BIZARRE TALE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 135, 10 June 1938, Page 5

BIZARRE TALE.

RETURNS FROM DEAD.! I REPORT "EXAGGERATED." |1 NOW HIGHLY RESPECTED. Ii SAN FRANCISCO, May 24. I William A. Chapman, former clerk of the United States District Court at Shanghai. China, has returned from the dead. In a bizarre tale of human emotions, extending from the mysticism of the Orient and reaching from McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary to a directorate of a Los Angeles boys' club, a 1 man who was reported a suicide for nine years to Federal officials has come back to life with startling suddenness. It was a story of embezzlement, death, humiliation, concealment of Government funds on the high seas, prison and finally human rehabilitation, according to threads of the man's life pieced from records of the Federal Court in San Francisco and the disco»ery that Chapman is alive in Los Angeles, prosperous and highly respected. Federal Judge Harold Louderba?k, in United States District Court in San Francisco, heard the story, wherein Chapman, 57 years of age, and now an assistant director of Junipero Seira Club of Los Angeles, was believed dead by everyone except United States Treasury agents. Before Judge Louderbaek a Treasuryj agent testified that Chapman, who em i bezzled £6000 in United States funds in China and served a three year prison term at McNeil Island prison, had been sought since 1029. Without him the Government wiulcl not collect par*, of £0000 from the persons who bonded Chapman while he. was clerk of the United States Shanghai Court. He served in this capacity from! 1921 to 1926. j In December, 1920, Chapman hoarded, the 5.6. President Jefferson in the, Orient, travelling to Seattle. There he was taken from the steamer and charged with "feloniously receiving and conceal- 1

lg money, bank notes and securities < elonging to the United States and con- k ?aling on the high seas £0000 in Govrnment funds." He had £300 cash n his person. Reported as Suicide. Returned* to Shanghai and placed iefore the bar in the Court where he >nce served as clerk. Chapman pleaded ( or leniency after admitting his guilt] >f embezzling £3000 while clerk of the' xmrt. He received the three-year term' md served it. Upon his release in 1929j le disappeared and his wife, who shortly! ifterward divorced him while he was] n a Palo Alto, San Francisco, transient I amp, informed the Government that hej lad taken his own life. ! For nine years agents hunted him] while the Government's case against I the persons who bonded him lay in! Government files. Now found Chapman said: | "Like Mark Twain the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated. I have not attempted to deny my name. nor that I served the prison term. I don't know whether my wife reported 1 me a sucide or not. I have ix>' --en her since before she divorced me i"i' non-support." Chapman recalled that .Jure leaving,' prison he worked at odd jobs in Sail'! Francisco from 1929 to HWH. This he rounds out his second year assistant director of the boy?' .-ltib—an lj organisation devoted to keeping _ trail-j sient youths out of prison, reimbilitat-y ing them and sending them hack to their homes. _ j. Informed for the first time nt the case, liis superior at the club, aback at the news, said: "We can only ( sav that Mr. Chapman's record here; speaks for itself. It is unblemished' p md I might add that he has done for the welfare of the boys heie than v most anyone else conld have. He i- s >ntirelv trustworthy and his only inter- s ;st is'tn send our boys on to in-tter j hings. He has made some of the line.-t t •ontributioiis in that field." j >. The Royal Scot- earned the strange " lickiiame 'of "Poutills. Pilate's Bod.\ - '_ ruard" bv their witty retort to the > 'icardv Regiment, who claimed to be 1 •ven older. "We wen duty at lli- v 'ruciiixioii.'' boasted the P'uardy men: ,1 o which the Royal Scots replied: "Had v ve been on duty, we hhould not have ; dept at our post!" 'h