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As soon as the names of Johns began leaking out, papers all over the U.S. played the story of the trial big. TYCOON ON PAT'S V LIST bannered the Boston Record. The Atlanta Constitution headlined its story: SOBBING CALL GIRL WEEPS OVER NAMES OF LOVE BUYERS. Punned the New York Mirror: SILENT SINERAMA IN SEX DIMENSIONS. Actually, the list of names she mentioned in court was a scattershot blast, as newsmen got it. They were unable to tell which were "clients" and which were mere "acquaintances" of Pat's. Such names as Screen Stars Mickey Rooney and George Raft, Disk Jockey Jack Eigen and Sportwriter Bill Stern were splashed across papers indiscriminately. Some of those mentioned denied that they had ever met her, while others like Mickey Rooney pointed out: "I met her five years ago at a party. What's wrong with that?" Of the entire list, only Manhattanite Max Ausnit, former Rumanian munitions maker, admitted he knew Pat, told a reporter: "As far as I know, nothing has been invented to replace sex for an unmarried man."
Blonde at 5:15 A.M. Jelke's attorneys in turn let it be known that Pat Ward drank heavily, recalled that she once tried to kill herself in the apartment of Martha Raye, a casual acquaintance, and said she had otherwise conducted herself in such a manner that she had "destroyed [herself] as a moral person ... we believe we proved she is without credibility." When the courtroom was quiet, papers got their stories elsewhere. Jelke, a somewhat overlooked man in the first days of the trial pushed back into the news by smashing his sky-blue Cadillac convertible into a truck while out driving with a "shapely blonde at 5:15 a.m." The New York Post and other papers peeked downstairs in the same courthouse building, contrasted the treatment of Pat Ward with that of the 'poor man's dolls" who were put on trial elsewhere in the building with the press admitted.
By week's end, newsmen had appealed to a higher court for a reversal of Judge Valente's ban. The strongest argument they had was that the ban was a threat to both fair trials and press freedom. After one week of the ban, they also had a strong practical argument for reopening the trial in the gossip, rumor and biased information that had come out of the courtroom, unrestricted by the facts of a court transcript.