BIG-SCALE FIRE MAKERS

Evening Star, Issue 20193, 5 June 1929, Page 7

BIG-SCALE FIRE MAKERS

CONFESSION OF BROTHERS SET FIFTEEN HOMES ALIGHT. While'Mrs Linda Dolan, a Chicago woman, was selling- auto accessories down town to help her husband meet payments on their - homo, her sons.. Robert and Richard, w_me setting other* homes ablaze and looting them as the tenants fled. Mrs Dolan’s suspicion was aroused in the ‘ Tribune ’ concerning a neatlydressed lad who had set two fires in her neighbourhood the previous day. She telephoned" home the instant sh© reached her desk in the office of the C. M. Hoof Company, 317 West Randolph street. Her older son, Robert, answered the phone.“Richard’s out shovelling the walks,” the boy said. “ No, _ I don’t think he’s read the paper this morning. All right, I’ll tell him to buy a paper and bring it down to yon.” FIND THEIR MOTHER KNOWS. Robert hung up and rushed outside. “Mom’s wise. She read about it in the paper.” bo gasped to Richard. “ What 11 we do?” But Richard was equal to the situation—nearly. He ran to the home of Mrs R. A. wait, 4834 North Kimball avenue, who had fled from a fire the day before. Here’s eight dollars, that’s_ all I have left.” he said, doffing his cap to the astonished woman. “I’m awfully sorry I set your homo afire, and I won’t do it any more.” Mrs Wait was fumbling with the money and asking Richard to tell her more about it when the landlord, Harry, A. Gordon, joined them. Richard passed nineteen dollars into his hand and continued his story. WANTED TO LEARN MUSIC. “My parents arc poor and my, "mother works,” he explained earnestly. “ I’ve always wanted to learn the saxophone, so I could join an orchestra and help out at home. But I never could raise the money, so I tried this. C know my mother will die of shame if she ever finds out.” Richard was finished bis pitiful tale, and was w-alking away with two dollars which the sympathetic Gordon handed him, when Police-sergeant John O’Malley arrived. Later at the Albany Park police station Mrs Dolan’s sons confessed having fired fifteen homes the last three years. It began, Richard said, when his teacher offended him and he ignited a clothes closet for revenge.