52 Years Later, New Analysis Raises Doubts About Police Narrative in Death of LA Gay Man
At 1:50 AM on March 9, 1969, at the age of 37, Howard Efland was pronounced dead at Central Receiving Hospital just outside of downtown Los Angeles. It marked the conclusion of what, by all accounts, had been approximately an hour of pain and horror for him that began less than two miles away, at an establishment called the Dover Hotel.
For years, the Dover Hotel (also known simply as “the Dover”) was a popular overnight destination for the City of Los Angeles’ growing LGBTQ population. It was operated and maintained by members of the United States Mission, an LA-based gay religious organization, and was an affordable and convenient option for spending the night, meeting up with other gay friends, and cruising for sexual encounters.
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The latter activity made it a common target of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Vice Squad, which was tasked with pursuing “morals”-related offenses. In 1967 and 1968 alone, Vice Squad officers racked up over 70 combined arrests at the Dover for charges of lewd conduct, sex perversion, and a slew of other offenses which were often used to target the city’s gay population.
For several years, Howard Efland had been coming to the Dover, and had become something of a fixture. The staff and his friends knew him by the name “J. McCann,” which he had used as an alias when signing in. While it is not known for certain why Efland chose this name for himself, the circumstances which immediately preceded his death are very well known.
At approximately 12:45 AM, outside of Room 220 on the Dover’s second floor, Efland was violently arrested by two plainclothes members of the LAPD’s Vice Squad, aided by a non-uniformed police observer.
The case, which spawned protests by LA-based gay activists at the time, has laid virtually dormant since the original 1969 inquest jury deemed Efland’s death an “excusable homicide.”
Now, for the first time ever, the full transcript of the inquest has been obtained, and its contents raise more questions than answers.
At the heart of the officers' inquest testimony lies repeated claims that, in the room where Efland first encountered one of the officers, Room 220, there was also somebody whom they referred to as a “male Mexican,” who propositioned the officer standing in the doorway prior to Efland himself entering the room. According to the officer, it was at this time that Efland began to proposition the officer, and engage in “lewd conduct” with the “male Mexican" on the bed, thus providing the officer with sufficient probable cause to arrest Efland at that time.
While the officers arrested Efland shortly after 12:45 AM, they did not, however, arrest the supposed “male Mexican" at that time. A separate officer not involved in the initial arrest testified at the inquest that, at approximately 3:50 AM, he entered the Dover Hotel to conduct a follow-up investigation of the arrest of Howard Efland. Upon reaching Room 220, he stated that he arrested an occupant of the room identified as Sanchez Garcia, for possession of Benzedrine. The officer testified that Garcia had been masturbating on the bed, and propositioned him. The officer also testified that, at Central Receiving Hospital, the mysterious police observer identified Garcia as the “male Mexican” with Efland in Room 220 at the time of the original arrest.
At Garcia’s court hearing on May 15, 1969, however, significant doubts about the veracity of this identification appear to have been raised.
According to the June 1969 issue of The ADVOCATE, Garcia’s defense attorney, Gerald J. Levie, called to the witness stand the desk clerk who was on duty at the Dover in the early morning hours of March 9th. According to the article, after recounting how he accompanied Garcia’s arresting officer to Room 220,
“The clerk further testified that at the time Garcia checked in, which was 1:10 AM according to his records, the other officers had just taken [Efland] out. Thus, Garcia could not have been in room 220 masturbating just before the [Efland] fracas, as vice officers testified at the [Efland] inquest.”
The identity of the desk clerk mentioned in The ADVOCATE’s account of Garcia’s court hearing is not definitively known, but the inquest transcript reveals that one witness did identify an individual by the name of “Wallace” as having been on desk duty at the Dover at the time of Efland’s arrest. Garcia’s arresting officer did not appear at the criminal hearing to testify, so his testimony at the inquest was read into the official record. In part due to the desk clerk’s testimony, as well as the officer’s failure to appear, the charges against Garcia were dismissed by the judge. A separate written account of the hearing, located in the personal papers of LA-based gay liberation activist Jim Kepner, quotes the judge as stating, regarding the officer’s inquest testimony:
“The police officer’s testimony seems to me quite bizarre.”
No witness called before the inquest testified that they were on desk duty at the time of Efland’s arrest, and despite being mentioned by one of the inquest witnesses as being on desk duty at the time, no individual with either the first or last name of “Wallace” was ever called before the inquest to testify as a witness.
Adding further doubts, at another point in the inquest, Dr. George Edward Cassady testified that Efland and the arresting officers were admitted to Central Receiving Hospital at 1:15 AM, a mere five minutes after the time which the desk clerk testified at Garcia’s criminal hearing that Garcia checked in to Room 220.
The competing testimonies regarding the timing of Sanchez Garcia’s presence at the Dover raise significant questions in their own right. If there had in fact been a “male Mexican" in Room 220 at approximately 12:45 AM as Efland’s arresting officers testified, why would he then flee, avoid arrest, and subsequently return to the same room for the remainder of the night? Additionally, if it indeed had been Sanchez Garcia in Room 220 at 12:45 AM, as the inquest reveals the mysterious police observer identified him to his arresting officer, why would the desk clerk on duty at the Dover that night have testified under oath at Garcia’s criminal hearing that Garcia had actually entered the Dover at 1:10 AM, approximately 15 to 20 minutes after the officers had taken Efland away? Why did Garcia’s arresting officer neglect to appear at Garcia’s criminal hearing on May 15, 1969, leading to the charges against Garcia being dismissed? Who is the mysterious police observer who identified Garcia as the “male Mexican” in Room 220 at 12:45 AM, and what exactly was his role at the Dover that night? And, perhaps most crucially, why wasn’t the desk clerk or Sanchez Garcia himself called before the inquest into Howard Efland’s death?
Due to the inconsistencies and questions raised in this report, as well as other information yet to be publicly disclosed, the LAPD has opened an Internal Affairs investigation into Howard Efland’s death.
Stephen Efland, one of Howard Efland’s surviving nephews, had the following to say about what his life meant to the Efland Family:
“Uncle Howie was a gentle, kind and loving man. He was my only uncle as we were and still are a very small family.”
Of the LAPD’s ongoing investigation, and the legacy of his uncle Howard’s death, he also offered:
“I want full disclosure from the LAPD, an apology and more.
I ask that we all remember Howard Efland and give thanks to him and others who sacrificed their lives for the unfinished gains made today.”
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