(2 of 2)
Carl Rettich gave himself up early last week. With the arrest of the chief and 20-odd henchmen, authorities felt that the solution of the Fall River case was only a beginning. They planned to prosecute Rettich first under the "Lindbergh Law" for enticing Andino Merola across a State line to his death. But first they expected him to tell something about the disappearance in 1933 of his onetime 'legging partner. Danny Walsh, who, rumor said, had been stood in a tub of cement until it dried, then tossed into Narragansett Bay. Perhaps he could explain, too, what happened to "Legs" Carella, whose body was found wrapped up in burlap with feet hacked off, gold tooth knocked out, scars sliced away. Most hopeful were they of pinning on the Rettich gang the great $428,000 armored truck robbery in Brooklyn last summer (TIME, Sept. 3), Day by day grew the list of crimes of which the gang was suspected: a mail truck robbery of $100,000 in Warren, Ohio; another of $51,000 in Butler, Pa.; an American Railway Express truck robbery of $10,000 in Perth Amboy, N. J.; three Massachusetts bank robberies totaling $51,500; a $200,000 jewel robbery in Magnolia. Mass, last summer; the O'Connell kidnapping in Albany in 1933; the disappearance of New York's Judge Crater five years ago.
For crime addicts, much of the grue went out of the case when a State chemist reported that the vault stains had not been made by blood, that the bones were from roast beef and had probably been dragged under the veranda by a dog.