OLD BOMB OUTRAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1930, Page 8

OLD BOMB OUTRAGES.

DEATHBED CONFESSION. 'j

BROTHERS IDENTIFY PLOTTER 1 *

WERE THE WRONG MEN CONVICTED? Louis J. Smith, who made a deathbed confession of the Preparedness Day bomb outrage, has been positively identified as ilie Louis Smith involved in Pacific Coast bombings in 1915 and 1916 (says the San Francisco "Call-Bulletin" in a recent issue). The identification was made by a full, brother, Jess Smith, of Wheeling, W Va. This latest developmeift is considered by the authorities to have proven beyond ill question of doubt that neither Thomas Mooney nor Warren K. Billings had any. thing to do with the explosion. Mooney and Billings have served thirteen years in prison since their conviction <?' on evidence that thousands now believe was perjured and framed. More than a month ago Smith's deathbed confession, made in 1922, was revealed by four persons, to whom it was made. / Confession and Identity. San Franciscans remembered the Louis Smith who figured prominently in the German neutrality and bombing cases there 1916 and wondered if " Smith, the confessor, was the same Smith who was known to have participated in bombings. All doubt was settled by the identification of a pcture of the San Francisco Smith by two brothers and a sister of Louis J. Smith, who died in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922. Louis Smith, according to the four witnesses, confessed that he threw the Preparedness Day bomb from the roof of the saloon at Steuart and Market Streets. FiO also confessed to destroying a munitions barge in San Francisco Bay some time in 1916 and to bombing a second barge in Seattle a short time later. These confessed activities check absolutely with the known activities of the San Francisco Smith now positively identified as the Smith who made the confession. Louis J. Smith was indicted in San Francisco along with Franz Bopp, German Consul - General; Eckart von Schack, Vice-Consul; Lieutenant Willielin von Brincken, J. F. von Koolbergen, Mrs. Margaret Cornell, secretary to Bopp, and C. C. Crowley, a private detective employed by the Consul. * They were charged witfo violating America's neutrality and interfering with munitions shipments. State's Evidence. Smith turned State's evidence and all other defendants were found guilty. According to Thomas Crowley, the widely known shipping man, C. C. Crowley, who is not a relative, told him that Smith was in his employ. Thomas Crowley also told of Smith's attempt to get on a munition barge and of the innumerable facts that prove that the San Francisco Smith did place the bombs that caused destruction of the two barges. . • More substantiation of the Smith confession has come from witnesses of the bomb explosion and experts in explosives. Woman Witness. Mrs. H. G. Parrott, who was watching the parade from the Terminal Hotel, across the street, declared positively that she saw a man drop tlie bomb from the roof of the saloon and then hurry across the roof and out of sight. This evidence was ignored by th.e prosecutions, whose theory it was that Mooney and Billings had placed a bomb in a suitcase on the sidewalk. The prosecution also ignored the testimony of experts that the fact that no clock was found near the scene of the explosion proved that the bomb was thrown from the roof and not placed on the sidewalk in a suitcase.