Runaways Adrift in Hollywood Nightmare

Details in the deaths of the young man and woman bore chilling similarities.

Both had changed their hair color--she to black, he to yellow. Both had come to Hollywood from far away, hoping to be in the movies. Both ended up hustling on the streets. And when their young bodies were found, they were in pieces--hers severed with surgical precision, his dismembered with a chain saw.

Elizabeth Short and Tracy Leroy Nute died 40 years apart.

Short, a drifter from Massachusetts, became known as the “Black Dahlia,� but her murder in 1947 was never solved. She died at 22.

Nute, a drifter from Kansas City, Mo., was killed last summer. He was 19.

Max Franc, a 57-year-old Fresno university professor, was charged with first-degree murder.

In the dream capital, many young runaways find only nightmares.

“It makes you wonder how many got chopped up who we just never found out about,� said Gary Yates, a psychologist who specializes in the runaway problem for Los Angeles Childrens Hospital.

Victims or Suspects

Police and social service workers guess that there are between 1,000 and 5,000 young runaways in Hollywood.

“If you stay out there long enough, you’re going to be a victim or a suspect,� said Police Lt. Ed Hocking, who is in charge of Hollywood Division detectives.

Kids congregate at the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine streets, where the brass stars on the Walk of Fame give tourists a glimpse of glamour. Down on Sunset Boulevard, the boys and girls can be found hustling “tricks,� despite efforts by police.

They tell officers they are 18 years old but are often 15 or younger, say Hocking and Yates. They say they can go home anytime, but they’re often unwanted there.

History of Abuse

“The real story,� Yates said, “is that they usually come from a history of terrible abuse--physical and sexual abuse.�

Their new life is little improvement. Hollow eyes, scabs and roughened skin are signs of drug and alcohol abuse and chronic malnutrition.

Sleeping in abandoned buildings called “squats,� the children often fall victim to pimps, drug dealers and ex-convicts who, like Fagin in “Oliver Twist,� need young prey.

“A lot of pedophiles live in Hollywood,� said Lois Lee, who founded Children of the Night in 1979. “It’s like they all moved here when they heard this is where the kids are.�

Lee’s agency is a nonprofit volunteer group that helps young people escape the streets. Her volunteers help about 100 children a month, almost all of whom have fallen into prostitution.

Lee believes otherwise inexplicable deaths are tied to the pimps. She described a diabetic girl who died in a hotel room. “She was locked in her room without her medicine.�

Many of the street children are middle-class youngsters running from homes in the Los Angeles suburbs. But Yates keeps records on cases from 47 states.

“There has always been a draw to Hollywood,� he said. “This isn’t like Haight-Ashbury in the ‘60s, though. Those young people were college age. They were rebelling against their parents. These kids in Hollywood are much younger. They’ve been rejected by their parents.�

With no place to belong, the new arrivals in Hollywood turn to older people who will feed them first, then degrade them, Lee said.

“Their parents say they can’t come home. . . . In a sad way, with prostitution, they’ve got job security.�

For those not yet tied to a pimp, ife is hand-to-mouth. So they seek security with the pack, Hocking said. They steal to survive.

“Some of them, girls as well as boys, shave their heads so the pimps won’t want them,� Hocking said. “Everyone rips them off, so they hang together.�

In the squats, which are often covered with satanic graffiti, they listen to “heavy metal� tapes on pilfered cassette players.

“It’s sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll,� Hocking said. “But I haven’t met one who wants to stay on the street.�

At the storefront office of Children of the Night, an 18-year-old girl calling herself Mimi stopped in and said she didn’t know where she was going to stay.

The squat she had stayed in the night before was set afire by someone looking for a girl named “Star,� she said. “He says he’ll keep burning places down until he finds Star.�

Mimi said that she would like to be a model and that she left home because her father tried to rape her. She said she met a “sweet boy� who gave her a gold ring. The “boy� is about twice her age.

Another girl at Children of the Night said that during her years on the street, she lived with older drug-dealer boyfriends until she joined an out-call prostitution ring. The adults in the ring moved her into an apartment.

“They gave me my food. They washed my clothes and gave me an ID,� said the girl who called herself Cheryl. “I hung out for a couple of months until I got sick of it.�

Cheryl says she is off the streets and going to school.

Yates, Hocking and Lee say young people can be rescued. Each cited success stories of kids who returned to school or got jobs. But many will never return home because the home was unsuitable.

“We need programs that get them out of the law enforcement system and into the social service system,� Hocking said, calling for shelters that offer refuge, hygiene and counseling.

In 1983, Lee and police discovered dozens of street kids in the biggest squat of them all, a crumbling apartment they called “Hotel Hell.� Next door to the famous Chinese Theater, the building was once home to comedian Stan Laurel and other celebrities.

“We found evidence of everything there. There was disease, malnutrition, drug abuse. Some kids were shooting whiskey in their veins for a cheap high,� said Yates, who gathered medical histories on the youngsters evacuated from the fire trap on Hollywood Boulevard.

Sacramento lawmakers toured “Hotel Hell� and legislation followed to fund a program called Project Homeless Youth, supervised by Childrens Hospital. The 20 shelter beds are constantly filled, and many young people must be turned away.

The ones who opt for counseling and intervention at the shelter often get away from the exploitation of the streets, Yates said.

“They need an adult they can trust and a situation where there is no manipulation,� said Lee, who hopes to raise enough money to start a shelter run by Children of the Night.

“We have to try to get them to somewhere where somebody gives a damn about them,� Hocking said.