MURDER AFTER DEBAUCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 177, 28 July 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

MURDER AFTER DEBAUCH.

BULLET-RIDDLED BODY FOUND. POLICE VETERAN'S SON SLAIN. Joseph MeGrath, 25-year-old wayward eon of a police lieutenant who had been, in the department for nearly oO years, was killed and his body totted into a grass plot on Bay Parkway, between •Shore Koad and Narrows Avenue, NewYork. Patrolman Anthony Capoua, of the Fort Hamilton Precinct, found the body at 6 a.m., while walking along the parkway. After detectives had been called the body, with four bullet wounds in the neck and back, was taken to Brooklyn morgue and from fingerprints was identified as that of the son of Lieutenant John -MeGrath, who had retired three weeks previously from the Eleventh Inspection District. The wounds in the body were from one steel-jacketed shell and three lead ones, all fired from the same .33-cali'bre revolver. Checking up on MeGrath's record, the police found he.had been a drug addict and had been arrested in 1919 for assault and robbery, in connection with alleged purse snatching, and put on probation; sent to the workhouse in 1922 for two charges of disorderly conduct; discharged on felonious assault charge in 1924 and sentenced in 1926 to three years in the penitentiary for felonious assault. With this information police checked up on his recent activities and sought men who had been implicated in any of the offences for which MeGrath served. After twelve hours of search they arrested Leroy Frank Eiker. of 722. Fifty-first Street, Brooklyn; Joseph McKenna, of 6211, Eighth Avenue. Brooklvn, and dames McC arthy, of 4460, !• ifth Avenue. Brooklyn. Questioned for hours, Eiker, according to Inspector John J. Sullivan, admitted he and McKeuna had taken MeGrath for an automobile ride and he accused McKenna of killing the policeman's son at Sixty-fifth Street and Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn. McKeuna was held on a charge of homicide and Eiker as a material witness. McCarthy convinced the police that he had left Eiker. McKenna and MeGrath after all four had .-oiiie from a speakeasy, and w.is released. Eiker and McKenna told conflicting .-tories. After the men were held. Inspector Sullivan said the four men hud been drinking in Eiker's speakeasy at 5.~8, Forty-sixth Street, Brooklyn. They left- there about 2 a.m., four hours before MeGrath's body was found. The Inspector said MeGrath had been killed in an automobile which was blood stained, in which was a hole caused by a bullet similar to those which killed MeGrath. Eiker showed the police the car and told them where to find McKenna and McCarthy. According to Inspector Sullivan them had 'been ill-feeling between MeGrath and McKenna. McKenna, the inspector said, had been forced to serve time for offences in which both he and MeGrath participated, while MeGrath went free.