 March 1953. Shorter was appalled by his gang’s violence. He ratted the others out, and Santo and Perkins kidnapped him from his pad on Bunker Hill, took him to the mountains and killed him. Shorter had a sister that lived in El Monte, and they were hunting through it for evidence: this mask was in her pad. - James Ellroy
