Buron Fitts
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Buron Rogers Fitts (first name often incorrectly given as "Burton") (March 22, 1895 Belcherville, Texas - March 1973 Three Rivers, California) was a California politician, who was lieutenant governor of the state from 1927 to 1928 and Los Angeles County district attorney thereafter until 1940.
He received his law degree in 1916 from the University of Southern California and while studying worked as clerk for Earl Rogers.
According to For the People — Inside the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office 1850-2000, by Michael Parrish, Fitts was a severely injured veteran of World War I whose base of political support lay in the American Legion organization of war veterans. He had been shot in the knee in the Argonne forest, and limped for the rest of his life.
He was appointed deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County in 1920 during the term of Thomas Lee Woolwine and chief deputy in 1924 under Asa Keyes. He was elected lieutenant-governor in 1926 and served in the administration of Governor C.C. Young.
In 1928, Keyes was indicted for bribery (in connection with the Julian Petroleum scandal), and Fitts resigned effective Nov. 30 of that year to become a special prosecutor in that case. He was elected district attorney (the county's chief law officer) as well.
In 1932 he investigated the death of Paul Bern. Samuel Marx, in his book Deadly Illusions (1990) accuses Fitts of having been bribed by MGM studio officials to accept a fabricated version of Bern's suicide to avoid scandal in Hollywood.
Fitts was himself indicted for bribery, and perjury, in 1934. He was accused of taking a bribe to drop a statutory rape charge against a millionaire real-estate promoter. He was acquitted in 1936 and remained as the district attorney until 1940, when he was defeated by a reform candidate, John F. Dockweiler.
On March 7, 1937, Fitts was wounded by a volley of shots fired through the windshield of his car. (Los Angeles Times, March 8, 1937, quoted in He Usually Lived With a Female, below.) Nobody was ever arrested in that case.
He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 with the rank of major. He was chief, intelligence, Pacific Overseas Air Technical Services.
His last residence was in Three Rivers, in Tulare County, California, where he committed suicide by a pistol shot in March 1973, shortly before his 78th birthday.
[edit] External links
- For the People excerpt quoted in Los Angeles District Attorney Web site
- | Social Security Death Index
- | University of California biography
[edit] References
- For the People — Inside the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office 1850-2000 (2001) by Michael Parrish. ISBN 1-883318-15-7
- He Usually Lived With a Female: The Life of a California Newspaperman (2006) by George Garrigues. Quail Creek Press. ISBN 0-9634830-1-3
- Deadly Illusions by Samuel Marx and Joyce Vanderveen (Random House, New York, 1990), re-published as Murder Hollywood Style - Who Killed Jean Harlow's Husband? (Arrow, 1994, ISBN 0 09 961060 4)
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