Headline of the Week

In the Washington Daily News:

'TEST TUBE' RACE WOULD FIND LIFE MONOTONOUS

Front Page Revisited

In fiction and in movies, if not always in fact, a good reporter can outsmart a dozen cops. Last week Hearst's San Francisco Call-Bulletin (circ. 160,271) made fiction into fact. To the Call's city desk came word that a 17-year-old girl had been found beaten to death in a clump of bushes in San Francisco's Mission Park. The staff hopped on the story and Reporter Bill Walsh soon turned up the names of the girl's boy friends.

He relayed them to Rewrite Man Bob Hall, a veteran of 14 years on the paper, who had led police to a murderer once before. Hall went to work on the phone, ran down 18-year-old Roman Rodriguez, a pants presser. Did Rodriguez know the girl? Yes, he did; in fact, he had seen her the night before.

"From then on," says Hall, "all he needed was prompting." Letting Rodriguez think he was a cop, Hall prompted him. Rodriguez almost casually admitted that he had had a few drinks with the girl, quarreled with her in the park and knocked her down. As he walked away, he said, "I looked back and saw a soldier helping her up." Hall was convinced. Still talking on the phone, he scribbled a hasty note to City Editor Jack McDowell: "Whitcomb Hotel tailor shop (Rodriguez --killer)." Reporters John Keyes, Walsh and two photographers raced to the Whitcomb, found Rodriguez at the phone, still talking to Rewrite Man Hall, and hustled him to the Call's city room.

They plunked him in a leather-covered swivel chair, snapped pictures and hammered him with questions while they called the police. Even after the cops arrived, Rodriguez stuck to his story that he had not killed the girl. When the cops stepped out of the room to decide what to do, Reporter Keyes supplied the answer. "Why don't you tell the truth, Roman?" he said to Rodriguez. "No jury will ever believe what you've told us . . ." "All right," Rodriguez answered, "I'll tell you the truth. I killed her." When the cops came back, he made a full confession.

In 23 minutes the Call had the full story splashed across Page One under an eight-column streamer: MISSION HIGH

GIRL SLAIN, CALL-BULLETIN NABS YOUTH.

After the confession was complete, the Call graciously admitted a reporter and photographer from Hearst's morning Examiner, but the rest of the San Francisco press had to wait. Said City Editor "Pete" Lee of the rival News (circ. 125,625): "We got thoroughly clobbered."

In Philadelphia, Bulletin (circ. 697,718) Columnist Earl Selby, 34, also played detective. A Republican politico, William F. Meade, was mysteriously shot recently in the lobby of a small Philadelphia hotel. To Democratic District Attorney Richardson Dilworth, the case was clear-cut. Meade was shot, said he, by Virginia Carroll, who was with Meade at the time, and with whom he had been "arguing and drinking." Meade insisted the shot came from outside the hotel. But Dilworth offered as evidence a bullet-shattered pane of glass which, he said, FBI tests proved "conclusively" had been broken from the inside.

Columnist Selby, who specializes in digging up stories that others pass by (TIME, July 3, 1950), was far from convinced. The broken pane had a smear of paint on one side and heavy putty on the other, and police assumed the thick putty was on the outside. Selby checked the lobby windows, discovered each had the telltale paint smear on the outside and heavy putty on the inside. Last week he wrote that the bullet might have come from outside the hotel. After new tests Dilworth announced meekly: the tests "appear to absolve" Virginia Carroll. Said Bulletin Managing Editor Walter Lister: "Selby really believes those plays and movies about reporters confounding the D.A."

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