Italians Bearing Gifts

Clerks in post offices are used to foreign-looking individuals who address packages queerly and argue over the amounts necessary for postage and insurance. What made Clerk Edward Werkheiser, 28, suspicious of two Italianate men in dark overcoats and soft hats who came into the Easton. Pa. post office one morning last week was the shape and weight of the six packages they shoved through the window. The packages seemed identical. Each was about 10 in. long, 5 in. wide, 5 in. deep. Each weighed 6 Ib. Yet the senders, in arguing about the packages' value, insisted each contained something different. They were "gifts," the men said: one package contained perfumery, another clothing, another a desk set. . . . The men seemed in a hurry. They argued for only a moment, then paid for their stamps and left the window.

Postal Clerk John B. House, 50, standing next to young Clerk Werkheiser, had heard the men arguing. He saw Werkheiser start opening one of the packages. . . . That was the last he knew until he found himself, in an agony of mortal pain and bloody numbness, being trundled out of the post office on a hand truck. Clerk Werkheiser, an arm and a leg blown away, was being trundled out on another truck. The post office was a wreck-- bundles, letters, glass, splinters and debris hurled every which way. The two clerks, mangled and beyond recovery, managed to gasp out details of what had happened before they died. Three other clerks who were torn, cut and bleeding badly, and the five remaining infernal packages, still intact on the mailing counter, pieced out the story further. A Mennonite minister who had been addressing mail when the two bomb-mailers were there, added descriptive details. A manhunt by Federal as well as State authorities began, focusing on antagonists in the U. S. of Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy.

The bomb that killed Clerks Werkheiser and House had been addressed to "J. Everhardt, Huntingdon, Pa." Mr. Everhardt is an official of a reformatory. Another was addressed: "Natap Mariane, Argentine Vice Consul, Argentine Consulate, Baltimore, Va. [sic]." The other four addressees formed a more homogeneous group:

Generoso Pope, the Manhattan sand & gravel tycoon who has bought up all but one of New York City's Italian-language daily newspapers (TIME, Sept. 14), potent in city politics and proud in the possession of three decorations from Benito Mussolini.

Italo Falbo, editor of Il Progresso, one of Sandman Pope's newspapers.

Commendatore Emanuele Grazzi, Italian Consul General in New York.

One B. Cuto, at the address of the Italian Vice Consul in Pittsburgh.

A hunt for anti-Fascist agitators seemed the more logical when it was recalled that the Italian consulate in Pittsburgh was bombed two months ago, that twelve Italian stores in Philadelphia were bombed in the past two months. The packages' return address in Dover, N. J. proved, of course, fictitious. Detectives sought three men in a small coupe seen near Easton, arrested two suspects.

The five unexploded bombs were removed, at the end of a long pole, to a quarry near Easton. Charles V. Weaver, an explosive expert from the du Pont works in Wilmington, undertook the risky business of opening them to see what they were made of. With a knife at the end of a pole he undid one package, set to work on another, putting a stone on the top while he cut away the wrappings. As he went back along the pole toward the package, it blew up, adding Expert Weaver to the bombers' list of unintended victims. He died 24 hours later. His efforts had only established that the bombs, skillfully made by someone who had used New York newspapers for wrapping, were sure-fire contrivances consisting of a wooden box with spring lid. a glass jar sealed watertight, and a small battery wired to a percussion cap on enough dynamite to kill several horses.

In Manhattan, Generoso Pope and friends expressed surprise at the Easton episode. True, a business colleague of Sandman Pope had been shot in a quarrel a few days prior. But that could have no connection with the Easton bombs. Sand man Pope and Friends had received no anti-Fascist threats or warnings, they said. They defended the good Americanism of the Pope Press. Equally anxious to be understood was Manhattan's Dr. Charles Fama, anti-Fascist leader. Said he: "The anti-Fascist element in this country are not bomb-throwers; they are gentlemen."

Nevertheless Harry L. Getchell, Post Office inspector in charge of the investiga tions, said:

"I solemnly warn all Italian Consuls and Italians who have been prominent in the Fascist movement not to open packages from strange destinations. The Easton bombs were merely a drop in the bucket. There will be others."

Within a few hours, Count Pier Albert Buzzi Gradenigo, the Italian consul in Cleveland, received by express from New York a package marked "table service and set." Police took it to a rifle range, fired one shot at 150 yd. It quickly, loudly confirmed the suspicion that it contained a lethal load of nitroglycerin.

Italy's consular officials in Detroit and Youngstown, and Oscar Durante. vice president of Chicago's school board, publisher of Fascist daily L'ltalia, all received lethal packages. All were wary, all un hurt.

In New Haven, Conn., while citizens everywhere viewed their mail with alarm lest they become involved in this murderous Italianate intrigue, police were handed a mysterious package wrapped in burlap. Gingerly carrying it out of town, they fired bullets at it. When nothing happened they opened it. It contained the skins of eight muskrats, one skunk.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.