New Boy in Town

The slim six-footer at the bar had an unfamiliar face, but to the gamblers in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, southwest of New Orleans, he looked like an all right guy. He thumbed his racing form with professional elan and flashed a horse-choking roll of bills when he placed a bet or got quarters for the slot machines. These were such solid credentials that the gamblers never bothered to ask who the stranger was.

Last week they were told for fair. "Gambling, widespread and important, is back at the old stands in Jefferson Parish!" cried the front page of the New Orleans States. "It is spreading like an epidemic." Beneath the banner headlines ran the byline of the stranger at the bar: Edwin Strickland, 39, the balding bachelor reporter of the Birmingham News, who has made a career of sniffing out crime and corruption, in 1954 played a major role in exposing the blend of sex, graft and murder in Phenix City, Ala. (TIME, June 28, 1954).

Farsighted Gamblers. Before Strickland came to town, every cub reporter in New Orleans knew that Sheriff William S. Coci's Jefferson Parish was the place to roll dice on green felt tables and bet on the hushed whirl of the roulette wheel. But no reporter could document the story in depth because the farsighted gamblers had taken the precaution of getting pictures of every newsman in town. When a reporter showed up, sharp-eyed bouncers gave him the thumb.

Last month Frank C. Allen, managing editor of the States (circ. 103,583), had a bright idea. Allen had started as a reporter on the Birmingham News, had later read with interest Strickland's detailed accounts of corruption in Phenix City. As far as he knew, Strickland's face was unknown in Jefferson Parish, and after a quick phone call to News Managing Editor Vincent Townsend, Allen borrowed Strickland for a couple of weeks.

Allen's hunch was right: no one recognized Strickland. Working up to 20 hours a day, he toured bookie joints by day, gambling houses by night. His technique was simple. "You have to sit there at the bar and drink a beer or two or they'll get suspicious," he says. "I tried martinis at first, but you can't drink many of them and know what you're doing. I've got beer running out of my ears."

Nobody Tried. After establishing a sudsy rapport with the proprietors, Strickland would head for the action, which, he soon discovered, was usually near the men's room. "I'd just walk on back toward the men's room," he explains, "maybe acting a little unsteady, and then push on into the gambling room."

After ten days and nights, Strickland had the facts and figures he needed. In his five installments, Strickland documented the corruption with such facts as the addresses of 27 places where he found illegal slot machines, told where to lay bets or roll dice, and reported: "I have seen horse bets placed, and openly discussed, while a policeman sat drinking a cup of coffee almost within arm's reach of the bookie." Strickland's summation of Jefferson Parish: "A giant new octopus of organized gambling is flexing its tentacles for an even bigger grab. It is little short of being a gigantic casino."

For Reporter Strickland, a graduate of the Birmingham School of Law, the Jefferson Parish story was just the latest assignment in a long career of expert sleuthing that started in 1942, when he finally gave up plans to become a lawyer and landed a job with the old Birmingham Age-Herald. Strickland poked into divorce rackets, bootlegging, juvenile gangs and prostitution. His series charging the misuse of public property by city officials in Bessemer, Ala. led to the indictment last year of Mayor Jasper W. Bryant, who died before trial was set. Strickland switched to the Birmingham News (circ. 187.183) in 1948. One night in 1954 he was trying to telephone Phenix City's crusading attorney general nominee, Albert L. Patterson, when the long distance operator reported that he had just been shot. Strickland headed straight for Phenix City on an assignment that lasted six months, culminated in the book Phenix City, written with Reporter Gene Wortsman, his longtime friendly rival on the Birmingham Post-Herald.

Last week, after his first Jefferson Parish stories had run, Strickland noted that dice games were already closed in some of his old haunts. And for the New Orleans States and "this hired hand, Strickland," Sheriff Coci had a characteristic accolade: "Liars."

Realist Strickland was under no illusions as to the power of the press to clean up for good. "Newspapers can make places close for a "while by turning on the heat," he said, "but only law enforcement officers can keep gambling houses closed permanently."

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