Bombing of Harry Raymond

Clifford visits Harry Raymond after the bombing.
Photo: UCLA Special Collections

Private investigator Harry Raymond knew he was being watched.

By January of 1938, Los Angeles Police Capt. Earle Kynette and Lt. Roy Allen were spending more time at a small house in Raymond's Boyle Heights neighborhood. In September, Kynette rented a spy house down an alley across from 955 Orne St. A wiretap connected to telephone lines to monitor the investigator's conversations.

Raymond, a former chief of the San Diego and Venice police departments, had become a target of the LAPD's Metropolitan Special Investigation Unit (known as the "spy squad"). Raymond was the prime witness in a fraud trial stemming from Mayor Frank Shaw's 1933 election campaign. Raymond had uncovered evidence linking Shaw's administration to gambling and prostitution rings while working for Ralph Gray. His client was a campaign worker who was owed $2,900.

1937 House Bombing

Shortly after midnight on Oct. 29, 1937, a thunderous explosion ripped through the kitchen floor of Clifford Clinton's Los Feliz home as his three children slept in second-floor bedrooms. A tin can pineapple-type bomb attached to a floor joist blew a large hole in the outside wall of the house. Luckily, no one was hurt.