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3 THE FEDERAL CASE Immediatelyafter being booked, I was taken into a room and interrogated about the Tudisco murder by Detective Harry Freeman and some of the other cops from Homicide. There were Secret Service agents present in the room as well, waiting their turn to ask me about the stolen stamps. Freeman started off right away. He punched me in the left eye while I was still handcuffed, but I refused to make any statements until my attorney was called. I didn’t know it at the time, but my attorney was on his way over to get me released on a writ of habeas corpus. When the cops got word he was coming, they removed me from the old Central Jail and took me to the Newton police station. Freeman kept up his rough stuff in an effort to force me to confess to Tudisco’s murder, but aftera while he gaveway to the Secret Service agents whowere patiently waiting to ask me questions. Again I refused to answer until my attorney could be present. I was finally taken to a cell, where I fell asleep, exhausted from the beating and the long interrogation. The next day they started again. After about three hours, I heard one of the cops say in a loud voice, ‘‘Let’s get this son of a bitch out of here quick. That goddamn shyster is here to spring him.’’ So they hustled me out a rear entrance and took me back to the old Central Jail on First and Hill in downtown LA. There they placed me in a cell that had been wired with microphones, although I didn’t see them at first because it was too dark, and it took awhile for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. I was surprised to find my partner in the adjacent cell, but later I figured this was all intentionally arranged to get us to shout back and forth to each otherand so have ourconversations recorded. At any rate, they never obtained any incriminating statements. They did succeed in recording nine tapes of useless jailhouse banter before I spotted the wires hidden in the cracks of the cell wall and yanked them out. They kept me hidden in the old Central Jail for a week before my attorney finally caught up with me and had me released on a writ. Although I was out of jail, my problems were only beginning. The Secret Service had arrested a man by the name of William Summers, also for possession of stolen stamps. Summers had been introduced to me by another man, to whom I had occasionally sold stamps, named Burt Oliver. Oliver had been reselling his stamps to Summers and other friends. When Summers got a chance to talk to me, he asked me to sell him stamps directly because Oliver was asking for too much money. I denied that I was Oliver’s supplier, but I did tell Summers I would pass the word on to the right person. Now that Summers had been picked up by the Secret Service, he offered to help them set a trap that would catch me red-handed dropping off the stamps. A few days after I got out of jail, Summers approached me about buying fifty books of stamps. We arranged to meet in Boyle Heights on a poorly lit street. He would be waiting for me across the street from the telephone company. Unknown to me, police officers and Secret Service agents had hidden themselves in the front porches of the houses across the way. We had agreed that I would meet him in front of the fifth house from the corner of Velasco and Fourth Street. The row of houses across from the phone company was very dark since there were no streetlights set up on that block. I was supposed to drive up to the fifth house, and Summers would walk over to the car and exchange the money for the stamp books. I would have driven into a trap had I made the drop as planned. However, by pure coincidence, another car pulled up to the fifth house and paused momentarily before driving away.The cops, thinking it was me, came out of their hiding places and gave pursuit until they stopped the car several blocks away. Just as this was happening, I drove up with Mary—we were on our way to the show. I had to...

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