As a reporter for Long Island's tabloid Newsday (circ. 175,000), young (25), law-abiding Don Kellerman made a proposal that surprised his wife as much as it did his managing editor. Kellerman wanted to get arrested so that he could write a series on "what happens to a youngster in his first clash with the law." This is an old journalistic stunt, but Kellerman had a new twist. Instead of going to jail with the connivance of police, the usual method used by reporters, Kellerman proposed to say nothing to the police, get himself arrested while seemingly committing a serious crime. "And that," he conceded, "made it dangerous." Last week, after seven weeks behind bars, Kellerman had a police record and was out on $500 bail awaiting trial on a burglary charge. He also had his story, which Newsday trumpeted on Page One: ASSIGNMENT JAILBIRD.
Aspirin Parties. Kellerman, an ex-G.I. started his assignment by getting a short haircut, putting away his horn-rimmed glasses, and dressing in a tattered lumber-jacket and an old pair of Army pants. Late one night he was driven to Riverhead (pop. 4,892), the county seat 60 miles away from the paper's office, where he would not be recognized, and dropped off near a bar. Kellerman hung around the bar, making an obvious show of casing the place, while the proprietor and his wife eyed him suspiciously. After closing time Kellerman went around to the back, broke in through a window and made for the cash register. As he had expected, the suspicious couple returned. While the owner held Kellerman at bay with a stout whisky bottle, his wife called the cops.
At police headquarters, Kellermar "confessed" that he was "David Crandall' and had been out with friends looking for girls, but had been deserted and needed money to get back to New York. Since he could not produce bail, he was tossed into the county jail in Riverhead to await trial in jail, he found just what he was looking for. Young first offenders, as he wrote last week, were locked up in filthy, verminous cells with second and third offenders, dope addicts and sexual degenerates. One aged psychopath, who screamed all night, four days after his release committed suicide by taking rat poison. For exercise, his cellmates' chief amusement was to strip to the waist and beat one another black & blue. Young prisoners staged "aspirin" parties to get "high" by grinding up aspirin and tobacco which they rolled into cigarettes. Not satisfied, they took a fling with dope, buying it through a "connection," a trusty who worked as a cleaning man in the courthouse. Kellerman bought one of the tiny capsules filled with white powder, smuggled it out to Newsday's Managing Editor Alan Hathaway. Next time Hathaway visited Kellerman, he whispered, "It's real, kid. It's time to see what we can do about it."