Free The Mad Sculptor by Harold Schechter

IN CLEVELAND; HE FLEES ,” “ IRWIN ELUDES CLEVELAND POLICE AFTER GIRL RECOGNIZES FUGITIVE. ” 5
    After sending out an eight-state alarm and assigning 187 men to the case, Cleveland Chief of Police George Matowitz held a newsconference to offer his opinion. “I think Irwin probably went out on a freight train or aboard a tramp steamer or an ore freighter. It was by some hobo route—we are sure of that.”
    Shown Irwin’s picture, however, several ticket clerks at the Greyhound bus terminal said that it closely resembled a man who had boarded a 1:20 a.m. bus for Chicago. 6

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    The Front Page
    C LEVELAND HAD NEVER BEEN Bob’s original destination. In fact, for a week after the massacre, he had made no attempt to flee at all.
    From the moment the killing was over, he had felt perfectly at peace with himself—“as calm as I’ve been in my life before.” Without bothering to check if the apartment door was locked, he had gone into the bathroom to wash up. He then spent a leisurely hour rummaging through drawers, searching in vain for some photographs of Ethel. He came across Ronnie’s diary but had no interest in it.
    In the bedroom where Ronnie and her mother lay, he grabbed the little alarm clock, its glowing, hypnotic face faded now in the dawning Easter light. Given the nasty scratches on his cheeks, he knew he’d have to keep out of sight for a few days, so he went into the kitchen and stuffed a paper bag full of provisions. Then, retrieving the ice pick from the side table where he’d placed it, he left the apartment and headed back to the Ottburgs’ house on 52nd Street.There was no need to hurry. It was 6:30 a.m. and the Sunday streets were deserted.
    Upstairs in his room, he discovered that one of his gloves was missing. He realized right away that he must have left it in the apartment, but going back for it seemed like too much of a bother. Stripping off his clothes, he climbed into bed and slept all day.
    He awoke to the shouts of newsboys, crying their extras in the streets below. For the next week, he stuck mostly to his room, venturing out only after dark to buy a paper from a late-night newsstand. During the day, from his rear-facing window, he watched the constant commotion at the 51st Street police station—the mob of reporters milling on the sidewalk, the comings and goings of detectives and squad cars. A couple of times, he even caught a glimpse of Joe Gedeon being hustled through the crowd into the station house.
    Very late one midweek night—when the tabloid witch hunt against Gedeon was at its height—he had chanced a trip to a twenty-four-hour eatery, the Surrey Cafeteria on Third Avenue and 54th Street. He was seated at the counter, finishing his hamburger, when the fellow beside him looked up from his newspaper and, nodding toward a photograph of the little upholsterer, said, “Do you think the old fellow is guilty?”
    “I don’t know,” he answered with a shrug. “You never can tell.” Then he hurriedly paid his check and left.
    He had made up his mind that, if Gedeon were charged with the murders, he would turn himself in. He liked the old man and, as he later told people, “wouldn’t have let him go to the chair.” He prayed things wouldn’t come to that, though. His hope was that “it would end by throwing suspicion on some unknown lover of Ronnie and that the lover would not be found.”
    It wasn’t until a full week after the murders that he figured it was time to leave town. Late Sunday afternoon, April 4, he checked his bags at Grand Central Station and took a train to Philadelphia. He stayed there until Monday morning when, passing a newsstand, he saw a headline reading “ MAD ARTIST WANTED. ”
    He knew at once who had fingered him to the cops: that son-of-a-bitchWilliam Lamkie, a man he had regarded as one of his closest friends. He vowed to get even with him one day.
    He still had the ice pick in his coat pocket. He tossed it into a trash can and, around