by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Roaring Twenties greater Los Angeles was relentlessly promoted by boosters as an American paradise, with an incomparable climate, plenty of land and space for settlers and business people, a diverse range of successful industries embracing agriculture, the film industry, manufacturing, real estate and oil, and much more.
To read the myriad publications issued by the Los Angeles Chamber Commerce and the All-Year Club of Southern California or any number of breathless articles in newspapers, not the least of which was the Los Angeles Times, it can be easily seen how well-oiled publicity machines churned out their perennially positive perspectives of why the region was the exemplar of a new type of American city.
There were, of course, the flip sides of the shiny coins that belied some of the eternal sunny optimism, including wide financial disparities among residents, the treatment of people of color, labor issues, widespread political and institutional corruption and other issues. Still, the rampant growth in the city and environs were impressive and lent compelling credence to the perception that greater Los Angeles provided a template for how a modern metropolis could (should) develop.
It was shocking, therefore, to a great many people when a disturbing spate of horrific crimes involving young victims rocked the Angel City in the later part of the decade, including the kidnapping and murder in December 1927 of 12-year-old Marion Parker (we’ll delve into this in a later post, though a prior one mentioned it). Another recent post concerned the discovery, on 1 February 1928, adjacent to the Homestead of the body of a young Latino, though, for reasons of ethnicity and, perhaps other factors, it received much less attention.
This entry takes us to the next piece of a terrible and tragic trifecta as we feature an Acme Newspictures and National Enterprise Association press photograph, date stamped 19 April 1928 from the Museum’s collection of 9-year-old Walter Collins, who vanished on 10 March. Notably, the caption on the reverse of the image of the cherubic youngster refers to the Parker killing:
Belief that Walter Collins, 9, shown above has been a victim of a crime like that committed by William Edward Hickman [kidnapper and murderer of Parker] is expressed by Los Angeles authorities following a report of a Glendale, (Cal.) oil station attendant that he observed an auto with a body resembling that of the Collins boy in the rear seat. The boy disappeared nearly a month ago. Description of the man and woman seen with the body tallies with that of the couple who kidnapped 3-year-old Wesley Dixon a few week ago and abandoned him in a hotel when the chase became too hot.
The reference to another abduction is also significant because there were other reports of kidnappings, along with a host of reports and clues, that reflected some form of a society in a state of anxiety that is not surprising given mass media attention that, by the 1920s, was becoming more commonplace and would not have been as likely in prior years.
Young Walter was born in Los Angeles in September 1918 to Christine Dunne and Walter J. Anson, who hailed from Omaha, Nebraska and who took on the surname of Collins, probably because of a long criminal history that began in Denver, where he spent much of his childhood and where he was committed to a reformatory, or juvenile criminal facility.
The elder Collins, known by his true moniker of Anson, migrated with his mother to the Angel City and found work as a brakeman with the Los Angeles Railway, but, in November 1907, was captured by a citizen after burglarizing three residences in an evening near today’s Convention Center. After a conviction and during the sentencing hearing, Anson told the judge that “he was the sole support of his mother and that he committed the crime to help her.” In seeking probation, he provided the court a reference to the Denver Juvenile Court, so the report on his request was “not favorable.”
Anson was handed a three-year term at San Quentin State Prison and reported there early in 1908, with a mug shot showing the 19-year old in a suit and tie and bowler hat and then with his prison stripes and shaved head, while the register reflected that he’d spent 16 months at the Colorado Reform School. It was also noted in the document that Anson was “restored,” this having to do with previously forfeited credits, such as for good behavior, on 16 May 1910.
Anson returned to Los Angeles, married Santa Ana native Ella Taylor Chantry in July and again was employed by the streetcar company, but within a half year, got into trouble again. On 21 November 1910, he confessed after a four-day police interrogation to the masked robbery of a fellow employee on a car in the East Los Angeles (later renamed Lincoln Heights) section of the city. The preliminary hearing was called by the Los Angeles Times of 24 November “as strange a mingling of crime, psychology, detection and blackmail-threatened love as the courts have ever seen.”
The paper reported that,
Swaying to and fro in the witness chair, his voice shaken with emotion, Walter J. Anson, aged 23 years, voluntarily declared himself a criminal, driven to crime for money wherewith to buy off bloodsucking blackmailers, and keep from his young wife the shame of knowing that she had married a jailbird.
The account continued that, while “superficially, it looked as though a desperate and hardened criminal had landed in the toils,” his statements at the hearing “put the matter in rather a better light, though by no means extenuating the offense itself.” The dramatic narrative retailed how Anson held his head down and tears rolled down his cheeks as he “sobbed the story of his reckless life” that led to his confinement at the notorious San Quentin.
There, he insisted, being “thrown among . . . other felons of a more hardened character, men who delighted to jeer at his desire to reform and lead to a better life,” there were some ex-cons released when he was who “followed him to this city and deliberately set themselves to extract blood money from him through their knowledge of his prison record.” The Times informed readers that “true to his resolution, Anson tried to turn over a new leaf” by returning to the LARY with it claimed that he “abandoned his evil habits” and married Chantry, who was unaware of his criminal past and prior incarcerations.
The tale was that, when he his former Folsom prison maters learned of his wedded bliss, “they informed Anson that if he did not at once hand over to them cash in specified amounts, they would tell the young bride everything they knew.” Evidently filled with fear, “Anson acceded to the demand,” but, not having the funds, knew what was to be done because “his hard-bought experience as a criminal told him what means to employ.” The paper surmised that “had not Anson chosen the car of one of his own former conductors, it is probable that the crime might have gone unpunished,” but it also reported that,
The essential parts of Anson’s story were corroborated by the testimony of a number of police officers who have been familiar with the man’s efforts to reform since his last release from [behind] prison walls. The police are also acquainted with the blackmailing operations and with the men who systematically carried them on, though this information did not come to them until after the robbery had been committed.
It may be that Anson saw no reason to go to the authorities about the extortion because he felt that, as an ex-con, he would not be believed. In any case, the account ended with the observation that “a pathetic phase” of the proceedings was the hope maintained by his wife and mother that “their loved one might, by some miracle, be spared the consequences of his act.” When, however, he was given a 10-year term at Folsom, “both women burst into a torrent of weeping and had to be helped from the court room.”
Anson served 6 1/2 years and was released on 26 May 1917 with a divorce from Ella soon to follow. Very shortly afterward, he married Christine Isobel Dunne, a California native of English and Irish parentage who seems to have been wedded briefly the prior year. When he registered for the draft during World War I, likely in September 1918 just before the conflict ended, the couple was residing in downtown Los Angeles, though Anson listed employment with a rancher at Dorris, just before the Oregon state line.
That month, on the 23rd, she gave birth to Walter, their only child and, when the family was enumerated at the seaside town of Venice (not yet annexed to Los Angeles), the surname Collins was used, though the elder Walter was listed as Conrad J. and his employment was, again, as a motorman for the LARY and its associated company, the Pacific Electric Railway. While he managed to stay clean for a half-dozen years, he was nabbed in September 1923 trying to evade arrest for another rash of the robberies of streetcars which had solo staffing.
The Los Angeles Times of 27 September remarked that “the fugitive was discovered in Tijuana and was caught after a swift chase toward the border,” with some of the ill-gotten gains said to be on his persons. The paper added that “he is said to have confessed” and was “being returned to this city under heavy guard as he is said to have threatened to commit suicide rather than face a long term in prison.”
It was reported that there were at least eight instances in which about $300 in cash and valuables were taken from conductors, though this time there were no reports of any allegedly extenuating circumstances. Instead, it was reported that “Collins is said to have signed a written confession, accepting the blame for some of the daring hold-ups which terrorized the motormen of one-man street cars during the month of September.”
Because he’d had the previous prison stints, a deputy district attorney told the Los Angeles Express of 8 November that he was likely “to ask the court to send Collins to Folsom for the rest of his life.” The Los Angeles Record of the 12th stated that there were eight charges and, while Collins offered to plead guilty to one, after previously indicating after waiving a preliminary hearing that he would take the heat for all of his robberies, which would yield at least five years in prison, the D.A.’s office wanted him to plead to two crimes, or a minimum of ten years. Collins, however, demurred and a trial was held.
The Record added that “Walter J. Collins was a street car supervisor by day” but “at night, he was Walter J. Anson” so that he “held up and robbed the street cars he supervised in daylight hours.” An obvious question is why, given that he was on his third strike, so to speak, but committed his last crime while an employee of the LARY, he was rehired by the company (and the PERY), unless he changed his name to Collins to secure a job and evade any possible scrutiny of his past and record.
When Judge Sidney N. Reeve passed sentence on Collins, the Times of the 14th recorded that,
Walter J. Collins, alias Anson, was one of the first to feel the severity and certainty of the new law relating to crimes of violence when he appeared . . . the court sentenced him to Folsom prison for from forty years to life, each of the eight terms being for from five years to life and running consecutively.
Notably, it was added that, while San Quentin is where first-time felony offenders were sent, Folsom was the place for recidivists to be incarcerated. Obviously, Collins was a veteran of that prison and, when it came to the kidnapping of his son, his prison history very much entered into the early stages of the hunt for young Walter.
Meanwhile, the youngster, who was five years old when his father was sent to Folsom for what was certainly anticipated to be for the remainder of his life, was told by his mother, who formerly lived in the Washington metropolis, that the elder Collins was residing in Seattle. In its 12 March 1928 edition, the Express reported,
Police, appealed to by a frantic mother, are searching today for Walter Collins, 9-year-old boy who disappeared from his home [in Lincoln Heights, near where his father committed his 1910 crime]. . . Saturday [the 10th]. The boy went to a motion picture show and failed to return.
Walter’s description has been given to all police [officers], with instructions that every effort be made to find him. He wore a corduroy suit, a red and black plaid [shirt], black shoes and a gray cap.
From this point, over the next five weeks, the hunt to find Walter took place throughout Los Angeles, in nearby areas and throughout California, with an emphasis on his father’s imprisonment in Folsom and a possible motive for the kidnapping based on that incarceration. We’ll return with part two to discuss this period, so be sure to check in with us then.