The Roaring ’20s brought a wave of great change as America celebrated victory in the World War and for the first time gave all women the vote.
It was also a time when organized crime celebrated the Prohibition by turning it into its own cash cow.
Into this scene came Frank Baumgarteker, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman, owner of Inland Valley vineyards and one of the few people who apparently just wouldn’t play ball with the mob.
On Nov. 25, 1929, Baumgarteker disappeared, an apparent victim of those seeking the easy dollar of illicit booze. To this day, there has been no trace of the 43-year-old man nor any real clue as to who may have done him in.
Baumgarteker personified the familiar story of an immigrant who came to this country, worked hard and became a success. he and his wife Mary came from Austria and built a successful trucking firm that ran between Bakersfield and Los Angeles. later he acquired a winery and vineyards in Cucamonga, a distillery in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles, a ranch in Alta Loma, a house at Lake Arrowhead and a $250,000 life insurance policy.
One day late in 1929, he confided to Mary that he had been approached by “six Italians from Chicago” who demanded he sell them his Los Angeles distillery.
His options were to agree or be killed, according to a book on the mobs of the West Coast, “One Eye Closed, the other Red,” by Clifford J. Walker.
Baumgarteker gave his wife the names of the men who made him the “offer,” telling her to send the list to the district attorney if anything happened to him.
On Nov. 25, he lunched with his partner and his attorney in Los Angeles to talk over the sale of 40,000 gallons of grape juice to a local wine tonic business. he left the restaurant saying he was going to drive to an office in Wilmington – and was never seen again.
It shouldn’t have been too tough to find someone who had seen him that day. Police determined that his expensive open-model Cadillac was the only car in Southern California then painted deep purple, an odd color at a time when most cars were black.
Later in the week, the car was found in a San Diego parking garage, with his keys and billfold inside. Remains of cigarettes in the ashtray indicated someone else had been in the car since Baumgarteker did not smoke.
Attendants at the garage recalled seeing someone resembling the missing man on the afternoon of Nov. 25 but said the driver wore hunting attire. Baumgarteker, at his lunch meeting, had been dressed in a business suit.
Police publicly speculated on a number of possibilities, including suicide. Baumgarteker’s secretary said that a few days before the disappearance, he had asked her if his life insurance premium was paid up.
Officers examined all of his holdings and found his books in good order. he had all the necessary permits for making grape juice and certain kinds of wines allowed under the strict rules of Prohibition.
On Dec. 4, police drove the purple Cadillac along his likely route from Los Angeles to San Diego in hopes of getting help from those working at gas stations along the way, but that generated no clues.
Baumgarteker’s wife announced a $1,000 reward – a hefty amount especially in the first weeks after the stock market crash.
Then a young woman – Dorothea Dustin, 24 – was arrested for trying to “shake down” Mary Baumgarteker. Dustin had come to her demanding $1,000 or she would go to the police with information about an alleged affair between Baumgarteker and a former secretary, Katherine Rousseau.
The police later determined that any affair, if there had been one, was not relevant to the disappearance. Mary Baumgarteker didn’t press charges against Dustin.
Later, reports that Baumgarteker had been seen in Ensenada prompted the LAPD to send investigators to Baja California, but nothing turned up.
Meanwhile, other, fresher crimes began to make new demands on investigators’ time, and the disappearance of Frank Baumgarteker was put aside along with other unsolved mysteries.
In may 1931, police investigating a moonshine operation in Hesperia came across what appeared to be two graves. Speculation arose that this may have been the final resting place of Baumgarteker, but police found no human remains.
Mary Baumgarteker and her son Herbert were unable to collect her husband’s life insurance for several years because no body was found. Sale of the family businesses was delayed in the courts for years as well.
The mystery of the disappearance remains unsolved to this day. did Frank Baumgarteker forsake his wealth and family to start a new life? Or was he a victim of vengeful bootleggers unhappy because he wouldn’t sell them his holdings? Or was there another explanation?
A possible answer might have come from the names of the six “Italians” the missing man left with wife.
Son Herbert Baumgarteker, in an interview with author Walker in the 1980s, said District Attorney Buran Fitts was given the names but he expressed the opinion that the missing man probably took off with another woman. The six names, said Fitts, were people who didn’t exist, and he lost any interest in the case
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Valley history. he can be reached at 909-483-9382 or by email at joe.blackstock@inlandnewspapers.com
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