Ku Klux Klan raid (Inglewood, California)

Ku Klux Klan activities in Inglewood, California, were highlighted by the 1922 arrest and trial of 36 men, most of them masked, for a night-time raid on a suspected bootlegger and his family.

Police officer Shambeau told a coroner's jury that he had talked with some of Inglewood's leading citizens about the prospective raid several days before the event.

A Los Angeles Examiner reporter testified at a coroner's inquest that the assemblage was told that there was to be "no tar and feathers," by order of "the big boss.

They heard shots fired, then they were driven first to the Inglewood jail and then to one in Redondo Beach, where their captors tried to lodge them but were refused by the officials in charge.

Then he called the City Marshal's office, and Frank Woerner responded aboard a motorcycle that was piloted by a civilian, Clyde Vannatta.

[4] The two Elduayen girls told reporters and later testified at trial that they were forced to change from their nightgowns with their bedroom door open as the masked men roamed their home.

[11] A coroner's inquest was held on Monday, April 25, in the same room in Beaver's combination furniture store and funeral home, where, according to the testimony of participant Shambeau, the Inglewood police officer, the KKK action had been planned just four days before.

In its verdict, the jury found that an "illegal masked and armed mob, presumably instigated and directed by members of the K.K.K.," caused Mosher's death; it demanded action to punish perpetrators of the crime.

[7] During the hearings, defendant Nathan A. Baker was being held at the County Hospital after his arrest on suspicion of felony when Sheriff Traeger and Undersheriff Eugene Biscailuz learned that he planned to escape from California and that he was bordering on a mental and nervous breakdown.

[14] Donald Parker, photographer for the Los Angeles Examiner, who was present during the raid, told the coroner's jury that he had been a member of the Klan for several months but resigned after April 22.

[4] Leaders of the proposed raid, Knickerbocker testified at trial, proposed at the Titan Garage to give him a typewritten statement of what had occurred and then, if he and Parker "behaved right on the story," they would be offered the opportunity to take part in two more activities planned by the Klan: The first would have been a sortie by Klan members, dressed in their robes, to make an ostentatious, public cash donation to a Culver City church, and the second would have been to witness the tar-and-feathering of a prominent Venice businessman accused of "mistreating a girl.

On August 10, Nathan A. Baker, the acknowledged leader of the April 22 action, collapsed, "crumpled up with a convulsion," during the testimony of 13-year-old Bernarda Elduayen and was taken from the courtroom.

The defense referred to the events of April 22 as the "Inglewood enterprise" and sought to show that officer Frank Woerner shot Mosher without provocation and that the Elduayens were selling liquor; therefore the raid was justified.

Hamilton testified that Charles Casto, one of the defendants, stood guard at the closed bedroom door of the two teenagers, forbidding entry to anyone.

[17]After five hours of deliberation — a delay caused by the need to fill out a ballot for each charge for each defendant — the jury returned with a verdict on August 26 of not guilty on all counts.

[5] Fidel Elduayen, 41, and Mathias, 31, were arrested on August 26, 1922, by federal agents who charged them with violation of the Volstead Act, which regulated the manufacture and sale of liquor in the United States.

Fox said he'd planned to kill all leading members of the rival faction, including William Joseph Simmons, Edward Young Clarke, and Fred E. Johnson.

"[27] On February 20, 1925, it was reported that the "Ku Klux Klan element" in Inglewood was supporting the recall of five city trustees (council members) in an attack on Street Superintendent O.O.