New-York tribune., 1910-01-08
FIND DIGGER'S BODY
THINK FINKELSTEIN
HAD ACCOMPLICES.
Anonymous Letter to Je1celry
Store Keeper Starts Police
on Search.

| OF the grave he dug for himself late
yesterday afternoon. But the police are
not satisfied that he was alone when he
met his death in the Ludlow street tun-
! mel. They believe that there were others
| in the plan to rob the Zirinsky jewelry
store, and to-day they will take up the
work where the Department of Build
! ings has left it and follow the narrow
shaft to- its end. The happenings of the
! late afternoon seemed to bear out their
suspicious
At o'clock, when the workmen had
| already uncovered the twisted feet of
the dead man in the pit, where they had
worked for two days and a night, Sam
uel Zirinsky, the owner of the store he
| was digging to rob, received an anony-
nous note. 1t was pencilled in forced
backhand on a common postal card and
bore the postmark of Station B, which is
at Grand and Attorney streets. a few
blocks distant, and dated at 4 o'clock
yesterday afternoon. It read:
if the compny will dig infrund of your
store on Ludlow St side in de candy
stand about fete away and dig down
| about fete you will find the man and
his helper know they are dead to save
done.
The spot indicated was close to the
Grand street corner, almost a hundred
feet from where the body was already
partly revealed. But for what followed
small attention would have been given
to the message.
Zirinsky closed his store a few minutes
later, despairing of keeping order with
| the crowds that swarmed in the streets
Then, with all the entrances closed, his
burglar alarm began to ring, showing
that there was a break somewhere in the
system Of wires that were laid about the
walls and openings of the building.
A man from the company which con-
trolls the alarm system came hurriedly
and after search found the trouble in
the trap of a sidewalk coal hole which
has it's opening in front of the candy
stand spoken of in the note. It was not
five feet from the spot where the anony-
nous writer said the bodies of Finkel-
stein and his associate were to be found
TALK OF ACCOMPLICES.
Samuel Melberg, who owns the candy
stand, told of seeing a man waiting
ing hours for more than a week. When
he asked him his business the stranger
told him that he was an agent of the
burglar alarm company and had been
sent to repair Zirinsky's wires On
Wednesday and Thursday he did not ap-
pear, but yesterday morning another
man was in the neighborhood and gave
the same explanation of his presence
there.
Zirinsky telephoned to the burglar
alarm concern TO make inquiry, and
learned that none of the company's men
had been assigned to inspect his ap-
paratus. zirinsky himself said frankly
that he believed Ffnkelstein had been
hired to drive the tunnel by shrewder
men, who had planned a robbery of his
store, probably by dynamitng the safes.
"Finkelstein was not intelligent enough
to carry out such a big scheme" he said.
He was quiet, law-abiding man, so
far as 1 can find out and would never
try his hand at a piece of work that
would take such long preparation and
would be so dangerous. More than one
man was in the plot, | am sure
All day long crowds peered and swayed
and pushed upon the police lines which
kept the street free where the men were
digging. Hundreds were there when the
work began by torchlight, an hour before
sunrise By 8 o'clock they had grown
to thousands, so curious that they showed
back the line again and again, only to
be driven away with hard words and
pushes.
WIFE STILL HOPED
Within the lines the street was bare
of its every day crowds only about the
rising mounds of red sand there was
group Of watchers, detectives reporters
and Buildings Department men, and in
windows and doorways groups interest
ed sorrowful or haggard, according as
their interests ran. For half a dav the
dead mans wife looked down from. ber
window almost into the pits where the
men were working. To the last she de-
cIared that she still believed they would
not find him there.
The first shaft was sunk through the
sidewalk in front of the unfinished tene-
ment house al No. 55, opposite the GEM
ent pier under which F'inkelstein had rim
his tunnel. From the position of the
bits OF wood with which the tunnel had
| been fimsily shored II seemed that il
| turned south at this point, and in the
morning second shaft was put down
! joining the first at one corner and run
ming out into the street for three yards
At o'clock it was down six feet and
! the men stopped to guard 1t with timbers
| and heavy planks driven along it's sides
! At noon II was ten feet down. The men
in dirty blue working clothes drove at
the digging without a pause for rest or
| food, relieved in eight hour shifts
| The school on the corner let out at 3
| o'clock, and in five minutes the crowd
against the southern police line was
| faced with a bank of youngsters, who
surged in on the bluecoats and gave
! them twice as much trouble as they had
| had before. The shaft was down four
teen feet now. and still the men at the
| bottom had no news of find.
At 4 o'clock the regular movement OF
! their backs stopped for a moment. the
! knot of watchers drew closer about the
| pit, and then two small boards, nailed
! together In the same shiftless fashion as
! the other bits of snoring. were passed up
1 IL