The Ohio Daily Express

NEW JERSEY THROWS SWITCH, COLLINS IS EXECUTED
By Mark Hyman

TRENTON, N. J., Aug (AP)--Alfred Collins, 37, of Philadelphia, went to his death in the electric chair almost laughingly Tuesday night for the slaying of white Alberta Sharpe, 16, last September 5.

He spurned the prayers offered him by Rev. H. C. Van Pelt, and asked him to confer them on his wife and baby instead. He showed no signs of worry as he walked the last mile. He told the guards not to talk about him after he was dead or "I'll come back and haunt you."

The death ritual was the run-of-the-mill electrocution. Collins eyed Detective John McCrory, the officer who arrested him in Philadelphia, and said, "I can still smile, Mac'." The switch was turned on. A few minutes later, Alfred Collins was dead.

Thus ended one of the most mixed up and controversial cases in the history of this area. It was the fall of last year when three states, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, started the hunt for an alleged Negro who was "shrewd, cunning, and brutal" believed to be the culprit in a series of roadside attacks on couples and women riding alone.

The climax of this series of crime came September 7, 1948, when the lifeless body of the Pitman, N. J., high school girl was found in a gravel pit. A week later William Jackson, 35, was picked up by Philadelphia police. People poured in from Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania towns to "positively" identify Jackson as the man who had attacked them.

While Jackson was still in custody, Collins was arrested, and in a week had "confessed." Despite work by his attorney, Abraham Needleman, it was several weeks before Jackson was freed by police.

The trial at Woodbury, N. J., reached the fever point as the county solicitor and Collins' attorney argued continuously when Collins shouted, "Why don't they let me tell the truth?"

As Collins told it, the "truth" was that he and Alberta Sharpe were in love and had agreed to a suicide pact because of her condition "which would have brought shame and disgrace to her parents and herself." There was no "rape," he said. He shot her thru the skull with a .22 caliber bullet, but lost his nerve to shoot himself, he said. Then he left her lying on the gravel pit.

When the jury pronounced him guilty, and the judge sentenced him to death, his wife's voice chilled the courtroom as she screamed, "My baby has lost a good father."

All efforts to have his sentence reduced or to hold a retrial failed. Last week the story ended as the executioner pulled the switch and turned the current on.