Salt Lake Telegram | 1940-03-27 | Page 3 | Mistake Death by Ring Solved

MISTAKE DEATH BY RKIGSOLVED NEW YORK. March 27 Iff! The underworld execution of a home-loving business man a "re- ; grettable mistake" in the annals of Brooklyn's cash killing syndicateis syndi-cateis listed aa solved by Bronx District Attorney Samuel J. Foley. With this development 4n tha many-sided Investigation into the mob's operations came the story, also of a champion of Brooklyn's rank-and-file longshoremen, who left his sweetheart to "meet a couple of tough guys" and was not seen again. ' j Foley said that Lazarus Black. 27-year-old dice game "hustler," : heretofore held as a defiant material ma-terial witness In the slaying lart ' July of Irving Penn, 42-year-old music publisher, had decided to co- j operate with authorities In telling the grand Jury precisely what happened. hap-pened. Shot by Thug Penn was shot down by thugs who mistook him for a witness In the rackets trial of Louis (Lepkcl Buchalter. Black previously had been described by Foley as the man who placed tha guns In the Penn murder car. Black spent an hour before the Bronx grand Jury Tuesday and was Friday. ,n,r ,nn,n,r Vfwnc As details of the Bronx killing were pieced together, Brooklyn District Attorney .William F. O'Dwyer, who pried secrets from two minor ringsters and exploded the syndicate mess, delved into the mystery of the disappearance of Peter Panto, 28-year-oid labor leader. This story O'Dwyer sought' from the lips of Abe (Kid Twist! Relet, i the Brownsville (Brooklyn) tough : guy turned tattler, who named the underworld figure, Joe Adonis, as a now-and-then client of the contract con-tract slayers In the operations of Adonis' waterfront mob. Longshore Champion Panto waa a favorite among longihoremen and had promised to help them break away from the tribute-exacting stranglehold of Adonis' thugs. He kissed his sweetheart sweet-heart good-by last July 14 and disappeared. dis-appeared. Meanwhile, three officials of upstate up-state Sullivan county, where the gang dumped many of Its victims, traveled toward California to return re-turn Irving Cohen, Hollywood bit player, indicted for the slaying of Walter Sage in July, 1937. Sage's body, punctured by an Ice : pick, was recovered from Sulll-1 van county's Swan lake Cohen I was named as a former Brooklyn I triggerman. I Making the trip west are DIs- j trict Attorney William Deckelman, Sheriff Harry Borden and State Trooper George Braisted.