Pled Guilty In Car Theft

newspaper clipping from amanda shafer scrapbook

Des Moines Tribune Sat. Oct 20, 1951
Two 17-year-old escapees from the state boys training school at Eldora pleaded guilty Saturday in district court to county attorney's informations charging them with driving a car without consent of the owner.
The two were Truman E. Osburne of Des Moines and Don E. Rohlff of Davenport.
Osborne was sentenced by Judge Tom K. Murrow to one year in the men's reformatory at Anamosa. The judge transferred the case of Rohlff to juvenile court for disposition.
Two Courses.
Assistant County Attorney Vincent Hanrahan said the juvenile court could order Rohlff's return to the training school or sentence him to men's reformatory for one year.
Officials said Osborne and Rohlff, while prisoners in the juvenile division of the county jail, were involved several weeks ago in an investigation of charges by a 16-year-old juvenile cellmate that they beat him severely and forced him into indignities.
The injured youth, who had been picked up by state highway patrolmen and held when it was learned that he was a parole violator from Utah, was later released when Utah officials declined to come here for him.
Walked Away.
Osborne and Rohlff, according to juvenile court officials, walked away from the boy's training school last August and surrendered here Aug. 25 to a probation officer.
Officials said the two admitted stealing a station wagon in Marshall county in their flight from the training school, abandoning it on Highway 69, about 6 miles north of Ankeny and then taking another auto belonging to Paul Barkley and driving it to Des Moines.
The informations against the two youths were based on the taking of the Barkley car, which was found abandoned at Second and College avenues. Barkley operated a cafe at Alleman.