Five Respites

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 December 1927, Page 9

Five Respites

Then Tires of it MURDERER HANGS HIMSELF Russell T. Scott, formerly known as a rich Canadian contractor and speculator, who was five times sentenced to death for the murder of a drug store salesman in Chicago in April, 1924, committed suicide in the County Gaol in Chicago. by hanging himself with his belt. Scott’s career, both in and out of prison, was a most remarkable one. When he was 20 he was an actor. Later he launched out as a promoter of. big engineering enterprises. He established a concern in Toronto, with branches in a dozen other cities, and sold to the public shares in an enterprise for the construction of bridges, to cost £6,000 000, to connect Canada and the United States. When he quarrelled with his associates he wjas forced out of the concern, which wits subsequently wound up. He came into public notice again in 1924, when he was arrested after the shooting of Joseph Maurer, the drug salesman, while trjdng (with his brother, Robert Scott) to rob the drug shop. Russell Scott pleaded ••guilty” when arraigned for trial in April, 1925. His counsel, in tears and on his knees, implored the judge to be allowed to withdraw the plea of •'guilty," insisting that his client was innocent. To this the judge consented. The case went to trial, and Russell Scott was found guilty and sentenced to death. Just before the execution, a sympathetic telegraph operator in Detroit sent a bogus telegram to the Governor of Michigan State, signed in the name of "Robert Scott," and purporting to confess to the murder. This resulted in a reprieve pending a search for Robert, which was fruitless. Then "insanity" was pleaded, and Russell Scott was sent to an asylum. Subsequently he was declared sane, and was again tried and sentenced to be hanged. To raise funds for his defence, his wife publiclj' exhibited herself on a “starvation strike.” With funds obtained by Mrs. Russell Scott’s enterprise in Detroit, and with other money contributed by influential Detroit women and others, four successive reprieves were obtained. Once again Russell Scott was about to be led to execution, but last month the “insanity" issue was again raised. Meanwhile, his brother Robert has been captured and condemned to penal servitude for life —which sentence he is now serving.