Crippled Killer

Few characters have come out of the Kentucky hills with a more impressive background for violence than George W. (for nothing) Barrett. Five years ago he killed his 73-year-old mother. After pinking his sister he gave her such a beating with a gun butt that she died six weeks later. At Manchester, Ky. in 1932 he participated in a five-hour gunfight which cost the lives of two kinsmen. Last summer this prodigal career reached its cli max when Barrett, pursued by a pair of G-men for violating the Federal motor vehicle theft law, shot and killed Agent Nelson B. Klein at West College Corner, Ind. Last week at Indianapolis, as the first man to be sentenced to death under the new Federal law which makes the killing of a Federal officer a mandatory capital offense, he appealed his conviction.

Spectacled Defendant Barrett had to be wheeled into the Federal courtroom to hear sentence passed. In addition to the loss of one eye. shot out by his brother-in-law. Barrett was crippled in the knees by a volley of slugs fired by the Government agents in the West College Corner affray. Ordering the prisoner to be hanged at the Marion County Jail next March, U. S. District Judge Robert C. Baltzell concluded: "May I add personally that I hope and pray that God will be merciful unto you."

"I think He will, your honor," calmly replied Killer Barrett.

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