Missing Men

Too often politics not Law decides whether a Governor extradites a man wanted for trial in another State. Last week Law asserted its rights in two distant States. In California, Attorney General Ulysses Sigel Webb ruled Governor Frank F. Merriam had no option, must surrender La Verne Moore, fabled super-golfing mystery man known for seven years as John Montague, to New York State to stand trial for alleged participation in a roadhouse robbery in 1930. This despite appeals for Montague by Bing Crosby, Guy Kibbee, George Von Elm, et al. Promptly John Montague's attorneys flew their appeals East, asked New York's Governor Herbert H. Lehman to cancel the request for extradition.

In Georgia, Governor Eurith Dickinson Rivers dug out a "full faith and credit" Federal statute which he hopes requires other States to return Georgia's duly requisitioned criminals. To Massachusetts' Governor Charles Francis Hurley Governor Rivers wrote again to recapture escaped Negro James Cunningham whose extradition was recently refused because of a "sense of humanity." Fed up with such melodramatic refusals of extradition as that by New Jersey's Governor A. Harry Moore in 1932 in the case of Robert Elliott Moore (I am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang), Georgia prepared for a legal roundup. "We are going after any others the other States may be holding from us," vowed Governor Eurith Dickinson Rivers.

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