CRIME: Stumblers

One day in the spring of 1936 the Travelers' Insurance Co. in St. Louis, Mo. received an agitated telephone call from one John Womack. His voice trembling, Mr. Womack related that his wife, Bertha Mae, had been sideswiped by a dairy truck in East St. Louis, knocked to the pavement where she gave premature birth to a dead child. Mr. Womack added that he would settle his claim immediately for $2,000. Preferring to investigate, a company representative found plump Bertha Mae bedded in a local hospital. Physicians decided she had given birth...

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