The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1932-11-18
''Bag" Murders Worrying
New York Authorities.

New York.-An epidemic of bag"
murders, the latest refinement of or
ganized gang cruelty, is laying out
some mental work of a heavyweight
order for the best minds of half
dozen police departments of the metro
politan district.
Eight such killings have occurred re-
Gently. While the police, with their
stock explanation, have had the ready
answer of "racketeers' war; for them
all, evidence is not lacking that other
motives have entered into the cycle.
At least two of them are believed to
have been due to revenge for previous
murders-one for a crime dating back
more than II months.
Similarly, while the police were in
clined at first TO credit each of the
murders to members of the same gang
owing to the similarity of methods
1t is now believed that three and pos
sibly four different gangs are involved.
Same Expertness Shown.
Each of them, however, show the
same dexterity and brutality in their
handiwork In each case the body
of the victim, more or less mutilated.
is found tightly trussed-usually with
endless coils of clothesline-doubled in
a burlap bag, either in an abandoned
automobile or by some remote road
side. In one mysterious instance two
bodies were found crammed together
in the rumble seat of a roadster left
standing by the curb of an uptown
Manhattan street.
In another case the slayers, loath
to waste their time in hiding the
grewsome evidence of their job. SIM
ply drove up to the curb, rolled the
sacked body to the pavement, and
drove calmly away, leaving awed
passersby to wonder what the bag
might contain.
incidentally, police are convinced
that it is the pride of the execution
squads" specializing in this modern
lied type of murder to bind their vic
tins in such manner that they will
strangle themselves to death in their
struggles to free themselves of their
bonds.
It is a comparatively new trick.
The victim is first subdued by blow
on the head with a blunt instrument.
Then a sash cord is nGosed around the
neck, with a few convenient knots
and the loose end is brought around
under the drawn up knees, looped
around the back, and made fast, so
that the victim, on awakening, tight
ems the moose when he tries frantical-
~ to straighten his legs. The hands
are bound across the chest.
One of the latest victims of the
trick was Gerardo Scarpato, Brooklyn
racketeer, recorded by the police as
the fifth to die in vendetta spring
ing from the murder of one Joe the
Boss Masseria, once head of the
Unione Sicilione and reputed lieuten-
ant of AL Capone.
The strangled, trussed-up body Of
Scarpato, wrapped, according to gang
ster routine, in a burlap bag, was
found in the tonneau of a sedan
parked for two days and nights in
front of a Windsor place apartment
house in Brooklyn.
Death No Surprise.
Scarpato's death was no surprise
to police-or to himself. For seven
teen months, in Italy and America,
he had trembled in the shadow of
violent death-ever since the after
noon of April Is, 1881, when Joe
the Boss" playing pinochle in Scar
pato's Coney island restaurant was
put on the spot by his bodyguards and
slid under the card table. an ace of
spades in his hand and his back rid