The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser., 1922-06-16
LADY ASTOR FIGURES IN MOST
ROMANTIC CRIMINAL EPISODE
Through Her Influence "Charey" Smith, Who Shot Noted Bank
Robber, Eddie Guern Is Set Free in England
Guern World Famous for His Escape From
Devils Island, Now Broken Man.

New York.-Fate, In her time, has
tossed up many a queer and unexpect-
ed combination on her dizzily spinning
wheel of chance; but seldom so odo
one as that Of today, when Lazy AS
tor. the winsome, the brilliant, the
idol of two continents, looked down
from the heights of her fame to DO
good turn for a fellow Virginlan-a
man who had been the companion OF
criminals and jailbirds and who went
to prison himself because he shot Ed
die Guerin, the most famous interna-
tional criminal of the last forty years.
The woman known as chicago
May" to whom no depths of wicked
ness were unknown, dragged this man
down with her; and now Lady Astor
lifts him up. =
When the great Majestic tied up at
the dock in New York recently among
her passengers was the man known
as Charley Smith"-a man who has
been in an English prison for the last
fifteen years, and who would nave
been there another ten long years II
it had not been for Fate and her
younger sister, Nancy, Lady Astor.
Once Charley Smith," facing
judge, said that his real name was
''Mr. Nobody, from Nowhere" The
years haven't added much to that
Identification, nor to. what is known
about that arch-criminal, the man
whose path Charley Smith luckless-
ly crossed ed-Eddie Guerin.. The un-
derworld knows all their secrets, and
the underworld doesn't tell.
Let's begin with what is known
about Eddie Guerin. Nobody knows
in what obscure hole he is lurking to-
day. The chances are that he is a
miserable, grayhaired derelict, thiev-
ing and begging on the streets of
London. But there was time when
he posed as an American millionaire,
and when the police of London, Paris
and New York held him in awe.
Guerin a Gang Leader.
Eddie Guerin was born in poor
quarter of Chicago, some sixty years
ago, in a day when Chicago was no
tOrious as a sink hole of vice and
breeding place of crooks. BY the time
he was twenty, in 1880, he and his
brother Paddy were leaders of a gang
of young toughs. Their first big "job"
was to walk calmly away one day
with nearly $4,000 in cash from the
counter of bank in Galesburg, Ill.
Eddie might have stayed on in Chi
cago, but, only a few days after the
bank robbery, he SHIT Thomas Ire
harm, policeman, in the back room
of a Chicago saloon, and fed from
his old faunts.
On his way East, bank in Alle-
gheny, Pa, We; robbed daringly, and
Eddie Guerir was. wanted" for the
crime. But he reached New York and
managed to keep out Of harms way,
though he became known to the New
York police.
With the money from an occasional
bank robbery or burglary of jewels,
Eddie hung about uptown gambling
houses and spent it freely in tt, dives
Of the Tenderloin. He was husky,
handsome young fellow-if you didn't
study his eyes too closely-and he
liked "the women" One of them in
particular he liked-"Chfcago May"
Churchill. He was to change his opin-
ion Of her later.
May was easy to look at, if con-
temporary reports are to be believed
Her blue eyes could seem very allur-
ing to wellto-do men who didn't know
her record. Afterward, when they
had accepted an invitation to her fiat,
and, once there, found Eddie Guerin
suddenly demanding a fat bankroll
from them as the price of silence,
they found Mays blue eyes as cold
as the steel of Eddie's revolver.
Paris Attracts Them.
New York cramped the two after a
while and, in the 90's they decided to
take look at Paris.
There was a robbery of 25O,OOO
francs from that famous Partisan
hank, the Credit Lyonnais, in 1891.
Eddie was suspected of having had a
hand in that. But nothing happened
to him for good ten years.
Then, in the warm spring days Of