Death on the Phone

Sid Hughes, 45, assistant city editor of the Los Angeles Mirror (circ. 188,453), is a cigar-chewing, tough-talking newsman who never got to high school. But in 23 years of covering the police beat for Los Angeles papers he has earned his own graduate degrees in crime and criminals. He mixes on such familiar terms with the underworld that the front-door of his apartment has a one-way mirror in it so that Hughes can see who is coming without the visitor's seeing him; on "tough" stories he often carries a .38 revolver, just in case. Last week in the Mirror city room, Crime Reporter Hughes got a phone call from a business acquaintance; on the long-distance line from Baltimore was an ex-convict named Johnny Johnson, 34, out on parole after nine years in Alcatraz for a series of bank robberies.

Johnson, headlined as the "blitzkrieg bandit," met Hughes several months ago when he came to the Mirror to ask help in getting a driver's license so that he could work as a truck driver. Hughes got him the license, from then on frequently got calls from Johnson. "He was a mixed-up guy," says Hughes, "who has been in crime ever since he was a kid. He likes to talk and I like to sit back and listen." Two months ago, Johnson stopped calling after police started looking for him as a suspect in the strangulation murder in a Los Angeles suburb of one Richard Fagner, who had befriended Johnson.

Pretty Hot. When Johnson phoned last week, Hughes recognized his voice immediately. He scribbled a note to a copy boy standing at his elbow: "Call the FBI and tell them I got Johnny Johnson on the phone." Then Hughes went on casually talking: "How are you, .... Not too good," Johnson answered. "I understand I'm pretty hot out there." Hughes told him he didn't know how hot he was, but would check and call him back. Johnson volunteered to call back himself in an hour. An FBI agent hustled to the Mirror office, set up a monitoring phone to listen in on the call when Johnson phoned back. In Baltimore, every outgoing call to Los Angeles was monitored, so that FBI agents could swiftly trace the call and nab Johnson. In an hour, he called back.

Hughes kept him on the line to give the FBI time to close in, talking about the murder case. "If you're not guilty," said Newsman Hughes, "turn yourself in to the FBI." Johnson answered that with his record; "I wouldn't have a chance." Then Hughes said bluntly: "I want you to tell me something. Did you pick up a heater? Dammit, tell me the truth."

"Yeah, I got it in my hand right now," answered Johnny. "Pitch it into the river," urged Hughes, "and turn yourself in." Replied Johnson, "I'm not going back to Alcatraz, not for one hour. I learned to hate up there in Alcatraz."

A Feeling. While Hughes and Johnson talked on and on--for 55 minutes minutes--the FBI agents traced the call to a phone booth in the mezzanine of Baltimore's Town Theater, where Mickey Spillane's blood and thunder I, the Jury was playing. The FBI rounded up a small task force of its agents, including Agent John Brady Murphy, 35, who had already started home to his wife and three children when he got orders to come back to his office. At the theater, four agents, led by Murphy, cautiously made their way up the stairs.

Johnson paused in his phone conversation, then said ominously: "I got a funny feeling." "What do you mean?" asked Hughes. "When you live like I do," said Johnson, "you get these kind of feelings and you play them." Suddenly, after talking some more, Hughes heard "the damnedest clatter on the phone, as if someone took a stack of quarters and poured them into the coin box in spurts. The phone went dead."

Johnson, playing his feeling, had pulled out his gun and was waiting for the agents as they came up the stairs. He fired through the glass door, fatally wounding Agent Murphy, seriously wounded another FBIman before he died in the booth under a rain of bullets. Next day Hughes gave Johnson an appropriate epitaph: "You can't mess with a mad dog and Johnny was a bad guy and that was that."

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