The Last of Matt Jones

The thing about Al Osborne that impressed people in Kansas City was the way he could make an unlikely damage suit pay off like a cash register. At 43, he was a pink-cheeked, garrulous lawyer, with a weakness for pinstripe suits, who knew all the angles for getting publicity for himself and his clients. In the courtroom, in steady command of a soft, barefoot Arkansas drawl, he had a wonderful way with juries.

Last April a Negro juror in circuit court told the judge something new about Osborne's way with juries. She had been approached by the courthouse janitor, a Negro named Matt Jones, who asked her to cast her ballot for Al Osborne's client in a damage suit. Fixer Jones, a thin, melancholy man with the air of a church deacon, was hauled into court for contempt, acknowledged that Osborne had asked him to see if he could get any Negroes on the jury to "help out"on the case.

Matt had "helped out" before, too, he told the court. In 1949, he and a friend got one of Osborne's clients out of a murder rap by their rehearsed testimony; neither one of them, had been anywhere near the murder. In another case, Lawyer Osborne had pushed toy automobiles around the floor of his office for two hours so that one of Matt's friends would be familiar with the details of an auto-accident case. At Osborne's urging, they signed a bogus eyewitness statement, and the lawyer rubbed it on the floor to make it look old. Later, in court, their testimony helped cinch a $12,000 verdict. As a result of Matt's story, Osborne was charged with two counts of subornation of perjury and two of contempt of court.

Then, suddenly, Matt stopped talking. The county prosecutor scraped together enough other evidence to get Osborne sentenced to eight months and fined $1,000 on one contempt charge, but without Matt's key testimony, he was stymied on the more serious charges. A fortnight ago, Matt changed his mind, promised to testify. To explain his previous silence, he told the court about a meeting with Osborne, a pool hall operator named James ("Pop") Balestrere, and a Negro tough named Seldom Seen. There, said Matt, Pop Balestrere advised him not to "go against" Osborne, because Balestrere "didn't like doublecrossers."

That was the last the law saw of Matt Jones. One night last week, railroad workmen near Lexington, Mo., 50 miles east of Kansas City, found Matt's body bobbing on the swollen Missouri River, a 9-lb. tire chain wrapped tightly around his ankles and threaded through a 45-lb. concrete building block. Al Osborne's lawyer, on hearing the news, averred that Jones's death was "detrimental to my client." But the county prosecutor didn't seem to think so. Without Matt's testimony, the three remaining charges against Al Osborne would probably have to be dropped, as any lawyer could plainly see.

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