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Show 1 THE DEAD MAN OF CAT SWAMP I KS ronj luri". minor politician oi I iiston, 'a., con- S tested Borderer ol Kosteri who swears lie "meant m harm" arnl Hint his "In-art is ffOO&V L'ST after dawn on a brilliant morning last J June Albert Koster. an engineer of the I Iackawanna Railroad, slid into the saddle of nil I motorcycle before his modest house In Andover, P N J, waved B hand to his wife and sailed down I the road on his way to work. The air was winey I and the sun that peeped slyly at him between the I hills glowed In his blood In the woods along I the meandering road the birds were chanting. I No doubt this simple man gave only ordinary &t- I tention to the glories of the day He was think- I lng. perhaps, that he must hurry or be late at his I post, that railroading was a hard and demanding I life, that insurance must be paid the day after I to-morrow and Me brotherhood due at the end I of the week. His mind must have been busy, as men's minds sre with the plans and problems of the adjacent future, with those vital trifles that I make up the life of the individual. He can have had no suspicion of a sudden and dire inlenup- tion of his being. A sweeping turn of the road, where it colled f about the base of a wooded mountain, brought A befoio his eyes a particularly lovely conjunction B I of hills and woods and streams, shining In the E u opulence of summer sun-up. Let us suppose It mane him uream a nine. peruau oi mihuilo. J matters of grown children, a better home, a lit- mm tie money in bank and a secure old age. Fine r weather makes men feel the goodness or living and sets their minds to the planning of life The road twisted agn'n. Koster saw before him blocking the way, a huge covered truck and two motor cars with a group of men standing about. (flfl He bad to slow down. A man detached himself F from the group and walked toward the engineer. ; As he came near he levelled a pistol and said In . an English tainted wlti Italian vocable?: PSA k ' Koster stopped his machine, put one foot on W1 tbe ground to steady it and obeyed The man Em ceio nearer, looked searchlngly into the engi- neer's face and seemed to hesitate a moment. :. I3H if calculating what to do MB "Dead me nlell no tales." he said suddenly. He put one hand on Koster's shoulder, lev-EaV lev-EaV elled the revolver and fired three shots polnt- H 'dank into the helpless workman s body This account of the killing of Albert Koster on EH the. road past Cat Swamp, near Andover. N. J , last summer, Is reconstructed in part from the ZjM confession and supplementary statements of the t man who killed him and has been convicted of murder. How Koster came to be slain wantonly and madly on this quiet summer morning Is a matter of some complexity. Its explanation involves in-volves a phase of the silk robbery traffic that has been carried on about New York City and especially espe-cially on the Inflowing Jersey roads for half a dozen years, or since 1915, when the interruption of sea trade caused by the World War and the raiding of German commerce destroyers and submarines sub-marines forced silk up to unheard-of prices and made it a commodity more attractive to the criminal crim-inal than gold itself. The man who killed Koster was a silk bandit and he bad In his heart no mood of killing and In his mind no plan that Involved In-volved murder. In telling this story I must warn the reader that only the confessed slayer of Koster and none of his alleged associates all of whom are under indictment in New Jersey and In jeopardy of being sentenced to death has been tried ( onsequently, the presumption of innocence must be assumed in the case of all these other men. The acceptable facts are that Koster was shot down In the manner described, that the man who shot him has confessed, implicating others who have been indicted with him. that the silk robbery rob-bery did occur and that the stolen silk truck and pari of its contents were recovered by the officers in such a manner and under such circumstances as partially to corroborate the confession. It is also a fact that certain other alleged members of the gang have made admissions to the Prosecutor Prose-cutor The reader is asked to accept this narration narra-tion with proper reservations in favor of the accused men. Here is. then, the official or Prosecutor's account ac-count of this deadiy affair, which is backed up by the Grand Jury's Indictments. According to his own confession, Tony Turco, .m Italian of local fame in Easton. Pa . was approached ap-proached by two of his countrymen, small tradesmen trades-men in the neighboring Township of Newton. N. J At this time stories of the til cr hauls being made by silk robbers along the Newton Road were common com-mon property. Such information was quite naturally nat-urally of particular interest to residents of Newton New-ton Township and the vicinity because of the ,'r ation at Newton of the Sussex Silk Print Works, one of the largest silk manufactories in the country. Day and night, big automobile trucks carried fortunes in print silks away from the mill Turcot testimony is that the two shopkeepers from Newton Township, when they called upon him, claimed to have Information that within a few nights about $S0,000 worth of silk was to leave the Newton mill, and it is alleged al-leged that they urged Turco to eet together some friends for the purpose of holding up the silk vans. Turco sets up the claim, quite naturally, that he at lirst declined to enter the conspiracy, and that he dldso only reluctantly after repeated re-peated urglngs. That may be as It will. That he was particularly well fitted for such an undertaking under-taking is plain enough This short, stocky Sicilian Sici-lian of thirty-flvo, bootlegger, fixer, go-between and general underworld agent (by his own statement), state-ment), was also a minor politician and supposed to be close to the. police. He was known to have influence and a following among rough elements of the South Italian population In the region. ?uch a man could, of course, recruit a gang to do any sort of job. Turco apparently went out on the streets of Easton and picked up his men, ten of them. Why he considered so many participants essential to his work does not appear. Apparently he was frightened from the beginning and sought support sup-port for his sagging courage in numbers. In any event he had a gang of eleven, including himself, him-self, when he set out to wait on the road at Cat Swamp for the coming of the silk-filled lorry This did not Include the two tradesmen from Newton Township. They stayed at home. About 6 o'clock on this Juno morning this gang of eleven reached the Cat Swamp road bend in two touring cars and there sat down to await the coming of the silk truck. The gang had precise pre-cise and reliable information to the effect that the truck would leave the factory at about that hour in order to reach New York by the middle of the morning. The truck appeared almost at the expected minute. The gang spread Itself across the road, which had also been blocked with the touring ears, levelled their revolvers at the driver and his helper, forced them to leave the scat of the truck and then sent them up Into the woods on the mountain slope in charge of two gangsters. These men were under orders ryot to harm their captives so long as they made no resistance. It was exciting work nnd hard on the nerves of these amateur banditti. A bottle of whlskoy was passed around to keep the blood running and the courage mounting. Tureo drank heavily of ihe stuff, he says. Then, just as the gang was debating what disposition to make of the captured cap-tured truck, a motorcycle was heard approaching and Koster came into sieht around the bend. Turco makes no concealment of the fact that it was he and ho alone who stopped the innocent engineer, forced him to throw up his hands and then shot him to death. He explained merely that he was excited half drunk and frightened He feared that Koster had seen the license numbers num-bers on the two touiing cars and might by that means furnish a fatal clew. He acted on the desperate impulse of the moment, before his associates had time to Interfere or advise him Koster's motorcycle was hidden In the brush His body was found by officers some hours later in an adjacent creek, after the drivers of the truck, released by tbe bandits, had given the alarm. Turco and his gang were seized with panic. Some wanted to rush away at once Others were calm enough to consider for a little. Finally, most of the gang returned to Easton, but one member was detailed to drive the captured truck to Turco's farm on the Jersey side of the Dela-faro Dela-faro River, opposite Easton. Here it was put into the barn. When the bandit leader came to examine the contents of the truck he was sadly disappointed. Instead of .'S0.000 in silk there was about $7,000 worth of this fabric and a number of coppei rollers used in printing silks, the latter worth about $15,000. The value of these latter was. of course, lost upon these Ignorant men They re-moved re-moved the silk at once and sent It Into New York through a channel arranged in advance. The rollers they left In the truck Their intention was to back the truck and its remaining contents con-tents into the river, but in this they delayed and therebv gae the police time to act decisively 9evera1 elements of the police organization were immediately drawn into the case. The local public police were of course most concerned with the murder of Koster. On the other hand, the hold-up of the silk truck brought into action offerers of-ferers employed by the Silk Association, various road patrols and finally a detective employed by Jones & Whitlock. insurance underwriters of No. 99 William Street, who carried the coverage on silk shipped by the Sussex Mills. This man's name is Bernard Levy and he assists me In preparing pre-paring these accounts of silk banditry Benny Levy, as he is called in his profession. as most active In the successful work which followed. He says, however, that the man who did the best work and deserves the fullest credit is Chief of Police H C. Irons of Franklyn, N .7. It was Chief Irons who got the first direct information in-formation henring on Turco's complicity in the affair Turco. having been warned, fled to Chicago. Chi-cago. There he was for a long time in secure hiding, but .ie war. finally lured back to Chester, Pa . by Italian detectives in the employ of New ton Township. At Chester, when he left the train, Turco was seized and immediately rushed Into the State of New Jersey by virtue of a writ of extradition pi floured fl-oured in advance bv the officers. Arrived at Newton New-ton he was at once closeted with District Attorney Attor-ney Lewis Van Blarcom, Chief Irons and De- VL v'v , '7 J,Sjjy "Dead men tell no tnles" he said in broken English, fired three shots point- Af2 "" . -SuB blank into Hie helpless trainman's body, and ran ' mBmM i 1 i 1 Li d- back to his companions at the truck. BsT SBa l BBfln BB '.2BBjB BBBfl BBSBja BJBB ? HBBx ""2B F BBBBBBh BBBBBBr BB BHBBBBm. VBBjjjjjjjf ' BBBBaBsBBBM Bjfl I Detective Bernard Levy, who gener- f Oltlj trite the credit for the brave ii nil ingenious unravelling of the j mysterious crime to his associate, Chief Iron;. tective Levy, and in the. presence of these men f he made his confession 'j- This confession Is almost childish In its mis- ! understandings of the law and the social rela- lionships. For instance, Turco pleaded earnestly with his confessors that he had not a bad heart, j that he had meant to kill no one and that he f vould settle with the slain man's widow if al- I lowed to go free and return to Italy He had a 1 few thousands m the bank and some property. if which he offered to. turn over to Mrs. Koster if the officials would leave him just enough to gt II back to his native country This was, he thought. sufficient atonement for the casual murder of a ji harmless and useful man. I mention this detail only to show what kind I of man may become a politician and man of in- fluence in the small American community, espe- !' dally where there are large foreign elements It may be a worth while commentary on the sue- cess or failure of the democratic system. The Koster murder case, as It progresses, will probably show ramifications much more interesting interest-ing than so far suggested here. It Is possible, J for instance, that one or more police officials in f nearby towns may be summoned by the Prose- " I cutor to throw light on the case. Again two f members of a firm of silk jobbers are held in 1 jail without bail on a charge of murder in the j first degree, the accusation being that they were j accessories before and after the fact. Further in- qulrios are being made among tho silk dyers to I learn how the stolen silk was converted so that I a couirj not be identified. Finally, it is believed that this case may eventu-ally eventu-ally involve Important financial and political per- I sonages This belief may not be realized, but it ij Is certain that the trial of the other members of tho band will be one of the most important and exciting held in that section of New Jersey for many years. There have already been prellml- I nary activities on the part of certain Italian I secret societies, so that a strong detachment of the State police will continue to be present dur- ii lng the sessions of the court to prevent any pos- I siblo attempt to rescue the accused. There have ! been repeated threats against the life of Chief 1 Irons and Detective Levy and a recent bomb throwing In New York Is said to be connected with the affair. There is thus the possibility that something may come out of the trial to strike close to the heart of the organized silk robbing I that has cost the Industry many millions of dollars For the ordinary reader, however, the focal i points of this terrible story are out there on the road past Cat Swamp on that tragic summer morning, and there in the jail at Newton, where Tony Turco sits, convicted of murder, sobbing that he meant no harm and that his heart is good. |
