Just Like the Book

The two boys, one 11, the other 13, had been reading 40 to 50 comic books a week, and apparently what they read they took to heart. One evening last month, they acted like characters in their comic strips. Result: last week, in Dawson Creek, B.C., they stood trial in juvenile court for robbery and murder.

The two boys* had started out by stealing a .30-30 rifle from an unlocked car. Then they broke into a truck, stole cigarettes. Thus equipped, they headed out of town, hid in a ditch, and waited. Soon a car came along. One of the boys, masked with a handkerchief, sprang up, fired a warning shot. The car did not halt. There was another shot, a scream from the car, a slithering to a stop. Farmer James Millar Watson, 62, had been mortally wounded. A week later, when one of the boys confessed, police took them to jail.

Said Crown Prosecutor Arthur McClellan when the boys came to trial: "I think these two unfortunate boys [both lacked normal home life] have been strongly influenced by what they have been reading." Judge Charles Kitchen committed the 13-year-old to the Provincial Industrial School for Boys at Port Coquitlam, B.C.; the younger he turned over to the Child Welfare Superintendent at Vancouver. Said Judge Kitchen: "I agree as to the influence of the literature these boys have been subjected to ... A concerted effort should be made to see that this worse, than rubbish is abolished in some way."

*Canadian law forbids the naming or identifying of juveniles charged with legal offenses.

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