Here is the earliest version of events dated 2/13/73:
TORRANCE. Calif. (AP) â€"Hundreds of children rimmed the Rolling Hills Theater in this Los Angeles suburb waiting to get the best seats when the doors opened for a special holiday matinee. But the doors were not opened, and the crowds were turned away Monday after police discovered the bodies of four theater employees on a blood-splattered floor. Police Lt. James Foster likened the slayings to “an execution.” He said the victims â€"three men and woman â€" were found with their throats slashed and their hands tied behind their backs.
Police said the slayings apparently occurred late Sunday during a robbery of the theater’s weekend receipts, about $2,000, from an office safe Investigators said they had no clues as to the killer or killers. The victims were identified as Lynda R. Freeman, 32, assistant cashier; George Cernik, 18, usher: Guy Brown, 32, doorman, and Clyde Felts, 55, projectionist. The bodies were discovered after a relative of one victim told police the theater employee had not returned home, police said.
Investigators said they were uncertain why the robber or robbers found it necessary to kill the four, since each already had been immobilized. “It makes no sense,” Foster said. “It’s only speculation, but it looks like they were kneeling when they were killed,” Foster said. He said all the victims were found face down.
Investigators speculated that one of the employees had been forced to open the safe after the night’s receipts had been deposited.
There was a fire in 1996, if the reference is to this Norma Jean. Am I correct in that there was only one Norma Jean in the city of Albany? http://tinyurl.com/2wdsbq
This theater was at Park and Elm in Mount Vernon in 1933, but it is unidentified. It doesn’t appear to be one of the three listed to date. Any ideas? http://tinyurl.com/29gvou
Pity the poor cashier in this 1972 story. She survives the hurricane in the morning and then gets robbed at night:
Police arrested a 26-year-old Odessa man Monday night minutes after a gunman made off with $326 in a brazen armed robbery of a busy Downtown Odessa movie theater. James Albert Posteal, 324 South Lindy, remained in the city jail Tuesday in lieu of $25,000 bond set by Municipal Judge Cecil Hardwick. He is named in an armed
robbery complaint filed with Justice of the Peace Otis Moore. Officers nabbed Posteal as he sat nervously in the balcony of the Scott Theater, 700 North Texas, just moments after an armed bandit forced the ticket-seller to hand over $326 at the Ector Theater just two blocks north at 500 North Texas.
Officers said witness to the stickup saw the bandit run to the south of the Ector Theater into the alley behind the 600 block of North Texas following the holdup at 9:10 p.m. Monday. The witness said she saw the man strip off a white shirt and a hat and fling them in the alley as he ran. She told officers the man then walked calmly to the Scott Theater, purchased a ticket and went in.
According to the robbery victim, Rose Bogard, 1939 North Tom Green, the bandit walked up to the box office of the Ector and shoved a bread wrapper through the small hole in the window and told her to fill it up with money. “I got nervous and dropped the bread wrapper on the floor,†she said. “I bent down to pick it up and when I got back up, he had a pistol pointed at me. He told me again to fill it up, and threatened to kill me.” “I got all the money from the register and put it in the bag. It was hard to get the cash into the bread wrapper,” the attendant said.
The gunman then ordered the woman to get down on the floor of the cramped box office. “He kept telling me to get down further, but I told him I was down as far as I could go. He told me to stay down and took off.‘’ She said she was on the floor a few seconds and then raised up and the man was gone. She said the man had a nickel-plated pistol.
Officer Ben Miller, a beat patrolman with the police department, was standing inside
the theater lobby talking to the manager, T. A. Collins, 1701 Rosewood, when the bandit
struck. Miller apparently saw the thief run from the box office and began pursuing him on foot. The ticket-seller said she then called the emergency police number and several patrol cars responded within moments. After talking with Miller and the witness, officers went into the Scott Theater where they arrested the suspect in the balcony. Officers said the man offered no resistance. The cash and a pistol were recovered, police said, along with the discarded shirt and hat from the alley.
Rose Bogard has been the attendant at the theater’s box office off and on for 10 years, she
said. During the days she is the complaint clerk for the Municipal Court of the City of
Odessa. She has been a city employee for the past 12 years, beginning as a meter maid, a position she held about a year and a half. “My day just started off bad altogether,"she said. “When I was going to work at about 6 p.m., I saw that tornado up in the air south of town.” “You never know how you’ll react until it happens…I thought I’d stay calm and remember important details about how the robber looked so I could give a description of him…but all I could think of or see was that big pistol pointed at me,” she said.
In another theater robbery in Oakland, between $50 and $100 was taken at the Capitol Theater, 5827 Foothill Boulevard. Miss Marjorie Maginot, 19, a University of California student working as a cashier at the theater, said two men approached her and told her it was a “stickup.“ “I don’t believe it,” she said she replied. “Give us that box,” one man ordered, and she did after he feigned having a gun in his pocket.
There was a robbery at the theater in November 1947:
LYNN Mass. Nov 24â€" (INS) A 23-year-old Salem youth was arrested today in connection with the $400 theater robbery in which the woman cashier and manager were slugged into unconsciousness. Patrolman Joseph Morgan took the youth into custody as he was standing in the doorway of a Central Square building. Morgan said he found a .22 caliber sawed off rifle on the man. Two thugs entered the Warner Theater on Union street just after Mrs. Rita Gagnon, 25, had closed her ticket booth and carried the day’s receipts into the office of Harold Cummings, the manager. The robbers knocked on the door and when Cummings opened the door in the belief it was an usher, the pair beat the manager and cashier into unconsciousness. They picked up the money bag, walked out through the lobby and escaped by hailing a taxi.
True crime, 2/24/52. You should always press your suit before robbing the theater, or you will invite criticism from witnesses:
A hold-up attempt of the Ritz Theater was thwarted last night by the quick actions of a doorman on duty at the movie house on North Main St. The employee, whose name police withheld, told investigating officers that a man between 40 and 50 years old walked up to the ticket window around 9:56 p.m. and inquired if the show was still on. When informed it was, the employee said, the man reached into his pocket and took a new dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to him. When he turned to make change, the employee said, he felt something in his ribs. The man told him to hand over the money. The employee then threatened the bandit and attempted to slide out of the ticket booth. The bandit demanded the doorman hand over his own wallet and when the doorman turned around, he told police he saw the man had a nickel-plated revolver. He believed it to be about a .32-caliber. When the man reached for the dollar he had given the employee, the employee struck the man along the side of his face with his fist and knocked him through the double doors of the theater onto the street.
The man then ran towards Fifth St. Both witnesses described the hold-up man as about five feet eight inches tall, red faced, sandy haired and wearing a light brown suit which was dirty, baggy and needed a pressing. They said the man appeared calm, used good English and was clean shaven.
POCOMOKE CITY â€" A Virginia man has been charged with robbery in connection with the theft of $350 from the Pocomoke Drive-in Theater Friday, State Police said today. Being held in Worcester County Jail under $10,000 bond is Willie Adolphus Howard Jr., 23, of Horn town. The suspect was apprehended Sunday at Line Rd., Pocomoke City.
Here is a newspaper account of the murders, dated 4/30/73:
Torrance police said today the mass murder of four Rolling Hills theater employees last February and the execution slaying of a Torrance store manager in the following month were committed by one man â€" and that man is now dead. Lt. James Foster identified the suspect as John Roy Mahew, 29, who died of an overdose of barbiturates April 3 in the Torrance jail. “From evidence carefully collected concerning this suspect since his death, the Torrance police are satisfied that he was solely responsible for the theater massacre and for the murder at the Torrance TG&Y store,” Foster said.
Mahew was arrested April 2, when officers went to his Torrance residence to pick him up on outstanding traffic warrants. Because of a past record of more than 20 arrests as an adult, officers said, several units were sent to make the arrest. Foster said the officers had been warned by a tipster that Mahew was armed and had vowed he would not submit to arrest.
THE ARRESTING force was refused admittance on arrival at the residence, Foster said, and Mahew refused to come out. When the police threatened to use tear gas, the suspect finally emerged after a long stand-off. Lt. Foster said that as Mahew was being placed under arrest, he grabbed for his boot but was restrained by arresting officers. A small pistol later was found in the boot, Foster said. On the following morning, the lieutenant said, Mahew was found unconscious in his cell and was pronounced dead a short time later. An autopsy revealed the death was caused by an overdose of barbiturates, presumably taken hurriedly by the suspect on the previous afternoon before he emerged from the house and surrendered, police said.
Lt. Foster said Mahew had been under suspicion in the Rolling Hills theater murders and in the TG&Y slaying before police went to make the arrest on traffic warrants. “But it took this intervening time to check out all the tips we had received and collect the physical evidence necessary to mark the case closed,” he added. Foster said traces of blood on a butcher knife found at Mahew’s home and some of the suspect’s clothes matched the blood type of two of the Rolling Hills theater victims. Mahew’s boot also matched a bootprint found by the body of one of the theater victims, he said. Bloodstains found in Mahew’s car matched the blood type of Jack K. Sweeten, assistant manager of the Torrance variety store, who was found with his hands bound and his throat cut in a storeroom early on Mar. 28, police said.
THE FOUR theater victims â€" Lynda R. Freeman, 32, Clyde Felts, 55, Guy D. Brown, 35 and George Cernick, 18 â€"were found in the theater office early on Feb. 12. Their hands had been bound behind their backs and their throats were slashed. Foster said Mahew, unemployed and behind on all his bills prior to Feb. 12, suddenly began spending money immediately after the theater robbery, and again exhibited affluence following the TG&Y robbery-slaying.
Sloppy reporting by the paper as they call the theater “Oakwood” in this story dated 10/27/60:
Fire Destroys Movie House
PONTIAC (UPI)â€"Fire destroyed the Oakwood Theater here Wednesday night and threatened an entire business block before it was brought under control. Several stores and professional offices next to the movie house were also demolished. Damage was estimated by Fire Chief James White at $300,000 to $500,000. Firemen from Pontiac, Waterford Township, Royal Oak, Birmingham and Ferndale battled the flames which shot 75 feet into the air and could be seen for miles. All 60 patrons of the theater were evacuated safely, but two firemen suffered minor injuries battling the blaze.
An estimated 4,000 spectators jammed the area although all streets leading to the downtown section were blocked off to prevent traffic congestion. A preliminary study showed the fire started from a short circuit n the projection booth, but further investigation disclosed it started in an adjoining drug store, of unknown causes.
Fire believed to have started in the projection booth early Sunday morning destroyed the Wisconsin Theatre at La Crosse. Firemen are shown pouring water on the $100,000 blaze after the roof and one wall had collapsed. The fire occurred in near-zero weather.
A fire that raged for more than two hours Sunday reduced the 43-year-old Wisconsin Theater in downtown La Crosse to a battered shell. The fire traveled from the rear of the theater to the front. Shortly after the blaze began, the theater’s rear wall collapsed, firemen ripped down the side walls which were tottering. All of the city’s fire fighting equipment was called out to control the blaze. Two firemen were overcome by smoke and were hospitalized.
Damage was estimated unofficially at more than $100,000. The theater was built in 1909 and was first known as the Majestic. It was converted from a vaudeville theater into a motion picture house recently and was renamed.
There is an article in the Nevada State Journal dated 1/23/53 which describes the total destruction of the Granada in a fire. Presumably the new Granada opened in 1954 as seen in the article above.
Here is the earliest version of events dated 2/13/73:
TORRANCE. Calif. (AP) â€"Hundreds of children rimmed the Rolling Hills Theater in this Los Angeles suburb waiting to get the best seats when the doors opened for a special holiday matinee. But the doors were not opened, and the crowds were turned away Monday after police discovered the bodies of four theater employees on a blood-splattered floor. Police Lt. James Foster likened the slayings to “an execution.” He said the victims â€"three men and woman â€" were found with their throats slashed and their hands tied behind their backs.
Police said the slayings apparently occurred late Sunday during a robbery of the theater’s weekend receipts, about $2,000, from an office safe Investigators said they had no clues as to the killer or killers. The victims were identified as Lynda R. Freeman, 32, assistant cashier; George Cernik, 18, usher: Guy Brown, 32, doorman, and Clyde Felts, 55, projectionist. The bodies were discovered after a relative of one victim told police the theater employee had not returned home, police said.
Investigators said they were uncertain why the robber or robbers found it necessary to kill the four, since each already had been immobilized. “It makes no sense,” Foster said. “It’s only speculation, but it looks like they were kneeling when they were killed,” Foster said. He said all the victims were found face down.
Investigators speculated that one of the employees had been forced to open the safe after the night’s receipts had been deposited.
There was a fire in 1996, if the reference is to this Norma Jean. Am I correct in that there was only one Norma Jean in the city of Albany?
http://tinyurl.com/2wdsbq
This theater was at Park and Elm in Mount Vernon in 1933, but it is unidentified. It doesn’t appear to be one of the three listed to date. Any ideas?
http://tinyurl.com/29gvou
Arson as censorship:
http://tinyurl.com/2c7pke
That’s a great name for a boxing referee.
Robbery in May 1973:
http://tinyurl.com/2x4snn
Pity the poor cashier in this 1972 story. She survives the hurricane in the morning and then gets robbed at night:
Police arrested a 26-year-old Odessa man Monday night minutes after a gunman made off with $326 in a brazen armed robbery of a busy Downtown Odessa movie theater. James Albert Posteal, 324 South Lindy, remained in the city jail Tuesday in lieu of $25,000 bond set by Municipal Judge Cecil Hardwick. He is named in an armed
robbery complaint filed with Justice of the Peace Otis Moore. Officers nabbed Posteal as he sat nervously in the balcony of the Scott Theater, 700 North Texas, just moments after an armed bandit forced the ticket-seller to hand over $326 at the Ector Theater just two blocks north at 500 North Texas.
Officers said witness to the stickup saw the bandit run to the south of the Ector Theater into the alley behind the 600 block of North Texas following the holdup at 9:10 p.m. Monday. The witness said she saw the man strip off a white shirt and a hat and fling them in the alley as he ran. She told officers the man then walked calmly to the Scott Theater, purchased a ticket and went in.
According to the robbery victim, Rose Bogard, 1939 North Tom Green, the bandit walked up to the box office of the Ector and shoved a bread wrapper through the small hole in the window and told her to fill it up with money. “I got nervous and dropped the bread wrapper on the floor,†she said. “I bent down to pick it up and when I got back up, he had a pistol pointed at me. He told me again to fill it up, and threatened to kill me.” “I got all the money from the register and put it in the bag. It was hard to get the cash into the bread wrapper,” the attendant said.
The gunman then ordered the woman to get down on the floor of the cramped box office. “He kept telling me to get down further, but I told him I was down as far as I could go. He told me to stay down and took off.‘’ She said she was on the floor a few seconds and then raised up and the man was gone. She said the man had a nickel-plated pistol.
Officer Ben Miller, a beat patrolman with the police department, was standing inside
the theater lobby talking to the manager, T. A. Collins, 1701 Rosewood, when the bandit
struck. Miller apparently saw the thief run from the box office and began pursuing him on foot. The ticket-seller said she then called the emergency police number and several patrol cars responded within moments. After talking with Miller and the witness, officers went into the Scott Theater where they arrested the suspect in the balcony. Officers said the man offered no resistance. The cash and a pistol were recovered, police said, along with the discarded shirt and hat from the alley.
Rose Bogard has been the attendant at the theater’s box office off and on for 10 years, she
said. During the days she is the complaint clerk for the Municipal Court of the City of
Odessa. She has been a city employee for the past 12 years, beginning as a meter maid, a position she held about a year and a half. “My day just started off bad altogether,"she said. “When I was going to work at about 6 p.m., I saw that tornado up in the air south of town.” “You never know how you’ll react until it happens…I thought I’d stay calm and remember important details about how the robber looked so I could give a description of him…but all I could think of or see was that big pistol pointed at me,” she said.
The fire was in 1980:
http://tinyurl.com/2p8922
Crime in October 1946:
In another theater robbery in Oakland, between $50 and $100 was taken at the Capitol Theater, 5827 Foothill Boulevard. Miss Marjorie Maginot, 19, a University of California student working as a cashier at the theater, said two men approached her and told her it was a “stickup.“ “I don’t believe it,” she said she replied. “Give us that box,” one man ordered, and she did after he feigned having a gun in his pocket.
There was a robbery at the theater in November 1947:
LYNN Mass. Nov 24â€" (INS) A 23-year-old Salem youth was arrested today in connection with the $400 theater robbery in which the woman cashier and manager were slugged into unconsciousness. Patrolman Joseph Morgan took the youth into custody as he was standing in the doorway of a Central Square building. Morgan said he found a .22 caliber sawed off rifle on the man. Two thugs entered the Warner Theater on Union street just after Mrs. Rita Gagnon, 25, had closed her ticket booth and carried the day’s receipts into the office of Harold Cummings, the manager. The robbers knocked on the door and when Cummings opened the door in the belief it was an usher, the pair beat the manager and cashier into unconsciousness. They picked up the money bag, walked out through the lobby and escaped by hailing a taxi.
True crime, 2/24/52. You should always press your suit before robbing the theater, or you will invite criticism from witnesses:
A hold-up attempt of the Ritz Theater was thwarted last night by the quick actions of a doorman on duty at the movie house on North Main St. The employee, whose name police withheld, told investigating officers that a man between 40 and 50 years old walked up to the ticket window around 9:56 p.m. and inquired if the show was still on. When informed it was, the employee said, the man reached into his pocket and took a new dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to him. When he turned to make change, the employee said, he felt something in his ribs. The man told him to hand over the money. The employee then threatened the bandit and attempted to slide out of the ticket booth. The bandit demanded the doorman hand over his own wallet and when the doorman turned around, he told police he saw the man had a nickel-plated revolver. He believed it to be about a .32-caliber. When the man reached for the dollar he had given the employee, the employee struck the man along the side of his face with his fist and knocked him through the double doors of the theater onto the street.
The man then ran towards Fifth St. Both witnesses described the hold-up man as about five feet eight inches tall, red faced, sandy haired and wearing a light brown suit which was dirty, baggy and needed a pressing. They said the man appeared calm, used good English and was clean shaven.
Manager in the late 70s was Willie Plummer, according to this case:
http://tinyurl.com/yptttv
Robbery in April 1973:
POCOMOKE CITY â€" A Virginia man has been charged with robbery in connection with the theft of $350 from the Pocomoke Drive-in Theater Friday, State Police said today. Being held in Worcester County Jail under $10,000 bond is Willie Adolphus Howard Jr., 23, of Horn town. The suspect was apprehended Sunday at Line Rd., Pocomoke City.
Here is a newspaper account of the murders, dated 4/30/73:
Torrance police said today the mass murder of four Rolling Hills theater employees last February and the execution slaying of a Torrance store manager in the following month were committed by one man â€" and that man is now dead. Lt. James Foster identified the suspect as John Roy Mahew, 29, who died of an overdose of barbiturates April 3 in the Torrance jail. “From evidence carefully collected concerning this suspect since his death, the Torrance police are satisfied that he was solely responsible for the theater massacre and for the murder at the Torrance TG&Y store,” Foster said.
Mahew was arrested April 2, when officers went to his Torrance residence to pick him up on outstanding traffic warrants. Because of a past record of more than 20 arrests as an adult, officers said, several units were sent to make the arrest. Foster said the officers had been warned by a tipster that Mahew was armed and had vowed he would not submit to arrest.
THE ARRESTING force was refused admittance on arrival at the residence, Foster said, and Mahew refused to come out. When the police threatened to use tear gas, the suspect finally emerged after a long stand-off. Lt. Foster said that as Mahew was being placed under arrest, he grabbed for his boot but was restrained by arresting officers. A small pistol later was found in the boot, Foster said. On the following morning, the lieutenant said, Mahew was found unconscious in his cell and was pronounced dead a short time later. An autopsy revealed the death was caused by an overdose of barbiturates, presumably taken hurriedly by the suspect on the previous afternoon before he emerged from the house and surrendered, police said.
Lt. Foster said Mahew had been under suspicion in the Rolling Hills theater murders and in the TG&Y slaying before police went to make the arrest on traffic warrants. “But it took this intervening time to check out all the tips we had received and collect the physical evidence necessary to mark the case closed,” he added. Foster said traces of blood on a butcher knife found at Mahew’s home and some of the suspect’s clothes matched the blood type of two of the Rolling Hills theater victims. Mahew’s boot also matched a bootprint found by the body of one of the theater victims, he said. Bloodstains found in Mahew’s car matched the blood type of Jack K. Sweeten, assistant manager of the Torrance variety store, who was found with his hands bound and his throat cut in a storeroom early on Mar. 28, police said.
THE FOUR theater victims â€" Lynda R. Freeman, 32, Clyde Felts, 55, Guy D. Brown, 35 and George Cernick, 18 â€"were found in the theater office early on Feb. 12. Their hands had been bound behind their backs and their throats were slashed. Foster said Mahew, unemployed and behind on all his bills prior to Feb. 12, suddenly began spending money immediately after the theater robbery, and again exhibited affluence following the TG&Y robbery-slaying.
Here is an account of the homicide in the theater on 7/19/73:
http://tinyurl.com/38s2zl
Crime in Alaska, 1976:
http://tinyurl.com/2mbbyy
I should correct that statement as the crime took place in 1967, which would jibe with Chuck’s closing date.
The manager in the early 70s was one Herman Hall, if anyone is interested:
http://tinyurl.com/2jav7b
Here is a 1972 robbery case. Theater is spelled “Center”, but clearly is just a typo:
http://tinyurl.com/2ojsta
Sloppy reporting by the paper as they call the theater “Oakwood” in this story dated 10/27/60:
Fire Destroys Movie House
PONTIAC (UPI)â€"Fire destroyed the Oakwood Theater here Wednesday night and threatened an entire business block before it was brought under control. Several stores and professional offices next to the movie house were also demolished. Damage was estimated by Fire Chief James White at $300,000 to $500,000. Firemen from Pontiac, Waterford Township, Royal Oak, Birmingham and Ferndale battled the flames which shot 75 feet into the air and could be seen for miles. All 60 patrons of the theater were evacuated safely, but two firemen suffered minor injuries battling the blaze.
An estimated 4,000 spectators jammed the area although all streets leading to the downtown section were blocked off to prevent traffic congestion. A preliminary study showed the fire started from a short circuit n the projection booth, but further investigation disclosed it started in an adjoining drug store, of unknown causes.
This is a 1958 article from Time about an explosion at the Hereon theater in Famagusta, wherever that might be:
http://tinyurl.com/2cxovb
Was this the same Palace that collapsed in 1986?
http://tinyurl.com/2dgwqn
Here is an account of the fire on 12/29/52:
Blaze Ruins Old Theatre In LaCrosse
Fire believed to have started in the projection booth early Sunday morning destroyed the Wisconsin Theatre at La Crosse. Firemen are shown pouring water on the $100,000 blaze after the roof and one wall had collapsed. The fire occurred in near-zero weather.
A fire that raged for more than two hours Sunday reduced the 43-year-old Wisconsin Theater in downtown La Crosse to a battered shell. The fire traveled from the rear of the theater to the front. Shortly after the blaze began, the theater’s rear wall collapsed, firemen ripped down the side walls which were tottering. All of the city’s fire fighting equipment was called out to control the blaze. Two firemen were overcome by smoke and were hospitalized.
Damage was estimated unofficially at more than $100,000. The theater was built in 1909 and was first known as the Majestic. It was converted from a vaudeville theater into a motion picture house recently and was renamed.
There is an article in the Nevada State Journal dated 1/23/53 which describes the total destruction of the Granada in a fire. Presumably the new Granada opened in 1954 as seen in the article above.
This law suit references the demolition of the Mouse:
http://tinyurl.com/y5rptt