The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-07-27
Norway InterVenes
Against Sd Degree;
Poor Worker Dies


The "Tihrd Degree" is such a COM
monplace way of getting what is
called evidence from prisoners who
have little money and few friends
that it seldom brings ripple. But
just now the police of Jersey City
and Brooklyn are on the defensive in
the cases of two workingmen, one an
old cemetery caretaker, and the other
former Norwegian ships carpenter.
Death Under the Club.
The cemetery worker, Charles
Walls, is worrying the police because
he died-it appears under their black
jacks. And now his relatives are APP
plying for a court order to have the
body exhumed, and the coroner will
hold an inquest.
1t is pitiful story. Walls was
employed in the Holy Name cemetery
by several families to water and cul-
tivate the flowers over their loved
ones graves. But the regular care
taker objected to this competition and
several times asked him to quit.
Walls refused, till Patrolman Bren-
nan arrested him on the charge of
stealing flowers from other graves.
Body Lacerated.
The truth or falsity of the theft
charge was never determined, for
Walls died after his examination in
the Darkroom of the Seventh Precinct
Police Station. When they took him
back, said his friend Patrick Murtha
who accompanied him to the station,
Walls face was unmarked. When
the cops led him out the blood was
running from mass of bruises. His
son Charles Walls says the fathers
body, as it lay in the coffin after
wards, was scanned with welts and
bruises.
Lied About Death.
Beaten to death to get a confess
sion of stealing flowers in church
cemetery, it seems. ~ signed some
thing; don't know what it was" he
told Attorney Meeres a few hours
after the beating His friends did
not see him alive again. He died the
next day, but whether in the Hudson
County Jail, whittier he had been
taken, or in the Jersey City hospital,
his family cannot learn. The police
attempted to conceal the cause of
death with report of alcoholism"
but Deputy County Physician A. P
Haslling refused to approve of this
finding.
AS unconscious irony, the caretaker-
was buried in the very cemetery
where he had been arrested.
Norway Intervenes.
At the request of the Norwegian
Legation at Washington the State De-
partment is acting in the case of the
other "Third Degree" victim, Lud-
wig H Lee, the former ships car
penter A communication from Sec
cretary Kellog's offices asks Gov.
Smith to sift the brutality charges.
Lee is poor workingman whose
job ashore was as a panitor in room
ing house. When the dismembered
bodies of women were found in the
basement Lee was arrested as handy
suspect.
CHASTITY Fraud.
Innocent or guilty Lee had the con-
stitutional right to be silent till his.
attorney was present. But no such
protection was permitted as he was
rushed into the star chamber with
grim plainclothesmen armed with
blackjacks. From the examination
room emanated police-inspired stories
of ferocious aXe-murderer, stories
which papers like the Daily News
owned by the Chicago Tribune
Tapped up eagerly.
But the husky "Chips," as ships
carpenters are called, would not con-
fess though he told his lawyer later
that the police plucked out strands
of hair, beat him and twisted his
limbs excr1Iciatinplv