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| Things were looking shady for Timothy Farrell in the mid-1970s. |
NOTE: It had been my sincere hope to bring this series about actor Timothy Farrell to an end with today's article. However, as I began assembling this second installment, I realized I had far too many articles to sort through. I simply hadn't counted on Farrell's 1974 court case generating as much publicity as it did. This article started growing exponentially larger and did not seem like it was close to reaching a conclusion. In other words, I goofed. Rather than releasing nothing this week, I decided to publish what I had. Please bear with me. One way or another, I will bring this thing to a conclusion... eventually. Just not now. J.B.
A week ago today, we were discussing the up-and-down life of Timothy Farrell, a wavy-haired Los Angeles theater, film, and television actor who was part of Ed Wood's repertory company in the 1950s, appearing in Glen or Glenda (1953), The Violent Years (1956), and Jail Bait (1954). Under his real name, Timothy Sperl, he had an almost entirely separate career as a Los Angeles county marshal that started in 1947 and ended in 1974 amid allegations of corruption, embezzlement, and conspiracy. He then retreated from the public eye and died in obscurity but was one of the interview subjects in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992).
More than a half-century later, questions still remain about Timothy Sperl's very public downfall. Was he really taking advantage of his job for financial and political gain or was he unfairly targeted by his enemies because he tried to increase minority representation in the marshal ranks and improve living conditions in the Los Angeles jails? Since the actor/lawman is dead and can no longer speak for himself, we are forced to rely on what various California newspapers reported about him decades ago. In that spirit, let us jump back to Friday, January 25, 1974, the day after Sperl was hit with a nine-count criminal indictment. He had already retained legal counsel, attorney Paul Caruso.
January 25, 1974: The entire Sperl saga revolves around the marshal's suspiciously cozy relationship with a Los Angeles politician named Jim Hayes. Sperl was accused of improperly aiding Hayes' campaign, even dispatching his men to work at various fundraising events. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported that a committee of judges had convened to discuss the case and plan for a larger meeting of 136 municipal judges to be held on January 31, 1974. The article included a picture of Jim Hayes.
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| It's never a good sign when judges meet about having more meetings. |
January 26, 1974: Here's an odd little footnote to the story. You may remember Vincent Bugliosi (1934-2015), the Minnesota-born attorney who successfully prosecuted Charles Manson in the notorious Tate-LaBianca murder case. He wrote Helter Skelter (1974), still the most famous book about Manson and his crimes. Well, in 1972, Bugliosi ran for district attorney and lost by an extremely slim margin to a man named Jim Busch. He accused Busch of illegally using his staff to campaign for him. A wire service story by Ruby Sexton compared this to the Jim Hayes/Timothy Sperl scandal. Here's an excerpt, as it appeared in the Monrovia, CA Daily News-Post.
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| I bet you didn't think we'd be working Charles Manson into this story. |
January 28, 1974: According to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Sperl pleaded innocent to the nine charges against him. There was some doubt as to whether Judge Richard A. Gadbois, Jr. should be handling this case, as one of his bailiffs had been supplied by Sperl's office. One way or another, Tim's trial was scheduled for April 3.
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| Our man denies culpability. |
That same day, The Los Angeles Times ran an article on the case, complete with a quote from Sperl himself.
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| Should he stay or should he go? |
January 29, 1974: A lengthy, unsigned article in the Van Nuys Valley News rehashed most of the information from previous articles, but it added some quotes from Sperl that I hadn't seen. Those are included below:
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| Try to picture Tim saying this in the exact cadence of Dr. Alton from Glen or Glenda. |
January 31, 1974: A busy day. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported that Thomas Reddin was a possible candidate to replace Timothy Sperl, if the latter were suspended from his job. Sperl approved of his potential substitute, but this did not come to pass as we shall soon see.
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| Note that Timothy Sperl expected to be "exonerated" and return to his job. |
In an article by Glenn Barr for the Malibu-Topanga News, Supervisor James Hayes acknowledged that one of his personal drivers in the 1972 campaign, Gene Baraldi, was a county marshal but insisted there was nothing improper about this arrangement.
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| Is it possible that a mountain has been made of a molehill here? |
February 1, 1974: The inevitable happened, as Timothy Sperl was suspended without pay pending court procedures. Myrna Oliver wrote the sad story for The Los Angeles Times. As it turned out, his replacement was Capt. Charles Perkins. More about Charles later.
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| Maybe it was time for Timothy to consider a return to acting. |
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| "They smile in your face. All the time they want to take your place." |
February 6, 1974: An article for The Los Angeles Times by John Kendall included more damning details about the case, including testimony from Charles Perkins about how Timothy Sperl ordered his men to falsify their timesheets.
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| This story must have been huge, considering how much ink was spent on it. |
On this same day, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner ran a letter from a reader in Sherman Oaks who wondered if the investigation into Timothy Sperl was headed in the wrong direction.
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| I hope Timothy Sperl saw this in 1974. |
March 15, 1974: Sperl tried to get the case against him dropped, saying there was not enough evidence to convict him. According to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the judge thought otherwise.
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| You so rarely get the opportunity to use the word "quashed." |
March 27, 1974: In late March 1974, Timothy Sperl formally requested an investigation into Charles Perkins and Robert Cox, alleging that these two men had acted improperly in their own investigation of Sperl. But District Attorney Joseph Busch found no evidence of wrongdoing by Perkins and Cox. Sperl was still awaiting trial. Here's one of several articles about the subject. This one happened to run in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
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| Why do I get the feeling that all these guys were corrupt? |
April 4, 1974: Sperl's much-anticipated trial was rescheduled. A wire service story to that effect ran in The Daily Breeze.
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| A few more weeks to start a new life under a new name. |
May 21, 1974: After months of headlines, Sperl's trial finally began. The Daily Breeze carried a wire service story about it.
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| Let's get this party started! |
May 29, 1974: The Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported that Timothy Sperl's secretary, Natalie Scotton, testified against her old boss, dispatching deputies to political events and forcing his subordinates to keep two sets of books. Last week, I said Natalie was the Rose Mary Woods of this story, but Rose Mary stayed true to Richard Nixon for the rest of her life.
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| Around here, we call that snitching, Miss Scotton. |
May 31, 1974: Along with his more serious felony charges, Timothy Sperl was also accused of interfering with civil service examinations in order to favor certain candidates. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner ran the following article about that aspect of the case.
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| Maybe Timothy Sperl was a good friend to have... for a while, anyway. |
And I'm afraid this article has again gotten too long, so we'll have to pick up the story next week. Honestly, there's so much of this stuff, I don't really see an end in sight for this series-within-a-series.
