A Jailhouse Denunciation
A man awaiting trial for robbery tells a reporter that the authorities arrested the wrong person and the real mastermind is still free.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In talking to a reporter yesterday afternoon at the county jail, "Scotty" Sharp, who is waiting trial on the charge of "holding up" Frank Bosano, declared that Frank Morrell, who was with Bosano at the time the job was done, planned the whole affair, and that Hugh, alias Teddy Boyle, whom the police had in confinement nine days before turning him loose, had nothing to do with the affair at all. He declares that the detective who arrested him lied to him. Sharp claims he was destitute and agreed to the robbery when Morrell proposed it. He describes a failed attempt to get a cut of the $150 he expected, only ending up with $3.75 and a watch, which he later returned to Morrell in anger. Sharp complains that he is now living like a caged monkey while the man who put up the job walks the streets a free man.
“I was desperate, and agreed. He was to get him to go out near the big rock on Madison street, where a friend was living in retirement.”
Jailhouse interviews were a common feature of 19th-century crime reporting, designed to provide a gritty, first-person perspective on the failings of the local police and justice system—a trope that still surfaces in modern tabloid journalism.
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