Friday, Jan. 21, 1966

Missing the Cue

As criminals go, George Skalla was even edgier than most. He and a friend, Cal Bailey, 44, had come up with what seemed a surefire scheme. For between $2,000,000 and $8,000,000 in ransom, they planned to kidnap Leonard Firestone, 58, one of five sons of the late rubber magnate Harvey Firestone, from his $250,000 home in Beverly Hills. The plot was dangerous enough, but Skalla's real worry was Bailey, an ex-con who had turned respectable and had acquired a $75,000 house and four children. Bailey took over the show, threatened to kill Skalla if he pulled out. He even got the nervous Skalla to thinking that he would kill him anyway once the snatch was completed.

Skalla, 25, a petty hood who was to be sentenced this week on a robbery and burglary conviction, finally went to the police and gave the whole plot away. "He's a tough guy," said Skalla of his pal, "and I'm scared to death of him. He told me that if I wouldn't go along with him, he'd take me out in the desert and bury me." The police told him to go along with Bailey. They then staked out the Firestone house, even went so far as to rent for Skalla a getaway car that he had been assigned to steal.

At 6 p.m. one day last week, the phone rang in the big white stucco house on Alpine Drive. The maid--a Beverly Hills policewoman--answered, told the caller that Mr. Firestone could not be disturbed. Twenty minutes later, a black 1965 Ford sedan pulled into the semicircular driveway. Two men walked toward the door. One, Bailey, wore a rubber Halloween mask to hide the knife scars above his right eye. The other, Skalla, had a brown felt hat pulled down over his eyes. Both carried guns--Skalla had one in each hand--and wore surgical gloves.

The doorbell rang. The policewoman peered through a peephole, asked who was there. "Parcel-delivery service," came the reply. As the policewoman left the room, three cops, with two shotguns and a pistol, took her place. One jerked open the door, and the two intruders burst in. The cops opened fire. Skalla had arranged with the police to drop before they opened fire, but he missed his cue in the excitement. He and Bailey were gunned down; Bailey died instantly, but Skalla lingered for three hours. "In my opinion, they were prepared to shoot us," said Lieut. B. L. Cork. "We shot first."

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