‘Perfect murder case’ of 1938 still unsolved

By the end of 1938, Weldon R. Irvin sensed that he was a marked man and that death was not far off. The ex-bookie could have stayed out of Los Angeles and maybe he would have lived -- at least for a while.

But he evidently decided to face the person who would kill him in what The Times called the “perfect murder case.”

Irvin had begun the year by dividing his extensive Los Angeles gambling operations among his four partners, using his share of the money to invest in Inland Empire real estate and buy the Morongo Valley Lodge near Palm Springs, The Times said.

As operator of the lodge, Irvin covered the walls of the dining room with bits of his poetry. The night before he was killed, he left one final verse: I have placed life’s greatest bet

and lost Far from the Great White Way, The wheel of fortune coppers

the bet And the carrion wait for their

prey.

Two days later, a landlady checking an expensive car that had been parked overnight outside her apartment house at 6057 Selma Ave. in Hollywood found Irvin slumped on the floor, hidden by a coat the killers had tossed over his body.

Weldon L. “Ducky” Irvin, 55, alias George W. Rogers and H.W. Currier, had taken two slugs from a .38-caliber semiautomatic in the back of the head; one in his neck and the other under the left ear.

One bullet evidently went out a rear side window, and the other penetrated the back seat. The magazine from a .45-caliber semiautomatic, with six rounds, was found on the floor, along with the brass from two .38-caliber rounds.

The Times later alluded to evidence that he was killed by two men, one of whom accidentally shot himself in the leg.

Investigators examining the car found a new leather suitcase containing letters, documents and Irvin’s .38 revolver, and a cardboard carton in the trunk crammed with his clothing.

Irvin’s murder seemed to be a typical mob killing, and although homicide detectives never solved the case, they offered half a dozen reasons someone might have wanted to kill him.

Maybe it was because he had resumed operations in Los Angeles after the IRS brought a tax lien on his previous earnings. Or because when he was arrested on bookmaking charges that August, he freely informed the district attorney’s office about illicit gambling in Southern California. Maybe he was selling phony police protection against arrests; or an ex-girlfriend tipped off his enemies to get even with him. Or maybe he was robbed.

As usual in mob cases, witnesses left town “on business” while a long list of underworld suspects had airtight alibis. A police commissioner even alleged that two high-ranking LAPD officials had taken bribes to protect the killers, but he refused to testify about the matter before the grand jury.

Once the reluctant witnesses surfaced, investigators slowly pieced together the last day of Irvin’s life:

On Dec. 28, 1938, he and his secretary, Edna Cook, left Morongo Valley Lodge for Los Angeles. He told Cook that he was being hounded by two men, whom he called “coppers.”

That morning, he had told a friend that he hated to return to Los Angeles because “my life isn’t worth a nickel there.”

“Then why don’t you stay here?” the friend asked.

“Well, I’ve got to face it some time, so I might as well do it now,” Irvin said.

Cook testified: “I let him out downtown and drove the car to El Segundo to visit my mother. He told me to meet him at 8 o’clock at a bowling alley at Pico and La Cienega boulevards.

“When I got there, he told me to sit down in a booth with him because he was waiting for a telephone call. He said he had told some friends they could call him there.” Irvin was called to the telephone almost immediately.

“A few minutes later he hurried out of the booth and drove quite fast to Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue, where he let me out after remarking he was going to meet a couple of friends. He said he would pick me up in a few minutes.”

But he never returned.

After waiting two hours in a drugstore at Sunset and Western, Cook called a friend, who took her to her apartment.

She spent the next day asking about Irvin around Hollywood and learned he had been killed.

One of Irvin’s former partners, David “Bad Boy” Klegman, an assistant director at Columbia, told police that on the night of the killing he was working at the studio and later went to a cafe.

“Irvin’s murder was a surprise to me,” Klegman told homicide detectives.

“For three years we were business partners in the bookie business, and then I split with him because he drank so much,” Klegman said. “But we never had a personal beef. I have an airtight alibi for that night.”

Then Police Commissioner Raymond L. Haight dropped a bombshell, charging that Irvin’s killers had bribed two high-ranking police officials to avoid arrest. Haight was called before the grand jury but refused to testify, saying the inquiry was an attempt to block the commission’s investigation of the crime.

Under further prodding, Haight said the two officials who received the bribes were among the 23 officers who were forced out of the LAPD in Mayor Fletcher Bowron’s reform of the department, but he would not identify them.

Haight was harshly criticized by the City Council for his silence before the grand jury and resigned from the Police Commission soon after without ever identifying the officers.

In the summer of 1939, after months of surveillance, police raided an apartment in Santa Monica and arrested five people -- a man convicted of robbing a Hollywood theater, a newspaper vendor, a dealer on a gambling ship and his wife, and a man who operated carnival gambling equipment -- none of whom knew Irvin. In contrast to the publicity over their arrests in what police suspected was a botched robbery, they were quietly released.

What appeared to be the next break came in early 1940, when an unidentified movie director told investigators that he had paid $11,000 to Irvin shortly before the killing.

Deputy Police Chief Homer Cross said: “Irvin, a well-known bookmaker, was unquestionably shot because he refused to divide up the $11,000 with four men who considered themselves partners in his bookmaking business.” Klegman was arrested in the murder, then released.

In 1941, police made one final, unsuccessful attempt to solve the killing before abandoning the investigation of what remains the “perfect murder case.”

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larry.harnisch@latimes.com