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Two years ago John ("Jake the Barber") Factor was fighting extradition to England on charges of having gulled Britons of some $5,000,000 (TIME, June 8, 1931). Hearing that Chicago kidnappers had marked him, he paid Chicago Gang Leader Alphonse Capone to tell them, "Lay off Jake Factor—or else. . . ." Last week, with Capone in jail, four men jumped out of a car on a Chicago street and grabbed Factor's anemic Son Jerome, 19, Northwestern University Junior. They wrote Factor, who is still at large, to get ready $50,000 in small bills or receive Jerome "in parts." Said he: "I'll pay any reasonable fee. . . ."
At Sing Sing Prison, the lilies on the chapel's altar at Easter services had been grown by Convict Owen ("Owney") Madden, famed Manhattan beer baron.
Sequels
To news of bygone weeks, herewith sequels from last week's news:
¶ To the British courtmartial of Lieut. Norman Baillie-Stewart of the Seaforth Highlanders (TIME. April 3): cashiering (no "drumming out" ceremony) and a sentence of five years in a civil jail. Charged on ten counts with selling military secrets to German agents ("Marie Louise" and "Otto Waldemar Obst"), he was convicted on seven.
¶ To conviction of one Scottsboro (Ala.) Negro on the mortal charge of raping two white girls (TIME, April 17 et ante): indefinite postponement of the trial of the other six defendants; in Decatur, Ala. Grounds: alleged insults to Alabamans by Chief Defense Counsel Samuel S. Leibowitz, creating "sentiment that might not allow a fair trial." Interviewed by a northern newshawk about the Alabama jurors. Leibowitz was quoted as saying, "If you ever saw those creatures; those bigots, whose mouths are slits in their faces, whose eyes pop out at you like frogs, whose chins drip tobacco juice, bewhiskered and filthy, you would not ask how they could do it." At a mass meeting last week, Harlem Negroes hailed Leibowitz as "a new Moses."