Twelve-year-old August Vollmer boarded a train with his mother, Philippine. They were moving to San Francisco. New Orleans’s police chief had just been murdered by mobsters. Crime, however, was not the motivating factor for moving from Louisiana’s major port city.
Philippine’s health had been deteriorating for several years after she was forced to take over the family grocery story following her husband’s death. She had finally succumbed to selling the business and moving the family to a better climate. Interestingly, the wife of the deceased police chief was aboard the same train. There was no way for Vollmer to know it, but he was heading straight toward a lifetime of policing. In fact, he would become arguably America’s most important law enforcement officer.
