By Ross Eric Gibson

In 1933, Leslie T. White bought a place on the Los Gatos Highway in Scotts Valley, which he named “the Mystery Ranch,” a writer’s retreat where he wrote mostly detective fiction. When he first moved west, this minister’s son had ideals he expected never to compromise. But his decade of law enforcement in Ventura and Los Angeles from 1923 to 1931, served repeatedly as a rude awakening, upsetting his naivety. “Me, Detective,” the 1936 autobiography he wrote in Santa Cruz is a unique chronicle of his hard lessons in attempting to maintain his personal integrity.

In 1923 the 20-year-old was hired as a Ventura County ranger to drive poachers off a private hunting preserve. He was 5 foot 8 inches, 125 pounds with horn-rimmed glasses, and had trouble looking authoritative. When he found illegal traps had been laid, he confiscated them, then was accused by the trappers of stealing their equipment. The traps had been a big investment for these poor squatters, who could not replace them. But White adamantly insisted he was hired to stop people without a membership card from poaching, and like it or not, that was the law and his job. A gruff Texan came to explain that the land was only recently purchased for a hunting club by people who likely had never seen it. The poor squatters living on the large expanse of wasteland had been there for many years and trapped for subsistence.

Later White discovered a limousine parked in the darkness, shooting deer in the preserve from the car. The Texan said if your job is to stop poaching, arrest that man. Fearing some danger, White called his employer and asked what he should do. The employer insisted that the limousine owner was too rich and arresting him would only bring trouble. The Texan tried to show White that his job was only as a barking dog, someone to reassure the rich club members that their reserve was exclusively theirs. White decided to return the traps to their impoverished owners and do like the other rangers by seeing nothing. This pleased the squatters and White’s employer as well. The only one displeased was his horse, who three months later tossed him off the saddle, sending White to the hospital. White was just as glad to leave the job, vowing never to help maintain exclusivity.

Meanwhile, he was in the hospital for about a year, enduring six operations, some to correct a previous operation. An oil boom drew White 75 miles north of Los Angeles to Ventura, where he was hired as deputy sheriff under county Sheriff Bob Clark. Clark told him there was to be no class distinction, breaking the law was the same for the rich as for the poor, pleasing White. Yet White described a rough disposal of undesirables by “floating them,” meaning to expel them over the Santa Barbara County line, in a belief that most such characters had been floated to Ventura from Los Angeles County. This only seemed to make matters worse, putting an undesirable in an unfamiliar county without money or a job, leaving petty theft as his only option. Yet Ventura was a rural county without resources to deal with a criminal population, so this was a money-saving expedience.

White’s first murderer was Sandoval, who had killed the woman he was living with. White loathed him with great resolve over the weekend, then met this short, mild-mannered fellow who had a charming personality. And on reviewing the case, White had to admit that Sandoval had stood the woman six months longer than White would have. White hoped the jury would understand the mitigating circumstances, yet Sandoval wanted to plead guilty. Having no money, he was given a lawyer with few skills, and the jury found Sandoval guilty, sentenced to be hanged. Then in one of those unlikely turn of events, a young lawyer named Erle Stanley Gardner found a breach of procedure, and he used his own time and money to get the death sentence commuted to life-in-prison.

A drunk doctor with a woman not his wife, overturned his car, and White arrested them. The undersheriff was steaming mad, saying the doctor was a prominent citizen. White said it doesn’t matter, because he’s arrested many a poor person for drunkenness. But the undersheriff insisted White needed to release the doctor and apologize. Burning under the collar, White asked the chief what he should do. The chief said, “You still think there’s a sharp divide between good and bad citizens? Who exactly do you think the decent people are?” White said: “Church members, legitimate businesses, and service organizations.”

The chief said last year the town treasury received $5,000 from the illegal gambling houses and $2,500 from whorehouses, a lot of money for a rural county. Such businesses aren’t licensed, but every couple of months they are raided, and pay a fine, like an unofficial tax, before they go right back to business.

“That’s because you’re letting them get away with it,” White argued.

“No, its the decent citizens who won’t let the police enforce this law. The bank owns that river bottom land, and rents shacks for $3 a month. But when casino operators offered $100 a month for such a shack, the bank jumped at it, even though the banker is a church deacon and service club member. When I was a new chief, I drove the casinos and whorehouses out of town. But the casino men told the banker they’d withdraw contracts with lumber and construction firms, neither of which wanting to lose casino business. And with a large population of oil workers, the brothels kept them in town, supporting the local theaters, restaurants, and stores. Without brothels here, oil workers would spend their money in the next town over. And you can’t embarrass people out of this hidden support for vice, because the newspaper relies on ad revenue from legitimate businesses, so they won’t print stories that cause their sponsors problems.”

“But that’s just it!” White said. “If gambling and prostitution is part of the economy, then just make it legal.”

The chief gave an exasperated sound, and said, “If it was legal, nobody would pay $100 a month for something worth $3 a month! That’s the system!” The same went for Prohibition, which White noted was practically a religion at the time. Yet the same pillars of moral authority publicly opposed bootlegging, while some privately supported it, disenfranchised drinkers patronized it, and many just didn’t care. Politics was a Kabuki show of public ethics, private corruption, and reassurances that the voters were safe and prospering.

New life

White was losing his idealism. He decided it was time to get married and settle down, opening a photography studio, with a contract to do fingerprinting, plus documenting and analyzing crime scenes. Life slowed to a pleasant routine, until March 1928 when the St. Francis Dam burst 70 miles east of Ventura. White was flown out to document the disaster, and find, photograph and identify as many of the 500 victims as he could. It was the largest concrete dam in the west and seemed a perfect metaphor for a system built on corruption failing so tragically. The process of identifying bodies in varying stages of decomposition for six to eight months made White the final victim of the disaster, when he contracted Tuberculosis.

White’s doctor told him one lung was shot and to seek a milder climate, for another lung hemorrhage would kill him. The local papers wrote glowing pre-obituaries about White. He abandoned his business on an hour’s notice, and was driven to his aunt’s house in Los Angeles, who recommended a female physician she knew. The lady doctor used more common-sense than drugs, and after a week in bed, told him to get up, because he can’t fight consumption on his back. Soon he was up and about, surprising three Ventura friends who expected to find him drugged and bedridden.

Los Angeles was notorious for its corrupt government, but the headlines had turned to a wave of reformers sweeping out the old regime. District Attorney Asa Keyes (rhymes with “eyes”) had been arrested on bribery and corruption charges, and replaced with reformer Buron Fitts, looking to hire reform-minded men. There was a stampede of applicants for the new regime, and White’s Ventura friends obtained credentials and letters of recommendation so White could apply for the job, if-and-when he had the energy. Fearing the moment to strike was quickly passing, White staggered down to the Hall of Justice, finding himself one of 2,000 applicants. The list was narrowed by eliminating opportunists and old-regime thinkers, and to his surprise, White was appointed a member of Fitts new Detective Investigative unit, which could bypass the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department.

For someone whose idealism had taken a beating, this was a dream come true of reform. And it almost stayed a dream, because when White first went to work, he was so weak he could barely stand without steadying himself by leaning on a desk or chair, yet he never disclosed his physical condition. Of those he worked under, only assistant chief Blayney Matthews had recognized White’s infirmity, which could have been mistaken as drunk staggers, but Blayney knew better. Instead of firing White, Blayney gave him easy assignments for a few weeks until his strength returned. Meanwhile, White earned his place in the department via a sharp mind and methodical analysis, becoming the office forensics identification expert. White felt his illness amounted to a near-death experience, followed by a resurrection.

The Investigation Squad was set up on the federal model, with approximately 70 members fitting three categories: 1. the political appointees lobbying for their respective supporters, 2. young lawyers seeking legal experience, and 3. seasoned officers made tough by years of bucking a corrupt system. This third group was terse and gruff, “flatfoots” nicknamed the “Broken Arches.” But they turned out to be the backbone of the program, and White was flattered when he was denounced as belonging to the Broken Arches.

White found prosecuting a drunk cop who shot a teenager made him so many enemies in the police department, White worried about job security. The birth of his son got him to think of having a fallback income source. He’d wanted to do crime fiction, but feared he wasn’t a trained writer. But when he saw his friend Erle Stanley Gardner writing pulp fiction (leading to Perry Mason books), White was so inspired, he began selling short stories to crime magazines. This eventually paid better than police work, but being a detective was where his heart was, so for two years more he continued his parallel careers.