GANGSTER MURDERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 235, 4 October 1937, Page 7

GANGSTER MURDERS.

Union Officials Victims of Underworld Feud? FRUSTRATE PROSECUTION. (Received 9.30 a.m.) NEW YORK, October 3. Murders by gangsters have broken out again in New York. One trades union official, Samuel Gapel, aged 34, was shot dead, while another, Mas Rubin, was seriously wounded. It is believed that both were victims of an underworld attempt to frustrate the efforts of the special prosecutor, Mr. Thomas Dewey, to wipe out a gigantic racketeer ring which is preying on trades unions. Gapel was shot down in the hallway of his home, and Rubin was shot in the head from behind, when near his home. The latter was the prosecution's chief witness against the alleged racketeer, Max Silverman, who is charged with extortion. The shootings occurred while Silverman, who is under bail of 250,000 dollars, was travelling to New York by air from Los Angeles, where he was arrested after evading the detectives for two years.

PAY FOR CONVICTS. Effects of Pocket Money in Dartmoor. PLAN TO HUMANISE GAOLS. LONDON, September 30. Three hundred Dartmoor convicts received their first payment under the new wages system to-day. Some broke down and wept. Many of them were handling money for the first time in a long period of penal servitude. Ninety per cent of those paid ordered tobacco and pipes. But so unaccustomed to smoking had they become, that a. number became sick within half an hour. Non-smokers bought small quantities of jam and butter and other provisions not included in the gaol diet. The Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, explains that there are two methods open to prison authorities:— (1) To make prison conditions so rigid and conditions so inhuman that it may be hoped that prisoners, after one experience, will be deterred from running the risk of a second. (2) To attempt to restore lost selfrespect and to build up the character of the transgressor. The first method has not succeeded, Sir Samuel Hoare says, but he points to figures to prove that the second has reduced the number of habitual criminals.