120 Years Ago, 1905 transcribed as originally published in the Youngstown Vindicator:

“Depravity in a marked degree displayed by three youthful prisoners. Charged with burglary. They made no denial and were sentenced to the reform school – their records.”

“Perhaps the most marked case of youthful depravity that ever came before the local probate court was that revealed yesterday evening by the statements of Mike Yawn, Martin De Rosa and Peter Bernardo, when they were brought before Judge Ewing to answer to a charge of having broken into Kaley’s candy store a few weeks ago. There was no attempt at denial on the part of the boys, so far from that they treated the matter as an affair of little moment, seeming to think that it was not of sufficient significance to call for more than the most ordinary degree of concern. All three were sentenced to the reform school.

“One of the boys, the last one to be arrested, said that he had not been in the store. All that he had done was to stand guard outside while the other two boys did the looting. This was 14-year-old Martin De Rosa. Martin was indignant because the other two had accused him of failing to meet his duties. While standing outside the door he had noticed a man examining a billboard on the opposite side of the street. ‘The other fellows said I didn’t whistle,’ the boy said in an injured tone, ‘but I did, and I whistled before I started to run. I didn’t know what the man was doing there and I thought he might be a cop.’

“Stolid indifference was marked on the face of each of the young desperadoes as they told of the occurrences which had marked this latest escapade. Their statements in the main agreed throughout. They had lounged about the streets, begging their suppers from some laborers on the return of the latter from work at the mills. The three youths had slept together in a wagon, it being their intention to get on a freight in the morning and go to West Pittsburg. It was not until they had arisen, at 3:30, they said, that they conceived the idea of entering Kaley’s store.

“They were well prepared for this act as Bernardo had a key to the building, which he said had been given him by a boy whose name he did not remember. Bernardo, who himself is 14 and a striking example of the embryo crook, told a wild and weird story as to the manner in which he had obtained possession of the key.

“‘I met a boy on the street one day,’ he said. ‘I did not know his name. He showed me the key and asked what I would give him for it. We was talking about it and I had the key in my hand when a cop chased us. The boy ran one way and I run another. The cop chased him and so I had to keep the key….’

“Prior to the arrest of De Rosa the mothers of both Bernardo and Yawn called at Judge Ewing’s office. They stated that the De Rosa boy was as guilty as the others, their chief concern seeming to be not that their own progeny escape punishment, but that the other culprit should be caught as well.”

• Compiled by Dante Bernard, museum educator at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society