My main post on Los Angeles crime boss Charles Crawford (updated 2020) is located here. This is my own, original research.
6665 Sunset Boulevard was Crawford’s business office and later the scene of his murder.
Charles H. Crawford
6660 Sunset: Longyear Packard / Howard Automobile Co. Buick
Located at the southwest corner of Sunset and Cherokee, this building was constructed in 1930 to house the new Hollywood home of Donald M. Longyear Packard.
Lee Francis
“You’re a cog in the organized traffic when you’re running a house, a spoke in the wheel of the underworld.”
-Call House Madam
Lee Francis was the madam of multiple brothels in Los Angeles under Charles Crawford and his successors. Almost all that is known about her, or believed that is known about her, is information that came from Francis herself and is not reliable. The following is based on my own original research.
Who Was Mumsie McGonigle?
A typical reaction from anyone who reads Geoffrey Homes’ hard-to-find 1946 novel Build My Gallows High (basis for the film noir Out of the Past) is: how on earth did he come up with a name like Mumsie McGonigle? The short answer is: he didn’t. There was a real Mumsie McGonigle, and she was much in the news in early 1940s Los Angeles. Her story involves depravity and corruption to equal any hardboiled fiction plot.
