1968 - Crime

Crime

Entertainer Eartha Kitt links America's crime rate to the escalation of the Vietnam War January 18 at a White House luncheon given by Mrs. Johnson for about 50 white and black women to discuss urban crime. "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," she says. "They rebel in the street."

The Ohio State Penitentiary at Columbus has a riot of 350 prisoners August 28; five convicts are shot to death when 500 National Guardsmen and local police blast a hole in the prison wall and crash through to quell the uprising that began as a protest against "sadistic" guards.

A Tokyo bank van robbery December 10 nets the equivalent of $1 million for a motorcycle gang that intercepts an armored truck carrying cash (the perpetrators will not be caught). Japan's crime rate is low by U.S. and European standards and is declining thanks in part to family social structure, low availability of narcotics, effective gun control laws, and a police force that apprehends 96 percent of suspects in murder cases and 92 percent of suspects in other criminal assaults. Japan has as many murders per year as New York City (whose population is one-tenth that of Japan).

Florida heiress Barbara Jane Mackle is kidnapped December 17. Her Honduras-born abductor Ruth Eisemann-Schier, 26, becomes the first woman to be placed on the FBI's most-wanted list and is apprehended December 22 along with her confederate, Gary S. Krist, 23, an escaped convict.