Peter del Gado (bottom) – The seemingly endless trails and rabbit holes.
Another look at the seemingly endless series of trails and rabbit holes that have made Los Angeles what it probably is today. I’ve run several broadcasts featuring activist and crusader (and restauranteur) Clifford Clinton – in this case, it’s from October 30, 1940 and the issue is over former Police Lieutenant Pedro (Peter) del Gado, who was forced into hiding by the political machinery at the time.
Below is the article that ran in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner for October 31, 1940, which cites this specific broadcast and explains the situation as it was at the time. Fascinating reading, but equally fascinating to hear the actual interview and the later phone call recording as it happened the previous day:
Herald Examiner Article:
In another fantastic episode of Los Angeles’ currently amazing political situation, Clifford E. Clinton talked by telephone yesterday with a man in Chihuahua, Mexico, who said he was Peter Del Gado, fugitive former police lieutenant. Clinton, the reform boss who is backing John Dockweiler in his bid to defeat District Attorney Buron Fitts for reelection, and who recently succeeded in making Del Gado, who fled to Mexico to escape prosecution for perjury in the 1938 graft scandal, an issue in the campaign, had this purpose for the phone call: To obtain from the fugitive denial that he had denied, as was reported in an interview with Del Gado earlier in the week, making a recording, which Clinton broadcast here, in which Del Gado accused an official of the District Attorney’s office In of financing his flight. Clinton and others are being sued for $300,000 by Chief Deputy District Attorney Eugene Williams, who says he is the man to whom the Clinton-Del Gado recording referred, who denies the assertion, and who contends that his good reputation has been damaged. The telephone conversation, which lasted 10 minutes and cost $10.20, and which was heard by listeners using extensions of Clinton’s elaborate phone system, went like this: CLINTON “Hello, Pete. This is Cliff. We’re having an exciting time here. The papers have published a supposed interview with you in which you supposedly deny the story you gave me about how you happened to leave Los Angeles.” THE MAN IN CHIHUAHUA— “That’s impossible.
I never gave any such interview. I’ve been out of town since October 20.” CLINTON— “The article in which you are supposed to have been interviewed says you and the interviewer sat in your hotel, and that Governor Alfred Chavez was there, sitting on a leather chair. There isn’t a leather chair in your hotel as I remember it, is there, Pete?” CHIHUAHUA— “There is leather chair, just a lot of lumber and materials. Chavez left here on the 20th and I haven’t seen him since he left.” CLINTON — “You remember the recording you made for me in Chihuahua October 15, don’t you?” CHIHUAHUA— “Yes.” (Arrangements for the alleged Del Gado recording were made, according to Clinton, by Joe Shaw, convicted job-seller and brother of and former secretary to ex-Mayor Frank Shaw, in whose ouster from office Clinton played an important part.) For what he described as identification purposes, Clinton then asked: “You remember the incident about Manuel being killed?” (He explained that during his supposed session with Del Gado October 15, mention was made of the slaying of Del Gado’s cousin, Manuel Perez, bodyguard for former Governor Talamantes of Chihuahua, in a political feud.) They no Fitts saying he believed he could C H I H U AHUA—”Yes. haven’t caught the killer.” CLINTO N-“Now, Pete, we you for didn’t coerce you, or pay making the recording?” CHIHUAHUA “No, I wasn’t promised anything.” CLINTON — “Do you know a man named Sepulveda?” (He referred to Paul Sepulveda, member of an old Los Angeles family, now living in Mexico, who last week wrote District Attorney “deliver” Del Gado at the border.) CHIHUAHUA— “I know him by name, but I never had any dealings with him.” CLINTON — “Williams has sued us for $300,000. Do you know Williams?” CHIHUAHUA— “He has, huh? Sure, I know him. I know Fitts, too, very well.” CLINTON — “Did you ever tell anyone you didn’t sign that affidavit or make that recording for us?”. CHIHUAHUA “No, I did not ever tell anyone that I did not sign the affidavit or make the recording. It seems like those people are trying to do the same to me they did to two Los Angeles policemen.”
Here is the broadcast and the phone conversation from October 30, 1940.
