CRIME: The Proper Punishment

Introduced in the San Diego trial of Amateur Photographer Harvey Glatman last week were 22 pictures that had technical polish, slight originality of composition, and almost no precedent in the grim annals of criminal evidence. They were studies of three women bound with sash cord at ankles, knees and arms. As each one faced the Schneider Xenar f: 3.5 lens of Glatman’s Rolleicord, she was minutes away from murder.

A 31-year-old TV repairman by day and shutterbug by night, Glatman was picked up last October. His arrest was accidental; a 28-year-old model, lured like earlier victims by Glatman’s pose-for-pay pitch, struggled free when he attacked her in a car off the Santa Ana Freeway, held him at bay with his own pistol until a state highway patrolman appeared. To police, the pint-sized ex-convict glibly announced he had strangled three other women, led police to the decomposed bodies of two of them on a sun-bleached strip of desert southeast of Los Angeles. He volunteered the 22 pictures, explained proudly how he settled on fine-grain Panatomic-X film for black-and-whites, processed the Anscochrome color transparencies himself.

Last week, after Glatman pleaded guilty and waived a jury trial, grim-faced Judge John Hewicker studied the photographs and other evidence, sentenced the photographer to San Quentin’s gas chamber. Said the court: “There are some crimes so revolting that the only proper punishment is the death penalty.” Said unconcerned Shutterbug Glatman: “I think my actions justify that. I knew this is the way it would be.”