Newspaper Murder

People cherish legends of radio operators who stick to their keys as their ships go down, of actors who carry on the show as fire and panic threaten, of reporters whose dying gasps are in the service of their newspapers. Last week a new and complicated episode of newspaper dramatics was enacted in the little town of Alturas (pop. 2,338), up in the northeast corner county of California.

With five bullet holes in his body, dying Correspondent Claude L. McCracken wired the Associated Press and United Press, both of which he served as Alturas correspondent: "Tonight about 6:30 Harry French shot Claude L. McCracken, editor of the Modoc Mail, with an automatic pistol. Condition of McCracken serious.

"McCracken."

Even as McCracken was dying, the parents of the killer, publishers of the weekly Plaindealer & Modoc County Times, issued their newspaper with this lead story: "As we go to press the tragic news is brought to us that our son Harry French has shot Claude L. McCracken, editor of the Modoc Mail. McCracken is seriously hurt. We ask you, our readers, to pray for us all in this hour of tragedy. Please pray for us that the injured man recovers. We apologize for the uncompleted parts in our paper. Our strength and heart in our work is gone tonight. "R. A. and G. P. French"

Murderer French, 30, a mild-mannered, life-long home-town boy, employed by the State Board of Equalization, married and with one child, had walked into McCracken's kitchen where McCracken, 36, married, was eating supper with two girls, Miss Donna Cornell, 27, who assisted him in publishing his mimeographed Modoc County Daily Mail, and a friend, Miss Evelyn Olin, 27. McCracken's wife, a nurse, was at work at the Alturas General Hospital.

French, who had been drinking, entered without knocking, muttered some unintelligible words and fired point blank at McCracken. He then went to a neighbor's house where he surrendered to Night Jailer George Kelly who took him to jail. To Deputy Sheriff C. R. Serper at the jail he said, "I have stood all the insults to my family I can stand," would say nothing more. McCracken was rushed to the hospital where his wife collapsed, recovered and aided the surgeons. She stood by until McCracken died two hours later.

The District Attorney sought in vain for some more serious motive than the small-town newspaper feud which had been developing since jovial, backslapping, man-of-the-world McCracken went to Alturas three years ago and shortly afterward started his mimeographed daily in opposition to the 42-year-old printed weekly which motherly Mrs. French edits.

The feud had begun harmlessly enough. McCracken in the Mail twitted the Frenches with having failed to pay their light bill, having the current shut off. Once he sent Mrs. French an anonymous letter ridiculing the Plaindealer. She took it to the sheriff. Then one day Mrs. French printed a story about a Mr. & Mrs. McCracken being arrested in Reno on narcotics charges. McCracken retaliated by printing stories of various persons named French being arrested for various crimes. The afternoon before the shooting he printed one about a man named French being hanged as a horse-thief in Montana.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.