History of Fresno County, Vol. 2 - Paul E. Vandor

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       Traced by a Rag

      Clarence French and George H. Ashton, professional safe crackers, with a record of prior convictions which they acknowledged, were sentenced November 22, 1913, each to fifteen years imprisonment at San Quentin. They were arrested in San Francisco for the dynamiting in Fresno of the safe in October before of Holland & Holland's grocery store. They were placed on trial and so strong was the case presented against them that their attorney abandoned further effort and the prisoners pleaded guilty. A third defendant, John O'Keefe, was discharged. The principals were expert safe crackers and a perfect case of circumstantial evidence was presented by the detectives of the two cities. The clue against them was a piece of rag torn out of a shirt cloth in which the burglarious tools were wrapped. The piece was dropped at the safe door and was of a particular pattern. Raided in their apartments in San Francisco, tools and wrapping shirt cloth were found in their possession. Piece fitted the tear and the pattern. The couple was suspected of other safe cracking jobs in the county committed at the time but they were such expert operatives that only the Holland job could be definitely saddled upon them by legal proof.

       Murder by Man and Wife

      Women have not figured conspicuously in Fresno in the annals of crime. A notable exception came to light in the murder March 31, 1917, of Faustin Lassere, a well to do farmer of National Colony. The murderers, according to their pleas of guilty in the expectation that this would save them from the gallows, were C. L. Hammond and wife, Anna. Avarice was the motive for the crime. The woman was young and by some might be regarded as prepossessing in appearance. The couple was not given the best of records by the authorities in that pretending that she was single and marriageable several attempts had been made to obtain money and property from aged bachelors or widowers on her promises of marriage. This was the plan adopted to worm herself into the confidence and good graces of Lassere. Hammond and wife both made confessions when they realized that there was no further hope. He declared that the murder was her inspiration and suggestion, and she that he planned the crime and forced her to be his accomplice. At any rate, she became the housekeeper for Lassere and on the day in question before the meal Lassere was bludgeoned into unconsciousness and slashed with knife until there was no doubt of his death. Then both dragged the body out and having opened a grave to receive the remains they were buried under a manure pile and the grave frequently watered to accelerate decomposition. The Hammonds were never allowed after arrest to communicate with each other. They were not even brought into court together. They were arraigned on separate occasions and they were to have been tried separately. On the day set for her trial June 7, she pleaded guilty and after a long statement of the crime was sentenced to life imprisonment at San Quentin. Thereupon she had an attack of hysteria and had to be removed from the courtroom. He was brought in later in the afternoon after a change of mind and heart and also pleaded guilty, made his statement of the crime, declaring that he was moved to act as accomplice because of his love for her. He was also sentenced to life imprisonment but at Folsom penitentiary. In their statements both unbared their past and revealed circumstances which were not to the moral credit of either. Both, it was understood, would have pleaded guilty in the first place if any promise had been held out to either that their lives would have been spared for their diabolical crime. Whether the crime was her inspiration or not, certain it was that Hammond was the cringing yellow cur in the court after his plea when he attempted to fasten all the blame for the crime and the program of its details on the woman. The Hammonds were comparatively young people. Their life imprisonment left parentless two young children, who became county charges, who if they ever learn their antecedents will in shame abjure their names. So with the murder of Lassere three children were left orphaned. He left an estate of about $8,600 after payment of expenses. A relative was appointed guardian of them to receive the estate on distribution, and thereafter the children removed to make their home with the guardian at Lawton, la. The confessed details of the butchery of Lassere were as revolting as in the case of Vernet.

       A Costly Jamboree

      Constable A. B. Chamness of Fowler was run down and killed on an evening in September, 1917, on the state highway near Calwa by an automobile driven by W. A. Johns, while intoxicated, a prominent vineyardist of Parlier. He was arrested and held to answer for manslaughter and for neglecting to render aid to those he had injured in his wild ride. Chamness fell in front of Johns' car while trying to arrest him. Before this accident, Johns had demolished a wagon in which rode a woman and two girls. They also were injured. The constable alighting from the Fresno-Selma stage in pursuit of Johns fell and his skull was crushed. Johns pleaded guilty before the Superior court and was released on probation, one condition being that he abjure the use of intoxicants for the remainder of his life, his state at the time of the accident disproving malicious intent. The representation was also that he had made "restitution" to the widow in the sum of $2,500, also recompensing the other injured. Chamness was sixty years of age, had been constable of Fowler for seven years and at one time was town marshal. Johns was sentenced on the lesser accusation of failing to render aid to the injured victims of his reckless exploit.

       Murder of the "Old Broom Man"

      May 16, 1919, Edwin S. Taylor, a well-known character of Fresno City, known as "The Old Broom Man," was treacherously and foully murdered in the tractor shack on the L. W. Gibson ranch, three miles northwest of the town of Clovis. Friday, June 6, the murderer, Ernest Nakis, was in custody as the murderer, and two countrymen were in jail as accessories after the fact in having harbored and concealed him after the crime. The search for the principal had been a long one, involving a journey to towns in Lower California. Taylor was an inoffensive old fellow who was a street and house-to-house peddler of brooms. He affected great poverty, and, to give semblance to his pretensions, went for days unshaven, wearing cast-off and patched clothing, looking the part of a very beggar. He had money, though, and this led to his undoing. After his death the public administrator unearthed thousands of dollars on deposit in banks. He was supposed to carry considerable money on his person — no one knows how much. It was to gain possession of this that he was lured to the Clovis ranch on some pretense of a sale of the place to him. Whatever the plan, the old fellow fell into the trap, and his life was the forfeit. The murderer was seen to arrive at the ranch in an auto, with the murdered man, to inspect the ranch; the report of shots within the tractor shed was heard, Nakis was seen to come out and walk around to the front of the ranch, until he drove away; and later curiosity drew attention to the shed and Taylor was found there shot to death. Nakis was arrested at the Fleener ranch, two and one-half miles from the scene of the murder, sleeping on a mattress under the bed. The identification of the prisoner was complete. Placed between five prisoners, the brothers Edward and Frederick Smith, ranchers, who had seen Nakis drive up to the Gibson ranch with Taylor, identified him positively, and Edward created a dramatic scene. The latter had also made note of the numbers of the auto. Besides there was the identification of Nakis by a policeman as the man he had seen on May 16th, in an auto on Callisch street with Taylor, and the circumstance was not one to be forgotten, because it was probably the one occasion in Taylor's long residence here that he had ever been seen riding in an auto. There was also a fourth identification by a woman caller at the jail, who had known the old man well and who recognized Nakis as the auto companion of the broom peddler on the morning of that ride to his death. The arrest of Nakis occurred in an unoccupied house on the Fleener ranch, which is said to have once been leased and occupied by the accused. It was stated that the blood-stained coat of Taylor, besides a .38 caliber revolver, and $137 in currency, were found in the prisoner's possession when arrested. The accessories were the lessees of the ranch who harbored Nakis on the premises, Nakis probably having been animated by the same lure that has led to the undoing of many another criminal, in a return to the scene of his crime.

      CHAPTER LXIII

      A picturesquely interesting narrative was revealed on the ten days' trial in Madera County in November, 1908, of T. H. Muhly for the murder of James W. Bethel, an old resident of Fresno County and a pioneer of California of 1848, who participated in some of the Indian wars and took part

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