JEKYEL AND HIDE

Southland Times, Issue 18965, 12 June 1923, Page 15

JEKYEL AND HIDE

RESTAURANT PROPRIETOR’S 75 “HOLD-UPS.” A highly-respected young business man, church member and model husband and ather, named Edward Donhely, has confessed to the police, it is said, that he is ihe daring bandit chief who for gome months has been terrorising Brooklyn Borough by looting shops at the pistol {joint in uroad daylight. He takes credit for conceiving and exe "uting, sometimes alone, and sometimes with his accomplices, no fewer than 75 of hese robberies. Until the lunch-hour rush was over, Donhely, a dapper, genial, chubby, smooth-faced ittle chap with curly hair and friendly, uniting eyes, was one of the attractions of the well-patronised restaurant of which he was the proprietor, and where his adoring, unsuspecting wife acted as cashier. About 3 o’clock in the afternoon he was iccustomed to go out, ostensibly for a stroll, while business was slack pending dinner time. But that was only to enter a house from which, in a few minutes, he would emerge completely metamorphosed and ready for the work by which he augmented his receipts a hundredfold and mgre. Smartly dressed, with a moustache orna menting his previously bare upper lip, the miling blue yes became hard and steley, and, the alertness of a panther in every movement of his body, he would walk straight into a shop filled with customers, and, a revolver in each hand, order them and the salesmen to the rear, empty the cash register of its contents, walk out as briskly as he had entered—and vanish, no one knew whither. At other times two or three confederates covered his retreat, or acted as look-outs, where large establishments had been selected for looting. One day, however, one of hie victims re cognised him. Mrs Donhely laughed at the idea when this man brought in a policeman and demanded her husband’s arrest. The policeman, who knew the restaurant keeper well, was certain it was a case of mistaken identity. But the tell-tale finger-prints revealed that he had a criminal record, and after 24 hours of questioning he weakened, and finally confessed.