"Make it closer to five hundred."

Putting two and twaddle together, detectives guessed if Simpson hadn't been the queen, perhaps he'd been a sort of royal pretender, killed by his rival.

Someone mentioned seeing a youth often hitchhiking on Biscayne Blvd., trailed by another youth in a green Chevvy. A racket?

The fatal shell came from an Italian Beretta. Such a pistol was registered to 19-year-old Charles Lawrence, identified as the suspicious hitchhiker. He said he'd shot Simpson in self defense against improper advances. Story full of contradictions. His friend Richard Lewis Killen, age 20, owner of the green Chevrolet, was picked up and confessed that Charlie would hitch rides from homosexuals, whom they would rob. Both youths carried guns. Taken to the murder scene, they proudly described the escapade.

Simpson had allegedly picked up Lawrence, bought him a coke and driven to a spot where a sex act was performed. Lawrence then shot Simpson in the side, ordered the man from the car, took his keys and wallet and let him stagger away fatally wounded. (Stories conflict on where Killen was at time of shooting.) They buried the Beretta nearby in Biscayne Bay.

... A STANDING JOKE...

Later, Simpson might have seemed the criminal and those pretty youths his victims. Killen's wife, in a lacrimose interview: "Miami did this to us-Louis always read his Bible-Louis didn't plan it never cared for Charlie-scared of him." Contradicting her husband, she said he was in on Charlie's racket only that one fatal time. "Why don't they clean this place up? Ask any kid and they'll tell you if you want money, just go down to Bayfront Park where such people are. It's a standing joke."

... THE BIG BLOW...

A hurricane is a rare congress of winds. They blow hot and cold. In Florida politics, hot and cold air is a common by-product. Some say the prime product is kept in pork barrels. To twist the metaphor further, grafty politics welcomes a big blowout such as witchhunt.

QUOTES...

MIAMI DAILY NEWS: "A 1952 city ordinance banned the femmics" (female impersonators) "in attempt to discourage congregation of sex perverts. Another attempt last winter to rid community of these undesirables... Time for Dade County Grand Jury to investigate

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POLICE LT. CHESTER ELDREDGE: "Estimate of 5,000 perverts in Greater Miami too conservative-closer to 6,000 or 8,000. Fortunate there have been no more violent crimes involving them. The sex pervert or deviate is an individual who has reached the age of reason, yet knowingly disregards the idea of reproduction... The sexual criminal almost without exception is product of either bad heredity or poor environment. . . deviate found not alone among poor and illiterate, but among well educated and so-called blue-bloods of society . . . Perhaps an attempt should be made to awake respect for God, parents, property, authority and our fellowman in general . . . only reliable method of combatting development of homosexuals is education . . . if we had a psychiatric hospital with proper facilities ...

MIAMI HERALD: "Shoulder-shrugging by police is cause of Miami's reputation as comfortable haven for homosexuals. . . A publication claiming to speak for them actually commended Chief Headley last December 'for your refusal to wholeheartedly support current hysteria'... Powder Puff Lane has become equivalent of old red light district."

DR. PAUL KELLS, interviewed in MIAMI NEWS: "Little hope for returning the established homosexual to a socially acceptable sexual pattern." Warned against group hysteria; distinguished between homosexuals and sex psychopaths, and also between proselytizers and those who have "a sense of social responsibility and will go to great extremes to conceal their plight." Denied normal homosexuals could be spotted by physical characteristics. Denied men with feminine qualities tended to be homosexual. Interview so worded and headlined as to give almost the opposite impression of the actual quotes.

JACK ROBERTS, MIAMI NEWS: "Is Greater Miami in danger of becoming a favorite gathering spot for homosexuals and sexual psychopaths? . . . California homosexuals have organized to resist interference by police, established their own magazine and are constantly crusading for recognition as a normal group, a socalled third sex. In January issue of their magazine Chief Romeo Shepard was