newport pier

In our fourth, multi-choice pop quiz on Newport Beach history, find out:

• Why you would find horses on the beach at between the the late 19th Century and the 1930s.
• What was the castle on Collins Island converted to in the 1940s.
• Who were the previous tenants of the Mariners Mile building (a classic in Southern California modern architecture) now occupied by the upscale A'marees boutique.
• What were three things that Newport Beach could "crow" about, according to a Los Angeles Times article in 1883.
• Why a Newport Beach man generated international headlines in 1940.

On the morning of May 23, 1896, a 38-year-old man known as Fisherman Pete was found dead on the floor of his 10x12 shanty, about a 100 yards south of McFadden Wharf (now the Newport Pier). The right side of his head had been crushed, 40 gashes and cuts marked his body, and a number of his fingers had been chopped off. 

It was Newport Beach’s first murder. It also was the grisliest homicide ever in Newport Beach and maybe all of Orange County. But remarkably, historic crime had been lost to time. Until now.