Earl Warren's trauma

From the Tri-City Herald, July 7, 1964

POLICE SEEK THIEF WHO BROKE INTO WARREN APARTMENT

"Police are still looking for the thief who broke into the Sheraton Park Hotel suite of Chief Justice and Mrs. Earl Warren early Sunday. The thief fled when Mrs. Warren awoke. Nothing was reported missing."

At the time, Earl Warren was deep into the investigation of the JFK murder. 

A break-in would be cause for serious alarm; it's frightening to know that one's privacy and safety could be so easily breached. 

In Earl Warren's case, this simple break-in may have reminded him of an earlier, more fatal encounter involving his own father some 25 years earlier.

On May 14, 1938, Earl Warren's father, Methias, 73, was bludgeoned to death by an unknown assailant in his own home. The motive was listed as robbery.

It was immediately rumored that the savage murder was meant as a message to Methias' crimebusting son.
(http://mdeansutton.com/site/other/earl-warren.html)


Can't help but wonder: was the break-in at Warren's Washington hotel room - during his tenure as head of the Warren Commission - meant as another warning?

Mark Valenti wrote:From the Tri-City Herald, July 7, 1964

POLICE SEEK THIEF WHO BROKE INTO WARREN APARTMENT

"Police are still looking for the thief who broke into the Sheraton Park Hotel suite of Chief Justice and Mrs. Earl Warren early Sunday. The thief fled when Mrs. Warren awoke. Nothing was reported missing."

At the time, Earl Warren was deep into the investigation of the JFK murder. 

A break-in would be cause for serious alarm; it's frightening to know that one's privacy and safety could be so easily breached. 

In Earl Warren's case, this simple break-in may have reminded him of an earlier, more fatal encounter involving his own father some 25 years earlier.

On May 14, 1938, Earl Warren's father, Methias, 73, was bludgeoned to death by an unknown assailant in his own home. The motive was listed as robbery.

It was immediately rumored that the savage murder was meant as a message to Methias' crimebusting son.
(http://mdeansutton.com/site/other/earl-warren.html)


Can't help but wonder: was the break-in at Warren's Washington hotel room - during his tenure as head of the Warren Commission - meant as another warning?

Mark,

From the linked story...

Bakersfield Chief of Police Robert B. Powers, who supervised 25 men working exclusively on the case, believed that the culprit was an itinerant prowler. "The motive was robbery and murder was not deliberately intended," he said for years. This view was accepted by the slain man's bereaved son. Among the suspects was a San Quentin prisoner -- convicted of another crime -- who could have been in Bakersfield at the time. "I wanted to put a stool pigeon in his cell and plant a dictaphone there," revealed Powers. But when informed of this plan, Earl Warren flatly rejected it.  "We don't break the law when trying to enforce the law," he said simply.


I believe Powers was correct. The man's name was Amer Schilling. He was serving time for a similar murder, and was suspected in several others where victims had been bludgeoned to death - including that of Mathias Warren.

When questioned if he had committed the Warren murder, he said he may have but couldn't remember because he had "black outs."

He was eventually cleared of all the other murders on the basis of passing a polygraph. Which on the face of it, is ridiculous. If he could not recall doing certain things because he was in a state of automatism - then of course he would pass a lie detector.

Warren himself would eventually question a far more prominent murderer who claimed to be acting in a dis-associative or automatic state. His name was Jack Ruby.

Whatever pressures Warren was under, they couldn't help but be made worse by a break-in to his own home in the middle of the night. And given his family's history, it must've sent a chill down his spine at a time when he was in the spotlight from the CIA, FBI, LBJ, Dulles, etc. etc.

I was looking through the WC hearings to see if there was any obvious sea-change in Warren's general outlook or demeanor after the date of the break-in, but there wasn't anything that stood out. Still...

Mark Valenti wrote:Whatever pressures Warren was under, they couldn't help but be made worse by a break-in to his own home in the middle of the night. And given his family's history, it must've sent a chill down his spine at a time when he was in the spotlight from the CIA, FBI, LBJ, Dulles, etc. etc.

I was looking through the WC hearings to see if there was any obvious sea-change in Warren's general outlook or demeanor after the date of the break-in, but there wasn't anything that stood out. Still...

Thanks Mark. That had been something I was going to do. You save me the trouble. Still, something might jump out when looking through the records in future...

And you're right. It must have brought back some old memories.