Jess at 19:08, 4 May 2015

2015-05-04T19:08:46Z

Jess at 17:49, 16 August 2013

2013-08-16T17:49:18Z

WikiSysop: New page: CuckoosNest --> True Stories --> here ---- - by ''Jess H. Brewer'' Once upon a time, I went flying model airplanes in a cornfield by the Connecticut River. It cost me $5K (in 1967...

2007-12-26T06:03:49Z

New page: CuckoosNest --> True Stories --> here ---- - by ''Jess H. Brewer'' Once upon a time, I went flying model airplanes in a cornfield by the Connecticut River. It cost me $5K (in 1967...

New page

[[CuckoosNest]] --> [[True Stories]] --> here
----
- by ''Jess H. Brewer''

Once upon a time, I went flying model airplanes in a cornfield by the
Connecticut River. It cost me $5K (in 1967 US$) and most of my respect
for Lawn Ordure, but it was a good preparation for Berkeley in 1968.
It started like this: I was a fresh graduate from Trinity College in
Hartford, CT, Physics major and captain of the track team, NCAA
Scholar-Athlete postgraduate scholarship ($5K) for UC Berkeley, where I
was headed in September 1967. Can you say "straight arrow"? I was the
quintessential naive innocent, hardly suited for Berkeley, but that was
soon to change.

I had a summer programming job with the Travelers Research Center in
Hartford, analyzing "air pollution" data to calculate areas and
"dosages". By the middle of the summer I got curious about that latter
term, and hunted up some references in the library; they were all
Declassified docs on Army tests of atmospheric dispersal of chemicals.
Hmmm... didn't quite match the story I'd been given about how we were
going to help combat industrial air pollution. It hadn't occurred to me
to ask who was footing the bill. Naive, remember? The good news is, by
the end of the summer we had the answer to the question they were
obviously asking: "Bad idea." You can't predict squat about the results
from ambient weather conditions, not even which way the stuff will go.
I'm glad they know that now. I hope they paid attention.

Anyway, to get on with the real story, I was sharing a nice house up in
the Berkshires with a couple of other new Trinity Physics grads, one of
whom was willing to be dragged along by my obsession with model airplanes
on a trip to Rocky Hill, CT, with another new Trinity Physics grad model
airplane nut. We drove the third guy's car. He lived in Hartford with his
wife and (IIRC) kid.

We arrived in midafternoon at a cornfield by the Connecticut River, down
a dirt road from a little kiosk where they sold tickets to a ferry across
the River. It was a lovely, hot day, lots of thermals for my
homebuilt-from-scratch handlaunched glider (a seat-of-the pants
adaptation "by eye" from John Diebold's Nationals-winning design) and I
got sweaty chucking the thing; my glasses kept slipping off my face, so I
put 'em on top of the car while we flew. Naturally, when it came time to
go I forgot all about them. They bounced off somewhere near the ferry
kiosk, and some kind soul who found them beside (or on) the road picked
them up and put them on the outside counter of the kiosk, which was
closed at the time. Meanwhile, we drove home and, finally realizing I had
lost my glasses, I moaned about it to my roommate who hadn't been with
us. This was around 7 or 8 PM.

About 10 or 11 PM that night, three guys who looked a lot like us were
seen breaking into the kiosk with a tire iron painted blue. They stole a
small amount of cash. The Rocky Hill cops were called and among the
evidence they collected were my glasses, a mold of the tool marks made by
the tire iron, and a small sample of the Western Auto blue paint it was
dipped in. Of course, I knew nothing of this until weeks later...

...when I got a call from the Detective Sergeant at the Rocky Hill Police
Department (a large garage with a couple of offices in it -- this was not
a big town).

Dick: "Did you lose your glasses?"

Me: "Yeah! How did you know?"

Dick: "I looked through 10,000 prescription cards at [the biggest store
in Hartford, where I did happen to have bought the glasses]. Yours came
up a match."

Me: "Wow, that's... amazing. Thanks! But why would you go to all that
trouble?"

Dick: "Actually, this is part of an important investigation. Would you be
willing to come down to Rocky Hill and talk about it?"

Me: "Sure, anything to help out law and order [, truth, justice and the
American Way -- remember, naive...]."

So we made an appointment and I drove my VW bug down to his garage -- er,
Department -- where he left me alone in his office for a while with a
rifle on his desk. Being a gun nut, I naturally checked out the rifle
while I waited, but didn't touch it, thank God. So he came in and asked
me what I was doing on the night of whatever it was, and I told him the
story of the gliders and glasses. He in turn told me the story of the
kiosk breakin and appended the sequel:

It seems the same guys (one presumes) used the same tire iron about two
weeks later to break into a private gun club where they stole a shipment
of rifles that were Federal Government property. No doubt the one on his
desk was a sample, though he never mentioned it. The dick knew this
because the thieves dropped the tire iron while departing hurriedly, and
they matched up the tool marks and paint (Western Auto blue, from the
same batch) so they were pretty sure it was the same tire iron. At which
point my glasses got a lot more interesting. Things began to make a
twisted sort of sense.

"So," he says, "you were our prime suspect. But I see you drive a
cream-colored Volkswagen, right? That's not the type of car we're looking
for."

Me, stupid: "Yes, but we weren't driving my car that afternoon, we were
driving my friend's car."

Dick, suddenly attentive: "Oh? What sort of car?"

Me, really stupid: "A grey 1957 Chevy."

Dick, salivating: "May I have a look at that car?"

Me, proudly wearing a "Shoot me!" sign: "Sure, if he's home."

Dick: "That won't matter. Where does he live?"

And so we set off in the dick's car for Hartford to have a look at my
friend's car. On the way I asked if he didn't think this was sort of
silly, I mean, why would I do such a thing? He replied, "You college kids
get drunk, you'll do anything for kicks." Hmm, well... almost anything,
but what's the kicks in stealing guns? I got plenty of my own. Cop logic.
Ha.

Now, my friend whose car we're going to see is a crew coach for the local
high school, and he carries a pram around on top of his car for sitting
in to yell at the rowers. There is -- you guessed it -- Western Auto blue
paint all over the top of his car from the pram. Which is not
particularly damning, but of course the dick only wants to look in the
trunk, where my friend kept the seat from the pram. The dick pulls the
seat aside and scrapes up a sample of the blue paint in the trunk, all
over everything. He admonishes me not to leave town. We all go home.

I think this is hilarious. I get drunk and call everyone I know to tell
them the story. I even call my mother, who doesn't think it's funny. (No
sense of humor, these parents.) Shortly afterward (like minutes) she
calls back and instructs me to get a lawyer right now. She'll pay.
OK, what the hell. Next day I go to Al Jacobs, then President of the
College I just graduated from with all the accolades anyone could want,
and asked his advice. What do I know about lawyers? I'm a Physicist (or,
more properly, a science fiction writer masquerading as a Physicist so as
to accumulate some credibility before I start my real career). Gool ol'
Al suggests Jim Egan.

Now, everyone in New England but me knows that Jim Egan is the most
notorious criminal lawyer in the region, that he is famous for getting
crooks off on technicalities, and that he has never defended anyone who
was actually innocent. Of course I didn't rate Jim himself, I got a guy
named Connell, I forget his first name, presumably some sort of junior
partner. My housemate and I go in to see Connell; he tells us, "This is
serious business," in response to our snickering at the whole silly
scenario, and informs us that if things get bad he's going to stick it on
our third friend (with the Chevy) who lives elsewhere.

"The hell you are," I say, "he's as innocent as we are."

Connell: "How do you know that?"

Me, indignant: "Because I know him, and he wouldn't do anything like that."

Connell, sneering: "It's time you grew up." [or something to that effect]

Now, needless to say, Connell was sure we did it, and (at my expense)
hired a couple of "detectives" (one an ex-FBI agent and the other a
former New York Port Authority agent) to come 'round my place at 3:00 AM
one night and give us the third degree, "Where did you hide the guns? If
we turn them over we can make a deal." About this time I started getting
pissed off.

He also hired a lie detector expert, who gave us all polygraph tests.
Needless to say, I flunked. The routine is, they hook you up to all these
electrodes, sit you next to the chart recorder where the needles are
going scritch, scritch and start asking questions while you listen to the
needles.

"Where do you live?" (scritch, scritch)

"What's your favourite color" (scritch, scritch)

"What kind of car do you drive?" (scritch, scritch)

Pregnant pause.

"'Where were you on the night of ... ?" ('''scritch scritch scritch scritch scritch''')

Trust me, to pass a polygraph all you have to be is stupid and/or too
stoned to care. All they measure is how uptight the questions make you.
Just say No f*ing way.

So that didn't help. And about this time my mother and both my uncles
flew up from Florida to check things out. Driving my mother back from the
airport I stopped and told her to get out of the car when she asked me if
I'd done it; by this time I'd had about enough of that sh*t. But I didn't
actually kick her out. It was clear that my uncles were also suspicious,
but they had enough sense not to reveal this explicitly.

It was now getting to be close to the time I had to leave for Berkeley if
I wanted to get there in time for Preliminary Exams. I pointed out to
Connell that my third housemate (whom the eyewitnesses could never have
mistaken for one of us) had sworn an affadavit saying I told him I lost
my glasses at 7 or 8 PM whereas the first robbery was at 10 or 11 PM; did
they think I'd intentionally left my glasses on the kiosk counter to be
found after the robbery? I threatened a half million dollar lawsuit for
false arrest if they tried it, and said housemate threatened likewise if
they tried to include him on the basis of that affadavit. This convoluted
logic would never have convinced a jury, but the DA was cautious and
promised us he wouldn't swear out a warrant unless he saw new evidence.
''Yea!'' We could go. I flew to Florida for a short vacation before packing
to head West in my VW.

The night I arrived in Florida we got a call from Connell saying I had to
show up for arraignment by the next morning or get nailed for interstate
flight. So I hopped back on a plane [boy, that sounds a lot easier than
it actually was] and headed back. It turns out that the sensible DA went
on vacation too, without explaining the situation to the Assistant DA. So
the dick lays his circumstantial evidence before the Assistant DA, who
says, "Sounds reasonable to me," and swears out a warrant for each of us.

Now the $0.5M threats come into play, and we reach a stalemate; they know
I have to leave for Berkeley within a week or two, so are hoping I'll
"flee" and give them a good excuse. We make a deal: if I agree to a State
lie detector test they won't serve the warrants. I agree (what choice do
I have?) and start practicing inner calmness exercises. Nothing happens
for a week. I'm starting to freak out. Then one day they say, "Ah, never
mind. You can go." I hop in my VW and head for Berkeley. I arrive the day
before Prelims and flunk. I take them again in Spring 1968 and all is
well. I am ready for Berserkeley!

I heard they did catch the "real" thieves (who knows?) a few months
later; presumably they let up on me when they got a lead. Connell
admitted he'd always assumed I was guilty. (I can't blame him; what else
was he trained to assume?) For decades I entertained fantasies of
sneaking radioisotopes into the dick's beer, but in the end I figured
being Detective Sergeant of the Rocky Hill Police Department was
punishment enough. Besides, he was just doing what he was supposed to do.

The most useful thing I took away from this experience was the certainty
that I would have done hard time for sure if my case had ever gone to
trial. There were just too many bits of circumstantial evidence to be a
plausible coincidence. I got out of it by spending my NCAA scholarship on
a fancy lawyer, not by being innocent. The criminal "justice" system is
not about guilt or innocence; it's about whose lawyer is cleverer. I knew
this long before OJ.

I like to end on a question: without indulging in wishful thinking or
using the words "ought" or "should", can you suggest how it could be any
different? What would it take to actually deliver "equal justice under
the law"? I haven't a clue.

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 [[Image:Jick_gun_Pop.jpg|320px]]
-''Jess H. Brewer''
+''Jess H. Brewer'' &amp; grandfather ''"Pop" Henderson''
 </CENTER>

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 [[CuckoosNest]] --> [[True Stories]] --> here
-----
+<CENTER>
-- by ''Jess H. Brewer''
+[[Image:Jick_gun_Pop.jpg|320px]]
+''Jess H. Brewer''
+</CENTER>
 Once upon a time, I went flying model airplanes in a cornfield by the

Gliders, Glasses and Guns - Revision history

Jess at 19:08, 4 May 2015

Jess at 17:49, 16 August 2013

WikiSysop: New page: CuckoosNest --> True Stories --> here ---- - by ''Jess H. Brewer'' Once upon a time, I went flying model airplanes in a cornfield by the Connecticut River. It cost me $5K (in 1967...