Inside Stuff

At 17, Louis Ethelbert Whitsitt, a bright, brown-eyed Michigan lad with good schooling and a job, seemed headed in the right direction. Then, one night in 1933, he went dead wrong. With his big brother and two other fellows, he kidnapped and robbed a Detroit man named Joseph Nesbitt, watched one of the gang shoot the victim and leave him to die by the roadside.

At 23, Louis Ethelbert Whitsitt, now Convict No. 34,234 in Southern Michigan State Prison at Jackson, still has considerable time to serve. He got life for the murder, 45 to 90 years for the kidnapping. The judge said the sentences were to run concurrently. If he keeps out of trouble, and if, somehow, the life sentence should be commuted, Louis Whitsitt might be let out by 1950, or anyway by 1982.

So far, hopeful young Lifer Whitsitt has been an exemplary prisoner. Three years ago his excellent behavior got him a break. He was allowed to sell a story he had written of life in prison. Then he began to talk prison officials into letting him ghostwrite crime articles for them. Last month he earned $145 that way.

But young Lifer Whitsitt's chief pastime is broadcasting. For the last three years he has been Jackson prison's official newscaster, reporting daily prison news and gossip to 4,100 of the 5,440 inmates over the prison's elaborate cell-to-cell hookup.

"Good evening, men," Whitsitt may say, "tonight's feature story is headed: 'Thirteen incorrigibles shipped to Siberian stir.' " Siberia, in Michigan stir talk, is Marquette prison. Other items may have a warmer touch. Prisoner So-and-so lost a picture of his wife in the textile factory. Reward for its return: two packs of cigarets. Prisoner Such-and-such will swap a pair of $12 shoes, which don't fit him, for 16 packs of cigarets. Whitsitt used to broadcast complaints and comments on prison regimen, too, but nowadays he has to stick to straight news, paroles and arrivals, personal items.

As a newsgatherer, Whitsitt is trusted to go pretty much where he pleases in the prison, pesters the life out of turnkeys and wardens alike for items. But what buzzes along the prison grapevine, wise Lifer Whitsitt lets severely alone. One night last fortnight the grapevine crackled with details of an attempted jailbreak, in which six escaping prisoners killed a guard. Of this black-type story, the Radio Gazette has broadcast not a peep. Says young Lifer Whitsitt: "I'm no Walter Winchell."

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