Evening star., 1936-06-10
TERROR|STS FIRED
SUSPECTS HOMES
Black Legion Riders Admit
Burning Residence in
Detroit Area.
BACKGROUND

BACKGROUND
OfshootS OF the nor discredited
Ku Klur Kldn, Black Legion mem
berS banded together in the Middle
West to pursue a policy OF rough
justice through terrorist methods.
The secret. military organization is
Gnti-Cdtholic and dnti-Negro. en-
forcing its moral edicts By lash
inoS, night rides and murder, 0c-
cordino 10 facts being uncovered
BY a four sided investigation.
BY the Associated Press.
DETROIT, June 10.-The Black
Legion had an intelligence squad
under orders to burn the homes of
men they suspected of being Com
munist leaders in the Detroit area,
Prosecutor Duncan c. McCrea said
today after a night Of intensive ques-
tioning of four men held here.
McCrea said the four admitted set
ting FIRE TO the home of William F.
Mollenhauer, in Oakland County, in
August, 1884, and that other cases
of incendiarism are under scrutiny.
The four men held are Frank Rice
and Clarence Frye, automobile factory
employees; Albert Swanson, a meter
reader for the Detroit City Gas Co.
and Roy Hepner, painter and deco
rator.
The four were confronted by Dayton
Dean, the Black Legion trigger man"
in the Staying of Charles A. Poole.
Dean accused Hepner of directing a
legion meeting at which Dean was
given IS lashes for lax attendance.
Carried Supplies in Car.
The Black Legion Intelligence
Squad" was under orders to carry a
loaded revolver can of naphtha and
quantity Of rags in the cars at all
times so they could be ready to carry
out at once ordeds to burn homes of
communist leaders, the four told the
prosecutor.
Another Black Legion squad. re-
cruited from the Intelligence Squad, +"
was the SHOCK troops" McCrea said,
who were organized to see that the
members did not waver in their at
tendance. The special squads re-
ceived their orders in code, either by
note or telegram.
Because the Mollenhauer fire was
out of the jurisdiction of Wayne
County authorities, the four men and
their statements will be turned over
to State Attorney General David H.
Crowley.
Coughlin plot" Aired.
A supposed suicide was under
scrutiny as a possible act of Black
Legion discipline today, while a woman
who claimed the hooded terrorists
plotted to kill Father Charles E.
Coughlin was detained as a grand jury
witness.
The woman witness is Mrs. Margaret
O'Rourke Dean, 80, who said she was
the estranged wife of Dean, confessed
slayer of Poole. She told of overhear-
ing Dean and other Black Legion
naires discuss plans for Staying Father
Coughlin.
Dean, she said joined the Royal
Oak priests National Union for Social
Justice as Black Legion spy, but in
his jail cell. Dean said he was an
admirer of Father Coughlin and de-
rided the woman's story of death
plot.
Just because we wanted only Prot
estants to hold Office we didn't have
to hate Catholics" he said.
Parted Eight Years Ago.
He said he was not married to his
accuser, who told of living with him
for nearly eight years, leaving him 13
months ago, she said, because of
Beams attentions to her 14-year-old
daughter.
Police expressed skepticism of the
woman's accusation, but said she
would be called before Circuit Judge
James E. Chenot, who Is conducting
a one-man grand jury investigation of
the Black Legion.
State police reopened an investiga-
ton of the drowning of Alexander
Murdy, 47-year-old street car con-
ductor, after discovering his name on
a Black Legion membership roster.
Murdy disappeared last January 9.
His body was taken from the Detroit
River, near Fighting Island, on
May IS.