"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:
Pending before the U. S. Supreme Court is the suit of Mrs. Anna Laura Lowe,
onetime wife of millionaire Indian Jackson Barnett, for the widow's share of the $4,000,000 estate which the Government seized after Barnett's death two years ago. On the grounds that she and two men forced the demented old redskin to wed her, her marriage was annulled two months before Barnett's death. Since then, lower courts have held that she cannot share in the rich oil estate. Last week, in Los Angeles, frustrated, 50-year-old Mrs. Lowe published a lurid booklet named Truth to air her grievances. Twenty-three pages long, Truth is illustrated by photographs of Indian Barnett before and after marriage. In one set he is a dirty old codger living in a squalid hut. In the other he has a shave, a new coat, a mansion, Anna Laura Lowe. Her conclusion: "Jackson Barnett was the smartest and best one of the Indians. He married better and lived better than all the other Indians combined. His eyesight, hearing, memory and intelligence were excellent to the end. He lived a useful and active life until the end." Of her late mate's guardians, says Mrs. Lowe: "Our Government in Washington is the best organized and greatest band of super-gangsters and criminals on earth. They stop at nothing where there is a dollar in sight."
In Manhattan, 35-year-old Alfred Emanuel Smith Jr. filed blackmail charges against two men who, he claimed, had bilked him of some $13,000 since May 1933, when he met a slender blonde named Catherine Marie Pavlick at a party, started to take her home, wound up at a hotel. Month later, said Alfred Smith Jr., a private detective named Krone approached him on Miss Pavlick's behalf, got $1,000 allegedly to finance an abortion. Subsequently the son of the 1928 Democratic Presidential nominee said he had constantly remunerated Krone and a Brooklyn lawyer named Ross until his income, which included $100 a week as vice president of a lottery recently barred from the mails by the Post Office Department, was exhausted. Then he appealed to his father, who took him instanter to the District Attorney's office.
Arraigned on indictments charging extortion, Detective Krone was jailed when he could not raise $50,000 bail. Lawyer Ross, whose brother turned out to be a Brooklyn Democratic district leader, was let out on $5,000 bail. Miss Pavlick, newlywed and sobbing, was exonerated after the police satisfied themselves that her connection with the case had ended on receipt of the first $1,000. In Krone's apartment, searching police found a fingerprint camera, wiretapping set, a picture of one-time Governor Smith inscribed: "To my friend Mr. Krone, Alfred E. Smith."