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With the specter of the gas chamber
hanging over him, two questions
remain unanswered: Was he really
the Red Light Bandit?
And, guilty or innocent,
did he receive a fair trial?
for survival has attracted the attention of psy
chologists, criminologists, penologists, and the pub
lic at large. Lawyers have undertaken his defense.
Petitions to spare his life have been signed by mil
lions in Sweden, Brazil, Japan, India, and other
countries. Many prominent Americans, including
TV's Steve Allen, producer Walter Wanger, Elea
nor Roosevelt, novelist Aldous Huxley, psychiatrist
Dr. Karl Menninger, as well as priests, rabbis,
and ministers, have joined in pleas that he be
awarded clemency or a new trial. Recently, Osser
vatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, editorial
ized: "Nobody can deny that anyone who has to
wait 11 years for the gas chamber has expiated his
guilt, no matter how grave."
Today, after 12 years of heated controversy and
thousands of pages of legal documents, two ques
tions still loom unanswered.
Was Chessman really the Red Light Bandit?
He has offered innumerable times to take a lie
detector test, drawn attention to the fact that, while
admittedly guilty of scores of robberies, he had
never before been convicted or even accused of a
sex crime.
While practically conceding that the Ford coupe
he was driving when captured was the car used
by the Red Light Bandit, Chessman has insisted
that two criminal cronies who used the car were
guilty of the crimes. He asserts he has told one of
his lawyers in confidence "the name, identity, and
part of the story of the Red Light Bandit; the main
one and a clown who was mixed up with him and
also with me in a different deal." He also says that,
though they are friends outside of prison, he has
placed the names of these men "together with cer
tain affidavits and police records" in a package to
be made public some 50 years from now.
The second unanswered question is:
Did he guilty or innocent receive a fair trial?
All of Chessman's protestations would not have
delayed his execution a single day if he hadn't
seized on a loophole in the state's case against him
and hammered away at it until he has convinced
some newspapermen, lawyers, and even judges that
his constitutional rights were violated.
By a freakish circumstance, the court stenogra
pher who kept the daily shorthand record of the
trial died suddenly just two days before Chessman
was sentenced to death. Later, to obtain the full
transcript of the trial, the dead stenographer's notes
written in a peculiar, almost undecipherable form
of shorthand were completed by another court
stenographer who, it was later disclosed, was a rela
tive of the prosecuting attorney.
Moreover, this stenographer, selected by the
prosecuting attorney, conferred privately and at
length with the witnesses against Chessman to re
construct their testimony before translating the
notes. Neither Chessman nor any legal representa
tive of his was invited to these meetings.
Later, the shorthand notes were stored by still
another relative of the same prosecuting attorney
in a garage, then in a private safe-deposit vault,
so that Chessman and his attorneys were unable
to examine them until nearly eight years after his
trial. Chessman's claims of prejudice and error in
this handling of the trial record have formed the
basis of most of his appeals. Last month the U. S.
Supreme Court rejected Chessman's latest petition,
and the state of California promptly set Feb. 19 as
his eighth and perhaps final execution date.
Is there any real key to the strange story of Caryl
Chessman?
Yes, say some experts. Long before the Red Light
Bandit case, Chessman already was one of the most
reckless, hardened, and incorrigible criminals at
large in California. Born in Michigan, the only child
of parents of modest means, Chessman suffered an
attack of encephalitis at 10, which he claims changed
him from a happy, creative youngster into a brood
ing, temperamental problem child. At 12, he began
San Quentin gas chamber may end Chessman's ordeal,
stealing bread and milk off neighbors' doorsteps.
At 14, he was stealing cars and breaking into gas
stations and candy stores. At 16, he was in reform
school. At 18, - he was the swaggering, bragging
leader of a gang of boy bandits. At 20, in 1940, he
was sent to San Quentin for robbery.
Belying characterizations of Chessman as a
"criminal genius'.' is the fact that all his thefts and
robberies were so poorly planned and haphazardly
executed that from 1940 until 1948 he was seldom
out from behind bars for more than six weeks at
a time. Altogether, he has spent nearly two-thirds
of his lifetime in prison.
Yet, within prison, Chessman always switched
roles. As a model prisoner, he displayed such
marked intelligence, enthusiasm, and dedicated en
ergy that he was assigned to clerical and educa
tional posts. He taught English, shorthand, and typ
ing, and developed his own method for teaching
illiterate convicts to read. Nonetheless, in San
Quentin and other prisons in the early 1940s, psy
chiatrists who studied Chessman concluded that he
was a dangerous psychopathic personality who
could not be trusted to adjust to normal life.
As his long legal struggle approaches a climax,
Caryl Chessman, pain-racked by an ulcer, warped
by years in death row, shows signs of nearing ex
haustion. Some newspapermen, who over the years
have become closely acquainted with him, say he
is "about burned out" and that his will to fight any
longer is waning. Chessman himself has scorned
his lawyers' attempts to have his sentence com
muted to 'life imprisonment, declaring that if he
cannot prove his innocence he would rather die.
If incorrigible Caryl Chessman was not guilty
of the Red Light Bandit crimes, it is ironic that,
from Cell 2455, he may have contributed more to
society's understanding of its problem children than
he ever would have as a free man or long since
put to death in the gas chamber.
Family Weekly. January 24, I960 7