McNamara charged in LA Times Bombing case

John J. and James B. McNamara

The Washington Herald reported this morning on the formal arrest in Los Angeles of James B. McNamara in the Los Angeles Times Bombing case. His brother, John J. McNamara and accomplice Ortie McManigal, members of the Iron Workers Union, are expected to formally charged today. They are accused of detonating 16 sticks of dynamite in the Times building at the corner of First Avenue and Broadway in Los Angeles, California on October 1, 1910 at 1:07 a.m. The bomb, combined with the natural gas that was detonated by the heat of the initial dynamite blast, killed 21 of the 115 people inside the building at the time and maiming just as many. Unexploded bombs were also found that day at the homes of Harrison Gray Otis, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times newspaper, and F. J. X. Zeehandelaar, the secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers' Association.

Just one of the McNamara's Victims

The suspects arrived yesterday via train in Los Angeles. When J. B. McNamara detrained, one of those waiting to greet him was a Mrs. D. H. Ingersoll, who identified McNamara as being the man she knew as James B. Bryce, a man who rented a room from her last September, before the bombing. "Bryce" was also the man identified, along with two other men, with having purchased more than 500 pounds of dynamite from a Giant, California powder works. These men then brought some of the dynamite north to a vacant building in south San Francisco, while the remainder was stored in Los Angeles.

James B. McNamara was quite defiant upon his arrival in Los Angeles. The Herald reports that he told his guards that if any reporters were allowed inside the compartment he was riding in, he would "brain them with his handcuffs." When questioned by reporters at the train station, he cursed them or stared at them with venomous eyes. His brother John was reported to be more polite, stating that he felt that the "framework of evidence built up by Detective Burns" would collapse but otherwise provided no comment. Oakland socialist lawyer Austin Lewis, Los Angeles socialist lawyer Job Harriman, and Denver lawyer O. N. Hilton have been engaged in the defense of the three accused men.

Meanwhile, the farce continues in Indianapolis, where William Burns, the private detective hired by Los Angeles County to track down the suspects of this heinous act, has been arrested of kidnapping the men. To think that such a brave man, who tracked down some of the worst mass murderers in this nation's history, men who have participated in a campaign of terror on behalf of terrorist organizations like the Iron Workers Union, would be treated in such a ridiculous manner is unconscionable.

The three bombing suspects have been taken to the Los Angeles City Jail where they are being held in separate jails.

Link: Woman Identifies J. B. M'Namara as "Times" Suspect [The Washington Herald]