2456 El Contento Drive

Perched high in the Hollywood Hills, 2456 El Contento Drive looked like the epitome of 1927 luxury. The sprawling ten-room Spanish-style home featured a two-story layout designed by the Moss Construction Company. To neighbors, its owner Edward E. Wiley was a highly successful, sophisticated defense attorney living with his glamorous former stage actress wife, Eleanor.  But behind the elegant stucco facade lay the nerve center of one of the most audacious criminal syndicates in Los Angeles history.

Whether or not it is customary practice for a lawyer to get a court order to have his client released from jail to visit him at his personal residence to take care of "paperwork" is debatable.  On June 24, 1933, two deputies transported 34 year old Don "Dapper Dan" Courtney to 2456 El Contento Drive so his lawyer, Edward Wiley, could "straighten out his affairs" before he was sent to prison for a year.  While inside the house, Courtney pretended he needed to make a phone call. Instead, he slipped out a side door, jumped into a waiting getaway car driven by his brother, and vanished into thin air.  The embarrassing escape triggered a massive nationwide manhunt and cost both deputies their jobs.  Courtney's 'wife', a 17 year old Hollywood High School student, Mary Elizabeth Hull, was also inside the vehicle. 

The police soon realized Wiley was far more than just a lawyer for crooks; he was running an entire racketeering operation. Investigators discovered that millions of dollars in stolen U.S. government Liberty Bonds—taken during violent bank robberies across the Midwest—were being laundered directly out of Wiley's law office in downtown Los Angeles.  By December 1933, the law caught up with the Hollywood attorney. Wiley was arrested on multiple fraud charges and unmasked by the press as the true "brains" of the 'hot bonds' ring.  In May 1934, he "sang like a canary" to federal investigators, delivering a massive 23-page confession that incriminated numerous corrupt public officials and linked his syndicate to stolen Lindbergh ransom money.  Wiley got 22 years in federal prison; he waited in jail while he appealled the sentence.

Meanwhile, "Dapper Dan" Courtney was arrested in Long Island, New York on September 12, 1934 for extortion charges and sentenced to 3 years to Sing Sing Prison.  Los Angeles would extradite him once he finished his sentence.  Born in 1899, in St. Louis, Missouri, Courtney began his criminal history at a young age and accrued robbery and gun charges between 1911 and 1923, then spent two years in Jefferson City Prison.  By 1929, Donald L. Courtney moved to Los Angeles and opened the Metropolitian Auto Association, a front for illegal activities with his two brothers.  

In January of 1931, Courtney was arrested for three statutory offenses involving two girls that were both in high school involving illegal gambling and sexual assault.  18 year old Betty Totman from Fairfax High School was a no-show at his trial so those charges were dropped.  Courtney then married 17 year old Mary Elizabeth Hull, a student at Hollywood High School, so she did not have to testify against him.  A year later, Courtney was arrested in San Francisco for the beating of a 35 year old Los Angeles salesman who exposed Courtney's bunco scheme.  Once again, the witness was a no-show in court and the charges were dropped.  In March of 1932, Courtney and his brother were arrested on extortion charges of several Pasadena residents; Courtney hired Wiley and the rest his history.  When Courtney retured to Los Angeles in February 1937, he was found guilty on escape charges and sent to Folsom State Prison where he served 8 years.

Wiley was waiting to be sent to federal prison in Los Angeles and attempted to escape the jail.  When it was time to go to prison, his train ride north was under high security.  Wiley was first sent to Alcatraz in 1938 as inmate #245.  Three years later, he was transferred to another federal prison to serve the rest of his 22 year sentence.  Below, Wiley was seen playing cards on the train while being transferred by federal agents to prison; he does not seem to be upset about his situation.

Following Ed's release from prison, the couple temporarily relocated to Illinois in 1944 to take over a furniture business following the death of Eleanor's brother. Seeking a fresh start far away from their scandalous Hollywood past, they moved down to Florida in 1950.  They settled down on Rose Street near the Sarasota Bay Country Club, trading the drama of the courtroom and the stage for the quiet rhythms of the Florida gulf.  In late 1951, Eleanor officially registered their new business venture under the state's fictitious name laws: Lillard-Woodworth Furniture, located at 1507 South Trail.  Because Ed was a convicted felon who had lost his license to practice law, he worked quietly behind the scenes. He acted as the "attorney-in-fact" to sign local business filings on behalf of his wife's partner.  To the local community, they were known simply as an elegant older couple. A 1955 news feature in town noted only that he was a "retired lawyer" and she was a "former stage actress," completely omitting his time as the "brains" of the Midwest hot bonds ring in Los Angeles during the 1930s.

The couple successfully kept their past buried, living out the remainder of their days in peace. Eleanor passed away in 1963, and Edward followed six years later in 1969.  2456 El Contento Drive was later rented by British screenwriter and literary critic, John Davenport and his wife, Clement in 1938, free from any further legal scandals.