Rascal Sentenced

In the District of Columbia's Supreme Court last week Gaston Bullock Means, national rascal, stood with arms akimbo and a smile on his dimpled face, listening to his third sentence to Federal prison. For duping rich Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean, estranged wife of the former publisher of the Washington Post and publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer, out of $100,000 on the pretext that he could find the Lindbergh baby (TIME, May 16), Rascal Means was given ten years imprisonment. For duping her out of $4,000 expense money he got another five years. The terms were not to run concurrently.

In passing sentence on this onetime German secret agent who later played a shady part in the Harding regime and wrote an audacious book about it, said Judge James M. Proctor: "The verdict reveals that the defendant capitalized not only on the sweetest and tenderest emotions of the human heart, but also on the basest in his clever and adroit plan. The Lindbergh case brought out all the best in the hearts of men, but also gave the opportunity to some to display the weakness and wickedness of human nature."

Pending appeal the Court denied the defendant $50,000 bail, suspecting that Rascal Means still had a sizeable portion of Mrs. McLean's money hid away.

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