The two juvenile members of a gang which conducted a 15-month campaign of viciously anti-Semitic telephone calls and vandalism against a Jewish couple were on indefinite probation today and sentenced to pay a share of the damage they caused.
The sentence was imposed by San Francisco Juvenile Court Judge Melvin I. Cronin, who described the activities of Gerald R. Kyle, 16, and George Kelley, Jr., 18, as “rotten.” Expressing the opinion that “no question of anti-Semitism was involved,” the judge told the two defendants that “you ought to be ashamed of yourselves and disgusted for the rest of your lives.”
The ten older members of the gang will go on trial in Superior Court on October 23 for their harassment of Mr. and Mrs. William Bowman. In addition to the abusive telephone calls at all hours, gang members had slashed the tires of the Bowman car and set it afire. Mr. Bowman, when apprised of the sentence, said he felt that it amounted to a “free pass for further violence and harassment of other people.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
