How to Follow a Hunch

To City Editor Leo Hirtl of the Cincinnati Post & Times-Star, the rumor that City Solicitor William McClain was in a jam rated a routine check. Since McClain had been seen around probate court the previous week, Hirtl sent a reporter to chat with court officials. The reporter discovered that McClain had appointed a man named William Jackson to appraise a recently settled estate. Jackson, it turned out, was a pseudonym for Norman S. Payne, a probate court employee who got a fee of $100, although he was not entitled to indulge in such moonlighting.

When the Post & Times-Star ran that story last September, Editor Dick Thornburg had a hunch there might be more to tell. He instructed Reporter Jim Horner, 32, to case the probate court to see if it was involved in any other high-fee hanky-panky. Horner has been on the story ever since, and his byline has been on the front page almost daily for over two months.

Case of the Missing Heirs. City Solicitor McClain, Horner discovered, had been doing some moonlighting of his own--as attorney for the same $38,977 estate that Jackson-Payne had worked over. Only McClain, whose services had been legal enough, had received a whopping fee of $8,625. Working at the rate of $25 an hour, he would have had to put in 345 hours to earn his paya staggering amount of time to spend on so small an estate.

In the investigation he claimed to have made on behalf of the estate, McClain had been unable to discover a single heir. Yet after the estate was turned over to the city, 14 heirs showed up. Editorialized the Post & Times-Star: "McClain has destroyed public confidence in his integrity as a city official." The estate was divided among the 14 heirs. McClain, who returned part of his fee, is now under investigation by the Cincinnati Bar Association.

Having shot down the city solicitor, the Post & Times-Star focused its attention on Probate Court Judge Chase M. Davies. It turned out that during his 19 years on the bench, he had made a practice of appointing relatives and close friends as appraisers. Out of a $37,575,282 estate left by a Procter & Gamble heiress, two of Judge Davies' friends had each received a $37,575 fee. Upset by the publicity, the probate judge paid two frantic calls on Editor Thornburg to try to persuade him that he was a man of probity. Said Thornburg in an editorial: "The best you can say is that the judge runs a slovenly court." Davies responded by announcing that he was cutting appraisal fees and not appointing any more friends--"not with all the noise people make."

A Matter of Patronage. While the Post & Times-Star was playing up the probate scandals on Page One, Cincinnati's other daily, the Enquirer, was giving them only perfunctory treatment. Though both papers are owned by Scripps-Howard, they operate independently. "We decided it would not be fair to pick out individuals in a few selected cases," explained Enquirer Publisher Francis Dale. He had reason. Reporter Horner had discovered that Enquirer Court Reporter Tom Mercer and Columnist Frank Weikel had both served recently as appraisers.

Publisher Dale claimed that he could not understand what all the fuss was about. "It's a bunch of hogwash," he said in a TV interview. "I don't think our reporters are second-class citizens. They can get appointments just like anybody else." And his paper devoted considerable space to explaining that all was shipshape at probate. "It is common knowledge," wrote Enquirer Reporter Caden Blincoe, "that the awarding of appraiserships is a way of returning favors--a form of dispensing political patronage. Patronage is not a dirty word in American politics." Or in the city room of the Enquirer.

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