Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1952. Team work

The police radio in The Journal newsroom sounded just 20 minutes before the deadline for the first edition of The Journal's afternoon paper, The Evening Bulletin:

"Wanted for bank holdup in East Providence: car and occupants, headed toward Providence over Red Bridge."

The four hours that followed would be a remarkable mobilization of the newspaper's reporters and photographers, putting together the complete story of the Sept. 30, 1952, armed robbery in East Providence, police chase through Providence into Pawtucket and hostage standoff that would claim the life of a patrolman.

When the news of the robbery broke, reporters from the paper's East Providence bureau hurried to the bank, where they interviewed witnesses and phoned their accounts to the city desk.

The Journal's Providence police reporter heard the initial radio call in the press room at Providence police headquarters and sped toward Red Bridge in a Journal car equipped with a two-way radio.

The manager of the paper's Pawtucket bureau hopped in a cab and headed for the Providence line, while the bureau's office assistant started tracking down reporters who had been working on other stories.

By the time a police officer knocked on the door at 153 Sherman St., Pawtucket, reporter John J. Clarke was by his side.

The patrolman asked the elderly woman who answered the door whether she had seen the gunman.

"He's standing behind me," she said, as the door slammed shut.

Clarke rushed to a house next door to telephone The Journal and report that the robber was cornered.

During the standoff, a shot rang out and Patrolman Charles W. Patnaude, standing next to a Journal reporter 100 yards from the house, dropped. He later died at a hospital.

Over the next couple of hours, Journal reporters and photographers took up positions throughout the neighborhood, phoning in reports and shuttling dozens of photographic plates to the newspaper headquarters for processing.

When the gunman finally gave up -- in time for the paper's final edition of the day -- photographer Thomas D. Stevens was there to capture a dramatic shot of police moving in on the bandit.

The following May, The Providence Journal was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting on deadline, the first time the prize was awarded to the entire staff of a newspaper, rather than to individual journalists.