Few Mourn Yuba City's Faceless Men (The Juan Corona Case)
The New York Times Archives - 1971
Few Mourn Yuba City's Faceless Men
June 1, 1971, Page 1
THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES
By DOUGLAS E. KNEELAND
Few Mourn Yuba City's Faceless Men
June 1, 1971, Page 1
THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES
By DOUGLAS E. KNEELAND
Special to The New York Times
MARYSVILLE, Calif., May 31 — Nobody much missed the faceless men who disap peared from Lower D. And nobody much mourns them now as their hacked up bodies are dug from the soft loam of peach orchards in the outskirts of Yuba City across the Feather River from here.
More than 20 of them dropped out of sight in the last two months from the four‐ or five‐block Skid Row here that is anchored by the lower end of D Street. Hardly anybody noticed. Perhaps be cause if the men existed at all in the minds of Marysville and Yuba City, they were al ready lost, already dead.
They were the men New Yorkers stare hard not to see on the side streets off Times Square. The men Chicagoans brush by on Division Street. The men San Franciscans avoid in the Mission district.
The weaving, tattered men with the red eyes and the stubbly, beards. The ageless men, all old beyond their years. The thousands and thousands — nobody knows how many—who drift end lessly, aimlessly across the underside of America. The men who are as invisible in the small towns and cities as they are in the big ones.
Every day they turn up dead in the dank doorways of the cities, behind a shabby village saloon, beside a lonely railroad track.
It took a lot of them dead in one place to make anyone notice much at all. But 23 bodies have been dug from the orchard graves during an investigation led by Sheriff Roy D. Whiteaker, and Juan V. Corona, a 37‐year‐old farm labor contractor with a history of mental illness, is being held on murder charges.
Now the nation is watching and asking how so many could have been so forgotten.
Actually, one of them was missed—one of 14 murdered men identified so far.
Sigrid (Pete) Beierman, also known as Pete Peterson, a short, 63‐year‐old disability pensioner, was not a drifter. He was a long‐time habitue of Lower D, the Skid Row of the twin cities of Marysville and Yuba City.
Early in May, according to Roy DeLong, another one of “the boys,” as they call them selves, Pete Beierman got into a truck belonging to Mr. Co rona. When he didn't show up the next day at the Marysville Men's Day Center, a dreary storefront shelter where he usually spent his time, he was reported missing. Mr. DeLong was arrested Saturday as a material witness.
On May 4, a Marysville police report noted, Mr. Corona was stopped on the street and was asked if he knew what had happened to Mr. Beierman. When he denied that he did, the matter was apparently dropped.
“Everybody says nobody is concerned about these guys,” said Chris Bergtholdt, a slim, nervous, graying man who runs the center sponsored by this community of 20,000 for the homeless, the drifters, the winos. “But when Pete Beier man didn't show up they re ported him. He was supposed to go out and just work for the day, but when he didn't come back the next day, we turned him in.”
As for the others, those who were not missed, Mr. Berg tholdt blamed the times, the unemployment in the country. He said that more drifters than ever were showing up in Marys ville, looking for work in the fields and orchards.
“How can I keep track of all these people?” he asked. “One week in April, every day that week we had 80 men. This is something we've never had before.”
Beierman Is Mourned
And if the others are not mourned, Pete Beierman is, af ter a fashion.
“I don't think old Pete had any relatives,” said Enoch Heath. an elderly, toothless man. “But we knew each other years and years. Used to live together for a while. He was a good guy. A nice guy. If he had the money, he'd pop for a drink.”
Pete Beierman was known, a little. He lived in Marysville, sort of.
But the drifter's life is a hard one.
As Mr. Bergtholdt locked the door of the center a few min utes before the regular 4 o'clock closing time, five bleary‐eyed men stood hesitantly on the sidewalk in front.
“Lord, where can they go?” one of them whined, swaying on his feet. “Right in the weeds on the river bank. Where in the world else could they go?”
As the four others staggered off, he rambled on:
“First thing they're going to get them another drink and they're going to find them selves right down there where those other boys went. You just can't turn them all out on the street at once.”
“The only thing they talk about,” Mr. Bergtholdt said, “is a couple of their friends who are missing.”
At the Twin Cities Rescue Mission, the Rev. C. W. Ren wick remarked on how odd it was for people on Lower D to even think in terms of one of “the boys” being missing.
“I know of two who had been coming in here every day recently and suddenly we didn't see them anymore,” the wrink led, 65‐year‐old minister said, “but that's nothing to get ex cited about around here be cause a lot of them get dis couraged and grab a freight and go down to Stockton or someplace.”
The mission is a two‐story, gray frame building on First Street, deep in the jumble of second‐hand stores such as Joes' No. 2, of cheap barber shops, of Mexican, Chinese, black and Anglo bars, of card rooms such as the Nugget and the Bonanza, of vacant lots lit tered with the remains of Petri Tokay and Franzia white port bottles.
Historic Skid Row
And the mission serves its purpose in Marysville, where the Lower D Skid Row is a hangover from the historic wide‐open days when the town catered to gold diggers and lumberjacks as well as the field hands and pickers needed by its peach and prune and rice growers.
The growers prefer migrant Mexican laborers for their har vest seasons because they think they are more stable and will horde their money for the day when they return home. But there are times when they are happy to pick up whatever hands they can find.
So the drifters come from all over the country, from Con necticut and Texas, from In diana and Arkansas, from everywhere, sometimes to get away from the chill Northern winter, sometimes to try to pick up a few dollars in the orchards and fields.
On the freights, they come, as they always did, and on the freights they leave, riding the rods of the Southern Pacific and the Western Pacific, which cut through Marysville a few blocks from Lower D.
And when they are cold or hungry or desperate for a bed, they turn up at the Twin Cities Rescue Mission. Many of the 14 murder victims who have been identified slept there or ate in the past, some off and on for several years. They came and went, from where and to where nobody knew, often with lapses of months or years.
“We had Jonas Smallwood,” Mr. Renwick said, thumbing a stack of index cards. “He was here—slept here the ninth of the month and the seventh of last month. Beierman was here around the first of the month. When they didn't have any money, they came here.
“A fellow can stay here for five nights in a row and then he's got to wait a week before he comes back unless he gets special permission. It all de pends who it is. The Weary Willies and the Tired Tims who have no Intention of working have to wait a week.”
To earn their bed and their beans or stew, served in bowls on bare tables in the dark chapel with its chasp stained glass windows, “the boys” must arrive before 7:30 P.M., without a bottle and sit on the hard folding chairs through an hour's sermen songs and testi mony.
After Service, a Meal
At about 8:30, when the serv ice is over, they eat.
“They can come up and get their bowls filled as many times as they want,” Mr. Renwick said. “Some of them are hun gry. They've just come off freights from all the way to Salt Lake City.
“We don't let them come in if they have a bottle. We tell them if they've got enough money to buy wine, they don't need our help. If they say they're really hungry and would rather have the food than the wine, we tell them to pour it out in the gutter and we'll let them come in. But very few of them do.”
Mr. Renwick, who has been in the rescue missions for 18 years, the last five here, knows his men well, and for good reason.
“I was saved in a rescue mission,” he said. “I went in as an alcoholic and a burn and after 15 years I got my license.”
After the meal, the men are led across the street to an old building with a cavernous room about 15 feet wide by 50 feet long that is lit by two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. It has six double‐deck beds, seven single beds, two ancient couches and a stack of well worn extra mattresses.
No‐smoking signs are painted on the dirty beige walls. Fly paper dangles from the light cords, and a can of roach killer sits ominously on a battered bureau.
At 9:30 P.M. the lights are put out, and at 5:30 A.M. the men are awakened and taken back across the street for hot cereal, doughnuts and coffee.
By the time they have fin ished, those who want work shuffle out to stand on a near by corner to wait for a labor contractor such as Mr. Corona to drive by and offer them job in the orchards.
If they are hired, they can make up to $18 to $20 a day during the peach harvest, which starts in July.
“The winos will work three or four days, then come in and spend it,” Mr. Renwick said. “Others will stay through the picking, then come in and go on one big spree.”
Mission Avoided
When they are flush, “the boys” often avoid the mission with its sermons and no‐bottle rules. They will spend $2m a night for a bed in the dormitory of the old U. S. Hotel and may be even buy their wine by the shot at the Clover Club or the Nugget instead of picking up a 39‐cent bottle to drink in a vacant lot.
At this time of year, green peaches are being thinned on the trees. The men are paid 75 cents for a small tree and $1.50 for a large one. It is hard and demanding work, especially for the out‐of‐staters who have never thinned peaches. And work is scarce.
Still they come, more every day, dropping off the slow freights and then drifting out when they can't find work or their welcome is worn out at the mission.
The day center is crowded. The mission is feeding about 50 meals a day. It is a difficult time to keep track of men whose identities are elusive at best.
“On Skid Row you never pry into a man's background or you'll get a reputation as stool pigeon or something,” Mr. Renwick said, “so you never ask questions. If a man wants to volunteer something, that's different.
“The only questions we ask are what the Federal authori ties make us ask, his name, Social Security number, where he was born and when.
“Every once in a while, you'll get somebody who'll try to tell you he was somebody in the past. A lot of fellows, if they have been somebody, they won't admit it. But we do get lawyers and fellows who have had businesses and school teachers.
“Quite a lot of these fellows have had college educations. Not a big percentage, but quite a few,”
Which reminded him of Over coat Shorty, who had gradu ated from a college in Canada and had taught high school in Hannibal and Independence, Mn.
“We used to call him Over coat Shorty,” Mr. Renwick said, “because he was about 5 feet 5 inches tall and always wore an overcoat—even in the hot weather—because he used to go in the jungles and sleep in the overcoat. I can't remember his name now. Hughie, his first name is.”
Still pondering a few minutes later, he added:
“His right name was Hughie, but I can't think of his last name. They just called him Shorty. There are a lot of Shor ties on Skid Row, so they called, him Overcoat Shorty.”
The Overcoat Shorties of this world have a tenuous hold on their identities. And like many others, Overcoat Shorty has drifted in and out of Marysville for years. He may be riding a freight in tomorrow. He may be in a peach orchard grave.
Mr. Renwick grew thought ful and a little sad as he re called one of the men who had been missing from the mission for the last couple of weeks, a young man as Skid Row transients go, only 24.
Then Mr. Renwick's eyes brightened as he considered the ways of the drifter.
“These fellows are subject to whims,” he said hopefully. “They could be standing out here by the freight yard and suddenly move on. Sometimes the whistle of that engine just whistles them out, makes them move on.”
MARYSVILLE, Calif., May 31 — Nobody much missed the faceless men who disap peared from Lower D. And nobody much mourns them now as their hacked up bodies are dug from the soft loam of peach orchards in the outskirts of Yuba City across the Feather River from here.
More than 20 of them dropped out of sight in the last two months from the four‐ or five‐block Skid Row here that is anchored by the lower end of D Street. Hardly anybody noticed. Perhaps be cause if the men existed at all in the minds of Marysville and Yuba City, they were al ready lost, already dead.
They were the men New Yorkers stare hard not to see on the side streets off Times Square. The men Chicagoans brush by on Division Street. The men San Franciscans avoid in the Mission district.
The weaving, tattered men with the red eyes and the stubbly, beards. The ageless men, all old beyond their years. The thousands and thousands — nobody knows how many—who drift end lessly, aimlessly across the underside of America. The men who are as invisible in the small towns and cities as they are in the big ones.
Every day they turn up dead in the dank doorways of the cities, behind a shabby village saloon, beside a lonely railroad track.
It took a lot of them dead in one place to make anyone notice much at all. But 23 bodies have been dug from the orchard graves during an investigation led by Sheriff Roy D. Whiteaker, and Juan V. Corona, a 37‐year‐old farm labor contractor with a history of mental illness, is being held on murder charges.
Now the nation is watching and asking how so many could have been so forgotten.
Actually, one of them was missed—one of 14 murdered men identified so far.
Sigrid (Pete) Beierman, also known as Pete Peterson, a short, 63‐year‐old disability pensioner, was not a drifter. He was a long‐time habitue of Lower D, the Skid Row of the twin cities of Marysville and Yuba City.
Early in May, according to Roy DeLong, another one of “the boys,” as they call them selves, Pete Beierman got into a truck belonging to Mr. Co rona. When he didn't show up the next day at the Marysville Men's Day Center, a dreary storefront shelter where he usually spent his time, he was reported missing. Mr. DeLong was arrested Saturday as a material witness.
On May 4, a Marysville police report noted, Mr. Corona was stopped on the street and was asked if he knew what had happened to Mr. Beierman. When he denied that he did, the matter was apparently dropped.
“Everybody says nobody is concerned about these guys,” said Chris Bergtholdt, a slim, nervous, graying man who runs the center sponsored by this community of 20,000 for the homeless, the drifters, the winos. “But when Pete Beier man didn't show up they re ported him. He was supposed to go out and just work for the day, but when he didn't come back the next day, we turned him in.”
As for the others, those who were not missed, Mr. Berg tholdt blamed the times, the unemployment in the country. He said that more drifters than ever were showing up in Marys ville, looking for work in the fields and orchards.
“How can I keep track of all these people?” he asked. “One week in April, every day that week we had 80 men. This is something we've never had before.”
Beierman Is Mourned
And if the others are not mourned, Pete Beierman is, af ter a fashion.
“I don't think old Pete had any relatives,” said Enoch Heath. an elderly, toothless man. “But we knew each other years and years. Used to live together for a while. He was a good guy. A nice guy. If he had the money, he'd pop for a drink.”
Pete Beierman was known, a little. He lived in Marysville, sort of.
But the drifter's life is a hard one.
As Mr. Bergtholdt locked the door of the center a few min utes before the regular 4 o'clock closing time, five bleary‐eyed men stood hesitantly on the sidewalk in front.
“Lord, where can they go?” one of them whined, swaying on his feet. “Right in the weeds on the river bank. Where in the world else could they go?”
As the four others staggered off, he rambled on:
“First thing they're going to get them another drink and they're going to find them selves right down there where those other boys went. You just can't turn them all out on the street at once.”
“The only thing they talk about,” Mr. Bergtholdt said, “is a couple of their friends who are missing.”
At the Twin Cities Rescue Mission, the Rev. C. W. Ren wick remarked on how odd it was for people on Lower D to even think in terms of one of “the boys” being missing.
“I know of two who had been coming in here every day recently and suddenly we didn't see them anymore,” the wrink led, 65‐year‐old minister said, “but that's nothing to get ex cited about around here be cause a lot of them get dis couraged and grab a freight and go down to Stockton or someplace.”
The mission is a two‐story, gray frame building on First Street, deep in the jumble of second‐hand stores such as Joes' No. 2, of cheap barber shops, of Mexican, Chinese, black and Anglo bars, of card rooms such as the Nugget and the Bonanza, of vacant lots lit tered with the remains of Petri Tokay and Franzia white port bottles.
Historic Skid Row
And the mission serves its purpose in Marysville, where the Lower D Skid Row is a hangover from the historic wide‐open days when the town catered to gold diggers and lumberjacks as well as the field hands and pickers needed by its peach and prune and rice growers.
The growers prefer migrant Mexican laborers for their har vest seasons because they think they are more stable and will horde their money for the day when they return home. But there are times when they are happy to pick up whatever hands they can find.
So the drifters come from all over the country, from Con necticut and Texas, from In diana and Arkansas, from everywhere, sometimes to get away from the chill Northern winter, sometimes to try to pick up a few dollars in the orchards and fields.
On the freights, they come, as they always did, and on the freights they leave, riding the rods of the Southern Pacific and the Western Pacific, which cut through Marysville a few blocks from Lower D.
And when they are cold or hungry or desperate for a bed, they turn up at the Twin Cities Rescue Mission. Many of the 14 murder victims who have been identified slept there or ate in the past, some off and on for several years. They came and went, from where and to where nobody knew, often with lapses of months or years.
“We had Jonas Smallwood,” Mr. Renwick said, thumbing a stack of index cards. “He was here—slept here the ninth of the month and the seventh of last month. Beierman was here around the first of the month. When they didn't have any money, they came here.
“A fellow can stay here for five nights in a row and then he's got to wait a week before he comes back unless he gets special permission. It all de pends who it is. The Weary Willies and the Tired Tims who have no Intention of working have to wait a week.”
To earn their bed and their beans or stew, served in bowls on bare tables in the dark chapel with its chasp stained glass windows, “the boys” must arrive before 7:30 P.M., without a bottle and sit on the hard folding chairs through an hour's sermen songs and testi mony.
After Service, a Meal
At about 8:30, when the serv ice is over, they eat.
“They can come up and get their bowls filled as many times as they want,” Mr. Renwick said. “Some of them are hun gry. They've just come off freights from all the way to Salt Lake City.
“We don't let them come in if they have a bottle. We tell them if they've got enough money to buy wine, they don't need our help. If they say they're really hungry and would rather have the food than the wine, we tell them to pour it out in the gutter and we'll let them come in. But very few of them do.”
Mr. Renwick, who has been in the rescue missions for 18 years, the last five here, knows his men well, and for good reason.
“I was saved in a rescue mission,” he said. “I went in as an alcoholic and a burn and after 15 years I got my license.”
After the meal, the men are led across the street to an old building with a cavernous room about 15 feet wide by 50 feet long that is lit by two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. It has six double‐deck beds, seven single beds, two ancient couches and a stack of well worn extra mattresses.
No‐smoking signs are painted on the dirty beige walls. Fly paper dangles from the light cords, and a can of roach killer sits ominously on a battered bureau.
At 9:30 P.M. the lights are put out, and at 5:30 A.M. the men are awakened and taken back across the street for hot cereal, doughnuts and coffee.
By the time they have fin ished, those who want work shuffle out to stand on a near by corner to wait for a labor contractor such as Mr. Corona to drive by and offer them job in the orchards.
If they are hired, they can make up to $18 to $20 a day during the peach harvest, which starts in July.
“The winos will work three or four days, then come in and spend it,” Mr. Renwick said. “Others will stay through the picking, then come in and go on one big spree.”
Mission Avoided
When they are flush, “the boys” often avoid the mission with its sermons and no‐bottle rules. They will spend $2m a night for a bed in the dormitory of the old U. S. Hotel and may be even buy their wine by the shot at the Clover Club or the Nugget instead of picking up a 39‐cent bottle to drink in a vacant lot.
At this time of year, green peaches are being thinned on the trees. The men are paid 75 cents for a small tree and $1.50 for a large one. It is hard and demanding work, especially for the out‐of‐staters who have never thinned peaches. And work is scarce.
Still they come, more every day, dropping off the slow freights and then drifting out when they can't find work or their welcome is worn out at the mission.
The day center is crowded. The mission is feeding about 50 meals a day. It is a difficult time to keep track of men whose identities are elusive at best.
“On Skid Row you never pry into a man's background or you'll get a reputation as stool pigeon or something,” Mr. Renwick said, “so you never ask questions. If a man wants to volunteer something, that's different.
“The only questions we ask are what the Federal authori ties make us ask, his name, Social Security number, where he was born and when.
“Every once in a while, you'll get somebody who'll try to tell you he was somebody in the past. A lot of fellows, if they have been somebody, they won't admit it. But we do get lawyers and fellows who have had businesses and school teachers.
“Quite a lot of these fellows have had college educations. Not a big percentage, but quite a few,”
Which reminded him of Over coat Shorty, who had gradu ated from a college in Canada and had taught high school in Hannibal and Independence, Mn.
“We used to call him Over coat Shorty,” Mr. Renwick said, “because he was about 5 feet 5 inches tall and always wore an overcoat—even in the hot weather—because he used to go in the jungles and sleep in the overcoat. I can't remember his name now. Hughie, his first name is.”
Still pondering a few minutes later, he added:
“His right name was Hughie, but I can't think of his last name. They just called him Shorty. There are a lot of Shor ties on Skid Row, so they called, him Overcoat Shorty.”
The Overcoat Shorties of this world have a tenuous hold on their identities. And like many others, Overcoat Shorty has drifted in and out of Marysville for years. He may be riding a freight in tomorrow. He may be in a peach orchard grave.
Mr. Renwick grew thought ful and a little sad as he re called one of the men who had been missing from the mission for the last couple of weeks, a young man as Skid Row transients go, only 24.
Then Mr. Renwick's eyes brightened as he considered the ways of the drifter.
“These fellows are subject to whims,” he said hopefully. “They could be standing out here by the freight yard and suddenly move on. Sometimes the whistle of that engine just whistles them out, makes them move on.”
So sad ...Jonah Smallwood was my Uncle...My Mother's brother..Doing research on his life and death...
ReplyDeleteI have done quite a bit of research on them. Message me on our facebook, and Ill share what I have
Delete