GASTON B. MEANS GAOLED

Taranaki Daily News, 29 May 1933, Page 7

GASTON B. MEANS GAOLED

KIDNAPPING CONSPIRACY CASE. LINDBERGH HOAX RECALLED. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright New York, May 26. Gaston B. Means and Norman Whitaker were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to defraud Mrs. E. W. McLean of 35,000 dollars in the Lindbergh kidnapping hoax. Gaston B. Means, who had a lengthy record in espionage work, offered his services, at the time of the kidnapping of Colonel Lindbergh’s infant son, to Mrs. McLean, a prominent Washington society woman, undertaking to restore the baby for. 50,000 dollars. He made several promises to restore the child to Mrs. McLean at different parts of America, at all of ; which she kept a rendezvous, only to fee met fabricated excuse from Means, who was paid the money at the outset of the contract. Means gained his notoriety through charges of breach of promise, murder, forgery, international espionage, wifebeating, rum-selling and the rifling of Senators’ offices. He has instituted charges of various kinds against some of America’s most famous men—Charles Schwab, Otto Kahn, Jess Smith, Harry M. Daugherty (all multi-millionaires), the late President Harding and Mrs. Harding, and the Japanese Mitsui family (one of the wealthiest and most powerful in the world). During the war he did espionage work for both the German and Allied Governments.