Comedy is when your social network sites are down.
Tragedy is when a legendary local barbecue joint catches fire.
Archive for August 26th, 2017
Tragedy versus comedy.
Saturday, August 26th, 2017Obit watch: August 26, 2017.
Saturday, August 26th, 2017Charlie Robertson, two term mayor of York, PA, has died at the age 83.
In July of 1969. Mr. Robertson was a patrol officer on the York police force. There was massive racial unrest going on in York. Another York PD officer, Henry C. Schaad, was shot and died of his injuries two weeks later.
On the night of July 21st, a woman named Lillie Belle Allen, who was visiting from out of town, was shot and killed. She was going to buy groceries with some of her family when their car was ambushed.
Both of these cases languished until 1999, when the local papers published a 30-year retrospective on the riots. People started coming forward with new information, and the local DA reopened the case.
As a result of the new investigation, Mayor Robertson was charged with murder. He’d just won the Democratic primary and was running for a third term, but dropped out of the race after being indicted. Nine other men were charged with crimes as well.
Prosecutors had argued that Mr. Robertson gave ammunition to at least one of the gunmen to avenge Patrolman Schaad’s shooting three days earlier. A co-defendant who pleaded guilty in the case, Rick Knouse, testified that Mr. Robertson had given him rifle bullets and told him to kill as many black people as he could.
Mr. Robertson admitted that he had shouted “White power!” at a gang rally in a city park a day earlier, but he denied the other accusations. He was the first officer to arrive at the scene of the shooting, but neither he nor three other officers disarmed gang members, took witness statements or filed a report.
Seven of the ten men who were indicted pled guilty to lesser charges. Mr. Robertson and two other men went to trial. The two other men, Gregory H. Neff and Robert N. Messersmith, were found guilty of second degree murder.
Mr. Robertson was acquitted.
In case you were wondering, the investigation into Officer Schaad’s death was also reopened. Two other men, Stephen Freeland and Leon Wright, were charged in that case and convicted of second degree murder as well.
1969 York race riot on Wikipedia.
Also among the dead: Cecil D. Andrus, former interior secretary under President Carter.