MODERN SOLOMON GAOLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 162, 10 July 1926, Page 13

MODERN SOLOMON GAOLED.

MARRIED FIFTY WOMEN. MAX OF MANY ALIASES. Ifr'rum Our Own 3orrespond«nt.) SAX FRANCISCO, June 8. Instead of being luxuriously ensconced in a palace, the "modern Solomon"' with the many aliases, who had been accused of marrying about lifty women in order to swindle them of approximately 1,000,000 dollars in cash and jewels, will spend the next year in a prosaic Pennsylvania penitentiary. Robert Whittman, a 4S-year-old ■'sheik," alias Herman Kruger, John Victor Weidenmeir, Lord Beaverbrook, and Baron Beaverbrook, pleaded guilty in the courts of Philadelphia to defrauding Mrs. Frances Kamp, of Philadelphia, of 18,000 dollars in diamonds and cash four years ago. Judge Stem immediately imposed tlie minimum sentence —one year—to allow other jurisdictions to lake charge of the case when Whhtman is released. Charges also are pending against 'Whittman in St. Louis. Chicago. Buffalo, Xew York, San Francisco, and other large cities. The ewanky Whittman was arrested on May 24 in a Philadelphia hotel by an amateur sleuth, who flirted with vivacious blondes who paraded Pomeranian pests on tho famous Board Walk at Atlantic City tintil he found Whitman's woman companion, and then Whittmau ••* This novice, a friend of Mrs. Rose Burken, of Xew York, who claims to have been swindled out of 120,000 dollars in diamonds by the •"marrying swindler," had seen a man answering Wluttman's description walking with a blonde and a diminutive canine on the Board tValk. The pseudo-baron pleaded not guilty when his case first was taken to court, but changed the plea. According to Philadelphia police, he said he is a Viennese, a graduate of the University of Vienna, and the husband of an operatic star, whose name he declined to disclose. His method, the police said, was to victimise prominent and wealthy women by marrying them after a whirlwind courtship—lie has the dashing manners of a Don —ami then disappearing with the new wife's jewels arid cash. He was arrested in St. Lou's in 1920, where he is said to have eloped with a Mrs. Leonard Huffman, widow of a wealthy Thicago man, but ji Imped 2-3.000 dollars bail, according to tlie authorities.