Ma vie de crime

Friday, July 19, 2024

I have always felt that there is a significant touch of crime in my DNA background, and thanks to my friend Andrew Lampert, he came up with these two news items from the Valley edition of Citizen News, Monday, January 9, 1950. The only official arrest/trial that I have heard of is when my dad was arrested and charged for making and showing Pornography in a Gallery called Ferus. That whole affair was documented by the photographer Charles Brittin. Now, with the assistance of Mr. Lampert, we have proof that my dad, Wallace Berman, was arrested in a Dope Ring that took place in the Valley.

This brought up a memory of my late mom, Shirley Berman, telling me about a time when she was waiting in a car outside someone’s home, and a flashlight appeared in front of her face, and there was a gun pointing toward her head. It was the Police, and beyond that, she never finished this narrative to me. Now, I wonder if the incident in the newspaper relates to what she had to go through. My parents got married in 1952, but they were dating in 1950. Now, want to know if my mom was arrested as well and, for whatever reason, she was kept out of the newspaper, maybe because of her age at the time. She would have been 16.

I looked up Burbank Police Detective Ernest Vandergrift, who is photographed looking at a drawing my father made and, according to the news clipping, under the influence of marijuana. He joined the Burbank police department in 1943, and he retired from the department in 1973. One of the cases he handled was the murder of Mable Monoham, a wealthy Burbank widow. He passed away in 1991.

So far, there is no record of what happened after the Valley Dope Ring's bust. I don’t even know how my father paid the $1,000 ($12,390 in 2023 dollars) bail. Beyond this family secret is the photograph of Detective Vandergrift looking at my father’s artwork. And how I wish I had or knew where that art is now in 2024.