CRIME: Give It to Me

As a boy in Brooklyn, mop-haired, zoot-suited Barry Jacobs had every opportunity to get sharpened up. His father, a bail bondsman, not only made a lucrative career out of springing prostitutes for onetime Crime King “Lucky” Luciano, but turned state’s evidence when the roof fell in and got off without a bruise. Barry, however, was both stupid and unlucky. He had hardly started a career as a holdup man at the age of 16 before he was nabbed by the cops. At 18 he found himself doing time in a reformatory. Last week, out on parole and 20, he swaggered out to try again.

He called on one John Green, a young Negro he had known in prison, “bought” a .22 pistol from him for $20, and invited Green along because he had “a good job setup in The Bronx.” On the way, they prowled a dark Greenwich Village street, stuck up a frightened couple and stole $12. But by 12:30, as he led Green aimlessly around The Bronx, it became embarrassingly evident that he hadn’t really planned a big robbery at all.

Just then, however, an automobile stopped and was parked near the shadows in which Jacobs and Green were loitering. A woman got out of it and headed for a nearby house. The driver, a middle-aged man, stayed behind to lock the automobile’s doors. Jacobs muttered, “This is it.” He sidled up to the man, poked him in the ribs with the pistol and ordered him to get back behind the wheel. The victim, a warehouse supervisor named Alfred McCullaugh, obeyed without a word. Green climbed in beside him. The pistolwaving Jacobs got into the back seat.

Then there were sudden complications. McCullaugh’s son-in-law, 22-year-old William Hopkins, had driven up with his wife in another automobile. He ran across the pavement yelling, “What’s the matter, Pop?” Jacobs ordered the son-in-law into the back seat. But before McCullaugh could start the car, the two wives came running up. One saw the pistol and screamed.

Jacobs began shooting. He put two bullets in Hopkins, who leaped out, cried “Please help me!” staggered up on a nearby porch and fell dead. He shot a hole through McCullaugh’s right ear. He fired fruitlessly at the women. Green ran. Jacobs leaped out, dropped the gun and sprinted wildly down the street. The police found him only half an hour later, hiding on a nearby roof. He confessed, ratted on his pal Green and cried dramatically: “If you’ve got me, give it to me. I don’t care if I burn anyhow.” The cops, who had listened to Hopkins’ sobbing wife and brokenhearted mother, set out to do their best to accommodate him.