The way in which various phases of crime may be “featured” in the lead without making the story in any way sensational is shown by the following examples, in which some interesting or extraordinary phase of the crime is put in the emphatic position at the beginning of the story.
(1)
After confessing to a shortage of $21,500 lost in speculation, Robert Crook, Jr., assistant paying teller of the Security Loan & Trust Co., was arrested this afternoon on the charge of embezzlement.
(2)
“I played the ponies and lost,” is William Dieb’s explanation of the theft of $1,200 from Wilson Brothers, clothiers, 121 Williamson Street, where for eighteen months he has been employed as cashier.
(3)
On the charge of robbing thousands of women and other small investors of nearly $25,000 by fake mining schemes, Allan Gotham, a mining broker with offices at 117 Chambers Street, was arrested by U. S. Marshal Harshaw this morning.
(4)
To avenge a beating, Giovanni Ricci, a laborer, shot and instantly killed Guiatto Cimbri, section foreman on the Pennsylvania Railroad, this noon, near Harcourt Road, just west of this city. Ricci immediately disappeared among the freight cars in the railroad yards nearby, and as the other workmen were unable to find any trace of him, it is believed that he boarded a freight train as it drew out of the yards.
(5)