County Archives Tell Their Own Tale of L.A. History

Located underground in downtown Los Angeles, the county’s Records Center has been called everything from a bomb shelter to a rabbit hole.

But within the concrete walls and among the daunting shelves stacked to the ceiling is a treasure of legal files dating to 1880, including those from the cases of notorious criminals and celebrities. Charles Manson’s trial records are here, as is O.J. Simpson’s divorce settlement, officials say.

Because Superior Court records are permanent, the only way they can be legally destroyed is to transfer them onto microfilm. “This is their final resting place,” said Bill Johnson, operating director of the archives.

To see the files at the county archives, the first step is to find the building. The address is 222 N. Hill St., but the facility is completely below street level, hidden behind the county Hall of Records and connected to a parking structure. The only entrance is an elevator door at ground level reminiscent of the Twilight Zone: The higher the numbers go, the lower the elevator descends.

Then there’s the maze of rooms, a few of which are off-limits to the public. The main room is on the second floor: a gigantic warehouse of records where customers pull a deli-style number and await their turn to view a legal file, retrieved from the 10-foot-tall shelves. Once they’ve viewed the file, they stand in a separate line for a clerk to copy pages--the main source of revenue for the archives.

Every month, clerks make as many as 80,000 copies--at 57 cents a page. Certified copies can cost even more--$10 per document for family law judgments and $6 for all others.

The archives began storing documents in 1971. Four years later, county officials laid out its mission: to preserve “permanent records of historical value.”

Now run by the Superior Court, the archives house civil and criminal court records, as well as documents from the coroner, district attorney, public defender and Board of Supervisors.

The job as county depository is becoming more and more difficult as case filings increase and the courts expand. When Superior Court branches run out of space, they send the excess files downtown to the archives. Even with constant copying onto microfilm, the three-story underground archive building will eventually run out of space itself, officials say.

The numbers speak for themselves: More than 7 million documents are housed in 82,000 square feet of storage space. On one floor alone, there are 110,000 boxes of files. About 18 million pages of court documents are copied onto 6,000 reels of microfilm each year.

The archives regulars are lawyers and their assistants, who trek there daily to search for criminal and civil files. On a recent day, a federal probation officer from Orange County reviewed previous convictions for a sentencing report, a Riverside County court researcher searched for an old paternity case, and a La Puente man copied his divorce papers so he could apply for citizenship.

Clarence Perry, who works for the city attorney’s office, comes to the archives a few times each month. His previous job for a legal services company called for him to fetch files every day, and the dust in the aging files drove him crazy. “I don’t even have allergies, but it gave me allergies,” he said, scratching his nose. “I felt like some big bug had crawled into my sinuses.”

But the daily archives visit was not without its advantages, Perry said. Most cell phones don’t have reception below ground, so the bosses can’t reach you. There’s also the security issue, he said. “In the event of a nuclear blast, I think you’d be pretty safe.”

Johnson and his staff of clerks and cashiers are trying to rid the archives of its reputation as a dungeon. Not only is the building safe, archive workers say, the weather is great. Even when it’s 100 degrees outside, it’s cool underground.

And when there is an earthquake, people in the archives don’t feel a thing.

Fires, however, have threatened the building and the county’s history. Last spring, about 40 boxes of civil court files from 1880 to 1913 were damaged when an arsonist set one of the storage rooms ablaze. Though sprinklers and smoke alarms are ubiquitous and the doors are secured at night, Johnson worries about another fire.

In addition to attorneys and clerks, the archives draw a smattering of military recruits searching their juvenile criminal records, historians researching books about Los Angeles and parents reviewing child custody orders. The U.S. Department of Justice seeks information on the criminal history of potential gun buyers, and state prison authorities call to make sure there are no pending cases before freeing an inmate, Johnson said.

Some file-viewers have money on their minds: widows who need copies of divorce judgments to get their ex-husbands’ Social Security checks.

Others are on a quest for family history, piecing together court records to learn more about their relatives.

Then there are journalists, who come rushing in at 4 p.m., just as the archives are about to close, frantically looking for background on the latest high-profile crime suspect.

A handful of older case files are also extremely popular, being pulled again and again. Among those are the probate cases of Marvin Gaye and Walt Disney, the McMartin Preschool molestation case and the serial murder case of the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez.

Devious customers try to stuff entire files into their bags, believing they won’t have to pay child support if the order has disappeared. Unbeknownst to them, all divorce judgments have been duplicated on microfilm. Besides, clerks watch for thieves like hawks and usually nab them before they get away, Johnson said.

Though the archive prides itself on its loyalty to history, it is slowly moving into the future. The county is considering putting library-style bar codes on the files so anyone attempting to steal papers would set off an alarm at the door. And the Superior Court is taking steps toward becoming paperless, so files would be stored electronically and could be retrieved and sent via e-mail.

“Whether hard copy or paperless, we’ll always have a record section,” Johnson said. “People will need to view records. They just want to know.”