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Today brings twin stories of courtroom drama, from Fairlawn to Berlin. Earn some easy jack on…

June 14, 1921

• Fiorello LaGuardia, president of the New York Board of Alderman, begins campaigning for the Republican mayoral primary, promising to run a “penniless” campaign free of corrupting influence.

• New York pastors issue a protest against a government report that accused the clergy of harboring socialists and pacifists, calling it “slander upon the motives of Christian ministers.”

• The Weather: Fair today and tomorrow, cooler Wednesday night; fresh strong northwest winds.

Now, $95 may not sound like a lot to blow up a house, but in 2022 that $95 would be worth $1,500...which is still not a lot to blow up a house.

PATERSON, N.J., June 13.—Frank Conway, disabled war veteran of Fairlawn, N.J., told Judge William Watson and a jury in Quarter Sessions Court at Paterson today that he had accepted $95 to blow up a house with dynamite because it was “just a chance to make some easy ‘jack’ and at the same time help a fellow out.”

Conway was the principal witness for the State in the trial of Ruggiero Meola, his son, James Meola, and Earl McKay, all of Paterson, charged with conspiracy to blow up the home of Mariano de Grado, a silk dyer of 237 East Sixteenth Street, Paterson. They were arrested, it was asserted, while they were making the bombs after Conway had “tipped off” the police.

“They gave me $95 for the job of blowing up the joint,” Conway testified. “If anybody got hurt they promised me $100, and if anybody got killed they said we would get $200 and maybe more.”

He said that on April 11, Ruggiero Meola asked him to do the job “because he wanted to get even with the De Grado family on account of one of De Grado’s sons having trouble with Meola’s daughter.” He testified that he had accompanied the elder Meola to Fairlawn, where they stole fifty sticks of dynamite from a power house. McKay was called in, he said, and with James Meola helped to make the bombs. Conway said he gave $50 to McKay and kept $45.

Ruggiero Meola testified that he and his son James had not been on speaking terms for more than a year and that a conspiracy between his son and himself would have been impossible.

The case will be resumed today.

Anti-leftist stories like this make you want to go back in time and scream at the German courts: “The Communists aren’t the people you should be worried about!” Of course, if you did that they’d call you a Communist and place you under arrest, so maybe skip it. If Hoelz’s story makes you want to play a tabletop RPG about leftist revolutionaries, Comrades is currently on sale for $6.75!

Also, bonus points for the unnamed reporter for combining hysterical fear-mongering with a delightful pun about Hoelz being “caught red-handed.” We see what you did there.

BERLIN, June 13.—The grim Moabit Court Building was garrisoned today like a fortress. Green clad police, armed with rifles, revolvers and hand grenades, guarded every approach to the entrance. The corridors inside were packed with reserves armed to the teeth. A strong force guarded the small courtroom.

The few privileged spectators armed with special passes were forced to run the gauntlet of patrols, repeated examination of their papers and having their persons searched for arms, because the Communist, Max Hoelz, who originally gained notoriety as a picturesque robber Captain of the Vogtland, Saxony, was being tried on fifty charges from murder down, incident to the last Red uprising in central Germany in March, of which Hoelz was one of the principal leaders caught red-handed.

Significantly this Communist, who once single handed had terrorized a whole countryside, was personally afraid to be led alone from the jail to the court under a police escort, dreading that he might be shot in transit. He begged that the Court permit him to be accompanied across Berlin’s Bridge of Sighs by his attorneys, which the considerate Court granted.

The Court, too, was afraid that armed Communists would succeed in invading its quarters and throw hand grenades at the Judges. Many witnesses marshaled against Hoelz by the Public Prosecutor were afraid of Communist revenge and betrayed a timid reticence as to testifying against him.

Hoelz, who is 32 years old, is undersized, pale and beardless, with a very low brow and deep sunken, piercing eyes. He proved pictorially to be neither of the heavy villain nor romantic robber captain type, but a new Teuton type developed by the war and the revolution, best describable as the cold-blooded fanatic, betraying high intelligence, reading Tagore and Tolstoi in jail, giving proofs of ability as a leader and organizer, but calculatingly fanatical on the subject of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Alienists pronounced this Red leader to be a psychopath with hysterical symptoms, but fully responsible for his acts.

Symptomatic of the communist state of mind, Hoelz in his initial statement to the court said that he did not consider himself to be the accused, but rather appeared in court as the accuser against the capitalistic social order. With quiet nonchalance, he admitted personal responsibility for masses of Red proclamations. Red army orders and other documents bearing his signature, including a blanket threat to butcher the bourgeoisie.

The case, which will be continued tomorrow, is attracting tremendous popular interest.

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