The Herald Tribune on the Amsterdam Hotel Shootout

The robbery and police shootout that left both perpetrators, identified as war heroes, dead was front page news everywhere.

The Herald Tribune visited the family of Albert J. Ray, one of the perps. The reporter found them red-eyed from crying, sitting around a kitchen table, a very different scene than the stoic reaction of John Farragher's estranged wife reported in the Sunday Mirror. She saw it coming. Ray's family kept repeating "I can't understand it."

Ray's mother, Mrs. Richard Berger, spoke of how her son had turned his life around in the military. The two men had served together for four years in a tank battalion under the late Lt. General Alexander M. Patch. They had been at Guadalcanal. They both had been sent back from the Pacific with malaria but had rejoined the Fourth Army in Europe. Her son "had been a grand soldier." He received a battlefield commission as well as medals and commendations.

Ray was discharged on October 28. Farragher got out on January 26. "He has been very quiet since he came home for good last November," Mrs Berger said. "I think he hurt his head while fighting."

Ray's brother-in-law, William Bloom of 410 East 72nd Street, said that Ray had been beaten over the head by a policeman in front of a restaurant on January 20. He had spent several days in Bellevue Hospital as a result and had "never been the same since." He had been unable to keep his job at a trucking firm on Christopher Street because of the persistent pain in his head. The News reported Monday that this was the third hotel robbery that the pair had been involved in since late January, only a few days after Farragher's discharge and Ray's hospitalization.