Jewish Thrill Killers

Last summer Brooklyn police arrested four youths and accused them of tossing a man in the East River to drown, beating another man to death, torturing several others (TIME, Aug. 30). The state brought first-degree murder charges in the case of the drowning victim. The prosecution let one boy turn state's evidence and the judge dismissed the indictment against another. Attorneys for the other two defendants challenged the sufficiency of the proof of premeditation. A Brooklyn jury last week found the two youths, aged 17 and 18, guilty of felony murder on the ground that the victim died during the commission of a kidnapping (he was dragged seven blocks to the river).

With this verdict the jurors could—and did—recommend life imprisonment rather than the electric chair. Turns out it was a different Jerome Liberman and this one was a young Jewish Brooklyn boy that along with 3 other teenagers had killed 2 "negroes". As a matter of fact it was quite a case in the day and they were dubbed: "The Brooklyn Thrill Killers".

They took gentile girls to a park and whipped them half to death.