World War II As It Happened
A MaritimeQuest Daily Event Special Presentation
Monday April 29, 1940
Day 242

April 29, 1940: Front page of The Midland Daily Telegraph, Coventry, England.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report in column 3: "Lard, Cheese, Eggs Not to be Rationed at Present"


April 29, 1940: Front page of The Daily Mail, Hull, England.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Derby Evening Telegraph, Derby, England.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report in column 6: "Demand For Cats"
(As a result of people destroying their pets at the beginning of the war, the rat population exploded.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Press and Journal, Aberdeen, Scotland.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of The Examiner, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report in column 3: "Communists As Executives In Trade Unions"
(Just like in the U.S.A. and the U.K., unions are infested with communists and gangsters. They still are today.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of The Sydney Sun, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report in column 8: "Big Japanese Attacks - Five Columns Move In China"


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Medicine Hat News, Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of The Winnipeg Tribune, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of Haarlem's Dagblad, Haarlem, Netherlands.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of The Fairfield Daily-Ledger, Fairfield, Iowa.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the photo at center: "Father Gets Murder Child"
(Chloe Davis, who had been accused of killing her family with a hammer, been declared innocent, was finally reunited with her father. It was determined that her mother, Lolita, had killed her three siblings and herself. Even though Chloe was declared to be innocent, several despicable headline writers still found the need to label this 11 year-old girl the Murder Child.)
 
This is the last front page report about the Chloe Davis case I found. The same photo and caption ran in the interior pages of a few papers in early May, but the story ended here. From the resources I have available to me I could find her name in the press only one more time. On June 21, 1940 her name was the answer to a Question and Answer quiz.

Question: For what did Chloe Davis of Los Angeles, recently become known in the news?

Answer: She was charged with the murder of her mother, brother and two sisters.

The answer was incorrect, she was never charged with the murders. The answer should have been she was accused of the murders, but determined to be innocent.

Chloe Dibble Davis then disappeared from the press and the public. She married three times, divorced twice and had three sons. I can find no reports of her ever being accused of another crime for the rest of her life. While researching her on line I found a four-part essay called "Mother May I...Murder You?" by Michelle McKee, which was written in 2013. This is the last paragraph of the essay;

"Unable to shake Chloe in her account, and now with the steadfast support of her father in the claims concerning the mental stability of her mother, and the further assertions of friends of the Davis family to the same, Captain Edwards needed to make a decision. Either Chloe was telling the truth, or she was a cold blooded killer. He knew that if she was found guilty the maximum sentence for annihilating her family would be confinement to a juvenile facility until age twenty-one and then she would be released. Chloe's father was putting the pressure on, now, too. He wanted his daughter out of state custody and he had hired an attorney to make sure that happened. It was time for Captain Edwards to either charge his young detainee with murder, or release her to the custody of her father."

She ends the essay with this sentence;

"The clock was ticking, and unfortunately for the LAPD it was strapped to a little stick of dynamite named Chloe Davis. There was going to be an explosion."

I made several attempts to contact Ms. McKee without success. My questions for her were, was there going to be a part four and was there an "explosion" because I could not find one. As I stated above, I can find no report that she was ever accused of another crime.

Her obituary reads as follows; (Note she went by Bonnie.)

"Bonnie D. Lewton, 58, Indianapolis, died Thursday in her home. Services will be at 2 p.m. Monday in Flanner & Buchanan Broad Ripple Mortuary with calling from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. She owned and operated The Bevelry, a beveled-glass studio, for seven years. She also was an accomplished artist, violinist and fencer. She was a member of the All Souls Unitarian Church, Athenaeum Turners' Orchestra and Butler University Symphony. Born in Los Angeles, she lived here 38 years. Memorial contributions may be made to the Memorial Garden Fund at the church. Survivors: husband, Philip L. Blumenthal Jr.; sons: Gary A. Methany, Todd G. and Jon M. Dietz."

(I cannot explain why her obituary gives her name as Lewton, when at the time of her death she appears to have been married to Mr. Blumenthal. Her son Gary had legally changed him name from Dietz to Methany. I don't know what happened to the other two sons.)

Her father, Frank Barton Davis, died on Feb. 26, 1956.
[The Chloe Davis story begins here, see the Bakersfield Californian of Apr. 4, 1940.]


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Biddeford Daily Journal, Biddeford, Maine.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report in column 1: "Lewis Gets Support of Negro Congress"
(John L. Lewis, President of the CIO union, a union known to be associated with Soviet communists, gets the National Negro Congress on board with his union. This may be the first move made by the Negro Congress to move the Black population toward communism/socialism.)
Also note the report in column 6: "French Woman Is Awarded Death Sentence"
(Awarded is an interesting way to frame it. However, she was not executed by the French. She was pardoned on June 6, 1940, but after Germany invaded France later in the month she was arrested by the Germans. Apparently, her former comrades in the Gestapo suspected she had been turned. She was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was a camp for women, where she became a notorious kapo. She was so evil that after the war she was arrested by the Allies and sentenced to death, for the second time, in 1947. She escaped the hangman's noose by committing suicide.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Butte Montana Standard, BUtte, Montana.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report at bottom center: "Two Youths Plan to Sail From Land-Locked Denver for New Orleans in Canoe"


April 29, 1940: Front page of the San Mateo Times, San Mateo, California.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report in column 6: "Nazi Radio Says Grand Fleet of Britain Gone"
(Propaganda so easily refuted it needs no explanation.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of The Port Arthur News, Port Arthur, Texas.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Bakersfield Californian, Bakersfield, California.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report in column 7: "Nazi Sub Sent to Bottom by British Plane's Bombs"
(This was the sinking of U-64, which was sunk on Apr. 13 by aircraft from the battleship HMS Warspite.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Teltower Kriesblatt, Teltow, Germany.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
1. Die Lügenmaske vom Gesicht gerissen.
(The mask of lies is torn from his face.)
[More about the German White Paper from yesterday.]


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Hamburger Neueste Zeitung, Altona, Hamburg, Germany.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
1. Weltalarm um Dokumentenfunde / Luftwaffe greift in Erdkampf ein.
(World alarmed by document finds / Luftwaffe intervenes in ground combat.)
2. Bresche in die Britenphalanx geschlagen.
(Breach made in the British phalanx.)


April 29, 1940: Front page of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the NSDAP.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
1. In zwei Tagen vier Kreuzer und elf Transporter bombardiert.
(Four cruisers and eleven transports bombed in two days.)
2. Die Welt erkennt Englands Schuld.
(The world realized England's guilt.)



   
Page published April 29, 2021