The Charlotte News

Wednesday, March 25, 1959

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, at his press conference this date, said that he believed the Western allies would have to hold a summit meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to obtain any sort of valid agreement on German problems. But he said that no one was going to command the U.S. and the other Western powers to show up at such a conference, and the West would not be bluffed or blackmailed into a summit. He thus said anew, although indirectly, that his attendance at any summit meeting would be contingent on progress at an earlier conference of East-West foreign ministers. The President was asked specifically whether he attached any condition to meeting with Mr. Khrushchev and the country's Western allies at such a meeting. At the time of the President's discussions with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan the prior weekend, there were reports from British quarters that the President had agreed unconditionally to attend a summit meeting. But this date, the President noted that the reply of the Western allies to a March 2 Soviet note regarding a proposed summit conference had now been coordinated with NATO, and the reply, to be made public soon, and its answer to the matter of any conditions in connection with a summit meeting, would be disclosed in that note. He went on to say that his convictions concerning a summit conference had been known for years and that he never had changed them. He added that he did not expect to change them unless something cataclysmic developed. That had been an obvious allusion to his statements, as recently as a week earlier, that he would go to a summit meeting, provided developments in the meantime would warrant it. At another point, the President had been asked to explain what he had in mind when he said the prior week in a nationwide television-radio address that there had to be justification for a summit meeting, replying that he meant progress which would justify a top-level conference. Still later at the conference, the President was asked whether he felt anything worthwhile might come from a meeting with Soviet representatives at anything less than the summit level and he had replied that it was clear that Mr. Khrushchev was the only man with sufficient authority to negotiate for the Soviet Union with the West and make it stick. Any Russian of lesser stature, he said, would have to be on the telephone to Moscow all the time checking with Mr. Khrushchev. The President had gone on to say that if the U.S. were going to get anything of substance from the Russians, then Mr. Khrushchev would have to be in the picture.

The Commerce Department reported this date that a new record in production of goods and services was in prospect for the first quarter of 1959.

In Brownsville, Ore., it was reported that armed members of a posse had searched this date for a gunman who had abducted one police chief, then shot another before hiding in the timbered foothills of the Cascade Range. According to the sheriff, the 27-year old gunman of Harrisburg, Ore., a dairy worker, was armed with a pistol, a .30-caliber carbine and 300 rounds of ammunition. More than 100 policemen had been pressed into the search for him and later they were joined by FBI agents from Portland. The FBI said that the man had once been an inmate at the Montana State Prison and was sought on a Federal warrant which charged him with interstate transportation of a stolen car. At Harrisburg late the previous day, the police chief sought to arrest the man for having improper license plates on his car. The chief was taken prisoner at gunpoint and released ten miles out of town. He then phoned ahead to Brownsville, alerting the police chief there and a state policeman of the situation. A few minutes later, the latter had spotted the man refueling his car in a service station and gave chase as the dairy worker sped out of town. On the outskirts of Brownsville, the man's car had veered out of control into a ditch. He then alighted from the car and raced into the shelter of a nearby barn. In the exchange of shots which followed, the second police chief slumped to the ground with a bullet wound in the head. As the State Police radioed for help, residents of the area had seen the man flee from the barn, splash across a waist-deep creek and vanish into a timbered ridge. Later, on the other side of the ridge, police had found fresh footprints which led into a clump of brush and then stopped. Bands of armed men roamed through the rugged Cascade Mountain foothills until dark and then set up mobile patrols along backwoods roads.

In Hibernia, N.J., it was reported that the bodies of two babies had been found jammed into a clothes basket in a playhouse 50 feet from their rural home the previous night, one having been bludgeoned and the other suffocated. The children, ages two and six months, had been found swathed in a blanket. The police chief said that the mother, a former schoolteacher, would be given a psychiatric examination, but no charges had yet been filed. The father, a microbiologist, had come home from work to find his wife and two other children, ages 14 and nine, under the influence of drugs. The children had later told police that their mother had given them sleeping tablets and told them that they were calcium pills. The police chief said that the mother told a friend of the family that she had killed the babies. Her husband quoted her as saying: "They are gone away and are never coming back." He told police that he could not believe it, as she was a wonderful wife and mother. The couple had moved to the town several years earlier from Youngstown, O. The father worked for the Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Co. at nearby Morris Plains. Hibernia was about 40 miles west of New York City.

In Asheville, N.C., it was reported that criminal charges against eight motor carriers, charging them with violations of the Interstate Commerce Act in the transportation of textiles from western North Carolina to New York, and other points, had been filed this date by the U.S. Attorney. The charges were filed as a result of an investigation conducted by the ICC, disclosing a widespread disregard of the regulations on the part of both the motor carriers and the shippers.

In Concord, N.C., it was reported that a 19-year old youth, picked up by sheriff's deputies as he walked along Highway 29 during the morning, had admitted leading police officers on a high-speed chase through two counties the previous night. Cabarrus County sheriff's deputies said that the young man of Hartsville, S.C., had admitted stealing the car he was driving and fleeing from the police officers. The deputies said that he had at first denied being the driver of a 1959 Chevrolet Impala which was wrecked near Concord the previous night. The car had been stolen the previous day from a doctor in Lancaster, S.C. The driver had lost control of the car on a curve and it had spun around in the road and slammed into a bridge. The youth told officers that he had jumped out of the car and hid in a nearby junkyard until the hunt for him had subsided, then built a fire to stay warm until daylight, when he left his hiding place and began walking. He was picked up about 2 miles from the wreck scene. He told deputies that he had served six months in a Federal prison on charges of transporting an automobile across state lines and had spent a year in a South Carolina prison on charges of breaking and entering and grand larceny. He said that he was headed to Pennsylvania when the police had begun chasing him. Deputies said that he would be turned over to Charlotte police and the FBI.

John Kilgo of The News reports that the tables had been turned on a city police officer the previous night, and he had been locked up. He said he wanted to holler for help but was too embarrassed. He had been walking his beat at around midnight when he came upon an open door in an office building and went in to investigate, finding nothing wrong. But when he went to the door to leave, it was locked. He said that somebody had locked the door with a key, but he did not know who it was. He was trapped and could not get out and could not get to a phone. He decided to stand there and wait for a beat man to come around and check. After about 25 minutes, one came around, shone his flashlight through the door and saw the officer. He told him just to get him out and quit talking, after the other officer had asked, "What in the devil are you doing in there?" The only way he could get out was through a second-story window and so a call was put into the Fire Department to send a "little truck" with a ladder. The only trouble, according to the firemen, was that they did not have a little truck with a ladder and so it took a big truck. By the time they got to the location, about ten police officers were standing on the street razzing the locked-up officer. One officer yelled that the captain knew where he was, but he had said "you ain't worth getting down." The trapped officer replied, "That siren on the fire truck was the loudest thing I've ever heard." The policemen would not let the firemen go to the rescue until they got some pictures of their trapped buddy. When a fireman had reached him, he said that he did not know if the trapped officer was normally red-faced or not, but that if he was not, "he sure was embarrassed. I told the boy when he came down that we would help the police out anytime we can except at the policemen-firemen baseball game."

Near Charlotte, it was reported that a man walking down a road in Paw Creek had observed smoke coming out of a house, knocked on the door and nobody answered. Becoming concerned, he had kicked the door open, then saw smoke in the house and called for help. The Moore's Chapel Volunteer Fire Department had answered the alarm and after awhile, County Police and ABC Law Enforcement had joined. The fire was in the house, but a 200-gallon liquor still was the cause of the burning.

In Seattle, it was reported that a youth on Tuesday had told of how he had burgled more than 100 Seattle homes after throwing rocks through the windows, saying, "If I had $100,000, I'd still pull burglaries. It just sort of came natural. I used to like to throw baseballs. I get a big thrill out of it. I like the stealth and the dark. I could easy be 160 places." He had been arrested the prior November and had admitted to 103 burglaries. Because he had no prior record, sentencing had been deferred and he was placed on probation for three years.

In San Francisco, it was reported that two little boys, who had invaded a branch of the world's largest bank with a hold-up note, hoped to be cleared of attempted robbery charges this date. The two boys, nine and 13-years old, on Easter vacation, had simulated a bank holdup on Tuesday, seeking some play-money. The trouble was that officials of the Bank of America, the world's largest bank, had taken them seriously, and a dragnet of 15 police officers and FBI agents had then taken the bank seriously. So when the youngsters returned home from a movie, they were arrested and turned over to the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center on charges of attempted bank robbery. They had cried when the police surrounded them, according to an inspector. The 13-year old's mother said, "The boys meant no harm, although they shouldn't have done it. Danny has never been in any trouble. He hasn't even been absent from school without my knowing of it. I gave him a dollar to go to the movie." En route to the movie, the boys had stopped at the bank in the Mission District, which had issued some play-money as a promotional gimmick, and the boys said that they had lost theirs and wanted more. The younger of the two, cleanly dressed in a sweater, jeans and tennis shoes, marched to the teller's window and placed a slip of paper on the counter which said, in the older boy's handwriting, "Put $100 in sack or we'll blow up the bank." The older boy had signed it. The teller asked the younger who had given him the note and he fidgeted and pointed to his buddy. The teller scolded them and said, "Get out of here." The older boy said that he told her it was a joke and apologized, and the boys then laughed. The teller reported the incident to the branch manager, who called the police and they traced the older boy's home address through school records. The mother of the boy said that three policemen had barged into the house while she was still out shopping and her son had not gotten home yet, but a guest was present who said that the officers were very rude, searched the house, but did not show the guest any papers. She said that when they got her son and the other boy, they were scared stiff and her son kept telling her, "Mama, they don't believe me and we're telling the truth." The younger boy's father, a service station employee, said that his son, one of six children, was "full of mischief" but had not been in any real trouble, and he said he planned to discipline him regardless of what juvenile authorities did. Beat the little robber within an inch of his life, and he'll never think about doing any such prank as that again. String him up by his neck, and place him on a little wobbly chair for six hours. That'll cure him.

In Memphis, Tenn., it was reported that a 19-year old student and his 69-year old bride had spent their first day at home the previous day fending off demands of the bride's children that they end their marriage. They said that they had been wed on Monday in Covington, Tenn., by a county judge and intended to stay wed. The bride said that she had told her children that she had already promised "before God and witnesses" to stand by her husband always and would. They had met about a year earlier when the man, studying accounting at a business school, had rented a room from his future wife. He said, "I was lost within the world and had no one to care. She looked to me to be the same." The woman, a widow of 19 years, said that she had first felt "very sympathetic to him. And later we fell in love. We tried to fight it. He moved out for a month. And then we gave in." She declined to identify her son and daughter, both of whom were married, saying that her son was in his mid-thirties and her daughter, about 40. She said, "They told me they're afraid of all the humiliation and he thinks he'll lose his position."

In Newport, Ky., it was reported that a man had put a new roof on his house on Tuesday, then fired up his stove and relaxed. Soon, the roof was ablaze and his home full of smoke. Firefighters had saved part of the roof and said that the trouble was that the man had built the roof right over the chimney.

On the editorial page, "Horsecar Government Isn't Good Enough" indicates that one trial balloon launched by Mecklenburg's legislative delegation to the Legislature during the week had gone straight into the hearts of many taxpayers, it being the suggestion that a county manager plan of administration would improve governmental efficiency.