GREAT SCANDAL

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 16 October 1924, Page 7

GREAT SCANDAL

SHOCKING STATE IN MONTREAL STATEMENTS BY INVESTIGATORS BY CABLE— PRESS ASSOCIATION— COPYRIGHT Received Oct. 16, 10.15 a.m MONTREAL, Oct. 4. A deep and staining /scandal without parallel in Canadian municipal history is being revealed here as the result of investigations into vice, arousing inquiries • into the police a S t lu ltie i S foNhwihg the condemnation ot the Italian desperadoes. Four years ago public spirited citizens organised % v i," llailce body called the Committee or sixteen to suppress commercialised vice and to determine the reasons and and police corruption. The first wa,s partially disclosed during the Italians’ trials. The committee employed a. group of private investigators, who in the past years had aided in stamping out vice m United States cities. These investigators are now testifying before the court of inquiry, bringing with them hundreds of witnesses, who are consuming days in giving full details of organised wholesale trafficking in women, wide open gambling dens, and unheard of debauchery and violation of liquor regulations. Cab drivers are agents for. numerous dives run by French, Greeks and other foreigners, all of whom are protected by the police, who are receiving a considerable .share of the profits. The investigators, whose lives are threatened, and whose testimony is being taken secretly, have 'elicited information from one of the condemned Italians, who was acknowledged as king of Montreal’s red lights districts. The Italians will be hanged on October 24, and a special petition is being granted to take evidence from them, in gaol. The chief investigator declared: — is the rottenest city I ever saw, where wretched " commercialised lewdness is intermingled with the drug traffic.”

One investigator had visited 300 disorderly houses. The police, upon insistent demands would make occasional raids, but the principals ahvaj« escaped an,d participants w-ere negligibly fined and the resorts' immediately reopened. It is intimated that culpability will be found to permeate higher than just the police, while the system itself is so widely ramified that the investigators frankly admit that it will probably take a year of persistent effort by the new regime to give Montreal even a semblance of cleanliness. —Aus.'-N.Z. Cable Assn.

A message on July 12 from Ottawa stated: A telegram from Montreal says the break-up of one of Canada’s most dangerous gangs of Italian desperadoes has been effected through the condemnation to death of six men who had participated in the hold-up of a collection car of a bank of Hochelaga in April, causing the death of two employees. The Bandits escaped with 140,000 dollars, of which the police recovered 40,000 dollars. The robbery occurred at mid-day in the centre of the city, following‘'several rehearsals. The plan apparently originated w-ith an ex-detective, who arranged the theft. Six motors provided means of escape. The authorities, however, through the confessions of two of the bandits, presented a strong case, but the jury disagreed, whereupon a newjury. trying all six together, found a verdict of guilty of murder. The trial disclosed remarkable machinations, including the so-called “trouble insurance fund,” to which bandits paid ten per cent, of the proceeds of robberies, for which they received a promise of immunity from .prosecution, or, at the worst, received the assistance of able lawyers. Tw-o more members of the gang w'ill stand their trial in the autumn. One bandit w-as killed during the arrest, and two others are being still sought.