$5 Atrocity

For eleven days, while scores of G-men and thousands of neighbors scoured lower Florida in vain, the dead body of James Bailey ("Skeegie") Cash Jr., 5 1/2, lay in a palmetto thicket not a mile from his home in Princeton, Fla. Heavy rains and scorching sun left the body unrecognizable except for the white-&-rose pajamas Skeegie wore when someone took him from his crib (TIME, June 13). But not even a sharp-eyed buzzard found the remains, till late one night last week, a surgeon, a State prosecutor and twelve G-men led by Chief John Edgar Hoover came crashing through the bush with flashlights.

Guiding them was Franklin Pierce McCall, 21, a hollow-eyed "cracker," part-time road worker, truck driver and tomato packer, son of a Nazarene preacher. He and his wife used to lodge with Skeegie Cash's parents. He knew the child well, and knew how much money James Bailey Cash, the father, had in the bank--just about $10,000, the sum asked for in ransom. McCall had professed great sympathy for the bereaved parents, had joined the first searching parties. But Mr. Cash's brother and sister-in-law grew suspicious of him when: 1) he "found" one of the ransom notes under Brother Cash's store door, 2) he remarked how easy it would be to break into their house. They told Sheriff Coleman, who trapped McCall in a fake alibi and turned him over to the G-men. Not for a week did he "crack" under their questioning.

McCall also helped the G-men find the ransom money. All but $5 of the $10,000 was recovered. McCall admitted taking that, but not the child.

For two days more he tried to implicate others, then "cracked" again. He had done the whole thing, all alone, to "get things" for his wife. But he had not murdered the child; that was accidental, he said. Skeegie "must have smothered" while he was quieting him with handkerchiefs. P:Chief Hoover had Prisoner McCall spirited to the 19th floor of Miami's skyscraper jail to prevent his lynching by an angry Miami mob.

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