Strange Times 72: Kill Any One They Touch

May 07, 2019

Today is Westside’s release day! This news has me positively dizzy, as it’s something I’ve been waiting on two years and more, and I hope it leaves you smiling, too. Order the book today.

Today we have death from the skies, stowaways in Brooklyn, and Black Handism in the Bronx. Practice your secret handshake for…

March 13, 1921

  • A conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church issues a statement condemning all dancing, particularly a new step known as the “Wesleyan.”

  • Now under martial law, Springfield, Ill., is declared tranquil after yesterday’s riot, thanks to the swift justice that saw the black man accused of shooting a police officer arrested, tried and imprisoned after giving a full confession—all in a morning’s time.

  • The eight White Sox players accused of throwing the World Series have been banned by newly-installed Commissioner Landis, pending the results of their trial.

  • In “perhaps the most sensational finish of a six-day bicycle race ever seen in this city,” Oscar Egg and Peter Van Kempen take the honors at the Garden, after another day of “spectacular riding.”

  • As Caruso’s recovery continues, his wife declares herself optimistic that he will sing at the Metropolitan Opera in 1922.

  • The Weather: Clearing and colder today; Monday, cloud; moderate northwest winds. 

True supervillain stuff in this front page science item, which gives an idea of what a superweapon looked like in the days before the atom bomb. 

The Chemical Warfare Service has discovered a liquid poison so strong that three drops will kill any one whose skin it touches, it became known here yesterday.

Falling like rain from nozzles attached to airplanes, the liquid would kill everything in the aircraft’s path, according to a high official of the service.

A description of what the new war weapon would do, in the opinion of an official, follows:

“One airplane carrying two tons of liquid could cover an area 100 feet wide by seven miles long in one trip, and could deposit enough material to kill every man in that area, and if those on the ground were not protected by gas masks the area of fatality would be many times greater.

“The only limit to the quantity of this liquid which could be made is the amount of available electric power, as nearly every nation has practically an unlimited supply of the necessary raw materials. It would be entirely possible for this country to manufacture several thousand tons a day, if the necessary plants were built.

“During the Argonne offensive the entire First American Army of 1,250,000 men occupied an area approximately forty kilometers long by twenty kilometers wide. If Germany had had 4,000 tons of this material and 400 planes equipped for its distribution, the entire First Army would have been annihilated in twelve hours.”

The Chemical Warfare Service is developing protective clothing to entirely cover the wearer and make him impervious to the deadly liquid.

This story is both extremely sad and irresistible fodder for a 1920s David Copperfield story. Not sure if the journey to New York occupies the first 2/3rds of the book or the first 2/3rds of the first paragraph, but either way, I see Wes Anderson directing the film adaptation. Write it with my compliments and call me when it’s released.

Effort is being made to interest members of the Rumanian colony here in the case of Jon Jacobin, 15 years old, a stowaway, who is being held shackled aboard the steamship Eldena, in Brooklyn, for deportation. Captain J.W. Nicholson of the vessel, who has been trying to get the boy admitted to this country, said he had no alternative but to keep Jon chained because of the severe penalties which would be levied against the owners of the vessel if he escaped.

Jon and a sister were left in Rumania when their parents went to America several years ago. The sister was killed by the Germans, the boy says, and he was sent by one of the American relief commissions to France, where he became mascot of a regiment. He learned to speak English fluently.

After the soldiers quit France Jon was left behind. About two months ago he reached Gibraltar as a stowaway and interested in the American Consul in his case. The Consul, he said, gave him an emergency passport and he stowed himself away on the Shipping Board vessel Polar Star, which he thought was bound for the United States. Instead, he landed in Constantinople.

In his haste to get off the ship—he had not been discovered—he left a coat containing his passport. Jon said he then stowed away on the freighter Evergreen City, bound for Bizerta, in French North Africa. Landing there he found that the Eldena was about to leave for the United States, so again he became a stowaway.

Captain Nicolson said he discovered Jon when about four days out. The boy’s intelligence made a good impression on him. Captain Nicolson reported the case to the immigration officials on reaching this port and the boy was ordered imprisoned. His deportation was ordered. Superintendent Baker of the Immigration Office said the government seldom waived passport regulations. 

Under the rule, Jon must be taken back to the boat where he boarded the vessel. As Bizerta is a French protectorate, Captain Nicolson doubted. It seemed to him, he said, that Jon would be a fixture on the ship. He added that if the boy remained on board under the American flag for the next five and a half years he would be entitled to enter this country and become a citizen.

This surprisingly rambling story of murder in the marsh—condensed more than I usually cut these down—is included because I’m fascinated by the way people wrote about the mafia before the Godfather, before “the mafia” was even a term. The best they can do is “secret society,” without any speculation about why hold-up men and grocers are suddenly falling dead. 

Dressed up in a burlap bag, with the head crushed from the blow of a blunt weapon, evidently a heavy hammer, the body of Louis D’Amico, 32 years old, of 2484 Third Avenue, the Bronx, was found early yesterday in a strip of marshland in the Eastchester section of the Bronx, near Fort Schuyler. From a pair of gray silk gloves worn by the man when he was murdered and the presence of a black skull and crossbones woven into a gray sweater on the body, detectives began to search for possible clues to a secret society in the Bronx believed to have ordered the death of two of its members in the last three weeks.

When the body of an unidentified hold-up man was found in a snowbank in Crotona Park, Tremont, about three weeks ago, the police were troubled by a mysterious ring the murdered man wore, which contained a skull and crossbones design similar to that worn by the latest victim of the supposed murder band. Detectives expressed the belief yesterday that the band killed D’Amico at a meeting somewhere in the Bronx on the preceding night. They advanced the theory that the first victim could not be induced to attend a meeting called for the purpose of slaying him and that certain men of the band were delegated to kill the man after they had arranged to decoy him to Crotona Park.

Further mystery has been added to the slaying of the first man, the detectives pointed out, as they have not been able to establish his identity, although convinced that he was a resident of the Bronx. They succeeded to the extent of having him identified as one of two robbers who held up several cigar stores on the west side and in the Bronx in the three months preceding his murder.

The slain man’s body was identified last night in the Fordham Morgues by his brother, Joseph, of 184 Lincoln Place, the Bronx, who declared Louis had been missing from his home since last Wednesday. Louis, he said, was in the produce business with his father, Julius, and he declared that as far as the murdered man’s family was aware he had no enemies.…

Shortly before 10 o’clock yesterday morning Edward and John Kern, farmers in the Eastchester section bordering on Long Island Sound, were driving along East 177th Street in the direction of St. Joseph’s Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Southern Boulevard when they saw a pile of discarded automobile parts lying behind a wooden rail which divides the thoroughfare from a fifteen-foot embankment leading to the marshland about 1,000 feet east of the asylum.…

Edward Kern lifted up the flap of the bundle and uncovered the head of a man. Then both unloosed the sash cord and saw that the man’s head had been crushed.… One of the men hurried off to a telephone and called the Westchester Police Station.… In a few minutes, the vicinity was swarming with detectives and officials, and search immediately was begun for somebody who could identify the murdered man.

Before the arrival of the first contingent of farmers and residents the detectives had removed the burlap covering around the body, and found that the slayers had run another length of the sash cord about the neck of their victim, then passed it down under his knees, drawing them up to a level with his chin. A deep gash over the man’s right eye showed that he had been struck with a heavy weapon from behind, and that the slayers had begun the work of binding the body before the man was dead.

The slain man’s left hand had been forced between the body and the upper part of his legs, while the right hand, with a new gray silk glove hanging from the tips of the fingers, had been bound to his side with the sashcord. On freeing the left arm it was seen that the victim wore another gray silk glove, buttoned at the wrist on that hand, and when the glove was removed the detectives found a signet ring with the initials “F.L.R.” on the little finger and two more gold rings on the next finger. One of the latter was a Japanese signet ring, and the other had the heads of three snakes entwined, with a red and a green stone in two of the heads, and the other stone missing.