The Press: The Face Is Familiar

Leafing through the St. Paul Dispatch last fortnight, Jimmy Lewis, 14, caught his breath as he came upon two rogues'-gallery photographs of a tough-looking customer. The story with the pictures, one of a series' on public enemies by Hearst's International News Service, identified the man as William Raymond Nesbit, 50, Iowa jewel thief, murderer-by-dynamite and escaped convict. Jimmy thought the face was familiar; it looked like "Ray," a man who was living in a cave in a park not ten minutes from St. Paul's downtown.

Jimmy and five of his pals went to Indian Mounds Park and tiptoed up to the cave. Ray was nowhere in sight, but smoke was curling out of the cave's chimney. Boldly, the boys dropped some snow down the chimney to make the fire smoke and goad Ray into showing his face. When he did, Jimmy Lewis and his men took one good look and ran.

A few minutes later, a squad car answered their frenzied telephone summons. Two cops took their stand outside the cave entrance and called to Ray to come out with his hands up. He surrendered meekly, admitted he was Nesbit, sought by the FBI since 1946. In his pocket the cops found a clipping of the Dispatch story that had trapped him.

Last week, tall, solemn Jimmy Lewis and his chief lieutenant, wisecracking little Jimmy Radeck, 13, flew to the capital at the expense of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch (combined circ. 207,784) to get a pat on the back from G-Man J. Edgar Hoover himself.

Emboldened by the Nesbit story's success, I.N.S. tried to claim credit for the capture of another escaped convict on the "ten most wanted" list last week. He was Orba Elmer Jackson, 43, who had been serving a 25-year term for robbing a Missouri post office and brutally beating up the postmaster. When Jackson was captured on an Oregon ranch after an I.N.S. story about him appeared in the Portland Oregonian (circ. 214,916), I.N.S. gave itself a cross-country pat on the back and the Portland paper crowed: OREGONIAN STORY AID TO CAPTURE. The fact: the tip that led to Jackson's capture came to the FBI four days before the I.N.S. story appeared in the Oregonian.