The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-10-27

Sparkling.
the green hat. of the baby in an
oven. Epochs all in a great career Of
public service.
BY EARL SPARKLING
Times STAFF Writer
Copyright. 1882. BY the New York World
Telegram Corporation)
CHIEF NORRIS sat in his
~ morgue, which he calls the
Country club, close to an assert
ment of human organs in dismal
need Of analysis, and talked of
the good old days when murder
was an easy business in New York
City-say. about fifteen years ago.
The old coroner system was
pretty bad, old man. Pretty bad. I
used to watch the coroner's ply
sician. He arrived here at the
morgue shortly before and was
always gone by $780,
Il link (the chief because of a
lisp can't pronounce a thu, 1
link he had another job and had
to get there on time. Christopher
julius There always were six or
eight bodies to examine, some
times twice that. And the boxes
were unlabelled, unnumbered, old
man.
1t would take half an hour Just
to ind the right boxes. link
If murder didn't go undetected in
those days it was only by miracle"
So, in 1918, the city got Doc
Norris and new system. They
got the chief for $500 a year. a
man who had published twenty
seven monographs at that time,
who had studied in three coun-
tries, and half dozen uni
versities, who had been head of
Bellevue laboratories since 1905.
The politicians of the town got
$4,000 year, $4,000, $25, 900. DR..
Charles Norris got $500, and had
to pay out of his own pocket for
the needed SOFA volume German
looks, and for bacteriologic work,
and for the equipment of a real
crime laboratory, etc.
LIE has given up to $4,000 a
a = year to make mis- office what
he thinks it should be. He hap
pens to be independently wealthy,
wouldn't have to work at all if he
didn't want to.
He gets up at o'clock in the
morning to look at what an ex-
pert Ratchet murderer has left,
prods around in month-old ca
davers which no sensible man
would go within three blocks of
all because II link it is an i'm
portant job, old man, and some
old son of a seacook like me must
do it,
Cost of all high priced medical
books that line the profoundly
untidy shelves of the crime labor
atory came out of his own pock-
ct. Every month or so he arrives
with a new one, some esoteric
book of which there are only half
a dozen copies in the world.
At least two needed technicians
have been paid for years out of
the same pocket.
If a piece of apparatus were
needed, something for which
chose damned f1oor-spitting, pi-
playing politicians" could
see no use, Doc Norris has dug
down and bought it. His salary
never has been raised, nor those
of his assistants who get only
$4,100 year.
But, anyway, murder has be-
come more dangerous for the
murderer. There is a legend that
the northwest mounted police al
ways get their man. SO do Doc
Norris and his band of physicians.
ITEM: Some Greeks were play
l. ing cards in a room at 324 West
Fifty-ninth street the night Of
Sept. IA, 1925. Constantinos Ia
lianos was stabbed He accused
George valsopulos, who vamoosed.
The stabbed man got well and
the police forgot. Doc Norris and
pathology did not Four years
later in January, 1929, zalianos.
the stabbed man fell i'll and died
in Roosevelt hospital. Chief Nor
ris performed an autopsy and de-
clared he had died from the
wound received from Valsopulos.
Police got busy again, and ar
rested the latter in Trenton, N. j.
The mills had ground slowly, but
sure
But the mills which grind so in
exorably at the stenchy, grewsome
morgue are touched with mercy.
Item: Mrs. Margaret Martinez
was arrested in October, 1929, on
charge of numbering her q
months-old baby by smothering it
in an oven in her fiat at 456 West
Eighteenth street. Chief Norris did
an autopsy. announced the child
had not been smothered, but had
died of pneumonia. The mother
went free.
Poor woman. signs the chief,
"she felt the child grow cold, the
chill of death. link she put it
in the oven, with the fire I'M
lighted, trying to warm it."
And always there have been
mysteries for those who will have
such things.
q
ITEM: On the night of March
Il 9, 1929, a laundrynan named
Isidore Fink was found shot dead