Strange Times 123: Riddled With Buckshot

Strange Times is a newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time. If you like it, you will probably like Westside Saints, my latest Jazz Age mystery novel, as well.

Today we have a boss with ink on his fingers and a handyman with blood on his hands. Set ‘em, lock ‘em, and do the whole job yourself on—

May 3, 1921

• A panic results on the South Ferry elevated platform when Eliam Kaouan, a Syrian rug dealer, tires of being shoved by the crowds and responds by shooting John Cachowski, a Polish sailor, in the neck.

• Although most of the public is pleased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition of French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, a few dismiss the art as “sacrilege.”

• The Weather: Overcast today; Wednesday fair, continued cold; moderate variable winds.

Across the northeast, newspaper typesetters are striking, but few of the dailies have actually shut down—thanks, I suppose, to the heroics of old school newspapermen like Mr. Clarke.

PHILADELPHIA, May 2.—Charles H. Clarke, an official of the John C. Winston Company, publishers, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and went to work as a typesetter this morning. When he reached the plant he found all the machines were silent.

“What’ll we do,” some one shouted.

“Do,” shouted Clarke, “I’ll set ‘em; I’ll lock ‘em—I’ll do the whole job myself.”

This is an insane way to kill someone, and I would love to know more about how Mr. Murphy felt about the incident. While I think it’s a tragedy for anyone to be killed to protect private property, I’m also irritated with the burglars for coming back to the same property three times. We all want to raid a millionaire’s liquor supply, but be sensible!

Two other notes on this story: Adolph Zukor was a pioneer of early feature cinema who kept working into the waning days of the studio system, and Haverstraw, New York, is a cute little town best known as being the place where my wife and I got engaged some time ago.

A trap gun loaded with buckshot, fastened in the home of Adolph Zukor, President of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, in the hills back of Nyack to protect his private stock of liquor and other valuables, was discharged when two bootleggers attempted to open the cellar door late Sunday night and one of them was wounded so severely that he died after running a short distance. The other was wounded but got away.

The body of the man found crumpled up in a plowed field about 200 yards from the house has been identified as that of Edward Coates, 30, of Haverstraw, who on June 25, 1918, was sentenced to serve a year in the penitentiary for grand larceny, and who later served six months for the offense. Recently he had been suspected of bootlegging.

Mr. Zukor’s home is one of the largest in the section. It consists of two main houses, one called the “day house,” in which is a large living room, a dining room, kitchen and den, and the “night house,” a larger building divided into sleeping apartments. There are two natural swimming pools connected with the houses and another artificial swimming pool in process of construction. On other parts of the 500-acre estate are a garage, where the caretaker, Patrick K. Murphy, and his family live upstairs, a barn and outbuilding for the forty men who work on the place and their families.

Robbed Once Before

In the “day house” are a number of valuable antiques and paintings, as well as a safe. Mr. Zukor is in Europe. About ten days ago two men broke into the “day house” and got articles valued at $500, although they were detected by the watchman, Richard Halloran, who fired several shots.

Murphy decided to make the place burglar proof. There is a buffet of mahogany in the living room of the “day house,” and although nobody on the place would say anything about it yesterday, Mr. Zukor is believed to have a large and valuable stock of liquor in his cellar. Murphy was apprehensive about the liquor and built a trap for any one who might be after it.

From the back of the “day house” several stone steps lead to an outside lattice door a few feet in front of the inner door, which has a glass panel. Directly opposite the inner door Murphy placed a small truck and fastened it to the wall. He put a packing case on the truck and to the top of the case secured a trap gun loaded with buckshot, aimed so that it would hit a man in the doorway just above the belt. He tied a string to the trigger, which in turn was tied to a clothesline that led up to a pulley in the ceiling. This line went across another pulley in front of the door, through a small opening at the top of the inner door, and was tied to the doorknob of the outer door. When the outer door was opened more than ten inches the gun would be discharged.

Mounted, but Taken Down

After Murphy got his piece in position he reflected that the burglars might be local men and relented. That night Halloran, the watchman, found two men again trying to break into the house, and chased them off after a lively battle in which ten or fifteen shots were exchanged. Murphy put back his protective gun. On Sunday night about 10 o’clock he and Halloran heard it fired. They ran toward the house in time to see two figures running in separate directions for the woods, and disappearing to the darkness. The first man called to the second, “Come this way, it’s better.” But the other man, dying as he ran, plunged down an embankment, and out into a plowed field, where they found him later face down in the dirt, dead. The middle of his body was riddled with buckshot. He had an army pistol and a belt sagging with cartridges.

The tracks of the man, who got away, were marked by blood, showing that he was badly wounded, also led to the undergrowth. Later in the night Murphy saw the lights of an automobile on the lonely road which runs near the estate, bound in the direction of Haverstraw, and he thinks that the man got away in this car, in which the two had probably planned to remove what liquor they could steal.

Sheriff Merritt of Rockland County, who answered with Under Sheriff Wood in answer to a telephone message, said he was certain that the men were bootleggers.