MURDERER ESCAPES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 110, 3 February 1931, Page 16

MURDERER ESCAPES

Few Hours After Sentence A prison escape was effected recently by a condemned murderer, Charles Fithian, at Salem, New Jersey. Fithian, who is 22 years old, has been sentenced to die in the electric chair for a brutal murder, but seven hours after the judge pronounced sentence he was free. He was taken to the county prison, and along with three other convicts was locked in the recreation room of the gaol. Here he produced a revolver. How he managed to smuggle in the weapon an inquiry now proceeding may elucidate. With the revolver he cowed his three companions when they tried to summon the warder, and, mounting the table, managed to reach a ventilator and draw himself up. The prison authorities declare they had never thought it possible that a man could get through such a narrow passage, but Fithian accomplished it, and squeezed through on to the roof, whence he found his way to. the ground. The alarm was raised immediately, but no trace of the prisoner has been found, and it is believed I hat he got away in a motor-car furnished him by the same friends who supplied the revolver.