Electronic Lure

Every day for four weeks the cops had poked around the homes, stores and vacant lots of Springfield, Mo. (pop. 80,500) looking for the weapon used 10 hack to death a shopkeeper and a liquor-store clerk. Last week an off-duty policeman named James Kitchell pushed a hand under an icehouse half a block from the scene of the murders, and pulled out a bloody butcher knife. Kitchell rushed to his boss. Police Chief Warren Norman, with the killer's weapon and an idea of his own: instead of calling the usual press conference, why not put the knife back and ask the town's newsmen to cooperate in a ruse? Springfield's two TV stations, two newspapers and four radio stations agreed to go along, arid next day all of them announced: "Springfield's police will begin an inch-by-inch search of the murder scene at 2 p.m. tomorrow, looking for the murder weapon . . ."

Back at the icehouse. Chief Norman staked out five men. At 10:30 p.m. a man slid out of the shadows, looked cautiously up and down, then snaked an arm under the icehouse loading dock. Out jumped the cops. "Who--me?" cried the flustered man. "Why, I'm just waiting to catch a freight out of town."

But in jail, Herman Joseph Flood Jr., 20, confessed. His motive, he said, was robbery. His take: $5. What had brought him back to the scene (in a stolen car)? Said Killer Flood: "I kept hearing that announcement over the radio."

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