"Nutty"

Last November 41 defendants went on trial in Chicago for using the mails to defraud 70,000 Midwesterners out of $1,350,000 (TIME, Dec. 2). The dupes were supposed to divide a fabulous estate left by Sir Francis Drake, 16th Century English sea rover. Wholesale exonerations had so reduced the ranks of the accused that last week only eight of those originally indicted remained in court to hear sentences passed against them. Federal Judge Philip L. Sullivan began by imposing five years imprisonment on Canfield Hartzell. Hartzell's brother Oscar had started out as a "Drake Estate" sucker, gone to England in 1922. switched to the receiving end of the racket and ended up with a ten-year sentence in Leavenworth. Again on trial in Chicago, Oscar Hartzell had maintained a moody silence which he did not break until last week.

"I am responsible for the whole deal," the elderly lowan rose to declare. "Everybody who put money into it will get it back at the legal rate of interest, compound interest and a bonus. . . . When it is settled not even the bars of the penitentiary will hold me, for the powers-that-be recognize no bars. I can't tell who they are. That would be high treason."

Taken aback, Judge Sullivan postponed sentencing the defendants, ordered a thoroughgoing psychiatric examination for Oscar Hartzell. "Your Honor," pleaded exhausted Defense Counsel Edward J. Hess, "if Hartzell is nutty, so are all the rest of them."

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