Behind the Closed Doors

In barring reporters from the trial of Minot ("Mickey") Jelke III, on charges of being a pimp, Manhattan Judge Francis Valente apparently expected to keep testimony from the sensational vice case out of the newspapers. The trial had not gone two days before Judge Valente had an ample opportunity to see how wrong he was in practice, if not in law. Elaborately shrouded in secrecy, the trial took on an importance it might never have had in open court. In Louisville, a panel of clergymen on radio debated whether the press should be allowed to cover the trial, decided that it should--that a secret trial was a dangerous precedent. British and French newsmen were stirred to cover the trial along with the reporters of U.S. newspapers and press services, and a handful of nightclub columnists, e.g., Walter Winchell, Dorothy Kilgallen and Earl Wilson, some of whom rarely see the morning light. Even such papers as the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen, which righteously proclaimed on its editorial page that it was proper to "seal off this filthy business from the public view," told its public on Page One the same day: "Call Girl Pat Ward wept at her past today and choked over the names of cafe society big shots to whom she sold her love."

Washroom Beat. Forbidden the courtroom, more than 60 newsmen stood watch outside, pounced on everyone who came out the door. Even Columnist Winchell was on hand quipping that Judge Valente apparently thought "little girls should be obscene and not heard," and feeling right at home in what he called an atmosphere of "opened transoms and peepholes."

Under the court's rules, lawyers or witnesses could only confirm or deny what newsmen asked them, were forbidden to volunteer information. It turned out to be a broad charter. Before the trial had well begun, it was plain that opposing lawyers notably Pat Ward's elegantly dressed belligerent lawyer J. Roland Sala (see NEWS IN PICTURES), were letting out bits of evidence to help their side, and attempting to try the case in the newspapers. After each court session, Star Witness Pat Ward, 19, who had started the whole case by charging that Jelke was boss of a string of $50-to-$500-a-night call girls, hustled to the washroom. There she held press conferences with newshens, while disgusted reporters stood around outside and city desks assigned more newshens to the "washroom beat." Sniffed the Mirror's Veteran Reporter Jean Adams: "All this shoving and running around in toilets! The dignity and prestige of the Criminal Courts Building is gone."

As the press pieced together the testimony, Pat Ward started out on her call-girl career two years ago after she had an illegitimate baby which she put out for adoption. She met Playboy Jelke at a party 17 months ago and, after their second meeting, began to live with him, continuing to ply her trade and giving him some of the proceeds. Occasionally, she let it be known, Jelke beat her when she objected to some of the "Johns" he had arranged for her to meet. She also said that she was thinking of writing a teen-age column for a newspaper to "advise other teen-agers . . . how to avoid the perils of life."

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.

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