Los Angeles police saw mob ties in 1958 slaying of bookie

Clifford Rue was a man ahead of his time and behind on payments to his bookie.

A former Marine who changed his name from Rubenstein for business purposes, Rue had been working at his father’s liquor store when he persuaded some friends to join him in an unusual venture.

Rue was the type who couldn’t get enough of sports statistics. Today, he probably would be in a dozen fantasy leagues and spend all his time on the computer.

But in the 1950s, access to sports information was far more restricted. Rue badgered sportswriters and newspaper editors with phone calls for updates until he wore out their patience. So in 1955 he talked some friends into putting up enough money to begin a free sports information service.

According to Time magazine, Rue’s Sports Information Results hired 17 researchers to answer 18,000 sports questions a day. Queries included “What’s the largest football score ever run up?” or “What is the maximum speed of a duck?” To make a profit, the service sold ads that were played over the phone before callers got their answers.

After an initial success, the venture apparently went under. Rue began working at the Seville, a nightclub at 7969 Santa Monica Blvd., and operated a credit business called Trans-National Budget Plan. He and his wife were also working on a dress shop she planned to open at 12236 Ventura Blvd.

Along the way, Rue ran up gambling debts on sporting events until he owed $4,200 (more than $29,000 when adjusted for inflation) to Morris “Goldie” Goldsworth, a bookie who split his time between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. But while Rue was losing money to Goldsworth, he also won $700 from a wholesale jeweler named David Solomon.

On the afternoon of Oct. 16, 1958, Solomon visited Rue, who was doing some remodeling work at the dress shop, and paid $200 on his debts.

Later that day, Goldsworth arrived at the shop in what The Times described as a hard-topped convertible. Police found his car four days later parked about four blocks away at 3809 Rhodes Ave. after a neighbor complained that the convertible had been left in front of his house.

When Officer E.C. Hayes responded to the call, he noticed that blood had dripped from the trunk onto the back bumper. While he was waiting for detectives, Hayes removed the back seat and saw a body.

Goldsworth, 52, had been shot and beaten in the head. His pockets were turned inside-out. All that police found on him were a white handkerchief and half a pack of cigarettes. Further investigation revealed dried flecks of paint on the body.

Police Chief William H. Parker immediately announced that Goldsworth’s death was a mob killing and turned the investigation over to Chief of Detectives Thad Brown.

In tracing Goldsworth’s last movements, detectives interviewed Rue, 34, who told them that the bookie left the shop after being paid the $4,200 gambling debt.

Under further questioning, Rue admitted killing Goldsworth. He said that he had offered the bookie $200, but that Goldsworth had drawn a gun and demanded the entire amount. Rue said he grabbed a hammer and hit Goldsworth, took the bookie’s gun and shot him with it and then hit him again with the hammer.

Rue said he wrapped the body with dropcloths that some painters had left in the back of the dress shop and hauled it out to the car.

He planned to dump the body in the desert but got lost on Rhodes, which is a dead-end street, and abandoned the car. He walked back to the shop, burned the dropcloths and painted the floor red when he couldn’t clean Goldsworth’s blood off the concrete.

While he was being questioned, Rue apparently pried a piece of metal molding from a desk and later that day, while in jail, he tried to kill himself by slashing his neck with it. The next day, police took him back to the dress shop and filmed him reenacting the killing. Investigators searched the route from the dress shop to where the car was parked, but never found the gun.

According to grand jury testimony, the bullets recovered from Goldsworth’s body had no marks from the rifling in the gun barrel. LAPD ballistics expert Sgt. William Lee said the bullets must have been too small for the gun and were therefore fired “with insufficient force.”

Coroner’s investigator Dr. Frederick Newbarr said that Goldsworth died from the hammer blows and that the gunshot wounds were only superficial.

Rue was convicted of second-degree murder on Feb. 27, 1959.

Although The Times didn’t report the term of his sentence, Rue may have been released from prison. California death records say a man named Clifford Rue died in Los Angeles on July 24, 1972, at the age of 48. A 1972 Times story refers to a company called Credit Security Insurance, which was reorganized after the death of its former president, Clifford Rue.

Despite Rue’s confession that the killing was over a gambling debt, the police chief continued to see the Mafia’s influence in Goldsworth’s death and some websites include it in a list of mob killings.

And as for the answers to queries put to Rue’s Sports Information Results: The biggest football score was 222-0 (Georgia Tech over Cumberland University, 1916), a college football record that stands today. The maximum speed of a duck? It depends on the wind.

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larry.harnisch@latimes.com

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latimes.com

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Harnisch reflects on Los Angeles history on his blog.