The Press: The Case of Silas Rogers

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End of the Trail. By last month, the only damaging bit of testimony left was that a coat found in the stolen car belonged to Silas Rogers. When an Argosy legman found and questioned the man who had given the testimony, the witness changed his story: on second thought, said he, Rogers' coat was brown, whereas the one found in the car was blue. Last week, just two days before Christmas, Governor Battle signed a pardon, and Silas Rogers, after nine years behind bars, stepped from the Virginia State Penitentiary a free man. Wrote Editor Kilpatrick: "It is, for this newspaper, the end of a long trail—a trail at once heart-warming and heart-breaking." Silas Rogers, standing in a blue suit which he had made himself in the prison tailor shop for the occasion, looked up at a dull winter sky and said: "I've never seen it so beautiful."