Free The Mad Sculptor by Harold Schechter Page B

reporters were equally brazen, going to anylengths necessary to secure a scoop, from impersonating police officials to buddying up to murder suspects. It was partly by befriending Carl Wanderer, for example, that Herald and Examiner reporter Charles MacArthur helped crack one of Chicago’s most notorious homicides. A heavily decorated World War I veteran, Wanderer had just returned from a movie with his pregnant wife, Ruth, on the night of June 21, 1920, when a gun-wielding vagrant accosted them in the vestibule of their apartment building. According to his account, when the “raggedy stranger” opened fire on Ruth, mortally wounding her, Wanderer drew his own pistol and shot the man dead. Wanderer was hailed as a hero until MacArthur, working with his crony Ben Hecht, a reporter for the rival Chicago Daily News, began to notice discrepancies in his story. Ultimately MacArthur and Hecht managed to wrest the truth from Wanderer, who confessed that the “mugging” was part of a byzantine plot to murder his wife so that he could run off with his homosexual lover. 5
    MacArthur and Hecht would later immortalize their freewheeling days as Chicago crime reporters in their smash Broadway hit, The Front Page . In that 1927 play, an escaped murderer turns himself over to Hildy Johnson, ace reporter for the Herald and Examiner , who keeps the fugitive hidden from the police and other newsmen so that he can get the exclusive scoop on the story. 6
    With Robert Irwin’s phone call to the Herald and Examiner on the afternoon of Saturday, June 26, life—as the saying goes—was about to imitate art.
    Having been dismissed as a hoaxer when he tried the Tribune , Bob took a different tack when he reached Harry Romanoff, Frank Carson’s successor as city editor of the Herald and Examiner .
    “I’m a friend of Robert Irwin, who is wanted in New York for the Gedeon murders,” said Bob. “He wants to give himself up. What kind of deal can you make with him?”
    “I’d have to know more about it,” Romanoff calmly replied. “Obviously no deal can be made over the telephone. We’d have to talk it over with you face to face.”
    “That can be arranged,” said Bob. “I’ll meet your representative at 2:30 near the fountain at the south end of the Art Institute.”
    At the appointed time, reporter Austin O’Malley arrived in Grant Park and headed for the designated rendezvous spot: Lorado Taft’s celebrated sculpture Fountain of the Great Lakes . Gazing up at the grouping of five graceful nymphs was a slender young man in a well-worn gray suit and gray fedora. O’Malley recognized him at once as Robert Irwin.
    After introducing himself, O’Malley led Bob to Michigan Avenue and hailed a cab. Minutes later, they were seated in the office of Managing Editor John Dienhart. Within an hour, Bob had signed a contract that began:
Universal Service agrees that if the undersigned Robert Irwin proves to the complete satisfaction of the police authorities that he is the Robert Irwin now wanted by the New York police in the Gedeon case and upon fulfillment of the terms of the agreement, a sum of $5,000 will be paid to the undersigned.
    For his part, Bob agreed to provide a complete signed confession for exclusive publication by the Hearst syndicate and to “refrain from giving interviews to any newspapers other than the Hearst press for a term of two weeks.” 7
    Accompanied by Dienhart, O’Malley, Romanoff, a cameraman, and a stenographer, Bob was then whisked off to a room at the Morrison Hotel. After a bath, a shave, and a room-service meal, he seated himself in an armchair and lit a cigarette. With a captive audience hanging on his every word, he settled back and launched into a rambling monologue. He related his entire life story, philosophized at length about art, immortality, and religion, and expounded on his theory of visualization (“my contribution to civilization,” as he called it).
    Stifling their impatience, Dienhart and