How to Get $38

When skinny, 17-year-old Tommy ("Ramrod") Cook of Long Beach, Calif, decided to start a career as a holdup man, he knew just where to look for accomplices. He invited babyfaced, 17-year-old Muriel ("Pickles") Downs and 15-year-old Peggy Byrns to join him. Muriel's family were "strict" and made her go to prayer meetings twice a week, but her father had a .22-caliber target pistol and Peggy's divorced mother owned a 1935 La Fayette coupe.

Both girls were honored at Tommy's invitation; one night last month Muriel swiped the revolver, Peggy got permission to use the car, and the trio drove to an alley near a small Long Beach liquor store. Tommy walked into the store holding the .22, Muriel stood at the door clutching a long-barreled air pistol and Peggy stayed behind the coupe's wheel.

Why? The proprietor of the store, a likable young man named Dominic ("Mickey") Calarco, didn't notice the pistol at first. He looked up, smiled, and asked, "May I help you?" Said Tommy: "Yeah, gimme your money. This is a holdup."

Calarco opened the cash register, took out a $20 bill, two tens and a five, and then said: "What do you want to do this for? I got two kids. I need the money."

Tommy stepped back a little, said nervously: "Give me five dollars and I'll beat it."

But when Calarco started around the counter with the money the boy suddenly fired the .22. The bullet missed the proprietor, noisily smashed a bottle of Corby's whisky on a corner shelf. The girl in the doorway ran, and the young gunman bolted after her. Calarco gave chase, caught the boy out on the street and tried to grab the pistol. It went off three times as they wrestled, and the third shot hit Calarco in the throat. Tommy Cook galloped, panting, to the car and was driven off with a screech of tires. Calarco died on the way to the hospital.

Surprise. Two weeks later Tommy Cook decided to try again. Peggy recruited a 16-year-old girl named Shirley Armitage, told her with juvenile ferocity: "Once you're with us, you better not tell anybody, or it won't be safe for you to go out at night." They asked a boy named Larry Collins to go along. The five drove to another liquor store, this time in nearby Compton. The two boys went in, leaving the girls to stand guard, and soon came backing out with $38.

Two Compton cops had been watching the whole performance. They charged in, yelling. Tommy and the three girls got into the car and drove off as the cops began shooting. But the policemen caught Larry Collins, the 14-year-old recruit. He talked. A little later the police converged on Peggy Byrns's house, found the rest of the gang. All five were charged with robbery, the original trio with murder. None showed any remorse at all.

In Brooklyn, armed teen-aged gangs named the Greene Avenue Stompers, the Nits, Chicos and Gay Nineties had been feuding for weeks--ever since the Nits fatally stabbed a 15-year-old Stomper as he sat in a parked car with a girl. They agreed to fight it out on Memorial Day. Police assigned 150 cops to the area.

The fighting started in the streets, spread to vast Prospect Park, while hundreds of picnickers ducked for safety. Before the cops broke up the war, two boys had been wounded by bullets from a homemade .22-caliber "zip gun" and a third had been shot by a .32 revolver.

When twelve of the poker-faced teenagers were brought before Brooklyn Magistrate Benjamin Brenner, he said angrily: "We're not going to treat you like kids . . . If you act like hoodlums, you'll be treated like hoodlums." Judge Brenner, who previously had let one of the punks off light, set bail for ten of them at $10,000 or more, ordered all of them held.

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