Beauty And The Beast

In the late summer of 1933, as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were terrorizing the Southwest, Los Angeles was dealing with their own homegrown gun wielding Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo was Thomas White a twenty-eight-year-old ex-truck driver who did time in both San Quentin and Folsom prison. Juliet was his nineteen-year-old hairdresser girlfriend Burma Adams.

White was arrested for the first time in 1924 for drunkenness, this was followed a few months later for robbery, but he was released. In 1927 he was picked up on a liquor charge but beat the rap. In 1930 he was working as a truck driver when $6000 worth of cigarettes went missing. He was found guilty of grand theft and sentenced from 1 to 10 years at San Quentin where he proved to be a troublesome inmate so was shipped off to Folsom. 

White was paroled in April 1933 and headed to L.A. where he met Burma at a night club. Soon they were a couple and in mid August they started to rob people. Though one of their victims was blinded by a gun shot from White, none were killed. Over the course of the remaining summer, the duo stuck-up a number of people causing a bit of a sensation in the City of Angels.

A stolen car would be their down fall. On one of their jobs, the duo stole a car and brought it to a garage for repairs. On September 6, 1933, police found it and waited for the couple to return to pick it up. When they did, they were followed back to their apartment building, where they had two rooms. Burma had one on the third floor, White on the fourth. 

Four officers entered the building, two in the front, two in the rear. As two of them entered Burma's apartment, two others went to the fourth floor as White was making his way down. The cops identified themselves and told White to halt. The bandit drew his gun and fired two shot before the officers brought him down with three well placed shots. After hearing the shots, Burma, his wife of six days asked, "Did they shoot him?" when told that he probably had been shot she showed no emotion. As they questioned her she kept asking, "Is he dead yet?"

He was. White died a few minutes after the shooting.

Thomas White

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