If the Trib Says So

Long before 17-year-old William Heirens confessed, he was convicted of three brutal murders by Chicago's dailies (TIME, July 29). Last week, when he made it official, they lavished page after page on his confession and his "reenactment" of his crimes. Lest anybody forget who had scooped whom, the Tribune (which gave the confession story 38 columns) pinned a medal on its chest.

For the first time in newspaper history, said the Trib, a murderer had been named by a newspaper and his crimes detailed before he had admitted them or been indicted for them.* "So great was public confidence in the Tribune," it crowed, "that other newspapers . . . reprinted the story solely because the Tribune said it was so. . . . For a while, Heirens maintained his innocence. But the whole world believed his guilt. The Tribune had said he was guilty."

*A few exceptions missed by the Tribune in its head-down dash through history: 1) the Lindbergh kidnapping case, where Bruno Richard Hauptmann was named before confession or indictment; 2) the murder of Manhattan Model Veronica Gedeon by Robert Irwin; 3) many another murder where witnesses have been able to name the killer.

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