Assignment Jailbird

As a reporter for Long Island's tabloid Newsday (circ. 175,000), young (25), law-abiding Don Kellerman made a proposal that surprised his wife as much as it did his managing editor. Kellerman wanted to get arrested so that he could write a series on "what happens to a youngster in his first clash with the law." This is an old journalistic stunt, but Kellerman had a new twist. Instead of going to jail with the connivance of police, the usual method used by reporters, Kellerman proposed to say nothing to the police, get himself arrested while seemingly committing a serious crime. "And that," he conceded, "made it dangerous." Last week, after seven weeks behind bars, Kellerman had a police record and was out on $500 bail awaiting trial on a burglary charge. He also had his story, which Newsday trumpeted on Page One: ASSIGNMENT JAILBIRD.

Aspirin Parties. Kellerman, an ex-G.I. started his assignment by getting a short haircut, putting away his horn-rimmed glasses, and dressing in a tattered lumber-jacket and an old pair of Army pants. Late one night he was driven to Riverhead (pop. 4,892), the county seat 60 miles away from the paper's office, where he would not be recognized, and dropped off near a bar. Kellerman hung around the bar, making an obvious show of casing the place, while the proprietor and his wife eyed him suspiciously. After closing time Kellerman went around to the back, broke in through a window and made for the cash register. As he had expected, the suspicious couple returned. While the owner held Kellerman at bay with a stout whisky bottle, his wife called the cops.

At police headquarters, Kellermar "confessed" that he was "David Crandall' and had been out with friends looking for girls, but had been deserted and needed money to get back to New York. Since he could not produce bail, he was tossed into the county jail in Riverhead to await trial in jail, he found just what he was looking for. Young first offenders, as he wrote last week, were locked up in filthy, verminous cells with second and third offenders, dope addicts and sexual degenerates. One aged psychopath, who screamed all night, four days after his release committed suicide by taking rat poison. For exercise, his cellmates' chief amusement was to strip to the waist and beat one another black & blue. Young prisoners staged "aspirin" parties to get "high" by grinding up aspirin and tobacco which they rolled into cigarettes. Not satisfied, they took a fling with dope, buying it through a "connection," a trusty who worked as a cleaning man in the courthouse. Kellerman bought one of the tiny capsules filled with white powder, smuggled it out to Newsday's Managing Editor Alan Hathaway. Next time Hathaway visited Kellerman, he whispered, "It's real, kid. It's time to see what we can do about it."

The Buy. Newsday put up $500 bail and got its reporter out of jail. Then Kellerman and Hathaway went to the police. At first, the police could hardly believe their story or that anyone could buy heroin in sleepy Riverhead. But the evidence convinced them. To catch the dope peddlers, Kellerman agreed to go back to jail as a prisoner. But when Kellerman finally managed to make his second "buy," the "junk" turned out to be nothing but aspirin, epsom salts and barbiturates.

When Newsday's expose appeared last week, Suffolk County's prison officials clammed up, had "no comment" on the series. But this week the county board of supervisors gave a push to Newsday's expose by appointing a bipartisan committee to investigate jail conditions. In all Newsday's jubilation over a slick journalistic trick well played, there was one small worry: Reporter Kellerman was still charged with burglary. Kellerman already had his defense figured out. He contended that before he can be convicted of burglary, the police must prove he had broken into the bar with "intent to commit a crime." Said he: "I had no such intent. My only intent was to get a good story." Nevertheless, at week's end Reporter Kellerman faced trial for third-degree burglary and a maximum term of ten years, if convicted.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.