Evening star., 1925-07-17
CONFESSION STAYS
BROTHERS HANGING
Scott, Few Hours From Scat
ford, Reprieved, as Kin
Admits Crime.
Rx the Associated Press. .

By the Associated Press.
CHICAGO. July 17.-There were
aces in the hand of Russell Scott as
he played what he thought his last
game of cards early this morning in
death row in the county Jail while
awaiting his hanging at dawn for
murder
Before he could play them he got
day reprieve from the governor after
he had abandoned all hope.
The reprieve was really a message
from Scott's missing brother Robert,
the man whom Scott always has said
did the killing for which he was SEN
fenced to death and whom he pre-
dicted would step out of obscurity to
save him from the gallows
Confession Telegram.
Gov. Small, resting in a sanitorium,
actually wrote the reprieve. but based
it on the telegram. Ten hours pre-
viously he had refused the supplica-
uons of Scott's young wife and aged
father for executive clemency. Scott
was to hang at $50 o'clock this morn
ing. Instead, the hour found him
sleeping soundly in his prison bunk
AiI uCdlI IOhr iliS udl anu cI ISl"IIIIc
card partners reduced to double soli-
taire in the visitors quarters.
The telegram. which reached the
governor shortly before midnight, was
fl ON Detroit. It read:
Delay hanging of my brother. I
will be in to surrender myself. l am
the one who shot Joseph Mauer.
(Signed ROBERT SCOTT"
Scott was sentenced for the murder
of Mauer, a drug clerk, In a robbery
here April, 1924.
The trial court and the Supreme
Court of Illinois held that the brother
had no part in the killing, and. acting
on those findings, Gov. Small first de-
clined to consider the application for
a reprieve or communication of sentence
to life Imprisonment.
Resigned to End.
Russell Scott, five years ago head
of a 10000 900 Ontario engineering
corporation, later a vaudeville actor,
author, bootlegger, robber and mar
cotic peddler, was resigned to his end
on the gallows when the reprieve
came. But he still protested his inno-
cence.
Some day they'll discover the
truth: some day they'll know the mis-
take they made" he soliloquized be-
tween deals at cards before the arrival
of the reprieve.
Authorities today began an inquiry
to determine If the telegram was a
fraud. One report which came to
them was that the message had been
given to a messenger boy in the street.
Scott's penchant for writing found
expression in works on business ethics
and books. on how to succeed Among
his titles are Mind Your Mind" and
Humanity and Business" both large.
ly written in Jail.
Chief of Detectives Schoemaker was
explosive in his comment on the re-
prieve.
Prosecutor Skeptical.
THE whole thing is rotten. When
Scott was captured he admitted to
me that he shot the drug clerk, who
was struggling with his brother. He
was identified in more than 20 other
drug store robberies. He should have
been hung and his brother with him
People have the idea they can re
form murderers by putting them on
a nice farm and feeding them oysters
and buttermilk."
Assistant States Attorney German
who opposed a reprieve for Scott be
fore the State Board of Pardons this
week said the telegram was "a fake
pure and simple"
''If Robert Scott was sincere, he
would have walked into the police
station and given himself up instead
of sending a telegram.
I'VE will hang Russell Scott next
Continued on Page 3, Column 81