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Show IfSe ADVENT ik PERFECT CRIMINAL' I r$nfflOW Dismay and Perplexity Have Been Spread ". ;;. "p'.tfjligMv y!SBtSt ' H ";; lr wuiiam b. tts. ymim, frmW -4Bfe - ' - .Si m'ttHM'tRwiS A i (CowrtcM, 1911. bj- the New Tore Herald Co. All risMa rcwrTCil.) j JS; NEW type of criminal has appeared, a type Ujl unfamiliar to criminologists, which has sud- r( y dcu'J" sprung to view in two countries, spread- W . lug dismay and bewilderment among those 7J I whose specialty Is to know crime and its per- a petrators, a sinister, strange and deadly type the ari Lett. ' jf He Is a man who knows do fear, no care foV life. J? no compunction, no mercy. He defies classification in any known group. He is more desperate, more Si reckless, more deliberately evil than the worst "gun M ' man" of wild days in the West. Pie is more violent, Sjr more destructive, more appallingly cruel than the !jf. blackest of "Black Hand" bomb throwers. Ho Is w ; bolder, more threatening, more of a menace, than IJE the most brutal of "Huuchakists." Bandits, hank S robbers, house breakers and train wreckerB the Aiucr- jj ; lean authorities have learned to understand and to U meet. But the Lett is a new problem in his methods? 3ff ; lis nature, hla Impulses and his thought processes. If there be such a thing, the Lett, meaning those examples of the race that have recently come to the attention of the police, is the perfect criminal. He comes of a racethat for centuries lias been dppresscd, maltreated and brutalized. His people, once proud and virile, have been stamped Into' the soil, their liberties crushed and their aspjrxat(pns. blunted. He has come out of that past withthe "moral sense of a beast; with a dull, small cunning brain; with complete disregard of any life, Jeast of nil his own; with a burning thirst for violence and a need, at a.ny cost, of wresting from the world pay-S pay-S , xnent for his wrongs. ' This is the man who now takes indiscriminate re- i venge, and, having been loosed from his own land, , turns upon the nations that give him shelter and 3 - T-- JBHJyA -' v-Mfc' ?- TSv The Famous "Gpsy Moth Gang. ' Gutraan, the Leader, S !-''"' ' dSBEtoitt& ""' ' ' ' SM(ffi ' Who Later Killed HimselC Wears Derby Hat at Right End J, 3: fir? t HHEi -f PP -' ofToPRow- Peter Plaude Stands at Other End of Too & I'V'"" Psi Row He Was Never Captured and May Be "Pciter the B t?j V VlPltoJier "",'-"' ' "5 ' Pa,nter Killed by London Police. Other Members of this 1 1 i-V. , fF fa g R "Gang Susj?ected but Ncyei; Rounded Up. - ' Kerniosy and Rosa, the Woburn Bandits 'J . rends all within his reach This U the man who '2 takes what he needs whore he can get it and will ji : kill all, men, women, little children who stand in K his way with never a qualm, wllh no emotion but S a tiorce exultation and a lust to slay. , His most startling characteristic, the one that 4 ' marks him apart, is his absolute determination never m to submit to capture and to spare no act that will keep him from the hands of the law. Going to any jjl extreme in his attack upon the comtnunHy, he is al- ,i ; ways careful to keep the last shot in his weapon for At himself, counting death a slight matter If he can send y others before him. m Armed with the most deadly of magazine pistols, B the most dangerous small arm that has yet boon pro- 1. duccd. this man s the threat of the hour in the ' world of crime. ' The Boston police are certain thnt "'Peter the 'i: Pauper." oue of tin anarchi?ts. besieged and burned fto death In Hounilsflltch, London, was Pelef IMiuidc, one of the uotorious "Oypsy -Moth''-band of ihissa- m,w chusetts. IThe London a I roc My was somethlug entirely dif- ) ferent than any other previous criminal event in the ; great fily. and for a few dsiyg England wns non- ; ' plusod. but to the police of .Maw;ichu&Lnts the method I of committing the crime and Ihe type' of criminal ; made it immediately apparent llmt the Letts wore I : abroad, and the information coUcclvd in America has been forwarded to England. t i The Lttih criminal appeared iu America in Febni- i ry. HlOS. nd in three jnurderous rulds at widely il ; separated points in Massaclmsetts at Irregular peflods ffl : he left a trail of death and misery. London should Ki ': know him, because lie showed ljmelf at Tottenham $j road In January, 1000. Ills methods wore identical w with those he used in America. j ' On the cold, clear night of February (J, 1D0S. in the 2 : quiet city of Woburn, a abort distance Xrosi Boston, ,'fl a pistol shot was followed Immediately by the crash jy of broken ylass us a Kpeut bulle( hurtled through the iU window of a dwelling hoiibu. Jt was the first shot 5 "red In tlie tragic war between the daring, merciless rjf Lettish bandit and the American representative of militant protection. That elicit was.Instumtly followed' ' by he hoarse cry of a policemuu for help and a volley I of bullpts from the desjierate mon tleelng from capture . and dogged policemen. Thry got away thu-t flight, life having been detected In the act of breaking uud en- Mlr r" ' A Thornas Landregan J Jrefc,tw,fc'; (mSosBBmSm Exquisitely Proportioned Magazine Pistols H llW V' m$W " S '- 5PVr , wJHlHlra and Clips of Bullets Nine Shots Can Be In- 1 Ifi- X!&1&& "f s s0$!3feK BS - & SWlSMBBFWlBmEmER scrted Instantly by a Single Movement H 9$p t ' y - , ; r: ' 'r . , l & 1 Bessie Baker, Who Refused to Surrender ' ffig'' r ' il Wi 'i'Z''t- 1 t gtgk I UcLLZI! d Her Horse to the De'sperate Bandft Ivan- ' w 1 lymli-' J&-M flw ' r I ZT Thoufrh He Threatened Hcr w,th m terlug, leaing two men and a boy seriously wounded. The countryside wns awakened, but the tlirce dgs-perate dgs-perate men had disappeared In the direction-of Arlington. Arling-ton. There had been a brave attempt to get them, but the escape had apparentlybeen successful. The Murders in Arlington. Two foreigners were riding In auelectric carMn the town of Arlington early that morning when Policeman Police-man Daniel flooley Jumped through the door at them with drawn revolver, followed closely by Arthur Burgees, Bur-gees, conductor, and Fred Collins, motormau. armed with heavy brass controller and brake rod. The passengers pas-sengers reached for their dreadful pistols, but before they began to spit leaden death the three brave men were sprawling on top of them aud the strangers were soon shackled. At Woburn the search of the desperados des-perados resulted In the finding of two magazine pistols, pis-tols, one Amerlcau and the other a small arm used In the Russian army. ' Huh! We don't care If we die," said oue of the i(ien, after giving his name as Peter Rosa. "Everybody "Every-body got die some time, and I kill cop If he try to kill me. The Latvl's not afraid to die. Ohrls Zeltln he get away. That is good, for he will be heard of by the policeman who gel us. Yes. Remember." The uther captured was Brlstow Kcrueiosy. Both were Letts, the first of the type brought to the attention atten-tion of the American police, and skilled otllcors rushed from Boston to htudy them. They fouud that Rosa had recited the credo of thQ Lettish, criminal that he would rob and kill; that hoywould murder without giving a chance to the victim to tlgjit for life. Chief Watts, of Boslou; Tils hquiicide expert, Captain Cap-tain biigaiL and Gustaf Oustnfsun.. head of the Ber-tlllou Ber-tlllou bureau, began the study of tbls.surprlsjug crijn-inal crijn-inal type. That the desperate mon -came from the Baltic provinces was ascertained, ;ind. after an jlupf-feclual jlupf-feclual search for Zeltln the pollen deterniiued that .the men who committed the raid wore but individual bad men who had deported from the Russian army. It was just five minutes before the hour for closing, at cloven o'clock, Tuesday. July 2.1, lfJOS, when three or four iriasked and armed men rushed' into the snlpnn of Wiuterscin' & McMnnus. In the Jamaica Plain "district "dis-trict of Bosto'n. and ordered all in'the room to "Throw up hands!" Wint0ron hurled it heavy 'schooner" at Hie head of U nearest holdup nia'u.J The glass shivered shiv-ered iu fragments agniust the adjoining wnll a& Wln- terson dropped to the floor badly wounded from a magazine pistol bullet and his bartender, Frank J. Drake, fell dead. The robbers turned to ilee as they heard cries' In the streets. They rushed, crouching low, in the direction of 'Forest mils .Cemetery. A citizen had the temerity to shout at them and he dropped, his arm pierced by a bullet. A woman was in the way of one of the men as he rushed poll moll and a bullet whizzed through her hat A little boy was shot In the leg, but by this time policemen were rushing to fhe district with drawn revolvers and the alarm had been sounded throughout sixteen well manned aud disciplined divisions. In an hour nine hundred policemen had surrounded the lonesome Forest Hills Cemetery and answered doggedly, shot for shot,' the spat, spat, spat of shots from the men at bay, fifty yards away. It was a dreary, dark night. The next day ihe battle was resumed, re-sumed, and an advance made upon a little clump of bushes from which a spiteful fire was persistently coming. Hundreds of shots were fired into that clump of bushes and finally, after the return lire had ceased for a long period, the spot was rushed and the body of n single man was found. There was a bullet wound through his heart. It was the occasion for considerable sardonic newspaper comment and general gen-eral ridicule of the police when the medical examiner reported that the bullet wound which caused death had been self-lnilietod. The stranger was Identified as Edmuiido Gutmnu, the sub-foreiunn of workers employed by the Mnssa chusetts Gypsy Aloth Commission. A. group picture found in a pamphlet report of the commission's work turned out to be one of the most treasured photographs photo-graphs over placed in the hands of a police department. depart-ment. It was not dldlculf to compare the photograph of the respectable looking leader with the face of the dead bandit and arrive at the Identity. "Then wo must get Peter riaude, the chap in the top row ou the end, opposite Gutmun," said Chief Watts, of Boston, "and 6hrls Zeltln, late of Woburn. was on el of the others. Round up the gypsy moth band anyway." But It wns a difficult-'task. Men at headquarters were unanimous in declaring that the dreaded Lett had broken loose again' and there was feur In New England. Homes In the suburbs were darkened early and the children went to root before dusk, yhllobe-laled yhllobe-laled adults "leered close to the lighted spots and .avoided the shadows as I hey sped to the doorkuob. Eveu the special detectives assigned to the strange case had been called off, bavins reasoned that the desperate des-perate men had by 'some means slipped out of the country when the atrocious Methuen airair happened. It has been told before howlcDennott and Emerson, Emer-son, types of the daredevil, clllcient policemen so often found in small communities, went out on that beaut!-v beaut!-v ful summer evening, ,-Augu,st S. to hide In the "peat meadow" in their town of Methuen aud nab the mid- night prowlers who had been stealing Tom Delnncy'K potatoes. The policemen had not returned at noon, and -the aged chief, Jones, drove out alone to find "what in thuuder was kecpin 'em." He stumbled aver McDermott's body. There wns a bullet wound In bib bead. Emerson nns dead near by from a bullet bul-let wound. Clutched in McDermott's big hand was a piece of cloth torn from the clothing of one of the 'mysterious assassins. Shells from automatic pistols wcM'e-found-swUtei'etL.about. . j Tliey do not know5" at this writing who-killed .McDcr-mol,t .McDcr-mol,t and Emerson. They do know that in the city of Lawrence, two miles from the peat meadow, there was a very small community of Letts, and police investigation later showed that n strange woman had left this silent, resened, hot headed llt'Mc household every day carrying provisions In the direction of the lonely neighborhood. Here It was, then, that the terrifying terri-fying remnant of the Forest mils band had retreated to prepare in this silent morass for the next sally into some peaceful community. The Lynn Tragedy. Thomas' A. Landregan, a wealthy shoe manufne- turer, and Patrolman James II. Carroll were trudging ' along through one of Lynn's busiest streets last June, enrrying $4,300 iu cash, the pay of the shoe workers. Landregan was in sight of his factory ollice when he turned suddenly, attracted by a hoarse whisper behind him. Instantly he dropped dead, a bullet through his brain. Carroll crumpjed up an instnnt later. Three holdup men had sneaked up behind. The alarm was given. One hundred policemen were chasing and shooting within twenty minutes. The bandits' -n ere surrounded, one was killed, another was shot through the front of the skull, but lived to go to trial, and the other had one of his fingers shot off, and surrendered. They wore rounded up in less than an hour. They were Letts. The dead man is known only as "Joe," thirty years old, and the leading spirit in the desperate holdup. The two badly wounded bandit were saved from a vengeful mob nnd guaided every moment during their hospital confinement aud a New "England jtfry a few weeks ago declared that they must die. The judge declared that Andrew Abson, nineteen, and "Waslll Ivaukowski, twenty-two, must die In March In the electric chair, ami they now await the hour of death at the Chaiieslown Slate prison. The Lynn group were Letts and IviTukowski, through an interpreter, told something of their past. They had met in New York city as tramps and coming from the same Baltic provinces were drawn together. They had stolen rides on freight cars through Canada and the Eastern States, robbing and committing ail sorts of lawless acts. The week before the murders they had witnessed Lnndrcgnn's method of carrying his pay bag from the bank to the mill and determined to pel It. "Ves. Wo are Latvis (Letts) if you want It so," he said. "Joe is dead. No. I am not sorry. I saw him drop. He was in the bushes with me. We would kill anybody who would stop us. I would have not away, though, If I had not hesitated a moment loo long and did not kill u woman. Her horse was outside out-side her bouse ready for her ride. I ran when the police chased too close of me and was just grabblug the horse, when the girl ran out nnd snatched the horse away from me. 1 told her I would kill, but she dragged horse away and when I pulled trigger she was too far for good aim and I missed 1 don't know other fellers very well. Not last names. Just Andy and Joe. They come from same country Yes, I have mother aud sister in Russia. Do not tell them that I must die. I don't enre, but they feel it much.'' The mysterious Lettish assassins left America soon after the Methuen murders. In August, 100S, so when despatches appeared from London telling of a dramatic dra-matic holdup, pursuit and killing by robbers In th Tottenham district in January, 1900, American police oflfclals cabled to England. "Thoy were Letts." Two men, after a pretence of applying for work, jumped into a motor car In a Tottenham factory yard, shot the chauffeur In the-neck and grabbed a bag containing the weekly wages of the factory hands. They rushed away, madly pursued by factory workers and other citizens, aud the chauffeur, though badly wounded, started his' car nnd. picking up n - M couple of policemen, sped In pursuit. The robbers H Urcd from automatic pistols and disabled the car. but H the crowd pressed close and they Hied into it again H and again, leaving a trail of wounded, including a M child, struck In the mouth by a bullet, and several jH policomcn. They finally swung onto a tram car, and, M holding a pistol at the head of the driver, compelled H him to speed ahead and meantime one of the bandits M shot into the crowded car. wounding many. M The police followed In another car, and the robbers M finally plunged to the street and run. The constabu- M Iary Mere close, and one of ttic pursued, running M under a railway arch, found himself in a cul-de-sac, fl and, seeing that he uas at bay, fired a shot into his , M head. The other was surrounded In n house and so M badly wounded that he died. One of them was known ' M as "Jacob," the other as "Kelferl," and both were , H Letts, ns ascertained by writing and printed matter fl in their pockets. M An International study by police of this latest ' M factor In criminal pursuit has been battling, Of the people little can be learned, aud, although the Letts in fl Coiirlaud aud Llvpnia,, t,w of the Baltic provinces;' (J . M are peaceful aud law abiding, the migrants to Amcr- fl k'a from the district have been to .1 great extent des- 1 H perate criminals, who left theirvwli 'c'dunJ.ryffunUer. " a cloud and burning for revenge upon any otlicinl. il The police in this couniry are satisfied that the ma- ll winders who have terrorized Massachusetts and Lon- . H don are deserters from the Rus.sl.iu army, because ijl they have iu many cases carried the Russian army H automntic pistol and have shown icmarknblo pro- M llcipucy in its use. Pistols they bin e purchased in , M this country have been of the automatic type, firing H ten bullets as fast as the tip of the index finger can M quiver. M The Letts, as a whole, are hard working people, a 'H mixture of the old Prussians and the Lithuanians, and ;H their name, "Lat is," menus "end of Lithuania." A ' remote, Isolated people, their language, of all Euro- ll pcan tongues, Is the nearest to San-dcrll. Living in ll (wiric)y separated farmsteads, harassed by dread oC H enforced army life and forever seeking means to jH evade it, they have sent out sinister representatives H to the English speaking countries. jH The criminals captured are poorly educated. ' Tn H their country, where pagan idols wore worshipped as H recently ns IS.3. aud where the names of the old di- iH vlnitles arc even now used iu their sombre folk- ( H songs, education is but secondary. Within a century Jl marriage by abduction was quite common and uar- H ringc of brother and sister was frequent In order -jo". H pre veu L family separation. H Songs of the Letts. H Their simple quatrains they have no grand epics H Still brjithc the spirit of a warlike and even vie- IH torlous epoch when they "burnt the stronghold of , jH the Russians," "challenged the Polnck to enter their . H island" or "met the foe on the deep." Their relations ' H with the Russians and Germans arc. as a whole, de- scribed with Inured or despair. One characteristically IH doleful wall reads: "O Riga, Riga, thou art fair, . IH very fair. But who mnde thee fair? The bondage of jH the Llvonians'." And another: "Oh. had I all that H money sleeping beneath the waves I would buy Mio castle of Riga, Germans and all, and treat them as they treated me. I would make them dance ou hot' H stones." Despondency prevails, as evidenced by tills national cry: "Oh, my God, whither shall I flee?' The woods are full of wolves and bears, the fields arc full of dcspoLs. Oh. my Gud, punish my father and j mother, who brought me up Iu his laud of bondage!" 1 A London policeman, after a nlny of the Letts in connection with the recent London tragedies, says: - H "They come to Loudon and are quickly hidden away and absorbed iu the great population aud are ready H to do any desperate job foi money. Murder is noth- H ing to them; aud burglary, rather than political macli- H illations, is their real aim. Thoy arc, of course, H chieily anarchistic, and they follow respectable call- 'H lugs, If at all, only as a cover of their lawlessness. tH They gravitate to certain districts, fiddly In the cast 'H end gf London and iu the Essex suburbs. Robbery H and not revolution would account for Mich pro para- ,H tlons as we found in Investigating them in conucc- !H lion with the Uouudsditch affair." ,H Deputy Superintendent William B. Watts, of the H Boston Police Department, whose depnrznjecir lui jH worked ou all of the New England murders and raids lH in which the Letts were engaged, believes that close ,H co-oparatlon with the Russia u government: and the jH adoption of tho fiiiKCr print system is the only effect- jH ive wuy to prevent their coming here in the future. H "European countries ns a whole." he said, "have jH a much more careful system of Individual espionage jH than we have hero, and as the criminals who have 'H come to tlds country in many cases aro fugitives 'H from military service, undoubtedly there arc careful iH records of them. If we could arrange by treaty an H Interchanging system whereby each person leaving IH the country would be compelled to have his linger H prints recorded, show he was free from military ser- iH vice, free from debts and not a criminal, then we jH could prevent Ihe acquisition of these undesirable iH allons. ThlB Is true not only of tho Lctt', but of criin-. .H inals from Southern Europe, and until I bore Is some) H such nrrongoment the work of the police will be) M doubly hurd." H ijH |
