A LOOK BACK -- JERRY PERSON

Last week, we began looking at Huntington Beach’s own version of a

master detective. We learned how two youths held up Ted Bartlett’s Shell

station at 7th Street and Pacific Coast Highway on March 20, 1932, and

made off with the day’s receipts of $18.22.

We learned how Huntington Beach Police Chief Vern Keller began

tracking down a license number of the getaway car and how it brought

Keller, Officer Grant and Ted Bartlett to several cities looking for the

car’s owner.

After traveling to Los Angeles, East Los Angeles and then to Sierra

Vista looking for the third owner of the car’s license plate. After

driving around for sometime, the three were able to locate the third

owner, a Mr. Jackson, at his North Huntington Drive residence in Los

Angeles.

Jackson told Keller that he had sold the car to a boy he had gone to

school with in 1928 by the name of Herbert, but didn’t remember his last

name. The three drove Jackson to his South Pasadena high school where

they were able to locate the boy’s last name of Heintzelman and an

address on El Centro Street in Pasadena.

Dropping off Jackson, Keller drove over to that address and found that

Heintzelman’s mother still lived there. She told Keller that her son was

spending Easter vacation with a friend in Balboa and that he didn’t own a

car. Keller got a description of her son and the three headed back to

Huntington Beach.

Keller dropped off Grant and picked up Officer Howard Robidoux and

this trio headed for the Rendevouz ballroom, a popular hangout for teens

at the time, in Balboa. It was now 8 Monday evening and Keller, Robidoux

and Bartlett took up their watch for the two robbers, and by 11 p.m. the

two suspects appeared and Bartlett recognized one of them as the one who

took his money. Keller had the local police arrest the two boys, Heber

Goode and Heintzelman, and they were taken to jail where they confessed

to robbing Bartlett’s station and stealing the getaway car.

On Tuesday morning, the two were brought to Huntington Beach where

they appeared before Judge Pann, who ordered the boys to be taken to

Orange County jail on charges of armed robbery. In just over 24 hours,

Keller had traveled to Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, Sierra Vista, South

Pasadena, Pasadena, back to Huntington Beach and then to Balboa, to solve

a robbery and to capture the two robbers.

Later, Keller found out that the pair were responsible for several

robberies in Los Angeles County, but with Keller’s unique talent as a

crime detective, prevented the pair from committing any more robberies in

Orange County.

Three months later a two-story hotel at 3rd Street and Orange Avenue

in town caught fire for a third time, and during the investigation by the

fire department, flammable chemicals were found at the hotel.

Keller used his deductive mind, and by August found out that the

hotel’s owner had torched his hotel for the insurance money and had him

arrested along with two accomplices living in San Bernardino.

Under Keller’s term, he established a junior police patrol to help out

at the police station and as crossing guards. He hired Baptist minister

Luther A. Arthur as a shooting instructor and had installed one-way

radios in the city’s police cars. But politics entered the scene when the

City Council demoted our master detective from chief to motorcycle

officer on April 20, 1934. He was dismissed by Chief Gelzer “for the good

of the department” and in so losing what could have been America’s

version of England’s Sherlock Holmes.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box

7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.