Murder is the Charge

Non-Fiction Hardcover: 205 pages Publisher: Camino Books Release Date: March, 2004 ISBN: 0940159880 » Buy the Book

Eleven days of hell was how those charged with restoring order to York, Pennsylvania, described the July 1969 riots. The false accusation of a young African American boy against a group of white gang youths - a charge that fell like a match to straw in the already racially charged atmosphere - incited mayhem that quickly escalated from throwing rocks to indiscriminate shooting between blacks and whites. With the city out of control, then Governor Raymond Shafer called in the National Guard. In the end, the toll came to two dead - Henry Schaad, a white police officer, and Lillie Belle Allen, a young black woman - untold numbers wounded, enormous destruction of property, and a ruptured community. Though the shooters of Schaad and Allen were known at the time, in the interest of preserving a fragile peace, the district attorney declined to prosecute a case for the killings.

Fast-forward to May 17, 2001, when York Major Charlie Robertson, a former police officer on duty during the riots, is arrested and, later, on the steps of City Hall, chokes out the words: "Murder. . .murder. . .murder is the charge!" The prosecution's chief witness accused Robertson of handing out .30-06 shells to white gang member instigating them to kill, during the hot night of July 21, 1969, but the witness was himself a corrupt and uncorroborated source with an otherwise faulty memory. In fact, pathologists who examined Lillie Belle Allen's body determined that a slug from a 12-gauge shotgun, not .30-06 ammunition, had taken her life. Moreover, Charlie was not even at the scene when the fatal shot was fired. He was patrolling the surrounding area in "Big Al," an armored vehicle, with three other officers, and it was he who first jumped out to investigate the shooting, risking his own life to protect the lives of the others in the Allen car. During the carnage that was the 1969 riots, the one and only misdeed a now-repentant Charlie was guilty of was raising his fist in the air and yelling "white power" in Farquhar Park, two days after the death of Officer Schaad. But, despite tainted testimony, the deaths of key witnesses after a lapse of thirty-two years, the loss of crucial evidence, and the erosion of memories, Charlie Robertson stood charged with the murder of Lillie Belle Allen.

Thus, in the effort to right a long-ago wrong, another grievous one is committed. And now the jackals - as defense attorney and author William C. Costopoulos describes the media in this biting account of his most challenging case - go to work. But long before the national media swarm over the city, the York Daily Record and the York Dispatch, beginning with the 1999 anniversary coverage of the riots that sparked the criminal investigation, daily fill their pages with "rumor, innuendo, [and] intemperate quotations from heavily biased individuals," as over 100 business, religious, and school board leaders assert in a letter to the editorial boards. Building the case against Robertson, editorials demand his resignation as mayor of York. Asked by the chairman of the York Democratic Party to withdraw from his race for reelection as mayor, then underway, Charlie complies, but refuses to resign his current term: "nobody was going to take that from him." The life of Charlie Robertson, who grew up in York and devoted his life to serving his beloved White Rose City, lies in ruins.

Costopoulos and coauthor Brad Bumsted skillfully tell this tangled legal tale. Judge Edward G. Biester Jr. said of the York riots trials that only through their resolution could "this past be put fully and permanently behind this city." One is left, after reading this sordid chapter in the history of an American city, asking, Was justice done?