Which story is better?
One image I can’t get out of my mind. It’s from a case I handled when I was still new to homicide.
The guy had brutally rapped and killed a several older women. He was very smug about it when I brought him in here to be questioned. NO remorse at all.
He would find out the addresses of vulnerable old women and then attack them in their homes.
I was questioning him trying to get a statement when he turned to me and said, “Where does your grandmother live?”
I lost it.
There he was challenging me with this threatening remark. And I had to do something, so I jumped on the guy. I just lost it.
It took four other detectives to pull me off the guy. Now I can can still see his face crystal clear anytime I close my eyes.
This was a great big muscular kid, in for assault with a deadly weapon and robbery. It was in the LA riots, in Pasadena.
This guy walks into a little Mama-Papa Korean-owned liquor store, carries out a bunch of stuff, puts it in his car, walks back in, pushes the old man out of the way, a little old Korean guy, carries more stuff out.
The Korean guy stops him at the door.
The guy lifts up a beer bottle, says, “Get out of my way or I’ll crush your skull, you little (racist remarks) and got arested.
In the courtroom this guy came up out of his chair, up over the counsel table. He got nailed by a Pasadena policeman and my fill-in baliff Brianwho used to pitch for the White Sox.
They had him pinned on counsel table. Brian, who is left handled, is leaning over him holding his arm so his gun’s on his left side. I don’t like guns in the courtroom.
This guy’s on his back, and really built.
That arm that Brian is leaning over and holding keeps coming up toward his gun. Every time it came up it was getting closer and closer to the gun. I’m watching this hand getting closer and closer.
So I stood up on my bench and jumped into the well. My robe is flying. I happened to be wearing tennis shoes that day. I jumped down and grabbed the guy’s arm and cranked it behind his back until Brian could get over the railing. It took all of three seconds.
There was somebody there from the Pasadena Star News at the time; the headline said, “Whoosh! Batman Judge.”