Pair ClaimP hone Case 'Frame-Up'

Two freshmen, arrested late Thursday night in Somerville on alleged charges of "offensively and disorderly accosting and annoying a certain person of the opposite sex," said last night they were innocent "victims of circumstance."

"We're being blamed for something perpetrated by someone else," the pair stated.

Picked up by police when they met girls with whom they had arranged blind dates, Edward J. Mrkonich and Peter A. Stern apparently walked into a vicious set of incidents.

For almost two months, three strange men have been calling the home of Julio Camacho in Somerville, and speaking obscenely to him, his wife, Hazel, and his daughter, Katherine. The anonymous men called at all hours of the night and, according to the telephone company, from different phones.

Thursday night, Mrkonich and Stern called the Camacho home on advice from a friend that they could get "nice dates."

Police had told the Camachos to have their niece. Linda, arrange a rendezvous with the phone pranksters next time they called. She made a date with Mrkonich and Stern, and the police nabbed the two at the meeting place, Union Square in Somerville.

Somerville police booked the two on the basis of a phone call made that afternoon to the Camacho home by the unknown men the only call the Camachos could be exact about on the time. In this call, several members of the family and a friend on the party line heard the caller use such words as "whore, prostitute, son of a bitch," and phrases like "you'd better watch your wife, mister, we've all been in bed with her."

Friends of the accused duo swore last night that they could account for the actions of both during the entire afternoon.

Martin Camacho brother of Julio, and a lawyer, said yesterday he "was not at all convinced that these two are the ones who have been making all those calls. There's certainly nothing wrong in two fellows trying to get dates."

The boys' lawyer, Milton Kafka, said he would meet early next week with the Camachos, and thinks they "will probably drop the charges."

"I never heard of the number formed by the first seven letters of an obscene word before," Stern said. "It was given to me as a girl to call for dates. We went over there and were arrested. We had never seen or spoken to these girls before Thursday night."

Mrs. Camacho claims that the voices of the two are the same as the voices of two of the men who had been calling them. She also identified the police captain's voice as the third, however.

Somerville police, while not certain that Stern and Mrkonich are the men they want, are convinced the culprits are Harvard men, as some of the calls had been traced to within the University.