Death Scenes

Mrs Florence Honeycutt age 38. Killed by her husband John T Honeycutt age 32. He ripped her to pieces with a carving knife while she still was alive, then beat her with a meat grinder. while her elderly mother looked on horrified 11-13-45. Roscoe. Calif. Honeycutt an Ex-conviot was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death in the S.Q. Lethal Gas Chamber. 2-14-46. EXECUTED 2-7-47. S.Q.

So the scrapbook is also Jack Huddleston’s confession, his plea bargain. The detective writes his little introductory rationale as the excuse, the socially redeeming purpose behind his obsession. If there is any truth in it, it is the stained white flag waved by the hostage taker. It is the “you-made-me-this-way,” the “I-did-it-for-you,” the “this-hurts-me-more-than-it-hurts-you” lies of the bully and abuser. The old cop, like the old con, tries to trick us into forgiveness and complicity. By witnessing he has participated, by understanding he is culpable. And his real purpose is to disguise the truth—that he started out terrified and ended up liking it, fascinated, an afficionado.

Jack Huddleston’s force was the root stock of the LAPD whose current image is of another lean, plainclothes detective, a suave perjurer on the witness stand, fueled by venomous racism to brutalize and plant false evidence against black people. This is the LAPD defined by the uniformed cops who beat an unarmed black man, and turned their backs as the riots began. This is the LAPD that presided over, and some say colluded in, the OTHER Kennedy assassination. It is the cradle of the Special Weapons Assault Tactics teams invented by Darrell Gates under the umbrella euphemism of pro-active crime fighting—a strategy which is all too often implemented by cops becoming criminal themselves. The political traditions of Jack Huddleston’s day continue, with police forces driving ethnic groups into isolated pockets, exaggerating the crime rate and inflating their own levels of risk at contract renewal time.