Education: Hideout

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Sixty-five miles from Manhattan, in northwestern New Jersey, stands Blair Academy where some 300 boys are preparing for college. Although "an essential feature of the school is its spirit of democracy," even the most broadminded of Blair boys were dismayed, last week, to find that they had been eating, sleeping, studying and playing with a murderer.

Three months ago. young Alphonso Mires (alias Meyers, alias Mieri), 19-year-old son of a Manhattan greengrocer, set out to hold up a cigar store. With several companions he bound the clerk, shooed a patron into a telephone booth, rifled the till. All was going nicely when a negro entered the store. The bewildered intruder was ordered out of the way, then shot down. Alphonso Mires's confreres said he did it.

Seeking a refuge, Mires shrewdly chose inconspicuous Blair Academy, which he entered with proper credentials from his high school. Headmasters of other U. S schools, surveying their own enrolments last week, all felt sure that their schools were not being used as hideouts by ingenious young criminals.