Running Wild

Fortnight ago lively Director John Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation stepped briskly before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee to plead for an increase of $1,025,000 in his organization's 1937 spending money. Kidnapping would sweep the country again, he said, if one cent were slashed from the proposed amount. Promptly Tennessee's McKellar launched a blistering attack on the Bureau for strong-arm methods, swell-headedness. "It seems to me," the vociferous Senator snapped, "your department is just running wild." Evidently more impressed by Senator McKellar than by Director Hoover, the subcommittee sliced $225,000 off the Bureau's budgetary request.

Wild indeed ran Director Hoover's G-Men last week. As if timed to induce Congress to change its mind about next year's appropriation, the Bureau put on an intensive blood-&-thunder show which made blacker headlines than any similar period of activity since the big gangster hunt of 1934.

Tortuous Trail-- Noon of Dec. 13, 1934 two Wall Street runners barged into Manhattan's United States Trust Co., delivered $590,000 in 14 U. S. Treasury notes. A bank clerk drew them into his window, went off to obtain the securities the notes were to purchase. When the clerk returned to his cage three minutes later, the notes had vanished. Manhattan police were hopelessly baffled.

Last June in Topeka, Kans. Federal agents found one of the purloined certificates squashed in the straw-hat lining of a minor pugilist named Melvin Smith. With this evidence to provide the scent, the Federal operatives relentlessly followed a tortuous trail to Manhattan, to California, to Florida, back to Manhattan, to the Bahamas. Last week, in Manhattan again, the agents came to a full stop. Eight thieves had been put under lock & key, $310,000 of the $590,000 recovered. No. 1 man, whom the G-Men called "one of the shrewdest security thieves in the country," was a shifty-eyed, weasel-faced Manhattan barber. For all their trouble, the gangsters had been unable to cash one note. How they had effected the robbery in the first place was the Department of Justice's secret until the trial.

Devine Theft. On Jan. 28, 1935, negotiable bonds worth $1,507,938 vanished from the office of C. J. Devine & Co., 25 floors above Wall Street. Police made no headway until a stranger telephoned Detective Henry P. Oswald in Manhattan last month, hinted that the bonds might be "in Paris--Paris, France." From officials there, Oswald learned that a dressy mob was peddling U. S. securities at cut rates among U. S. expatriates. Another tip led to a beauteous blonde called the Marchioness Pia Ferrari Davico. Federal agents enticed the "Marchioness" to the U. S.

From the "Marchioness," exonerated by the police, and a jailed bond "fence" named David Frank, police got the lead which subsequently revealed that the gang maintained headquarters in Monte Carlo, entertained prospective customers with yachting trips along the Cote d'Azur, houseparties at their French chateaux. Last week the French Surete Generale, on the obliging advice of Prince Louis II of Monaco, who seemed curiously well acquainted with the gang, pounced on one Hungarian and one Czechoslovakian with $440,000 of the Devine securities, when some of them were being offered for sale at a Paris bank.

Confident the Devine and United States Trust thefts were linked, Director Hoover dispatched a Federal man to France. Lest they lose their share of the credit, Manhattan police sent Detective Oswald.

Hamm Solution. "I think we've solved the Hamm kidnapping at last," exulted Director Hoover, handing newshawks his third exciting press announcement within three days. Briefly it announced the arrest at separate points of three men, virtually unknown in police circles, for the kidnapping in June 1933 of St. Paul's Brewer William A. Hamm Jr., released four days later after payment of $100,000 ransom. Also named as co-kidnappers were three men now in jail. Still at large for this and a score of other crimes is Alvin Karpis.

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