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LA Radio People who are spending or spent time behind bars

H

Hot Hits

Guest
I remember the day they took former KDAY,KRLA & KGFJ's Ken Jones away. L.A.'s first Black TV Newsman who wrote 21 bad checks to Security Pacific bank in 1981. Jones was working fulltime on KTTV and spent 6 months behind bars.
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Humble Harve, legendary Radio personality who murdered his wife while at 93 KHJ and spent a couple years in Chino Prison.
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My ex boss Fred Cote, former KHJ engineer & owner of KOLA who is currently serving a life term in California prison for Murder. Fred you also made off with my Social Security contributions.
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Rick Ward, XPRS "President" (according to him) and brokered Radio announcer who sold Oldies Record collections on the Radio but never paid any of the artists or obtained permission to do so. He spent a year or two behind bars and told me here it never happened. I then located the R & R article on David's tribute site. Rick has since passed
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KFOX & KLAC's Carleton 'Corky' Mayberry, 45 who faced 3 to 8 years in prison for a Pandering conviction but only served a couple months and was put on probation for 5 years. Allegedly was attempting to make adult films with a listener's child.
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My favorite Tom Clay who sold used Cigarette butts supposedly smoked by the Beatles. Sold a reported 80,000 of them for $1 each and never faced any charges, go figure. Weren't there Postal Inspectors around in the 60's?

There are others as well I'm sure, some who spent jail time under their original names or out of town, feel free to add any additional perps to this list!
 
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Hot Hits said:
My ex boss Fred Cote, former KHJ engineer & owner of KOLA who is currently serving a life term in California prison for Murder. Fred you also made off with my Social Security contributions.
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Mean piece of work. My employer, prior to the conviction, called to see if he would sell KOLA. The response "I won't sell to a k--e who wants to program to the s--cs". And then he hung up.
 
Spade Cooley. Although better known as a predecessor of Lawrence Welk and Cliffie Stone for his television work on KTLA in the fifties (as well as the abortive Paramount television network) Spade Cooley and his musicians also briefly did radio in Los Angeles at the end of WW2. His entertainment persona was eclipsed by the theatrics following his murder of his second wife (the trial at the time was the longest in Kern County history). Cooley died while on release from prison for an evening doing a benefit concert!
 
Here's a couple more, one that I wasn't expecting to see?

STAN DUKE, the TV sportscaster who shot and killed KGFJ-A/LOS ANGELES commentator AVERILL BERMAN in 1971 &

Iva Toguri, better known as “Tokyo Rose,” was born in Los Angeles on July 4, 1916. After college, she visited Japan and was stranded there after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Forced to renounce her U.S. citizenship, Toguri found work in radio and was asked to host “Zero Hour,” a propaganda and entertainment program aimed at U.S. soldiers. After the war, she was returned to the U.S. and convicted of treason, serving 6 years in prison. Gerald Ford pardoned Tokyo Rose in 1976 and she died in 2006.
 
Loved Fast Eddie, looked like a shady Car Salesman who actually did decent work on Eyewitness News. Another fine member of this group, KEZY's Dr. Tim Leary, wild story!

"On January 21, 1970, Leary received a 10-year sentence for his 1968 offense, with a further 10 added later while in custody for a prior arrest in 1965, for a total of 20 years to be served consecutively. On his arrival in prison, he was given psychological tests used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having designed some of these tests himself (including the "Leary Interpersonal Behavior Inventory"), Leary answered them in such a way that he seemed to be a very conforming, conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening.[72] As a result, he was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower-security prison from which he escaped in September 1970, saying that his non-violent escape was a humorous prank and leaving a challenging note for the authorities to find after he was gone.
For a fee of $25,000, paid by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Weathermen smuggled Leary out of prison in a pickup truck driven by Clayton Van Lydegraf.[73] The truck met Leary after he'd escaped over the prison wall by climbing along a telephone wire. The Weathermen then helped both Leary and Rosemary out of the US (and eventually into Algeria). [74] He sought the patronage of Eldridge Cleaver and the remnants of the Black Panther Party's "government in exile" in Algeria, but after a short stay with them said that Cleaver had attempted to hold him and his wife hostage".
 
RadioPatrol said:
http://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/11...-Eddie-Alexander-was-sentenced/3101437720400/

Fast Eddie a former KABC-TV Sports talent convicted of fraud according to this link.
There was other links that mentioned that Fast Eddie was in San Francisco a few times before going to Los Angeles at KRON and KTVU and was accused of similar things in the Bay Area too.
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http://richliebermanreport.blogspot.com/2013/02/eddie-alexander-dies-former-bay-area-tv.html

Fast Eddie had Bay Area stints prior to Los Angeles but his fraud charges were in the Bay Area and San Diego according to this link.


http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=17014

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=32711

Jim Jones the leader of the Peoples temple hosted a show for KFAX San Francisco in the 1970's but he was detained in Los Angeles for lewd conduct with an undercover cop.
 
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Hot Hits said:
I was trying to limit the scope of this thread to convictions and not allegations or arrests
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And that issue was a civil suit for damages.
 
It seems like I do this about twice a year...and no, I've never met the man, but the phrase "murdered his wife and spent a couple of years in Chino" is a gross oversimplification that leaves the typical reader with a feeling that justice was not served.

The story Harve told and the judge believed was that Mary pulled the gun he had given her on him during an argument. He tried to get it away from her and it went off. Had he called an ambulance, stuck around and told that story to the cops on the scene, it's likely he wouldn't have been charged. But he left the scene, didn't call for medical aid for Mary, panicked and ran to Mexico for 13 days before surrendering to the D.A. They had to charge him with something.

It took three months, but his attorney convinced him to accept the D.A.'s plea deal of second-degree murder. Harve did, then two weeks later, fired that lawyer, hired a new one and tried to change the plea. The judge rejected the motion, and sentenced him to five-to-life. Given that California's liberal (in the literal, not political sense of the word) good-behavior credit system had people convicted of first-degree murder on the streets in seven years back then, 14 months plus the three he spent in custody awaiting trial is about right.

The state of California says he paid his debt to society 45 years ago, and he hasn't been in any trouble since. He's an old man who (I'm told) suffers every time the phrase "Humble Harve murdered his wife" comes up. If he told the judge the truth (and none of us are in a position to say he didn't), I can see why.
 
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Yes - "Fast" Eddie Alexander was sports anchor on KRON 4 when I first moved to the Bay Area. I always enjoyed his high energy delivery.

The man Stan Duke shot was Averill Berman of KGFJ News.
 
Didn't retired LAPD Cop Rod Bernsen of LA Fox 11 do some time after he was caught diddling a couple of boys on cruise ship a few years ago?
 
DavidEduardo said:


Mean piece of work. My employer, prior to the conviction, called to see if he would sell KOLA. The response "I won't sell to a k--e who wants to program to the s--cs". And then he hung up.
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Well old Fred is getting his just due. According to the CA DOC inmate database he is living in the gray bar hotel at the Lancaster Prison. He is 82 years old!
 
John Farahi, a popular Iranian-Jewish radio talk-show host and investment adviser heard on KIRN, was sentenced in U.S. District Court on March 18 2013 in downtown Los Angeles to 10 years in federal prison for operating a multi-million-dollar Ponzi scheme against local Iranian-Americans. Farahi, 56, also was ordered by the court to pay more than $24 million in restitution to close to 60 victims
 
In 1974 KPFK North Hollywood General Manager Will Lewis is arrested and thrown in Jail for refusing to turn the SLA tapes over to the FBI.
 
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