TROUBLE IN APRIL AND JULY
He'd just turned 19 ten days before this incident, and I guess if he was in a position to carjack one John Hick, he must have been out of Annandale. Maybe that was the day they escaped from Annandale, though. Maybe that's the car they stole, the 1946 sedan they stole in North Branch according to the report of their recapture.
I wondered why didn't they pick him up for this in April. Did they not have hard evidence? Accusation No. 4295C is dated December 13, 1951, a full week after my dad was sentenced. Did it take the police that long to put two and two together? The accusation reads
The County Prosecutor of said County of Somerset, alleges that the said Thomas Joseph Wingate, on the 21st day of April, 1951 with force and arms, at Branchburg Township, in the County aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of this Court, with force and arms, a certain motor vehicle, the property, goods and chattels of one John Hick, then and there being found, feloniously did steal, take and drive away.
Carjacking. It's less romantic than being a failed getaway driver, which is what I always used to say landed him in jail. More modern, somehow. Something a true-born gangster would do.
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