Is There a Future in Dead-End Publishing?

Psssst. Wanna buy a book with profiles of 12 condemned killers, a history of capital punishment, and a complete listing of the nation’s Death Row inmates?

If so, call Hare Productions in Carlsbad. They’ve got 13,000 copies in the warehouse.

It’s called “Death Row” ($19.95, 225 pages, fully illustrated). It’s the latest creation of Glenn Hare, 58, a former San Diego cop turned magazine publisher and emergency gear manufacturer.

“We started working on it at about the time of the Ted Bundy execution,” Hare said. “I realized there is a public fascination and curiosity about capital punishment.”

Hare was on the San Diego force from 1962 to 1966. He left to start a company making traction splints; his Dyna Corp. now manufactures 100 paramedic-style items (cots, gurneys, extraction devices, etc.).

From that, he went into publishing. Hare Productions publishes Police magazine (circulation 55,000) and Emergency magazine (35,000) and does the printing for a dozen more magazines.

Hare sold 2,000 copies of “Death Row” through an ad in Police. He hopes to sell the remaining 13,000 through bookstores and ads on television.

“I could see an update every three months, telling about new arrivals on Death Row, who’s been cleared, and who’s finally been executed,” he said.

Hare is pro-death penalty. But “Death Penalty” is not a tirade against liberal judges and the ACLU. The prose is straightforward.

Steven Casey, an assistant to San Diego Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, wrote the overview chapter and a profile of Robert Alton Harris, who murdered two Mira Mesa teen-agers.

As a cop, Hare took part in one of San Diego’s most celebrated shoot-outs: a four-hour downtown gun battle in 1965 with the killer of a jewelry store manager. Robert Anderson was captured and sentenced to the gas chamber.

In 1972, the state Supreme Court used Anderson’s case to rule the death penalty unconstitutional. He was paroled in 1978.

“He’s walking the streets of Seattle these days,” Hare said.

Flimsy Jail Humor

It’s all true.

- The flight of inmates from the county’s flimsy facility in East County has bred its own humor. Fleeing prisoners are said to have issued themselves a writ of habeas escapus.

When Supervisor Susan Golding received a crystal bowl from her colleagues this week in appreciation of her year as chairwoman, she found the box packed with tiny curlicues of Styrofoam.

Golding said she figured the fluffy stuff was building materials from the El Cajon Jail.

- Golfers, Replace your Mantras!

MiraCosta College of Oceanside is offering a course in “Zen and the Golf Swing.” Golfers will be taught the posture exercises and breathing techniques of Zen.

- Patricia Shaffer, professor of chemistry at the University of San Diego, has received a $200,000 grant to study genes in connection with leukemia and lymphoma.

It’s not your usual grant: It’s the largest grant ever received by a USD professor.

Then again, Shaffer is not your usual professor: She’s a Sacred Heart nun (Rome ‘57) as well as a Ph.D in chemistry (UC San Diego, ‘75).

He’s No Padres Fan

It started with a joking headline on Times sports editor Dave Distel’s column on Thursday: “Have a Credit Card Ready and Call Now! 1-800-BUY-PADRES.”

Richard Cole, co-owner of Emslee Products of Cleveland, Ohio, is not laughing. His company sells sanitary napkins. Its number is 1-800-BUY PADS.

“Our phone has been ringing all day,” Cole said. “My secretary can’t get any work done, I’m losing orders, I’m paying 12-cents per minute for every call, what in hell are you people doing out there?”

Cole hopes people will stop phoning. He spent an exasperating day telling callers he’s not related to Joan Kroc.

“I told them, ‘Listen, I can’t sell you a baseball team, but if you need sanitary napkins, toilet seat covers or diapers, I’m your man,’ ” Cole said. “I didn’t make a single sale!”