Word: gorham
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Last Thursday afternoon, two convicts named Otis D. Wilkerson (alias Robert Nathan Jones), 24, and Frank Gorham Jr., 25, were brought from the Washington, D.C., jail to the U.S. district courthouse to confer with their lawyer. Coincidentally, John D. Ehrlichman and three other defendants were on trial for their roles in the Ellsberg break-in on the second floor of the building. After a conference with their attorney, the two men, both of whom were serving lengthy sentences on charges ranging from armed robbery to conspiracy to kidnap, were returned to their cells in the basement. A short time later...
...stairs leading out of the cell block, Gorham encountered Deputy U.S. Marshal Joseph Sinkavitch. Shoving Gorham aside, Sinkavitch rushed back through the cell block's steel door and quickly shut it behind him, sealing in Wilkerson, Gorham, eight hostages and 15 other inmates, none of whom had taken part in the seizure. Among the hostages were four deputy marshals, a Justice Department auditor and his secretary, and two local attorneys (one of whom, John J. Hurley, had previously served as Wilkerson's lawyer). At first, the two convicts vowed that they would not release the hostages until they...
Compared to the confused negotiations that have taken place in other prisoner-hostage situations, the discussions between Gorham and Wilkerson and federal authorities were surprisingly calm and cool. It helped matters considerably that the cell block telephone was in good working order. As the ordeal continued, both captors and hostages talked freely to newsmen, relatives and negotiators. The hostages' fears were eased somewhat by this link with the outside world. At one point Gorham's mother Velma and sister Ena showed up outside the courthouse, and while there they talked to Gorham by telephone...
...past few days the dailies have been full of photos of hostages' wives, crying and cringing while waiting for their husbands to be set free from the basement of a Washington courthouse, and reporters have been filling up their dispatches with juicy quotes from the mother of Frank Gorham, one of the convicts. "All my men are gone and nobody seemed to care until this event on Thursday," The Times quoted Mrs. Gorham as saying. "Nobody cares whether I live or die, and I have got a daughter to school. I am human and I am innocent...
...course, the poor woman is perfectly right. Newspapers, chronicles of great leaders and great events, don't pay much attention to innocent people like Mrs. Gorham, at least not until hostages are taken. Chances are good that the press won't care very much about either Gorham a week from now. And that may be part of the problem. In a month people won't remember much of what happened in Washington last week, and they won't understand anything except that some convicts took a few hostages. They won't understand that there were real people with real troubles...