Error

In The Bronx, sprawling northern borough of New York City, live a great many Jewish people of all shapes and sizes. Two who were about the same shape and size lived in the same apartment building at No. 250 East 178th Street. If you did not know them well, you might easily have confused Philip Orlovsky, onetime clothing workers union official (now in the textile-shrinking business), and Irving (Isadore) Penn, 42, royalties manager for G. Schirmer, Inc., music publishers. A jolly homebody with no interest outside of his family (wife & two children), music publishing (he was up to $4,200-a-year from office boy after 22 years) and the New York Giants. Mr. Penn stood 5 ft. 8 in., weighed 240 lb.; Mr Orlovsky, 5 ft. 6 in., 260 lb. Each used to leave home for work about 8 a. m.

One morning last week Orlovsky left about 7 a. m., Penn at his usual hour. Across the street, a blue sedan containing two men, which had been waiting about an hour, made a U-turn, drew up beside him as he waddled along the sidewalk. Out stepped a man with a pistol and the morning quiet of the street was shattered by six explosions. Penn, the left side of his body torn up by five slugs, fell to the pavement screaming, "Get me a doctor! Get me a doctor!"

Shortly he died, saying: "I haven't an enemy in the world. They must have mistaken me for somebody else."

Police found the blue sedan, a stolen one, and a fired gun, but not the killer. They were mystified until Republican District Attorney Tom Dewey's office down in Manhattan called up to ask a bodyguard for Philip Orlovsky. That made Democratic District Attorney Sam Foley of The Bronx furious. Orlovsky, it appeared, was one of Tom Dewey's prospective witnesses against Racketeer Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, a fugitive under indictment for dirty work in the fur, clothing, baking, restaurant, paint, trucking and other trades. Two other Dewey witnesses had been similarly shot down, presumably by Racketeer Lepke's agents, in recent months; two were missing, others wounded. Democrat Foley fumed loudly & bitterly at Republican Dewey for not guarding his witnesses sooner, so that innocent citizens who resemble them should not be erased by mistake. Furious in turn, Republican Dewey got guards for scores of other prospective Lepke witnesses, asked the city to post $25,000 reward for lethal Gangster Lepke, dead or alive, flooded the nation with Get-Lepke circulars.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.