It was just before 10 a.m. when Private Detective (and former LAPD officer) Harry Raymond went out to his locked garage in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles. His wife needed to go to the market. Normally, she went out to the car with him, but on this particular day, she went over to a neighbor's house first for her husband to pick her up there. It was a good thing, too, because when Raymond stepped on the gas, a bomb went off under the hood that rocked the entire neighborhood.
Amazingly, Raymond survived the blast. He was rushed to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital where he received over 100 stitches and was treated for multiple fractures and two chest punctures. At first it was believed that the Mob was involved, but the true culprit was even more startling -- the Los Angeles Police Department. Raymond, due to a dispute over money owed to him, was investigating links between the office of Mayor Frank Shaw, the Mob, and the police Department (under Chief James Davis). Raymond was no angel himself; it was all a case of the crooked vs. the crooked.
In the end, LAPD Captain Earl Kynette was convicted for the bombing, Mayor Shaw became the first mayor in U.S history to be thrown out of office by a recall election, and Chief Davis was forced to resign. Even so, the LAPD still had a long way to go to rid itself of such corruption.
READ MORE: The Daily Mirror (courtesy of the Los Angeles Times)
IN PRINT: L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City
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