OCR Text |
Show iscwiraiiiiN New Orleans' Long Chain of Ghastly Murders. ASSASSINATION OF IIENNESST. Blood AVont TSefore and Blood Hai Come After the Famous Police Chiefs Truglo Death Itlllings' Strange Kxperlcnces. liow James Herrinjrton Was Persecuted. A story of blood such as the newspapers of the United States have, perhaps, never before had to tell is that of the murder of Superintendent or (as he was always known) ''Chief" David C. Hennessy, of the Xew Orleans police force. To begin with, assassi nut ions have for many years been frequent in the history of the Hennessy Hen-nessy family. Dave's father was killed by Tony Guerin; a friend of the murdered man shot the murderer, and, in turn, was himself murdered. Then Dave's brother was assassinated, and Dave played his part in the bloody drama by killing the man who killed his brother. It seems to be generally agreed, however, that this remarkable re-markable series of crimes had nothinn to do with the murder of Dave, which is laid at the door of an Italian society, La Mafia. This society has been in existence among New Orleans Italians (many of whom are of the lowest class of Sicilians) for thirty-five thirty-five years, and twenty-nine murders have been committed and laid at its door tbir-int;th.-tt time. An idea of how close its organization s and of how fearful the other Italians are of its vengeance should they reveal any of its secrets maybe obtained ob-tained from the fact that not one of the men who committed the twenty-nine mur- fee ks-.m' f-oAKKor.i. Gonnoxos. BAONirrro. matraxoo. MAIICHEOA. COMITIG. SOME OF THE Sl'SPECTS. ders has ever been convicted. Eye witnesses wit-nesses of the crimes knew that if they told whut they had seen they, too, would be victims, and so refused to testify. Our readers are all familiar with the circumstances cir-cumstances which immediately caused U19 murder of Chief Hennessy, vendetta nau existeii ueiweuu iub employes ot two rival stevedoring firms the Provenzauos aud tha Matrangoa. In June a gang of the Provenzauos lay in wait for and fired upon a party of Matrungos. Then Chief Hennessy Hen-nessy announced his intention of putting a stop lo the ghastly business at once, and went to work with a vengeance. Six Italians Ital-ians were arrested and convicted, but were granted a new trial, for which they nrn Ftill waiting. It maybe mentioned incidentally inci-dentally that during the trial one of the principal witnesses was assassinated. But Chief Hennessy was not satlMh-d with these arrests aud convictions. He proposed to blot out the murderous Italian Ital-ian societies in Xew Orleans, and began the collection of evidence in this country and in Italy for that purpose. This made him a' common enemy of all the criminal Italian chisses of Xew Orloans, and it has been learned that a few nights before his death a meeting was called at which his murder was agreed upon, plans carefullv laid, and assassins hired to do the work. He was literally riddled with bullets by a gang of Italians ambushed near home, receivincr six ''penetrating wound" and a number of superficial wounds, prol-itbly prol-itbly made by bird shot. For a time after his murder Xew Orleans Or-leans was so wildly excited that riots nnd mob violence were barely averted. The whole city was at fever heat, and the fil-r-. tumult was in- g SSs creased when still 5f I another sensation was added to the io yJ lit. This was tlio i 4-x j shooting in the tJpJ "bull ring" of the J X. JJ parish prison of jf Antonio Scaffodi (who has been u jy-'t identified as 0110 f of the men who fired on the chief) TQOi,AS H- DC"Y. by Thomas II. Duffy, a friend of the murdered mur-dered man. The mayor of the city Issued a special message referring to the murder and announcing the existence of the terrible ter-rible secret order in Xew Orleans, saying that it threatened the life of every persoD who offended one of its mem berg. The whole city was startled by his nex' statement, which was to the effect that he had been marked ns the next victim. He had just received a letter notifying him 0 the murderous intentions of the Italians. Mr. A. J. Peeler, the man who identified t.rnT,mrt Antonio ?p3fforli. Antonio BntT" ! netto ana rebastono Incardono as tn j assassins of Chief ilenues.v.-, was also informed in-formed through the mails that he would 60on be killed. A "cotr.mittes of safety" was organized by citizens and officials, I which issued an address to the Italian society saying that tlier intecclad to crush ont the murderous so-jlities, "peaceably and lawfully if vre can, violently and sum- 1 mariiy if we must." Dozens of arrests have been made r Italians suspected of knowledge of or com- i plicity in the crime, and it is vcrr prcbabla ' that Chief Henaessy's slayers will C3 speedily speed-ily brought to justice. Among the'mea ! most strougly su?pectii t:-e those whoss portraits are given in th-2 atouo pie t lira j Bastrono Gordocoa, Antonio Baguette, ! Vntonio Scaffodi (DctTy's victim). Antonio Afarcheoa, Tony Matrango (one of the men fired upon by the Provenzanos) and Foreto Comitig. Iowa has a fa-nous ease too, but it con- I sist3 of the practical acquittal of a man i who had been -ronvicted on two previous ! trials of murder, on the ground that the ! man whom he was accused of murdering j in reality committed suicide. j M. E. Billings was sentenced to impris- i onment for life in 1S33 for the murder of ' County Attorney V. S. Kingsley, of Brcm-er Brcm-er county. Billings was a lawyer, and j Kingsley occupied an office with him and i boarded in his house. Kingslev was young. wStdtS was past hisprizne, j suspected his! youthful and pre-f? pre-f? "5s? possessing asso- , 1 ciate of intimacy V iS5feii with his wife. The Y'f'-'TtJv suspicion led to a db$!&h$jL separation of of- v'TvfV fices, and Kings-lV!f Kings-lV!f left Billings' ij, S ?f!& house. On Dec. ' f$" ? 21, 17, Billings ' went to Kings- M. E. BILLIXGS. ley's office and had a dispute that was overheard by occupants of rooms adjoining. At length two pistol shots were heard, a heavy fall followed and Billings hounded down the stairway exclaiming, "I ;:m -hot!" A revolver re-volver with two empty barrels was found near Kingsley's right hand ns lie lay on the floor, alive but unconscious, with a wound in the head. Billings' own pistol was in his overcoat pocket and had not been discharged. Xo arrest was made until the coroner's jury had brought to light the fact that Hillings hail visited Kinsley's office to extort ex-tort money for damages on account of the suspected relations between the dead man and Billings' wife. He was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced, as has already been told, but an appeal was taked and granted, the second trial taking place in an adjoining county. Again he was convicted, and again given a life sentence, although the judge who passed the second sentence said from the bench that no evidence pointed to the guilt of the prisoner, and everything indicated that the dead man had killed himself. Yet he refusal to set aside the verdict nnd passed sentence. The case being appealed for the second time, the supreme court has again reversed thedecision of the lower court, and Billings will probably be free before long. 1 5 1 1 his two years and more in jail havo made him an old man. His hair is white, step faltering and lie is penniless. This is only one more evidence that innocent men sometimes suffer from the verdicts of mistaken mis-taken juries. A crime in which only one man was in- j and from which Si''??'-' j he escaped w i t h 0:'ir - j his life, seems al- I most tame nnd uu- r'k V interesting after 'H Vo the awful story of JJ the Xew Orleans murders; but the A rCi-xS incredible cruelty ,1 -Vv. with which Law- -ij ""-w"-- ' yer James Her- riiigt.cn was treat- JAMF-9 "Eninxc.TON. ed in Bakersfield, Cal., must be accorded a place among the most frightful pieces of wickedness of the time, Herrington had, he says, incurred the enmity of a "ring" of land speculators, and to them he attributed Ins frightful persecution. Herrington was incarcerated in the jail at Bukerstield at the time the outrage was committed, having been arrested ar-rested on a warrant fifteen days old and signed by a justice of the peace who, Herrington Her-rington says, acknowledged that ho did not read it. Herrington was taken to jail and says he knew at once that he would be mobbed. He told the sheriff of his fears ami asked to be allowed to retain possesion posse-sion of a revolver with which to defend himself in case of attack. This request was refused, and he sat down in his cell to wait for the mob. The vigil was a short one. In less than an hour a howling crowd of masked men forced their way into the jail and to Herrington's ceil. lie sprang to the door and defended himself as well as he could with his fists. He was soon knocked down, however, and as he fell was shot in the back. The man who shot him dropped the pistol and Herrington grahhed it, but the heavy hoot heel of one of the mob knocked it from and crushed the hand that held it. Herrington was then taken from the jail, stripped and covered with coal tar and what he says was pcid of some sort. Then he was forced to climb a barbed wire fence and make his way as Lest he could out of the count ry. When he reached Stockton he was completely exhausted. ex-hausted. The flesh and fckin on some portions por-tions of Ids body had been literally cooked by the acid and was hanging in shreds, and he had lost much blood from the wound in his back. Since the outrage the warrant and charge against Herrington, which he dec la res were trumped up by his enemies for the sole purpose of getting him in their power, have been quashed, and now no charge stands against him in the county where he was so inhumanly persecuted. Ho claims to have recognized some of tho crowd implicated, im-plicated, nnd hopes by tho aid of law abiding abid-ing citizens of the vicinity to bring the guilty ones to justice. Tho three cases which are told of above Chief llennessy's assassination with ita attendant murders, the vicissitudes that have surrounded Billings and the persecution perse-cution of James Herrington would be, all of them, as thrilling tales, if told in all their detail, as any ever evolved from brain of novelist or playwright. Verily truth is stranger than fiction. |