People and Events

It’s been 16 years since Robert Masucci, now a 30-year-old Glendale police officer, sent off his $12.50 for one of those MIA bracelets then being sold to keep alive efforts to find American servicemen believed missing in action in Vietnam.

When the bracelet arrived, young Masucci was startled to discover that the engraved name--selected at random from the MIA pool--was that of Air Force Capt. Martin Massucci, of Royal Oak, Mich.

Almost the same spelling, but not quite. “I was amazed,” Robert Masucci said.

During the ensuing years, Robert Masucci kept in touch with the missing Air Force jet pilot’s father, Arthur Massucci, calling him in Michigan regularly on Memorial and Veterans days. The missing flier was never found.

On Saturday night, while the older man was here to visit friends in West Los Angeles, the two had dinner. “We had never met, but we have this rapport with each other,” the Glendale man said.

And while Robert Masucci still feels the pilot is alive, he said the father doubts it, “but always has the hope.”

Sunday evening’s search for the ghosts of John Pedder and W.E. Stark, who some say still roam the Queen Mary in Long Beach, failed to turn up any apparitions. But, said one of the participants, “you could feel a kind of creepy presence. . . .”

Pedder was an 18-year-old crew member who was crushed to death by an engine room door as the queen sailed the Atlantic in 1966. Stark was a senior second officer who died aboard the ship in 1949 after drinking from a gin bottle that, to his regret, contained a corrosive solvent.

More than two dozen members of a seminar organized by the Real School, an adult education firm that loves to stage this sort of thing, were taken aboard the queen by Richard Senate, who teaches a college class in hauntings. They were allowed to wander around the spaces where, some Queen Mary employees say, long-gone Pedder and Stark have been glimpsed from time to time.

Senate’s wife, Debbie, a psychic, conducted a midnight seance for the group. On Monday morning, they compared notes about their experiences.

“I got a lot of chills in different spots,” reported Pete Magnuson, a 26-year-old Long Beach grocery store employee who was one of the people who paid $100 for the experience. “A few people saw different lights and smelled odors. There were a lot of strong feelings, especially in the pool and engine room area.”

Magnuson said he and others in the group came ashore “with a more open mind.”

Inglewood police identified the man they arrested for throwing a live, purple-clad chicken onto the Forum ice during Saturday night’s Kings game as Craig Rodenfels, 30, of El Segundo. He was booked on suspicion of malicious mischief and cruelty to animals.

“Apparently he wasn’t happy with how the Kings were playing,” said Police Lt. Robert Westlake. The Kings lost to the Montreal Canadiens 7-6 in overtime.

Police said Rodenfels hauled the chicken into the Forum in a sack but wasn’t arrested immediately because it is not illegal to carry a live chicken around.

After Rodenfels was released on his own recognizance, he called and asked for the return of his chicken. Police refused because it’s evidence in their case.