SAVED FROM THE GALLOWS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 2 April 1930, Page 7

SAVED FROM THE GALLOWS

CANADIAN BORDER DRAMA DISCOVERY OF "JIMMY BROWN" CONDEMNED MAN REPRIEVED VANCOUVER, Ist March.

Reprieved from the gallows almost at the eleventh hour, 11. Ravinsky, convicted of Ihe slaying of Dave Katz, a clothing salesman, is the centre of a court drama that reads like a novel.

Katz, who travelled through the country in an auto selling his wares, hired Ravinsky as his assistant. Some months later he caused tho arrest of Ravinsky, alleging that lie had stolen some goods from him. Ravinsky served a short term in gaol. The aged father of the victim told tho rest of the story. After his son's trouble with Ravinsky, he received a lettor from him saying that he felt sorry for Ravinsky and hud again employed him as his assistant. Months passed and nothing further was heard from Katz, who should have returned to his home in Toronto. Police engaged by the elder Katz found Ravinsky in Hamilton, Ontarjo. Questioned, he said that ho had no knowledge of tho whereabouts of Katz, whom ho had left in the Canadian west after a dispute as to then' methods of conducting business. _ He had learned later, however, that Katz had left for tho United States, intending to take up residence there, to secure a divorce.

SEARCH BY AGED FATHER Ravinsky was thereupon released by the police. Then began a pathetic search by the aged father of the missing man. Twice he crossed the Dominion, interviewing the customers of his son in various places and endeavoJring to J avo police in the cities he visited unearth a clue. Eventually he found that his sou's auto had been sold in Winnipeg by Ravinsky. He also discovered that several cheques, drawn against his son's account in a Toronto bank some months after he had disappeared had been cashed in Vancouver. Tracing the sale of the auto, Winnipeg police made a general search for Ravinsky, but to no avail. Then one day as tho old man stood on a Vancouver street corner seeking direction to the police station, a policeman advised him to board a passing street car. There, among the passengers, ho recognised Ravinsky, tho man for whom for more than a year ho had been wearily searching from coast to coast. Determined that Ravinsky should not escape this timo, tho aged man secretly persuaded the street car conductor to have a policeman board his car. Despito efforts to escape, the suspect was arrested. Long cross-examination at the police station at first failed to shako Ravinsky's story that he did not know where Katz was, but he confessed that he had turned over the bank book of the missing man to a friend, who had cashed several cheques that Ravinsky had forged, and that he had received part of the proceeds. This, he said, he believed was all right, as when he parted, with Katzahe latter had refused to pay him money that was owing to him.

ACCUSED TELLS ANOTHER. STORY

This accomplice of Ravinsky was arrested, convicted and sentenced for forgery, and through him police succeeded in securing admission from Ravinsky him to being charged with murder. Told through a police ruse that tho forgery accomplice had told them "all about the slaying of Katz," Ravinsky hastily protested that he had not killed him, though he had been there when ■ tho clothing salesman had been beaten to death with tools from his own auto on a lonely country road, and had then been buried in the sand dunes. The actual slayer, said Ravinsky, was a man named ""Jimmy Brown," who had been travelling with them, but whose whereabouts ho did not know. He had taken no part in the crime, he contended, and instead'had attempted to assist the attacked man. Brown, he asserted, had also attacked him until he was forced to desist. Shortly afterwards, said Ravinsky, Brown told him to take Katz's auto, and had disappeared. ( Every effort to locate any man named Brown failing. Ravinsky was convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged on 19th February. The Dominion Cabinet on 17th February decided that the sentence of death must stand.

"JIMMY BROWN" ARRESTED On the very day before the condemned man was to be hanged a Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable at Sydney, Nova Scotia, hastily communicated to the Minister of Justice tho fact that after arresting a man there and securing from him a confession of the murder of a janitor, ho had found that the man had been known as "Jimmy Brown," and- had been in the district where Katz was slain for Rome time both before and after the murder occurred. The constable, who through his police duties had become fully acquainted with the facts of the Ravinsky case, expressed confidence that there was more than a strong possibility that Ravinsky's story had been true, and that the "Jimmy Brown" under arrest was really the slayer of Kate. The Cabinet immediately granted a reprieve to Ravinsky, _ and the special ommission will investigate the activities of "Jimmy Brown."