SHOT GANGSTER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18761, 27 December 1930, Page 17

SHOT GANGSTER

ZIEGFELD FOLLIES ACTRESS. FRIEND OF JACK DIAMOND. Marion Roberts, or Straswick. a beautiful Ziegfeld Follies girl, aged twenty-two, has been detained by detectives in connection with the shooting of Jack Diamond, the New York gang leader, in a New York hotel. She told the police that she was Diamond’s friend, but denied any knowledge of his attacker’s identity. Al Capone, the Chicago gangster king, according to one report, ordered the shooting of Jack Diamond. Police who raided Al Capone's home found the gang leader had flown, but they arrested nineteen men and a woman. Jack Diamond, who is thirty-two, is married and has three children. Two bullets entered his body, causing serious injuries, and three more hit the side of his head. Marion Straswick, the girl in the shot gangster case, is described by Reuter as a “small, red-haired chorus beauty.” She was arrested hiding in a bundle of clothes in a cupboard in a flat belonging to a friend, Miss Agnes CLaughlan, an actress, who recently brought a £20.000 breach of promise suit against Rude Vallee, America’s most popular dance conductor and love song crooner. Straswick burst into a flood of tears, angry tears, as she was dragged from the cupboard. She said she did not know why she was brought into th« affair. She shouted: “No, I never saw Jack after the shooting.” She recently appeared at a wellknown night club flashing a large diamond ring, saying it was a present from Jack, as they were, she said, engaged. Mrs Diamond, who left her husband’s bedside, to which she was rushed after the shooting of her husband, was confronted with the chorus girl at the police station and, with her face ablaze with fury, shrieked: "You dirty little home-wrecker,” while the object of her wrath burst into hysterial sobbing. Jack Diamond, is lying in the Polyclinic Hospital fighting for his life; with, it is stated, only very slender hopes of success. The police have ordered the wholesale detention of gangsters known to have been associated with Diamond. Before sinking into a state of coma Diamond told the police that two men whom he did not know fired the shots. Police Commissioner Mulrooney characterised this as an obvious lie. The police are strictly guarding the Polyclinic Hospital, as they fear a return of the gangsters to “finish off” Diamond. The Ziegfeld show girl, Marion Straswick. admitted that she had breakfast with Diamond in her room at the Monticelli Hotel. Roberts asserted that she was filling her bath when two men entered Diamond’s room. She alleged that she heard him pleading for mercy and shouts followed. She fled and hid in a friend’s room. She denies that she knows the identity of Diamond’s assailants, but says she knew that they came from New Jersey. Bootleggers’ Victim. This, combined with the fact that j the attackers are reported to have | got away in a car bearing a New Jersey license number, leads to the suggestion that they were New Jersey liquor runners who objected to Diamond’s encroachment on their territory—Exchange. Three suspects, says the “Central News,” are being detained by the police, who are now searching for Jacob Ginsberg, the manager of the hotel, who disappeared after carrying Diamond to his room following the shooting.