Evening Star Newspaper, August 22, 1929, Page 3

POLICE SEEK CLUES l INACTOR'S DEATH Robert Chapman, Leading Man in Racy French Farce, Killed in Frisco. By the Associated Press. SAN FRANCISCO, August 22 (#).— The breath of mystery which have haunted the paths of actors in the racy French farce, “Easy for Zee Zee,” since its opening in a theater of the Latin, quarter here a year ago drew the atten- - tion'of the police today as they investi- | gated the death plunge of Robert Chap- man, 28, leading man-in the comedy. Chapman, son of a prominent Pied- mont, Calif., attorney, either jumped, fell or was thrown to his death from the sixth-story window of the apartment of his friend, Allen Hoffman, playwright | and author, early yesterday morning. Displaying a bruised face and other marks of violence, Hoffman told police that Chapman and he had just returned from a party in the home of another member of the Zee Zee cast. The door- bell rang and Hoffman found two ! strange men at the door. Hoffman said he told them he had no liquor, where- upon they beat him into unconscious- ness. ‘When he came .to his senses, he said, the window was open and the crushed | body of Chapman lay at the bottom of the light well, with police' grouped around it. Scuffling Is Heard. ‘The occupant of a nearby apartment | told of hearing two men go to Hoff- man'’s quarters, sounds of scuffing and then silence, followed by a scream. Pinger prints, identified as Chapman'’s, were found on the window sill Chapman was a graduate of the Uni- versity of California. His death recalled other mysterious happenings involving Naana Wortova, leading lady, and others in the cast. Miss Wortova's name was linked with that of Gerri Ferri, gangster, who was slain in his apartment above the thea- ter a year ago. As Ferri's “girl friend” the actress was questioned during the investigation, which brought to light various underworld happenings, but led to no arrests. Others of the Zee Zee cast were also drawn into the case be- ;‘u.!f of their admitted friendship with erri. A few weeks ago Miss Wortova, known off stage as Elaine Worth, ap- peared at the city prison to visit Frank Crupico, who had been arrested on a statutory charge involving a girl. The actress collapsed in the prison and re- mained in a coma for several days. Upon awakening she announced she was Crupico's wife—an announcement ‘which met with denial from Crupico. POLAR PLANS INVOLVE CANADA AND AUSTRALIA British Meteorologists See Need of #“Real Share” in Explorations North and South. By the Associated Press. LONDON, August 22.—Canada and Australia may be approached shortly in connection with British expeditions to the north and south poles for ex- flt’:‘mry and meteorological purposes. ding meteorologists met at the air ministry yesterday to consider weather | forecasting in particular relation to aviation and agriculture with the em- pire. Dr. C. G. Simpson, director of the British meteorological office, said: “We cannot allow exploration of the polar regions to be done by foreigners; it is up to us to take a real share in it. If there is going to be a definite attempt to investigate the polar regions, north and south, in 1932, we must be pre- pared to take our part. Ws shall ap- | proach Canada and Australia about sending out expeditions.” A British-Australian e: tion is al- ready on the first leg of its journey to | the south polar regions, under Sir Douglas Mawson, but the purpose of this expedition is mainly study of economic and fishing resources. Some Fine Forest Land. ‘The outstanding forest in New Eng- land is the White Mountain National Forest. During 17 years, since 1911, the Federal Government has purchased for- est land in the White Mountains. It has acquired now 514,000 acres, or 803 square miles. Much of it is in virgin forest, says Nature Magazine. There are 61,000 acres in which an ax was never used. SPECIAL NOTICES. ¥ WISL NOT, BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY debts other than those contracted by m;- self. JOHN RAYMOND BOXWELL, 1236 Irving st. n.w 3% OUR ONE JOB IS TO MOVE YOUR GOODS with care, consideration and low cost to or from any point within one thousand miles. Tell us your problem and we'll tell you how much it will cost and how long it will take. National Delivery Ass'n. Inc.. Main_1460. NOTICE 18 HEREBY GIVEN THAT partnership composed of Frank T. Stone and 8. Stuart Poole, trading and doing Business as Stone & Poole, retall drusgists, at 1210 Pennsylvania avenue n.w., was dis- solved August 1, 1929, Future conduct of the business will be by Prank T. Stone, tri Stone & Poole, at the same ad- 0 assumes the payment of all :APTHAfl%mu—nom‘qv,mub AXD P P ou " bave the T & samples. AT B THE EVE Mrs. Willebrandt Cites Conduct 4of Qffi;ials Who Appeared to Want Lax " Enforcement. (The personal equation plays a great part in jailure of enforcement, Mrs. Willebrandt points out in this article, the eighteenth of her series on hibition. Lack of intelligence, honesty and earnesiness rises up to clog the mac) ln;gl, and n she enumerates many instances where sabotage has kept the law from out its honest grist.) ding BY MABEL WALKER WILLEBRANDT. I am not one of those who believe that what prohibition enforcement needs is more men, more money and more ammunition. rohibition enforcement particularly needs more law. that In fact, I do not even beileve t is lack of intelligence, earnestness and honesty rather than lack of law that prevents effective prohibition enforcement. There lies before me a personal letter from a United States district attorney in the East, a part of which I quote, with the names and places deleted, for obvious reasons: “A few minutes ago Mr. S——, former Congressman and State Senator. who lives just outside the city of K——, was in my office and told me about a saloon- keeper in K- who was in the Senator’s office Saturday of last week, and his conversation divulged that he was paying about $1,000 a year to a brother of the mayor of K—— for protection in his business. He also told the Senator there were between 55 and 60 otHer men who were running saloons and paying as much or more than he was paying for protection. “Of course, you have no opportunity of knowing the kind of men working under Mr. X——, the prohibition ad- ministrator, and I am not complaining about them. Nevertheless, it is a fact that neither Mr. X—— nor any of the present _employes of that office have had sufficient experience and training to intelligently investigate and prepare | big conspiracy case for trial in a Federal court. Mr. X—— and his men have been doing wonderful work along the line of repression, in so far as it affects the smaller violators, but they have not been able to fathom the larger phases of violation of the prohibition act, and have not been able to prepare cases which involve the real leaders in | these violations. “The mayor is serving his second term here, and the report among those who are conversant with such matters is that he is the head of the protecting organization for the violators. My per- sonal opinion is that this lead from the Senator is an exceedingly important one, and calls for a careful investigation by the best trained men in the Bureau of Investigation.” Didn’'t Have the Money. And my reply to this had to be that the Bureau of Investigation in the De- partment of Justice did not have the money to make the investigation! It was one that should have been made by the agents of the prohibition division of the Treasury Department. It is the lack of quality of the man- power in the enforcement job rather than the lack of quantity which has made the work ineffective. Too many of the agents are the ordinary police- {man type, without special training or | experience in under-cover investigative work. There are too many little cases being made against ordinary retail bootleggers, and not enough against the real brains of the bootlegging industry. To detect and capture 10 bootleggers in one week in a town of any size pre- sents no great difficulty. But to dis- cover and to obtain proof sufficient for conviction of the common source of supply; to find who is furnishing pro- tection and how; to link these local operations with operations in cities of the same county and perhaps the opera- tions of a gang distributing liquor over not only an entire State but three or four others, and to show their depen- dence primarily upon a conspiracy with a brewery, distillery, bonded warehouse, alcohol manufacturer or alcohol permit holder, is more difficult and much more essential. The job of prohibition enforcement can be well done with the right kind of men, but it never will be done with any number, no matter how large, of the wrong kind of prohibition agents, direc- tors and administrators. And the right kind of agents, directors and adminis- trators will not be appointed unless there are the right kind of men at the :’;ry top of the enforcement organiza- n. Number of Agents. T am often asked, “How many agents, spies and snoopers do you think ought to be employed to enfdrce prohibition?” the implication being that a limitless army is needed to secure anything like cffective enforcement. My answer to that is that the number of Federal prohibition agents and offi- cers should not be greatly increased. It is no more logical, sensible or feasible to expect the Federal Government to set up and maintain an_organization sufficient to apprehend all the liquor law violators in the country than to set up an organization to snare and prosecute all the petty thieves, burglars and hold-up men in the United States. The eighteenth amendment itself con- tains the best answer to the question I have quoted. Section 2 of the amend- ment provides that the States shall have concurrent power to enforce the laws made under it. Certainly that part of the amendment having been ratified with the other part by 46 of the 48 States, places on those States a respon- sibility as great ‘and as solemn as that resting upon the Federal Government. The States can no more say, “Well, the Federal Government has authority now to deal with the liquor problem; PROVIDENGE TILE REPAIR & SUPPLY. 1376 H St. N.E. Phone Lin. 3540. 24 APFTER THIS DATE I WILL NOT BE RE. aponsible for suy debts other than those 2ontracted for by myself personally. CHAS. H. INMAN, 1927 14th st. n.w. * S NCR Y EEBEORBEL S e han Dt contra any one -other myselr 'NICK “LesS or LESSEOS. 408, 2nd . Return-load Tates o or from any distant city on 10 days’ notice. HEADQUAR' FOR LONG-DISTANCE VING. UNITED STATES STORAGE CO. INC.. 418 10th St. N.W. Metropolitan_1845. ELBERTA PEACHES Best Quality Tree-Ripened Fruit Drive thru Silver Spring, turn right at Sligo on Coles s ton Plke to Lucknough Otrchar we will leave it alone and let the people at Washington worry about that,” than to say, “There is a Federal law which prohibits the shipment between States of impure and spoiled foods, and there- fore we will not in this State make any effort through our own officers to pro- | tect our people against canned goods that are pof , contaminated or adulterated. Let the Federal Govern- ment attend to that.” ‘Where blame does attach to the Fed- eral Government is in failing to supply the right kind of man-power in many places during the past few years. The human flaws, and not the legal flaws, have furnished the loopholes through | which bootleggers have swarmed. Legal Defects. Lest the prohibition officials in the Treasury Department complain that I have been unfair to them and willfully blind to the defects in tuc Department of Justice’s machinery for law enforce- ment, I now call attention to some of those defects. As things are now, the prohibition agents and their superiors often say, “We gather plenty of evidence and ar- rest practically everybody who is in the bootlegging business, but we can’t make any real progress in putting a stop to the business because the Department of Justice falls down on its end of the job. Give us the right kind of district at- torneys who will prosecute cases vig- orously and secure convictions and long sentences, and we will soon have most of the bootleggers out of business.” Certainly no one has a better under- standing of the glaring deficiencies and defects in the prosecuting organizations than I have. During my entire eight years as Assistant Attorney General a large part of my time and energy was necessarily devoted to prosecuting prose- cutors when I should have had to do nothing but direct prosecution of people the prosecutors should have prosecuted. For instance, a few years ago we re- celved complaints from many reputable citizens of an Eastern city that prohibi- tion cases assigned to an assistant United States district attorney were be- ing handled in an ineffective way. The complaints were of such a character that we ordered a thorough investigation. The investigation disclosed that the assistant district attorney, who had been appointed through the political influ- ence of a United States Senator, was constantly consorting with bootleggers and other underworld characters, and had shown evidences of wealth not at all compatible with his salary of less than $4,000 a year. Among these evi- dences were purchases of a high-priced automobile and an expensive seashore home, payments being made in cash. Explains Big Fee. ‘The prosecutor on being questioned admitted that he had possessed littie money or property before taking .office. He explained his evident prosperity after assuming office as due to the re- ceipt of a large fee from an under- world character for whom he had done some_work, which, he said, was in no FLOWERS BY WIRE UR connections with the Leading Florists in America enable us to give you Pel:fect Service. Between 14th and 15th Sts. Telephon National 4905 1407 H St. QBuittermilb. Churned Fresh Daily way connected with his Federal ties. He stated that the fee had been paid in cash, and that the man’from whom -he received it had since. died having been killed in' a shooting affray. He itted that he had failed to ac- count for the money in his income tax returns. He. stated that he was un- aware of the regulation of the Depart- ment of Justice prohibit! district at- torneys or their assistants from appear- ing as defense counsel in criminal cases, either in State or Federal courts. Cer~ tainly a man cannot both prosecute and defend persons at the same time with- out either neglecting the public’s inter- elz or goorly serving his private clienis’ rests. Even after we called for the resigna- tion of this prosecutor he sought by the use of political influence to retain his position. However, he finally went. Another assistant United States at- torney, while responsible for the prose cution of prohibition cases, actually sociated himself in a transaction wher by he became the partner of several shady characters in the purchase of a brewery. In another district I received infor- mation concerning the operations of a liquor ring that was transacting an enormous amount of business. The evi- dence was clear and conclusive, but we had to withhold taking any action to secure indictments until the United States district attorney then in office was replaced by another. We found that it would be unsafe to place the evidence in the hands of the district attorney then in office, because there was proof that he and his friends were closely associated in many ways with some of the principal conspirators to violate the prohibition law. ‘ Nullification by Officials. ‘There are many ways in which an un- willing or dishonest district attorney can nullify the effect of good work on the part of the prohibition agents. I was obliged to recommend the dismissal of one of the United States district at- torneys, not because of any proof of corruption or graft, but because of con- tinued neglect of prohibition cases. One of these cases involved the removal to | another State for trial of a Federal| court balliff who happened to be a Re- | publican county chairman in the dis- trict attorney's State. The removal proceedings were neglected nearly two' an Apartment found every convenience. There are apartments and a two-hundred-car gara HARRY M. 1106 Vermont Ave. years, until one of the men under Mr. , head of what we call our “flying squadron” from my office, action to end the delay. removal was brought about the defend- ant was tried and convicted. The district attorneys’ offices, of course, are responsible for insuring the ro-unx of adequate bonds by boot- leggers who seek release on bail pend- ing trial, but in many cases prosécutors have failed to see to it that the bonds posted were valid and collectible. The result is that arrested bootleggers have simply disappeared and bondsmen have had to Bly nothing. Prohibition agents can ther evi- den:: an%“ l:ma.‘e -mn.lnha their hearts’ conten! ere is little prospect of prohibition enforéement when a district attorney handles prosecutions in such a way that 6 out of 10 of the men ar- rested secure dismissal of their cases with the apparent acquiescence of the district attorney. In one district we discovered that of 830 criminal cases disposed of 474 were either dn?ned for want of prosecution or quashed on motion of the defendants, which meant that the defendants were freed without trial. In the same dis- trict there were 123 trials by jury, and 85 of these, or more than half, resulted in acquittals for the defendants. The district attorney in charge simply wasn't interested in prohibition enforcement ;nd had to be replaced by a man who as. In other districts we found the work of good prohibition agents nullified by the plain incompetence and lack of —— S AT O s e v ARIETTA PARK $7,950.00 Large 6-room home. throughout. 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Chestnut Farms Butte rmilk is served at your home ice cold—fresh from the churn and makes one of the most delicious and appetizing of Summer beverages. Md. Only 12 miles frem D. C. Line pen_Every Day Until 9 “ELBERTA PEACHES Leave a note in your empty milk bottle tonight—our driver will be glad to leave it at your door. G _STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 1929. FLAWS IN PERSONNEL ARE HELD CAUSE OF DRY LAW FAILURES of district attorneys appol ir offices merely in reward for political services rendered a Represent- ative‘or United States Senator. This type of district attorney simply doesn’t know how to effectually prosecute a pro- hibition case or any other kind of case, and, of course, bootleggers thrive in such districts. (Copyright, 1929, by Current News Features, to “thef ‘Tomorrow Mrs. Willebrandt will have something more to say about the human flaws that haye prevented genuine en- forcement of the prohibition laws. ATTORNEY IS CONVICTED. Former Arkansas Town Official Bentenced as Robbers’ Aid. PINE BLUFF, Ark., August 22 (#).— Ralph R. Reed, former city attorney, was convicted last night by a jury in Circult Court as fter the fact GULDENS ‘ P_fil.lsfar_d‘ INSIST ON THE GENyne ONE GROUP of 55 SUITS IS SALE PRICED: SUMMER to rob the People’s Bank A) 2, when three bandits robbed the tution of $20,057. He was sentenced to serve five years. in the State penitentiary. The | jury was out 55 minutes. ! Reed Bars in London :re banning women Safety smokers. was the fourth person to be sen- tenced in connection with the robbery. _Ford Taxicab i Sow are your BRAKES? NeomroRATES Triplex Glass 4-wheel Brakes Comfort | Transverse Springs I Hydraulic Shock Absorber: at Sweeping Reductions! NN/ We Say“1849” Even in such a standard value as this, the rtanding of the jeweler counts! 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