Thursday column

Every home has that closet.

You know, the one where you put stuff that really doesn't fit anywhere else.

In my parent's house, that closet had a box full of old newspapers and magazines. The headlines were bold and historical:

JFK ASSASSINATED

RFK ASSASSINATED

MOON WALK

NIXON RESIGNS

We have a place for old stuff at the newspaper, too. It's not really a closet, just a large room full of file cabinets that we call "the morgue."

The other day, I decided to paw through old crime files. One of the oldest told of a West Covina bank robbery from November 1955, about eight months after the San Gabriel Valley Tribune became a daily newspaper.

A huge screaming headline stretched across the front page:

ROB W. COVINA BANK

Machinegun-Carrying Pair

Flee With Over $5,000

Beyond that there wasn't much else notable.

The decaying folders in our morgue contain stories about vandalism, assaults, molestations, theft and murder.

A four-paragraph La Puente brief from November 1960, headlined "Valley Man Tells Fear for Family," had this second paragraph:

"Victor E. Chandler, 45-year-old Negro, and his wife Joyce, 31, white, told deputies also that a three-foot high cross was burned in the driveway of their residence."

Over time, colorful stories about hobos, drifters and delinquents morphed into stories about hippies, drugs and mental patients.

By the time the 1970s rolled around, the headlines and stories got smaller and the language more restrained.

During the disco decade a "Nice Old Man" got killed in a Rosemead liquor store hold-up. In 1979, a Valinda Thanksgiving dinner went awry: "Youth Killed After Spilling Beer on Turkey."

Reporters in the 1980s went for the "round-up" stories. "Detectives Blame Weather: Weekend Violence Keeps Police Busy" from 1981 is one example. My colleague, Jim McConnell, reminded me that in the 1990s we had an editor here who liked to distinguish between murder and misdemeanor murder. As a result, crime coverage was at best uneven.

Over the past couple of years, the files have petered out. We rely on computer storage of our archives so there's really no need to keep those yellowed clips anymore.

Upon reflection, I think what amazes me most is the consistency of random violence. There's also something dispassionate about reading history. I don't get the same gut feeling of sadness that came from writing about Manling Williams, suspected of suffocating her two small children and slicing her husband to death with a samurai sword last August.

There's none of the anger that comes with having to think about the senseless death of 12-year-old Albert Garcia, gunned down Saturday in a Montebello back yard by gang bangers who remained free Wednesday.