Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 21, 1959

Mash Notes and Comment     "Mr. Paul Coates, dear friend:     "About 2 1/2 months ago you called me at 12 a.m. and asked me if I could tell you who was President in 1875.     "I didn't know and I didn't win the stove.  I'm not too sorry because I don't like stoves.     "You told me, however, that I would get some prize but for the life of me, I can't remember what it was.  So far I haven't got anything from you.     "My neighbors claim that I never heard from you, so please answer this to straighten things out." (signed) Mrs. Theresa Herron, Glen Ellen, Calif.    --It wasn't me who called you at 12 a.m.  I know who was President in 1875. ::     "Dear Paul,     "I feel silly writing this letter, but the boss is out and I've got nothing else to do so why not?     "I'm a secretary with a problem.  A funny problem, maybe, but it's beginning to get to me.  It's about -  you suggested it -- my BOSS.     "He's one of these practical jokers.  Tacks on my chair.  That kind of thing.     "One time he pinned a sign on the back of my coat and I didn't discover it until I got back to my apartment.  It said, 'Danger Explosives,' and boy did he get a kick out of razzing me on that one. Between the Cheese and Ham     "I've been putting up with this for about two years now, so the other day when he sent me out for his sandwich, I decided to get even.  I typed on a little slip of paper, 'Help! I'm locked in the icebox,' and stuck it in his sandwich between the cheese and the ham.      "From my desk I can watch him eating, and I kept waiting for him to find it to watch his expression, but he didn't.  He ate it!     "Everyday for  a week I kept putting the same note in but the jerk kept eating them.  Finally, I wrote it on a piece of cardboard to be sure that he'd find it.     "He ate that one, too!     "Now I can't help laughing when he's eating and he keeps calling out to me what am I laughing about?  Then I get hysterical.  Naturally, I can't tell him because he's eaten so many notes now if he gets sick he'd blame me. Time for a Change     "I think I better start job hunting.  Every time I look at him I break out in giggles.      "Incidentally, I type 60 words a minute, take Gregg shorthand like a whiz and have a VERY presentable appearance.  If your secretary is worn out, why not give me a call????" (signed) Mitzi, L.A.     --I would, Mitzi, but cardboard repeats on me. ::     (Press Release) "Ask and ye shall receive!!!     "Ira Cook, KMPC's genial disc jockey, found out that there is more to this saying than meets the eye.      "Last week Cook lamented on the air that one of the toughest chores he is faced with daily is finding a pen to sign the KMPC log.     "He asked his listeners to send him a pen if they might have  a spare around their desks.     "To his amazement, Ira received more than 1,500 pens since his request.     "Largest shipment of more than 200 came from Standard Brands, Inc.     "Ira is wondering now if he asked for  a trip to the moon whether one of his listeners would come up with it." (signed) Publicity Dept.,KMPC, Hollywood.    --I can't swing the moon, Ira, but I'll give you bus fare out of town.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 20, 1959

Drama in Housewife's Life Is Fraught With     I've come to the labored conclusion that housewives lead more interesting lives than career girls.     This, I've done without benefit of polls or surveys.  In fact, I've even ignored those subtle inferences in the Kinsey report.     It's strictly my own, personal conclusion.  I reached it myself.     I'm probably dead wrong, but, the way I see it, it's better to come up with a wrong conclusion than to just sit around and come up with no conclusion at all.     You know the old saying, idle minds gather no moss.     But I digress.     My conclusion (which in case you got here late, is that housewives lead more interesting lives than career girls) is based on years of observation as a professional journalist.      We journalists come in frequent contact with both groups.  It's part of our job.  It's as much a detail of our routine as sharpening our pencils every night before closing our roll-top desks, or picking the brown crust off our paste pots every morning.     My conclusion is that, over the long run, housewives come up with more interesting stories than career girls.     A career girl, for example, has never called me up with an exclusive about a cat stuck in a tree.  Yet, some housewives witness this thrilling news event practically daily.     And take hoses that burrow themselves into the ground.  Tipsters on those stories are invariably housewives.     I could go on, but I'm tiered of the subject.      Instead, I'll tell you what's been happening, over a period of 10 years, to an Inglewood housewife who contacted me with her story the other day.     I'm not using her real name.  She requested that I omit it because it would be embarrassing to her.  Actually, it could ruin her reputation.  You know how neighbors gossip and build these things out of proportion.     To protect her identity, I'll call her Mrs. Small.  (Which is a good clue.  In fact, it's about as close  to her real name as I can get without blurting it out.)     On a brisk November morning 10 years ago, Mrs. Small stepped outside her front door to pick up the morning's mail and found, among the usual trash one finds in one's mailbox, a copy of Household magazine.      She had never subscribed to the magazine; yet it was addressed to her name.  She made no inquiry that month, but after receiving the December and January issues, she sat down and wrote the magazine a letter stating that she had never subscribed to it, and had no intention of paying for it.     No answer came.  Just the magazine, regularly, every month.     After a year, she wrote another letter.  Still no answer.     Two years passed.  The magazine kept coming.  She wrote a third letter.  Again, she received no reply.     She waited two more years after that for the magazine to stop, but it didn't.  So she dispatched Letter No. 4, reiterating that she never subscribed.     Still, no answer.     But Household came as regularly as the gas bill.  Five years, six, seven, eight, nine.  Long before, she had decided that it was pointless to write any more protests.     Then, on Jan. 21 of this year, she received a letter from Curtis Circulation Co., which handles the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal and other magazines. The Suspense Is Terrific     "Dear Reader," it began.  "As you probably know, Household magazine ceased publication with the November issue.  By special arrangement with the publisher and as a service to you, we have agreed to fill out the unexpired portion of your subscription with a Curtis magazine . . . "     Given the choice of four magazines, Mrs. Small didn't hesitate.  She selected the Ladies' Home Journal.     Just last month -- nine months after she sent in the card -- she received her first copy.  And she notes by the addressograph slip on the cover that her "subscription" will finally run out in July of 1960.     Find me a career girl with a story to top that one and I'll eat my battered felt hat.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 19, 1959

Saga of a Guy Who Flipped From Poky     "I walk alone," the voice on the phone told me, more as an apology than as a boast.  "With me, it's habit.  I guess I never learned any other way."     The voice was a man's and a drawl.  It continued:  "Funny I should be calling somebody like you for help after all these years of going it alone."     The time was about 3:45, yesterday afternoon.     "What do you need?" I asked.     "I need-" he started, and stopped.  "Is this phone tapped?"     "No."     "You won't trace it, or call anybody, until I'm through talking?"     "No."     "I'll trust you," the man said.  Then, for a long minute, he said nothing.  Finally, he began again.  "I just flipped.  That's the only way to explain it."     "Explain what?"      "Why I broke out of jail.  It was about eight o'clock, after dinner, and I was just sitting there on my bunk and I started thinking about my kid.  I just flipped."     Now the conversation was coming easy.      "He's three, and I got this weird idea that he's run out in the street and be hit by a car.  Silly things.  Things like that were going through my mind."     "How did you escape?" I asked.     "Domestic troubles," he continued, ignoring the question.  "When my wife came to visit me, I told her to get a divorce.  It would be better for the kid -- and now we've got another one, a baby girl -- if he never remembered me.     "That's what I told her.  I told her I was no good.  That's what happens to me sometimes.  I get off on a negative kick."     "What were you doing time for?" I said.     There was a sigh.  "This'll get you.  Robbery, second degree.  They gave ma  a year.  With good time, I could have been out in March.  So I ran away.     "I ran straight home and saw the kid.  I was afraid he would have forgotten me, but he didn't.  I wasn't there thirty minutes when he turned to his mother and said, 'This is Daddy.' " The caller continued to unwind.  He was 33, he said.  He'd had one felony conviction for first degree robbery.  He got five-to-life for it.  He came out in April of '55, and not too long afterwards, he married.      "I got a good job.  I worked," he said.  "I thought everything was going to be all right.  Then I goofed.     "It was my fault.  It's been my fault all along.  Like this escape.  They trusted me, made me a trusty.  So I took off."     I asked him from where.     "Montrose substation.  My kid -- he talks real good now.  When I saw him the last time, he barely talked."     "What's your name?" I asked.     He answered without a hesitation.  "Elias Smith.  Elias like the Biblical Elias.  Elias Smith Jr."     "What are you going to do?"     This time, he paused.  "I wish I knew what they're going to do with me."     "You're ready to go back?" I pressed him slightly.     "It's one-to-ten years for escape," he sighed.  "When I left my wife last Monday, I told her I'd turn myself in.  I promised.  And she said she'd wait for me.  That was all I wanted to hear.     "I started to turn myself in, but I got confused.  Now it's Wednesday and I'm still confused.  You're not tracing this call, are you?" he asked again. He Got Confused         "No," I assured him.     "All right," he said doubtfully.  He told me where he was calling from.  "Now," he added, "two favors.  You call them for me, would you?  And give me 10 minutes for  a cup of coffee."     I waited 10 minutes, then called.     Half an hour later, a sheriff's deputy called me back to report that Elias Smith Jr. was a man of his word.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 18, 1959

As Senators Write to Indignant Taxpayers     While we're all gathered here together, in this smoke-filled room, I'd like to say a few words in behalf of politicians.     They are our friends.  Behind that stodgy facade that they put up, they've all got hearts as big as Daddy Warbucks'.     And what they do, they do in our best interests.     I am prepared, I might add, to give you an example.     You remember, a couple of months ago, when Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois drafted a resolution calling for a government expenditure of $200,000 to permit himself and his 99 colleagues to fly to Waikiki to welcome Hawaii into our union of states?     The resolution was drawn up shortly after Alaska, which is cold, slipped quietly into the union.  And it was met, I'm told, with some resounding cheers in the upper house before it was drowned out by a chorus of taxpayer screams.     Well, now, at last, I can tell you the story behind the proposal.  I have it from an indignant taxpayer who was among those who wrote their protests  to Washington.     He wrote to Sen. Dirksen, Clair Engle and Thomas Kuchel.     Dirksen replied, in part:     "Nothing delighted me so much as to observe in every section of the country that a proposal to have the entire Senate attend the Hawaiian inaugural ceremonies at public expense struck so deeply into the hearts of people and offended their basic feeling with respect to governmental extravagance and the need for economy.     "I should point out that when the question was asked of me by the press, I said that I presumed every senator 'wanted' to go to Hawaii, but as you well know, 'wanting' to go and 'getting' to go is quite another matter . . .     "I reaffirm, however, my delight that there is an aroused feeling in the country with respect to spending.      "As for the record, I take some real pride in the record which the Republican minority made in the Senate in resisting huge authorizations for the expenditure of money and heavy appropriations.     "This aggressive effort on the part of the minority plus the determination of the president to hold the budget line plus the clear evidence of public interest all joined to give us a good record in this field."     I would have suspected that the junket was a Democratic plot if I hadn't seen Sen. Engle's answer, too:     "Thank you for your letter regarding the proposal of Sen. Dirksen . . .     "I agree that this suggestion is ridiculous; and if it had come to a vote, you may be sure that I would have voted against it.  It is not improper to send a small delegation . . . on this great occasion;  but to send the entire delegation is, of course, preposterous."     California's Republican senator, Tom Kuchel, had still another explanation:     "I fully agree with you that it would be an abuse of the public trust and a flagrant waste of public funds for either branch of the Congress to arrange a so-called junket for its entire membership . . .     "It is unfortunate that a jocular remark about a possible trip to Hawaii was misunderstood and subsequently treated seriously by a certain segment of the press . . .     "You may rest assured that I would never be a party to such an extravagance." Statesmanlike Stuff     So now we know.  Either:     1 -- Sen. Dirksen -- who's been battling those spendthrift Democrats for years --  was just testing us taxpayers to see if we were alert;     2 -- If those spendthrift Republicans had gotten it to the floor, the Democrats would have voted it down; or:         3 -- It was just a big joke.    I get the feeling that if the indignant taxpayer taxpayer had written 97 more letters to our elected representatives, all would have expressed violent opposition to such a prodigal scheme, no matter what they might have said before.     It's like I told you at the start.  Politicians are our friends.  Especially if we're watching them.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov, 17, 1959

Poet in the Poky Has Samson Sort of Woes     Jerry Baker, the promising young coffee-house poet, appeared in my office yesterday afternoon, shortly after being released from Lincoln Heights jail.     He sat down, gazed fondly at an open pack of cigarettes on my desk, and informed me, "You smoke my brand."     I offered him one.  He took it, thanking me.     "I'm here," he said, "because I'm told you're a fair man.  You have  a good reputation.  You come very highly recommended."     Borrowing a match, he lit his cigarette.     "In fact," he continued, "not one, but two of my cellmates recommended you as the man to see."     "About what?" I asked.     Baker frowned.  "About my hair, but I'm getting to that.  I hitchhiked here, you see.  I made money by reading my poetry in coffee houses along the way.  Cleveland, Houston.  I'm from Brooklyn.  That's in New York."     "I'm from back East myself," I told him.  "I've heard of it."     "Good," he replied.  "Now, last Wednesday I was hitchhiking on Sunset on my way to the Unicorn.  I had my wood flute and my poetry with me, when the two policemen came along in a patrol car.     "At first, I thought they were going to let me go because I only had one foot in the street.  The other foot was legal.  On the sidewalk.  But they ran a make on me and discovered there was this warrant out from the last time I was here.  A year and a half ago.  For hitchhiking on the freeway.      "So," Baker shrugged, "they arrested me.  It was all fair and legal.  They were very nice about it.  They even asked me to recite some of my poems, but I didn't because -- you know, they bugged me.     "Later on, " he added, "I did play a few notes on my flute for the jailer.  Anyway, it was $25 or five days, and not having the $25, I took the five days."     "You mentioned," I interrupted, "something about your hair."     "Yes," he sighed.  "Look at it."     It was sort of a dark blond, trimly out, parted on the left.     "I see it," I said.      Baker jumped to his feet.  "No you don't!" he shouted.  "They cut it off this morning.  All the hair I'd been growing since June.      "And for good measure," he added, collapsing back into his chair, "they stole my goatee."     "Who?" I demanded.  "Who did?"     "Who else?" he cried:  "The cops.  At five o'clock this morning, this cop grabbed me out of my cell and said, 'We're going to the barbershop, sonny.'     "I said, 'No.  I want my hair.  You can't have it.'     "When we got to the barbershop, I grabbed the door and wouldn't let go, so he got me in an arm lock.  I kept protesting.  I guess I tore his shirt, so he bounced my head on the floor."     Having to relive the experience obviously was an ordeal for the poet.  He grabbed another one of my cigarettes.      "This policeman put me in the barber chair," he continued, "and the barber told me, 'Sit still and I'll give you a nice, clean haircut.  You wiggle and I ain't guaranteeing nothing.'     "I sat still and let them violate every civil right I was born with.  When the barber finished, the policeman told him, 'The goatee.  That goes, too.'  And it did." I Got a Naked Chin     Baker stood up again. "It was my personality," he sighed.  "They took my whole personality.  I'd be ashamed to go into a coffee house now.  I'd feel self-conscious."     "What are you going to do now?" I asked.     "What can I do?" he snapped.  "Nothing! Until I grow my hair back.     "Then," he added, "I'm going to blow this town.  You know?  It bugs me."

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 16, 1959

Search for Better Brand of Justice     Erle Stanley Gardner, you either like or dislike.     He's easy to categorize.     If you don't like him, he's a troublemaker, a rebel who gets his kicks by destroying the public's illusions concerning the integrity and intelligence of our district attorneys and police.     As author of more than 100 Perry Mason mystery novels, he's continually belittling these public servants.  His man Mason always shows them up.     As a private citizen, Gardner founded the now-famous Court of Last Resort, which, in freeing dozens of innocent men from prison, has proved in fact that our system of justice isn't infallible.     (And when you prove, time after time, that certain prosecutors and police ruined innocent men's lives in their over-zealousness, you're not about to win any popularity contests about law enforcement officials.)     If you like Gardner, he's the champion of the underdog, unafraid to step on anybody's toes.      The other day, however, I sat down with Gardner for a talk -- and walked away an hour later with a new definition of the man.     "Frankly," he told me, launching into one of his favorite subjects, "the basic problem facing law enforcement today is one of public relations.     "People get fed up seeing law enforcement authorities, and particularly prosecutors, take technical advantage of the laws.  Laws," he explained, "with usually severe penalties, enacted to curb a usual serious crime situation -- but they apply them to much lesser situations."     Gardner cited the Mann White Slavery Act.     "Years ago," he said, "people became fed up with the pimps and panderers who seduced young girls and forced them into prostitution.     "They passed the Mann Act.     "What happened after that was that a couple of young men took some women, who were ready, willing and able, on a train from Sacramento to Reno.  It was the type of weekend trip that is indulged in by young people from time to time and place to place everywhere -- with the single exception that they crossed a state line.     "To the extent that the people had in mind when they passed the law, there was no white slavery involved, but a prosecuting attorney promptly arrested them as white slavers."     Gardner also mentioned  a case in which an ordinary auto theft by a bunch of winos on a New Year's Eve was tortured into a kidnapping because the car's owner was passed out drunk on the back seat.     Gardner's dislike of "eager beaver" prosecutors -- D.A.'s who measure their personal success by number of convictions rather than whether they feel justice was done- is passionate.     But he's equally firm in his defense of district attorneys who try to live their role as representatives of the people with honor.     "I know one district attorney who committed political suicide by refusing to prosecute a man he felt was innocent," he said.     "Unless we give law enforcement authorities better tools with which to work," he said, "their hands are tied.  They're licked before they start. Element of Distrust     "Yet the legislatures won't give them the tools because they distrust what law enforcement will do with those tools.     "We need new laws to cope with modern conditions, but the people don't trust the prosecutors to apply them properly.     "The fundamental problem today," Erle Stanley Gardner concluded, "is how the people themselves feel toward prosecutors and toward police."     Gardner is neither a rebel nor a champion of the underdog.  He's merely a man in search of a better brand of "justice for all."

Voices – Evelyn Rudie

Above, Evelyn Rudie, 9, who played Eloise on TV, makes the front page of the Mirror with a story about vanishing from home to go see Mamie Eisenhower.

Paul Coates’ Nov. 10, 1959, column (“Evelyn Is a Real Old Hand at Drum Beating”) brought a response from Rudie, who is now co-artistic director at the Santa Monica Playhouse: Evelyn Rudie here. Wow - what a blast from the past. But you know - Leo was wrong. Although he was a good friend of mine, he was also notorious for getting himself in the midst of exaggerated gossip. I never asked him to be my Valentine. True, I sent lots of Valentine's (and St. Patrick’s Day cards, and Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving and Christmas) - everybody did that in those days. You bought little boxes of holiday notes, passed them out to everyone in your class, teachers, friends, relatives. But when I was six, and seven, and eight, my heart truly belonged to Paul Coates and in 1959 he was the only person I actually asked to be my Valentine. Paul - if you're up there looking down, or down there, looking up, I hope you hear that. :)  And Leo, shame on you for making me out to be a “loose” woman at age 7.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 14, 1959

Mash Notes and Comment     "Dear Mr. Coates:     "Humorous though your column about taking your wife with you to Japan was, I just wanted you to know that it did the hearts of many women good to have you come right out and say you are glad your American wife is as she is, and not the servile Oriental type.     "We get so much silly drivel these days by men who want all the good things this modern world offers, yet evidently want wives of a bygone era, those 'dedicated to the needs of men.'     "Thank goodness the best and smartest young men recognize there is much more to life and to marriage than simply having a woman to wait upon them.     "Good for you.  You're a fine writer.  It was good to see a man write an honest column like that."  (signed) Ruth King, Los Angeles.     -That was no man.  That was my wife. ::      (Press Release)  "It is said by the working psychiatric force that there is a very thin line bordering the genius from the moron.     "It too follows in the field of comedy -- a microscopic boundary between the humorist as opposed to the ham hock.  But Tom Lehrer is a wit one cannot serve on rye.     "He is the master of the absurd, and the caustic.  At gatherings, he usually is referred to in chic conversation as the 'Elvis Presley of the Avante Garde,' and just as handsome.     "Certainly no sideburns, but a faint Listerine scent about him that makes him wonderful to be near.     "And Tom Lehrer is all man -- never swears, always tells the truth.     "Quite a strange phenomenon for a gentleman in the theater, one must admit.     "Tom Lehrer and I first met through his record.  He recorded satirical ditties while teaching at Harvard.  Purpose of this was to make a little pin money to buy gas for his car.     "I wore the grooves out in learning by heart his 'Masochism Tango,' 'When You Are Old and Gray' and the lifting 'Poisoning in the Park' -- and sang them constantly in the shower.     "Seven years later, we met.     "I told Tom my feelings and he understood -- for 200,000 other girls had worn out their records, too.     "Having a competitive spirit, I decided to woo him.     "One day, we spoke of marriage.     "Tom told me with kindness that it was out of the question, for we weren't compatible . . . " (signed) Audrey P. Franklyn, Public Relations, Hollywood.     --Those Listerine-users!  They turn their nose up at everything. ::     (Press Release)  "Sen. John F. Kennedy is a man with an enormous head and a small body.     "At least, that's the way Kennedy's pretty wife, Jacqueline, says he would appear if she were drawing a picture of him.     " 'He's much more serious than I thought he was before I married him,' says Mrs. Kennedy in an article in the current Look magazine.     " 'He looks young,' she adds, 'but he's never been a boy.  After I got to know him, I went out and took a course in American history.' " (signed) Public Relations Dept., Look Magazine, New York.     -Nothing wrong with his head, Mrs. Kennedy.  Give him a decent haircut and he'd look like the rest of us.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 13, 1959

Hucksters of Horror Tell How to Succeed     I listened in on a trilogy of success stories this week.     They were about three local-boys-who-made-good.  Their ages averaged 25.  Each was married, with two to four children.  None had any special educational advantages.  In fact, two never finished high school.     Yet, today, they're earning between $25,000 and $50,000 a year apiece.  Tax free.     They live in good neighborhoods, drive good cars, wear good clothes.  Their neighbors respect them, and apparently the police do, too.  Because none of them has so much as one arrest to mar his record.     This, to them, is vital.    Because if they were picked up, booked or even known, it would probably mean the end of their very flourishing businesses.     They are, by trade, heroin dealers.  They're the dope racket's middlemen.     They buy a few ounces of H at a time, cut it, and sell it to pushers at a fantastic profit.     Strangely, I'm told that the men don't even know each other.       Less strange is the fact that none of them has ever taken a fix.  They -- like most dealers -- are in the game strictly for the big dollar.  Yet they all admitted, in the fantastic interviews which I heard, that in the table of organization of their trade they were strictly lower income bracket salesmen.     How I heard the interviews, or who conducted them, I can't say.  Obviously and unfortunately, the interviewees didn't risk jeopardizing their freedom.  They would never have opened their mouths unless they were positive that what they said couldn't be used against them.     The stories, if true -- and, under the circumstances, I have every reason to believe them -- serve as a fantastic indictment against the system we have of policing narcotics out of our society.       The fact that each has been operating for so long (from 2 1/2 to 5 years each) without once being molested by a law enforcement agency;  the fact that they are men of not especially high intelligence or cunning;  the fact that each just kind of "stumbled" into the business;  and the very fact that they're so cocky that they  would permit the interviews -- it all totals up to one helluva shocking commentary on the efficiency, or the sincerity, of society's so-called  drive to rid itself of a major evil.     I wonder out loud how these men can possibly still be operating today.     Most of the strikingly similar stories they told dealt with the facility of their operations, and the minimum risks involved in buying and selling their product.  Getting it here or just across the border was equally simple, they said.     And even if they were caught, they added, they'd only get three or four years in prison under existing law.  After all, they'd be first offenders.     The ratio between profit and penalty made the risk worth taking, easily.     "I'd still get out of the joint a young man -- and a rich one," one dealer explained.     All talked about "retirement."  None lived too ostentatiously.  That wouldn't be smart.  Each had a front "occupation," although none worked.  Each mentioned that probably, some day, he'd take his fat bundle of savings and go into some legitimate business.     One said:  "If they'd passed the Dills' Bill (a bill killed in committee by the state legislature this which would have stiffened narcotics penalties considerably), I think I'd have gotten out right then."     But he added that the "void" left by him would be filled quickly -- high jail penalties or not -- so long as there was so much money to be made so easily. One Must Be Ethical    Pulling out, all agreed, would be easy, just so long as they played it level with their business connections when they left.  Just so long as there was no heat immediately afterwards -- anything to point the finger at them  as informers.     In my days of reporting, I've talked to a lot of addicts and peddlers.  They were small men, emotional, confused, hating themselves for what heroin made them do.     But never before had I heard the cold businessman, who shrugs off his participation in the most vicious of all rackets with the rationalization, "If I wasn't dealing it out, somebody else would be."     It was a lesson.

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 12, 1959

The Mirror follows the Lillian Lenorak story. Below, Paul Weeks profiles suspect Tord Ove Zeppen-Field. This Mother Wonders Why Her Son Died     Many eyes -- including those of some U.S. senators in town for public hearings this week -- see the juvenile delinquent.     But somehow, the focus, the image, is never the same.     To the policeman, the juvenile delinquent isn't just a bad boy, or a bad girl.  They are potentially dangerous criminals.  A boy's age -- the fact that he's not yet 18 -- doesn't make him any less dangerous.  Experience has taught the policeman that an immature punk, paired with a loaded gun, is as deadly an enemy as he can face.     Through the eyes of a probation officer, a juvenile delinquent is a kid who's made a mistake, or two, or more.  He's an anti-social, but not beyond redemption.  The probation officer's job is to straighten the kid out and keep him straight.  He's got to see him in a kindly light.      Other people see the juvenile delinquent in other shades of vision.     The judge, the neighbors, the "nice" kid who has to take the long way home from school to avoid being beaten up by a gang, the j.d.'s parents ("He's really a good boy."), the preacher, the rabbi, the father -- each has his own definition.      Today, I'm going to give you another definition -- as applied by a housewife whose concern is a tragic one.     Her name is Mrs. Lembersky.  She live son L.A.'s east side.     On Oct. 17 of this year, her 15-year-old son, Larry, left the house at 6 p.m. to attend a church bazaar seven blocks away.     Mrs. Lembersky, and some other people I've talked with since that day, described Larry as a very popular, real fine kid.      He'd been a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, an honor student at Hollenbeck Junior High, and was, at the same time he walked out the front door that evening, a member of the "B" football squad at Roosevelt High School.     At the bazaar, when he and a friend were playing a dart game, a 14-year-old kid approached them and said that somebody wanted to see them outside.     The "somebody" turned out to be nearly a dozen members of the Little Eastside gang.  One of the gang's members, it turned out, had taken Larry's joking comment about a "squeaky bicycle" (made more than a month before) as a personal insult.     Larry and his friend walked innocently outside.  They were encircled, jumped, slugged, kicked.  As they fought their way through the circle and started to run, Gilbert Roque, 17, plunged a 7-inch knife into Larry's heart and killed him.     "Gilbert Roque killed my son," Mrs. Lembersky told me yesterday.  "He's a murderer.  A cold-blooded murderer."     "But you watch," she said, "He'll be treated like just another juvenile delinquent.  He'll be back on the streets in a year or two."      Gilbert Roque's story reportedly is that he'd been threatened with a shotgun in the face the week before by a rival gang.  He was just a bystander the night he killed Larry Lembersky .  He carried the knife for "self-defense," and when he saw Larry and his friend running toward him, he thought they were after him and he used the knife for "protection."     The dead boy's mother told me: "After my son fell down, his friend rushed back and bent over him.  Then the same boy knifed him in the back."     "Is that self-defense?" she asked.     In panic and pain, Mrs. Lembersky called Gilbert Roque's mother after the killing. Why, Why, Why?     "Why," she demanded, "did your son kill my son?"     Mrs. Lembersky told me: "The boys mother said she didn't know why.  She said that her son was  a good boy."     "He's not a good boy, Mr. Coates," Mrs. Lembersky cried.  "Good boys don't murder people."     Juvenile delinquents.  Juvenile killers.  I hope the senators come up with some answers, but optimistic I'm not.