Witness, The (USA).pdf

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National Detective Gazette
LAW ENFORCEMENT GETS TOUGH WITH DEVIANTS WHO PLAGUE THE 'PHONE LINES.
"Five a.m., I was lying in my bed trying to decide what to do next," recalls Bob Lundstrom. "My wife kept asking, 'who
was that calling, Bob?' And I kept answering over and over, 'It was nobody we know; a wrong number for someone
named Minkinin.'
"Eunice knew there was something more to it than that. She knew because I couldn't fall back to sleep after the call. I
kept hearing the voice, a southerner's voice, over and over in my head. 'Lundstrom, watch out behind you, don't stay out
after dark and don't let me catch you in St. Croix Bluffs ever again - or you're a dead man!'
"I didn't know what to do. It was five o'clock in the morning, and it didn't seem like it would do much good to call the
sheriff that night. I had no idea where the 'phone call came from or who was behind it.
"All I knew was that I was scared and a bit mad. I haven't felt that powerless since the German bombing raids in the
World War. It could be a prank. But then, you can bet I'd think twice before I showed my face in St. Croix Bluffs after dark
again. I was a gun-shy man. I had to talk to someone. So after three or four days of agony, I called the FBI."
TOUGH TALK AT THE TOP.
Authorities at the telephone company and at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been plagued by a rash of
what authorities are calling "the telephone intimidators" -people who use the nation's 'phone systems to scare or abuse
innocent citizens with life-threatening or obscene 'phone calls.
Up until this year, the menace was not widespread enough to warrant a full-scale investigation. But now J. Edgar
Hoover's G-men are attacking the problem with a crack squad of electrical experts who, working with engineers at the Bell
System and Western Electric, hope to bring the plague under control in the near future.
"We're going to bring 'phone abusers to justice," says Hoover. "Already legislation is pending in the House and Senate
that will make telephone threats and abuse a Federal offense."
While most of the reports of 'phone abuse are prank calls, a great number are actual threats on people's lives. Take,
for instance, the case of Mafia boss Louis Gambognini, who died last year in a hail of bullets outside his Providence,
Rhode Island, fortress. His last words were made to one of his aides as he stepped out of the front door of his mansion:
"The punks are threatening me over the telephone now. Can you believe that? They say they're going to gun me down."
But cases like Bob Lundstrom's are more the norm. Readers will be happy to note that Lundstrom's case turned out to be
nothing more than a random 'phone call made from a crossroads diner just outside of Great Prairie.
"It was probably just a drunken truck driver on his way back to Mississippi," said FBI Midwestern Director of
Operations Harold Pinkolt.
National Detective Gazette
"The point is that if victims respond quickly enough, we may have time to respond quickly enough, we may have time
to trace the call back to its origin and nail the perpetrator," Pinkolt says. The FBI is putting together an elaborate tracer
system that Pinkolt says "will nail the offenders in a matter of minutes," Sources close to the story say that the new tracer
system - code-named "Operation Infocept" -is still a long way from being indefectible.
An FBI agent in Minneapolis, who demanded anonymity, detailed this exclusive story for the
Nat'l Detective Gazette.
"We
spend a lot of time sitting around playing gin rummy, you know. Shoot, my first assignment in Minneapolis was a
stakeout
that lasted nine days, and the guy wasn't nowhere near the building we were watching. But this 'Operation Infocept'
is
really something. See, we're trying out this new tracer system, and we got our first call from a panicky housewife out in
Stillwater, who said she got a call from someone who was going to kidnap her the next time she went down to the
drugstore for a soda. Well, instead of asking questions, we hooked right up into the system and traced the call back to a
house out in Dellwood. So we - me and five other fully armed agents - sped out there in hopes of catching the punk red-
handed. We should have known something was fishy when we showed up at 38 Lakeland Drive, and it was a beautiful
two-story Colonial. But we didn't have time to think about all that. We busted in the front door, and all we found was this
woman with her baby fixing dinner and listening to the radio. I guess the system traced the 'phone call to the wrong place,
because that lady sure didn't seem like she'd be making threatening 'phone calls. We never did get our man. But you
know, we're still working out the kinks.
"The kicker is, we come to find out later that the lady who had been threatened didn't even drink soda. And that she
lived out in the sticks, about thirty miles from the nearest drugstore. She only went into town about once a week!"
Director Pinkolt had little comment on this particular case. He said only, "As with any new crime-solving accessory, it
takes some time to perfect the system. We don't let minor mishaps deter us from our goals."
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Director Hoover has set a five-year deadline for the total implementation of
'Operation Infocept.' Criminologists here at the
Gazette
and at police departments all over the country eagerly await new
developments in the field of electric surveillance and interception. Hover promises not to let us down.

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