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The colu edition on the street late Wednesday night In addition to eight or ten letters to the editor, two of which were later excerpted in "The Voice of the People," five letters came in Friday and Saturday addressed to McGraw personally One, from a Catholic layman in Riverdale, re another to commit such an act was sinful as well The others all expressed agreeree or another

McGraw had a stack of printed postcards: "Dear ____________________, Thanks for taking the time to write Whether you did or didn't care for what I had to say, I', and pleased and proud to have you as a reader I hope you'll keep reading my stuff Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday in the Daily News" Not everyone rote would include a return address-soot postcards in reply, with their first names written in after "Dear" and a handwritten comment at the end-"Thanks!" or "You said it!" or "Good point!" He'd sign the cards and

One of the five letters gave him a moment's pause "Your open letter to Richard Vollan "What are we to do when the syste ourselves on our co our hands at the incident's unfortunate outcome Our criminal justice system requires a backup, a fail-safe device to correct those mistakes that are an inevitable outcome of a flawed system

"When we send a rocket into space, we build it with coht fail We allow for the possibility that soe it off course, and build in devices to correct any such deviations as occur If we routinely take such precautions in outer space, can we do less on the streets of our cities?

"I submit that a backup system for our criminal justice system exists already in the hearts and souls of our citizens, if we have the will to activate it And I believe we do You are athe column you wrote And I, too, am very much a manifestation of that will, the will of the people

"Richard Voll from that tree soon It is the people's will"

The letter was more literate than most, and it was typed McGraw's readers were not all clowns and s, and he had received typed and well-phrased letters before, but they were invariably signed and alned and there was no return address, not on the letter itself, not on the envelope it had co, and the envelope bore his own na else He filed it and forgot about it

The folloeekend, two Do down a steep path in Inwood Hill Park One of them cried out to his friend, and they both braked to a stop as soon as they got to a spot that was level enough "Joo see that?" "See what?" "On that tree" "What tree?" "Was a guy hanging fros, you crazy" "We got to go back" "Uphill? So we can see so?" "Co things Afrom the stout limb of a pin oak ten or fifteen yards off the bike path They stopped their bikes and took a good look at hi ht His head was the size of a basketball and his neck was a foot long, stretched by the weight of hi slowly in the wind There wasn't any wind

It was Richard Voll not far from where both of his victiht was that the otten son of a bitch had actually done what he'd told hiht power, at once unsettling and exciting

But Richie had had help Asphyxiation had caused his death, so he'd been alive when the rope went around his neck, but he'd probably been unconscious An autopsy disclosed that he'd been beaten severely about the head, and had in fact sustained cranial injuries that ht have proven fatal if so him up

McGraw didn't kno he felt about that It certainly appeared as though a column of his had led some impressionable yahoo to commit murder; at the very least, the killer had looked to McGraw for the usted hi himself to rown in the habit of doing over the years He talked out his thoughts and feelings in a coluer with us," he wrote "There are, after all, a lot of us left to soldier on, eight ue that the quality of life will be a whole lot worse with Richie in the cold cold ground But I'd hate to think that I, or any reader of this colu him there

"In a sense, whoever killed Richie Vollmer did us all a favor Vollmer was a monster Is there anyone who seriously doubts he'd have killed again? And aren't we all justified now in feeling relieved that he won't?

"And yet his killer did us a disservice at the same time When we take the law into our own hands, e snatch up in our own hands the power of life and death, we're no different froentler Richie Vollet, and we can tell ourselves we've got God on our side

"But how different are we?

"For wishing publicly for his death, I owe the world an apology I' to Richie, I'y is to all the rest of you