CALIFORNIA
The Deadly Lettuce Swindle
Insanity or justifiable rage? What drove a California farmer to murder in 1925?
The sandy desert lands of Imperial County hug the southeast corner of California, nuzzling the Colorado River and the Mexico border. People are sparse, but tarantulas, rattlesnakes, and stories are abundant.
Pahkar Singh was born in the agriculturally rich Punjab in 1889. Like many Sikhs frustrated by British disrespect, Singh left India and migrated to Seattle, where he found work in a lumber mill. He was six feet tall and handsome with black eyes. He became an activist, speaking out against the British occupation of India. Eager to farm, he moved to California in 1917.
Punjabi migrants had begun settling in the Imperial Valley after large landowners irrigated the area with water from the Colorado River. Singh leased 300 acres in the small town of Calipatria from Victor R. Sterling. Sitting 184 feet below sea level, Calipatria is the lowest incorporated city in the Western Hemisphere. Today it boasts two landmarks: a giant prison and the world’s tallest flagpole, high enough to reach sea level.
In 1912, a syndicate of rich white businessmen from Los Angeles, including Sterling and L.A. Times owner Harry Chandler, created the city by acquiring 47,000 acres of recently irrigated land. These men were not farmers or ranchers; they were real estate developers. They needed others to take on the hard, risky work of raising crops and cattle. They sold land to farming families from the Midwest and East and leased land to Japanese, Filipinos, Mexicans, and Indians who’d migrated to America.
In late March 1925, Singh began harvesting the lettuce crop into which he’d invested all his money. Anglo, Mexican, and Punjabi workers were collecting and packing the lettuce, which was worth $50,000. Trucks belonging to Sterling’s associate John B. Hager were hauling it to the center of Calipatria, where railroad cars would ship it to the East.
When Sterling and Hager checked in on the harvest, Singh asked for his payment. The two men brushed off the request. Sterling, 50, and Hager, about 40, regularly disparaged Singh and other Punjabi farmers. Referring to mustard leaves, Sterling once said, ‟You people eat grass. We eat cake.”
Each day of the harvest, Singh asked the men for his money. If they couldn’t give him cash, he would accept a statement showing what they owed him. But the men wouldn’t provide any acknowledgment of their debt.
Since undocumented residents couldn’t own or lease land, Japanese and Punjabi farmers found workarounds. They formed corporations and cooperatives or placed title in the names of Anglo business partners sympathetic to their plight and looking to make money. Some Punjabi married Mexican-American women, who were exempt from the land law, and put property in their names.
Though his frustration grew, Singh calmly requested payment each day of the harvest. ‟Tomorrow,” Sterling promised. Singh, who had good relationships throughout the town, approached a lawyer, a judge, and the district attorney. All told him that the Alien Land Law precluded any redress. The American justice system did not offer Singh a path to recover what he was owed.
With temperatures that started at 40° and climbed quickly toward 80°, April 1, 1925 was a typical spring morning in the desert. Singh arose early, bathed, performed his Sikh prayers, and drove to his farmland. Sterling and Hager came by to complain that Singh wasn’t harvesting the lettuce fast enough.
The men returned late that afternoon. Singh asked, ‟Did you bring that statement?”
‟No, I tell you,” said Sterling. ‟Go away, you goddamn Hindu.” All South Asian immigrants, including Sikhs, were called Hindus by Anglos, even in newspapers and the U.S. census.
The men argued. Sterling finally said, ‟Pahkar Singh, go home. We won’t give you anything. Even the horses belong to us. Take your blanket, leave, go — you have nothing here. All this lettuce here, this horse here, it’s ours. Take your blanket and go.”
Exasperated with the men’s recalcitrance, Singh took out his .45-caliber revolver. Sterling scurried to the far side of his car. ‟Stop,” warned Singh. ‟Don’t run around the car anymore.”
‟Don’t shoot me,” responded Sterling.
‟Too late,” Singh announced as he pulled the trigger. Hager, now terrified himself, said, ‟Don’t shoot anymore. I’ll give you a $25,000 check.” Hager ran, but Singh caught up with him and shot him in the head. He retrieved an ax and split both men’s heads open. Several farmworkers witnessed the violence.
Singh got into his car and drove to Calipatria in search of William Thornburg, who worked for Hager. Thornburg was standing outside his Main Street office. Approaching him, Singh declared, ‟They can’t hang me any higher for killing you too.” His shot went wide. Thornburg’s wife, Marion, eight months pregnant and defiant, burst out of the office and seized Singh’s legs, tripping him onto the sidewalk. Singh dropped his weapon, surrendered to the local marshal, and confessed that he’d killed the two men ‟because they robbed me.” Newspaper accounts reported that a mob would have lynched Singh had he not been placed in jail.
Singh had unarguably killed the two men. The question was how the American justice system would treat him. Would nativist politicians portray Singh as an exotic demon? Would the crime provoke more anti-immigrant legislation?
I wanted to visit the scene of the crime. News coverage placed the murders at Bradford Ranch. Several ranches with that name existed in California. A close review of the Imperial Valley Press said the murder occurred ‟four miles south and four miles east of Calipatria.” The only existing photo related to the murder, on a Sikh history website, depicted a field alongside a dirt road. It could have been anywhere, even Kansas.
As I approached Calipatria, the ammonia smell of fertilizer seeped into my car. Piles of irrigation pipes and spare parts filled pockets between fields. Occasionally roadside trailer homes popped up. A hot summer had accelerated the lettuce harvest, and giant bales from the earlier alfalfa harvest sat in thick medieval walls along dirt farm roads.
The area was mostly open fields. But right where my measurements suggested the murder occurred, there were some ruins of small buildings and concrete pads sheltered by some trees that probably provided cooling. An irrigation ditch and weir bisected the land. There was no wind; the air was silent and heavy with the musky fragrance of agriculture.
Articles about the murders had placed Thornburg’s office downtown but didn’t list a specific location. I drove to the center of Calipatria. Several buildings from the early twentieth century remained, most in stages of disrepair and abandonment. The sidewalks were empty. Produce packing plants still operated just outside of town along the railroad tracks.
Court documents said Thornburg worked for the Certified Fruit Company and a news article that said its offices were in the town’s bank building. Fire insurance maps from the 1920s in the Library of Congress, available online, provided a good diagram of the town’s buildings, and there was just one bank, on the southwest corner of the main intersection. Two online historical images showed that building.
I usually have a pretty good sense of direction, but standing at the intersection, I thought I was facing south when I was really facing east. I took some pictures of a surviving building, thinking it was where Thornburg had been shot. But later, as I processed my photos, I realized I’d taken pictures of the wrong corner. Occupying the land where the bank building once stood — where Singh fired at but missed Thornburg — is a Circle K gas station. On a later visit, I reshot the photos.
I headed next to El Centro, the county seat, where Singh’s trial was held. If its portico of six white columns were removed, the Imperial County Courthouse would look like an early 20th-century high school. Assembling the Singh jury required a pool of more than one hundred prospective jurors, breaking the county record. The judge excused those who were racially biased or had formed opinions about Singh’s guilt.
Initial news coverage claimed Singh was ‟frenzied” with a ‟thirst for blood.” But the tone soon became more sympathetic. Reporters emphasized Singh’s education and his mild manner in the courtroom.
Small farmers, used to being squeezed by land agents, brokers, and shippers, treated Singh as a hero. They knew the men he’d killed were swindling him. The murders released some of their own rage. Even the local banker and a judge not involved in the case expressed support for Singh.
Singh’s attorneys initially claimed he was temporarily insane at the time of the killings. His father had epilepsy, which some then considered a form of insanity, and his brother had become deranged and killed three people in India. But the judge refused to delay the trial to obtain overseas affidavits.
The trial for the Sterling murder moved quickly. During cross-examination, Singh’s attorneys showed that townspeople believed the crop belonged to him. His lawyers put on no defense and didn’t call expert witnesses to prove insanity. In their closing argument, however, his attorney did assert that Singh was ‟crazy as a bedbug” during the shootings.
The jurors felt Singh had been swindled and had no available means of redress. His response contained a trace of self-defense. They quickly decided he was guilty of murder, not in the first degree as the prosecution had insisted, but in the second degree. The judge sentenced him to ten-years-to-life.
The case underscored the need for access to civil courts to adjudicate business disputes. Those without that option — like mobsters — resorted to violence to settle arguments.
Since jury selection had been so difficult, the trial for Hager’s murder was moved to Riverside, a much bigger city a couple of hours away. Singh’s attorneys tried to prove that Hager was reaching for his own gun when Singh shot him. After 11 ballots, the jury convicted Singh of first-degree murder, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison. He was sent to San Quentin.
Local Punjabis, and some Anglos, raised a defense fund for Singh, and his attorneys appealed the verdicts. A higher court threw out the second conviction, ruling that the Riverside judge had displayed bias toward Singh. To avoid a retrial for the Hager murder, Singh pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served a ten-year sentence simultaneously with his existing penalty. He was never tried for the attempted murder of Thornburg. When Singh left prison in 1940, his supporters handed him $600 that remained from his defense fund.
After his release, Singh struggled to put his life back together. He wed the widow of a Punjabi friend, but the marriage failed. He tried farming again in the Imperial Valley, and in Arizona, but did not succeed. He stayed active in Indian political activities and his Sikh temple. In 1955, he became a U.S. citizen. At 66, he married a young Mexican-American woman, and they had four sons.
Visiting India in 1970, Singh spoke favorably about America and suggested his relatives migrate to California. If he’d killed two white men in India, England, or Canada in 1925, he said, he would have been hanged.
Copyright © 2024 Lou Schachter • All rights reserved
