Rocking Chair Ring : 7 Arrested as Bookies, Most of Them Senior Citizens

Grinning under a dapper fedora, 70-year-old Joel (Derby) Brown blamed the whole bookmaking bust on a dame.

“I had an old flame,” he said Tuesday, referring to the 34-year-old woman, on parole for robbery, who lived with him briefly last year--until he had the police throw her out. Now, Brown stands accused of masterminding a $30,000-a-week bookie operation run by a band of mostly senior citizens in South Los Angeles.

“I believe somebody dropped a dime,” Brown said of his arrest four days ago.

Free on $2,500 bail, he spoke affably at his comfortable home in Windsor Hills, where a white Cadillac sat in the driveway. Brown wore a natty three-piece suit and tie. Bitter? No way. “I’m not bitter,” he declared, adding with a laugh: “I’d be bitter at this broad if I knew she did it.”

Guilty? He laughed again. “I’m not going to say I’m innocent.”

Brown acknowledged four previous bookmaking busts--all more than 20 years ago. But he denied being associated with the six other suspects arrested Friday by Los Angeles Police Department vice detectives, who concluded a 10-week investigation by serving warrants on Brown’s home and four other locations concentrated in the inner-city neighborhood near Avalon Boulevard and 46th Street.

Arrested with Brown were Charles Gardner, 66; LeRoy Higgenbotham, 52; Rex Barnett, 76; Jewell Wilburn, 67; OdisMcBride, 69, and Patricia Powell, 41, all of Los Angeles. Due in court on Feb. 21, they face felony bookmaking charges that typically result in fines of $500 to $4,000, said LAPD investigator Mike Wixted.

Wilburn denied being involved in the ring, which police say concentrated all its efforts on horse racing. “I don’t even know what bookmaking is,” Wilburn said outside a run-down, gray apartment building on 46th Street, where he was arrested along with McBride and Powell. Wilburn said he was eating dinner and McBride and Powell were visiting and playing dominoes when police stormed the residence.

Officers confiscated a copy of a Racing Form, but he called the arrest a mistake. “Yeah, I bet on the races, but I go over to the track,” Wilburn said, alluding to Hollywood Park. “I’m not in that (bookmaking) business. If I was, I’d have some money, I guess.”

Neither Wilburn, Barnett nor McBride have been convicted of bookmaking, police said. However, Powell has two prior bookmaking convictions, and Higgenbotham and Gardner each have been convicted seven times, police said.

Gardner, who acknowledged that he is scheduled to be arraigned today, his 67th birthday, for a bookmaking arrest in January, lashed out at police for nabbing him again. At the time of the latest raid, Gardner said, he possessed only a single “scratch sheet”--a list of a day’s racing entries available at newsstands.

He said he was alone when police descended on his tiny white rented storefront on Avalon Boulevard, where daytime customers like to come in, have a few beers and, allegedly, put money on the ponies.

“I had nothing down: no bets . . . no markers . . . and there was nobody there,” Gardner said. “It’s the same old jive, the same old stuff (the police) have done all the time. No, siree, they didn’t have nothing on me--period.”

Gardner said he was arrested with about $120 in his pocket--cash from his GI pension and Social Security checks. Calling himself a former shipping clerk who was disabled in 1974 by spinal meningitis, Gardner went on to defend bookmaking as a pleasant way for seniors in the inner city to make a few extra dollars.

“It’s a harmless pastime--always has been,” Gardner said. “Most of the guys I deal with are senior citizens. They come in, have a sandwich, have a beer . . . buy a couple six packs, play some horses.

“We don’t have nothing else to do--nowhere to go,” he added. “There’s no dope, no killing. It’s never been that way.”

Barnett, who spoke only briefly, echoed Gardner’s comments, calling bookmaking a “legitimate, unlawful job.”

“You’re too damn old to go out and do something physical,” he said, questioning why police were not busting white bookmakers. “Why do they just fool around and catch we black people?”

LAPD Lt. Dan Jones, who supervised the investigation, credited anonymous “informants” for alerting police to the alleged ring. According to Jones, the inner-city locations--mostly small apartments--were “fronts” where bettors would place wagers ranging from $1 or $2 to $10.

Also known as “cash rooms,” such fronts are common to areas of South-Central Los Angeles were bookmaking on the horses seems to thrive, Jones said. The typical location is protected by wrought-iron security doors and features an electronic buzzer for admitting customers, a cashier’s window for placing bets and a radio for listening to the races, Jones said.

The operators of cash rooms typically keep track of bets on rice paper--also known as “dissolvo,” because it dissolves in water, Jones said. The special paper enables bookmakers to quickly destroy evidence in the event of a police raid.

Cash room operators telephone their bets to a “back office” where the wagers are permanently recorded and the books are kept, Jones said. For precautionary reasons, those who operate the cash rooms frequently do not know where the back office is located.

According to police, Brown ran the crucial back office side of the operation. Following his last arrest more than 20 years ago, Brown became the target of another probe about five years later, Jones said. However, just as police were preparing to serve their warrants, Brown apparently got wind of the plan and moved his operation.

Police lost track of him.

“I was younger then,” Brown said with a smile. “You watch yourself.”