CONVICT AS CHIEF OF POLICE

Evening Star, Issue 14548, 24 April 1911, Page 5

CONVICT AS CHIEF OF POLICE

DRAMATIC EXPOSURE. Tho thriving town of Danville, Virginia, was recently the sceno of the dramatic arrest of the local chief of police, Mr R. Morris, whose story is like that of Jean Valjean in ' Les Misorables.' Morris, who had risen to a position of high honor in the community, was taken into custody (reports the New York correspondent of the London 'Dail Mail') cm a warrant issued by the Governor of Georgia, oharging'him with being Thomas Edgar Stripling, an escaped convict. His exposure came about through a travelling salesman, who had known him m Hamilton. Morris, dressed in his uniform, was sitting in his office transacting the business of the department, which for the last five years he had administered with conspicuous ability, when a visitor was announced. He laid before the chief constable tho warrant. Morris glanced at it, and without a tremor observed: "T am the man yon want." One of the first to hear the news vas the eighteen-year-old daughter ( <i the accused. She rushed to his ctfi?e rircl flung her arms around his ne.?k. lie gently freed himself, walked u> live mayor's office, and resigned his cnuinussinn. Ho requested, as a solitary favor, permission to see his wife and family before his departure for Georgia. This was granted. Half an hour later Morris, handcuffed and stripped of his uniform, entered the train which was to take him back to the convict prison in Georgia. The excitement of the townsfolk knew no bounds. When he was sentenced, in 1897, to a life term in prison for shooting, m Hamilton, Georgia, his native■;o«ii, a man named Corbott, Morris—or Stiipling, as he then was—had a wife :n,d two children. He escaped from gaol in 1900, and fled to Danville, where his wife rejoined him. Here he became a nightwatchman of a tobacco warehouse, and later a policeman, and distinguished himself on several occasions by his fearlessness in the discharge of his duties. In lOO") the Prohibitionist flirty elected him chief of police, lie i ept magnificent discipline in tho force, though ho excited some criticism among the anti-Prohibitionists by his di;aeo>iie methods of executing the law. Morns is now the father of ten children. Fie is confident that he will be shortly released, as the crime he committed is pardonable under the " unwritten law." He was driven to frenzy by a wroi'g done to his sister, he says, and shot her betrayer.