Fugitive

A film currently horrifying U. S. audiences is I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, taken from a successful autobiography of almost like title* written by Robert Elliott Burns. Last week the fugitive was a fugitive no longer. Author Burns was apprehended in Newark. He had been running a toy shop in East Orange. His arrest aroused national interest, stirred up two issues: a general one on the question of crime & punishment, a specific legal one between Georgia and New Jersey.

Prisoner Burns was born in Brooklyn 41 years ago. When War broke out he was an accountant. He enlisted in the 14th Engineers, served 21 months overseas. Home again, he found no work, drifted South. In Atlanta, one night in 1921, he and two flophouse companions held up and robbed a grocer of $5.80. Burns was sentenced to serve six-to-ten years in the Campbell County chain gang.

Four months after his sentence began, Prisoner Burns escaped, fled to Chicago. He became a real estate agent, married his landlady, a beautician named Emily Pacheo who was 13 years his senior. With $2,500 of her money he revived The Greater Chicago Magazine, realtors' sheet. By 1928 he was paying an income tax on $20,000. Meantime he met Lillian Salo, taxi-dancer. He fell in love and went to live with her. He asked his wife to divorce him. She notified the Georgia authorities of his whereabouts (TIME, June 3, Sept. 23, 1929).

In 1930 he again escaped, this time from the Troup County chain gang. Then he wrote his book which was a highly exaggerated account of his own experiences. His publishers and film executives refused to reveal his whereabouts to police. But lately he gave a lecture at Westfield, N. J. in conjunction with the showing of his film. And growing yet bolder, last month he attended a luncheon at Trenton, sat next to Superintendent Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf of New Jersey's State police.

"As far as I am concerned," said Governor Richard Brevard Russell Jr. of Georgia, signing the request for Burns's extradition for two Troup County officers to take North, "he will have to take his medicine like any other highway robber."

The American Civil Liberties Union, the 14th Engineers Veterans' Association and many another service group, Mayor Jacob Sechler Coxey of Massillon, Ohio, and hundreds of other persons including several liberal Georgians, buried the desk of Governor Arthur Harry Moore of New Jersey with petitions begging that Prisoner Burns be saved from the Georgia chain gang.

In Trenton, Governor Moore issued a startling announcement. The Burns story was an old one to him. Thrice had he been visited by the fugitive and his brother, a preacher of Palisade, N. J. "About a year ago they came to me," said the Governor, "and asked that I give Burns a chance. . . . Last summer they came to see me at Sea Girt. Yesterday they came back again. It was then that Burns told me he feared he might be arrested at any time. He said he had been tipped off by a reporter. Again I told him that the case would be dealt with on its merits if and when it came to my attention on a request from the Georgia authorities."

In his Newark cell, said Prisoner Burns: "I am looking for the justice of New Jersey to save me from certain death." Later he admitted he had never been chained or whipped in Georgia.

In Chicago said his wife: "He loves the limelight. He's a four-flusher and a big mouth. And I resent the way he portrayed me in that picture. And making that floozy a sweet young thing, too."

Commented the "floozy," Taxi-dancer Salo: "I bet his old wife's tickled to death he has to go back. ... A nice girl--I don't think. . . . I'm in love with some one else right now. . . ."

*The book: I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang.

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