Strange Times 158: "Hold Up Your Hands!"
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Today brings stories of daring women on both sides of the law. Wear your fur to the hold-up on…
June 7, 1921
Pueblo, Colorado, is described as “an indescribable ruin” and “a living hell,” as locals are conscripted to clear flood area and it’s reported that 100 died trapped in flooded passenger trains.
An appeals court upholds a ruling allowing the Post Office and Attorney General to classify writings about Bolshevism and radicalism as “indecent and obscene,” barring it from being sent by mail.
Making an unexpected stop to address the graduates of Lincoln University, President Harding praises Black graduates for their commitment to education and insists that, “No government can wave a magical wand and take a race from bondage to citizenship in half a century.”
A pair of burglars break into the Morgan Memorial in Hartford, and though they fail to break through the grillwork guarding the Morgan gems, they do make off with a case of antique lace valued at $4,000.
The Weather: Generally fair today and Wednesday; not much change in temperature; moderate, variable winds.
A stirring story of courage in the lavatory! I can only assume that, going forward, the Times will point out every time a male detective “did not scream or faint” when confronted with danger.
Charged with shoplifting in Gimbel Brothers store, Salvadore Corti, 28 years old, 7 East 117th Street, and Harry Sturn, 30 Years Old, 269 Tenth Avenue, yesterday were held in $1,000 bail by Magistrate Robert C. Ten Eyck in Jefferson Market Court to await examination Wednesday. They pleaded not guilty.
Selma Bankeser, 19 years old, house detective for the store, said she saw Corti and Sturn enter shortly after noon and said that Corti carried in his hand a black paper bag, which from all appearances contained a hat. They edged around to a counter containing women’s silk negligees and while Corti held the bag his confederate slipped several articles into it, Miss Bankeser said. They took a leather bag for good measure she testified.
The two men went into a washroom in the rear of the store, with Bankeser close behind. When they saw her enter and approach them she said Corti pulled a stiletto about eighteen inches long from beneath is belt, but Miss Bankeser did not scream or faint, but told both men they were under arrest and took them in custody.
In addition to the stiletto, Miss Bankeser said she found on one of the men a “jimmy”—both it and the stiletto along with the women’s garments and the leather bag were presented as evidence. Corti said he was a waiter and Sturn gave his business as that of salesman.
Now here’s a ripping yarn! Although I was initially disappointed to learn that the headline did not refer to a masked crime-fighting vigilante, the lively prose and vigorous storytelling soon won me over. Huzzah for the masked bandit—may she ever remain at large!
Hundreds of men and women saw a pistol battle which started yesterday afternoon at 5 o’clock in Sixth Avenue just south of Forty-second Street and ended with the capture of a bandit in the sub-basement of the Knickerbocker Warehouse, in Forty-first Street just east of Broadway.
The running fight followed an attempt by a masked man and a masked woman to hold up Morris Sapo, a jeweler, in his shop on the second floor at 729 Sixth Avenue. The woman disappeared into the crowd which scattered in all directions when the shooting started.
One bullet, apparently fired at the bandit by a policeman, lodged in the thigh of Ira Holmes, who was seated at his desk about five feet behind the plate-glass street window of the Consolidated Ticket Offices at 115 West Forty-first Street, where he is employed.
Sapo at five o’clock was alone in his shop, which occupies one very large room. His two helpers had just left. The jeweler, who is 53 years old, gray-haired and heavily built, was seated beside the most easterly of his three front windows, but was using an electric bulb for illumination, as he perfected the platinum mounting for a diamond ring. Persons on the south end of the Sixth Avenue elevated station platform can look right into his shop, which is about twelve feet from the platform. The three big windows give the shop practically a glass front and make the most of the interior visible from the opposite side of the street and from a strip of Bryant Park.
“Spooning” In Hallway
The robber and his young woman accomplice lingered in the hallway outside the shop for some time before they entered to hold up Sapo. The police were later interested in their novel method of keeping a lookout without attracting suspicion to themselves.
“They were spooning like a terribly love-sick couple,” said Dr. Michael Peyser, a dentist, who has an office two doors from that of Sapo. “She was kissing him and hugging him. My assistant thought at the time that they were a pair of lovers who had no place to meet, but it looks as if she was either trying to keep up his courage or as if they were pretending to be busy while waiting for the jeweler’s helpers to go.”
A few minutes after the other men had left, the jeweler looked up from his work, as his door, opening, automatically rang a bell. He found himself facing a small masked man with a revolver in each hand. As the woman turned to shut the door behind them the man called out:
“Hold up your hands!”
Sapo held them up as the bandit advanced through the long room, which is cut in two by a low rail, but no partition. The masked man walked over toward the desk where Sapo was working. When he came within range the jeweler disregarded the two muzzles pointed at him and grappled with the man. The woman instantly went to the rescue of her masked mate.
Woman Uses Finger Nails
Sapo knocked one weapon to the floor and gripped the thief’s body and arms so that he could not shoot with the second one. The battle was going favorably for the jeweler when the young woman threw herself on him from behind, drove ten nails with manicured points into his face and struggled to drag him away from the bandit.
One of her thumbs was boring into Sapo’s lip. With a snap he caught the thumb between his teeth and held it like a bulldog. The young woman jerked her arm and struggled to free her thumb. Sapo bit all the harder. The young woman did not permit herself to scream in spite of the pain, but she flung herself on Sapo again, sunk her teeth into his cheek and inflicted bite after bite, virtually chewing the flesh.
All that struggle was staged in plain sight of persons on the elevated station and on the east side of Sixth Avenue, but it was not observed for several seconds. At the same time, the noise was heard in other parts of the building, but did not at first attract attention. Sapo was too busy fighting to scream, but when it settled down into a deadlock and a siege of pain endurance, he sought to cry for help from the corner of his mouth, while hanging on to the thumb. This finally aroused the next door neighbor, James Posner of the Elias Model Shop.
“I didn’t bother about it at first,” said Posner, “because there are screams like that all the time from the dentist’s office across the hallway.
Sees Struggle With Thieves
“Finally I thought something was wrong and ran next door. Sapo was fighting with the two of them, biting her thumb and calling for help at the same time. When I saw what was going on I jumped back toward my own shop and shouted for them to call the police.
“The bandit did not see me come in, but he heard me, and they got loose from Sapo and started out. The man had got his arm into a position to pound Sapo on the head with the gun, and the woman had bitten him terribly. He was too exhausted to go after them.
“I was starting back to help Sapo when they ran out. The man held a revolver at me and told me to hold up my hands. I did, and they hurried down the staris.”
In the meantime Louis Fields, who was in the Elias Model Shop, ran to the front window in that place, beat on panes of glass, and shouted to attract the attention of the two policemen regulating traffic in Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue. Persons on the elevated structure had also began to notice the triangular struggle near the windows and to shout for help.
Traffic Policeman James Sullivan, who was in France with the 165th, was the first policeman to get in action. From his window Fields began to gesticulate frantically to indicate that the bandits were about to come out of the doorway below.
Leave Doorway Arm in Arm
According to some of the witnesses, who were ignorant of the attempted hold-up, the male and female bandits came out of the place arm in arm. In a second, however, they were separated and the man was running south toward Forty-first Street.
Policeman Sullivan did not know whether it was a fire, accident or crime, but when he saw a man running, he gave chase. The fugitive turned and fired twice at him. Sullivan fired back twice.
Those on the street did not know at this time that there was a woman in the case. She easily disappeared in the midst of crowds running toward Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue to get out of the way of the shooting and of crowds running from that busy corner to see what the excitement was about. Witnesses afterwards told the police that she had walked to Forty-first Street, watched the revolver battle until it was over and then walked into Bryant Park. No trace of her was found last night.
Four traffic policemen were converging on the fugitive, as he started west in Forty-first Street. They were Sullivan of Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue, William Lynch of the same corner, Nicholas Moore of Forty-first Street and Sixth Avenue and Charles Carroll of Fortieth Street and Sixth Avenue. The streets were too full of people and vehicles for free firing and the bandit had the advantage of not caring if he hit a member of the police.
Fugitive Makes a Stand
Half way down the block the bandit took his stand in front of the plate glass windows of the Forty-first Street side of the Consolidated Ticket Offices, which is the great central agency for railroad tickets. More than fifty men and women were at work behind the glass and the hold-up man might have conceived that he could shoot from this background, while the police would not fire back for fear of hitting those inside. Hearing the shots and seeing the revolvers drawn outside, most of those near the windows dodged behind desks or threw themselves on the floor. Here was that a shot from a policeman’s revolver missed the bandit and hit Ira Holmes, one of the employees, while seated at his desk.
About twelve feet west of the hole in this window is another hole from a policeman’s bullet through the screen-glass door to the elevator of the Wurlitzer Building.
The bandit started then to run with all his might toward Broadway, making himself an impossible target, because the police did not dare to shoot when a miss was almost sure to mean another innocent person wounded.
About forty feet east of Broadway the fugitive dodged into the door of the Knickerbocker Warehouse. This place is being remodeled and the workmen had just gone. The ground floor and walls have been almost entirely removed. The floor and interior walls of the cellar have been ripped out. Below that is a sub-cellar, where there has also been some demolition in order to clear the way for new construction.
Follows Fugitive Into Building
Traffic Policeman John McAvoy, on duty at Broadway and Forty-first Street, was the first to follow the bandit into this maze running two stories underground. When he first entered, a shot blazed at him, Policeman McAvoy said. He shot back.
The bandit disappeared in the stacks of lumber, mounds of debris from the old walls and heaps of new building materials. McAvoy could not determine whether he had hidden on the ground floor or in one of the two lower ones. The other traffic policeman, entering at his heels, started a systematic search.
The flooring consisted mainly of loose boards thrown over wooden scaffolding. They looked behind thirty or forty hiding places without seeing their quarry and then went to the cellar. The floor of this is open and full of mantraps. The light was such as filtered through the temporary woodwork which has been substituted for a second of the brick walls on Forty-second Street. Again they searched through a wilderness of barrels of lime, brick piles, lumber, lathes, rolls of wire and multifarious debris. But the cellar seemed to be empty.
While a swarm of additional policemen arrived to fortify the ground floor and sub-cellar, the five traffic policemen descended into the sub-cellar, a gloomy place with patches of dim light which sifted through the two floorings and the temporary wall. The policemen beat around the multitude of hiding places here.
“Did you catch him?” called Policeman Sullivan.
“No. I haven’t seen anything of him,” said McAvoy.
“He must be here. There’s no escape for him. There’s no exit, and he couldn’t have got upstairs.”
Caught in Sub-Cellar
Just then there was a movement under the stairs near McAvoy’s feet and a body scurried through the semi-darkness. Not able to shoot with the risk of hitting one of themselves, the police began a game of blind man’s bluff over the difficult footing. A few seconds later there were heavy blows followed by screams.
“Moore and I have him,” said McAvoy.
They carried the prisoner upstairs. He was badly cut from the blows of fists and revolver butts, and there was only shot left in his revolver. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
There the prisoner said he was George Brewster, 24 years old, a clerk, of 115 West Houston Street. Later he said that his real name was George de Saro. He had been arrested once before on a charge of burglary.
A search was started immediately for the girl, who was described as dark and slim, weighing about 115 pounds. She wore a dark blue hat and a blue suit. Her brown fur neckpiece was found on the floor of the jeweler’s shop.
Almost before the smoke of the revolver battle had blown across Bryant Park, fire apparatus clanged through the streets and stopped in front of the building where the holdup had been attempted and firemen rushed up the stairs to put out a small blaze on the third floor.
Fire had started in the shop of Lester & Moss. It was caused by an electric iron which became overheated when its police ran out to learn the cause of the shooting.
