Missouri Newshawks

To the outsider who thinks at random of St. Louis newspapers, the names of the venerable Globe-Democrat or progressive (Pulitzer) Post-Dispatch come to mind. But throughout the past fortnight both great papers were soundly larruped on St. Louis' newstory-of-the-month -- possibly its story of the year: the kidnapping and return of 13-year-old Adolphus Busch Orthwein, grandson of famed August A. Busch (TIME, Jan. 12). The sheet that ran away with the story was the loud, energetic St. Louis Star.

The Star's beat was another personal exploit of its ace Reporter Harry Thompson Brundidge, who achieved some note last summer by telling a Chicago Grand Jury that the murdered Jake Lingle was by no means Chicago's only racketeering newsman; that he had found a dozen others who worked hand-in-glove with the underworld.

In the St. Louis kidnap case little Adolphus was secretly restored to his parents only 20 hours after his disappearance. Possibly through his own friendship--or that of his managing editor, Frank W. Taylor--with the Busch family, Reporter Brundidge learned that the name of Pearl Abernathy, a local Negro real estate dealer, had been mentioned in the Busch household. Next day the Star blazed out its first scoop: "Negro Real Estate Man Exposes Own Son [Charles] As Abductor." Also it printed nearly a full front page of pictures of the room where the boy had been held. Next day Reporter Brundidge was following a hot tip that led to a furnished room hideaway in Kansas City. Two days later he had Charles Abernathy's confession--with a hand-written note from Abernathy to the reporter for a front-page splash. Then he led St. Louis officers to their quarry.

Good-looking, self-confident, Reporter Brundidge, 36, is well liked by most St. Louis newsmen but sometimes suspected by his opponents of faking. His critics point to his ostensibly intimate interview with Gangster Al Capone at Miami-- which Capone promptly denied (TIME, July 28). But his friends insist that Capone talked as reported, with the stipulation that he would deny it to save his own face. Other Brundidge exploits: expose of the Midwest medical ''diploma mill" scandals of 1924; conviction in 1925 of Ray Renard ("The Fox") of the notorious Egan gang and the solution thereby of 22 murders. Also in 1925 he got a job as deckhand on a rumship plying between New Orleans and Havana, wrote thereafter a series of articles on liquor smuggling.

The Star's opposition took its defeat in the Busch case bitterly, the Times reputedly discharging three reporters for falling down. The Globe Democrat man had even talked to the elder Abernathy, but could not make him talk "kidnap." The Post-Dispatch had assigned its own No. i newsman, and one not often bested --John T. Rogers.

Even more than Reporter Brundidge, Reporter Rogers has the uncanny knack of making people talk to their own disadvantage. In 1926 he won the Pulitzer Prize for the year's best reportorial work embracing a public service, by forcing the resignation of Federal Judge George W. English of Illinois. In the same year he won a bonus from his paper for obtaining the first exclusive story on George Remus, big-scale bootlegger tried and acquitted of uxoricide. Another time he broke up the gang of cutthroats, led by Charlie Birger, who ruled "Bloody" Williamson County, and saw them all punished, Birger hanged.

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