The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-03-07

rent citizens of Waterbury who were active in exposing this conspiracy, Leary threatened 8 representative of this group with the publication of these statements unless the in- vestigation were stopped and the complaints withdrawn but the in- vestigation went on. Hayes and Kelly labored with Levy as above set forth and Leary ehdeavored tc secure the cooperation of Macken. zie and Williamson as to their tes. timony given before the grand jury.
 This destruction and suppression of evidence made the work of the prosecution very difficult. The fact that any information at all could be obtained was due in large part to the cooperation and provision of the chief accountant in the comp troller's office, Purcell. When Lea " took office there was Q vacancy in this position and he appointed Purcell, who had very limited expe- rience in this work. In spite of this he soon noticed Irregularities in of. flee procedure but when he at- tempted to complain of them to Leary and to the mayor he was told in effect that he did not under. stand politics, to mind his own business and to do as he was told, Thereafter he kept and retained uia- der his personal control copies of many of his working papers, in- cluding copies of bank reconcilia- ton statements and adding machine tapes. These were available at tho time of trial and in spite of at- tempts by Leary to buy his silence, they were produced by him for the use of the state. It was with the assistance of these papers in con. nection with such other records as were available that the expert &C., countant for the state was able to trace the payments to the exent in. dicated. S..o
 The destruction of the warrants payable sheets made 1t extremely difficult to trace many disburse- ments made from the city treasury The charter of the city required that all disbursements to be made by tho city, with few exceptions, prin- cipally pay roll payments, should be submitted to the board of finance and approved by 1t. These sheets listed the disbursements, to be made, with sufficient particularly so that the purpose for which they were to be made and the appropria- tions against which they were to be Nka xyad. onss1A tNa a% a,aoa <1 at a,,,,, = ined, and they were the only rec- ords of the city which served that purpose. On the back of each sheet was a certificate to be signed by members of the board, in which were blank spaces for inserting the numbers of the warrants listed on it which were approved by them. While warrants payable sheets were submitted to the board, on which were listed most of the disburse- ments to be made by the city, tha members performed their duties in a very perfunctory way and usually failed to cause the certificate to be filled out. Many entries were in serted on these sheets after they had been submitted to the board: among these were a large part of the payments to the defendants which we have listed; and of these the members of the board had no knowledge.
 Original Central Group
 There was evidence from which the jury could have found that the general conspiracy was formed by the original central group consist ing of Hayes, Leary, Kelly and Ol- sen who remained in control of its operations throughout. This group might be compared to the head of an octopus. At different times 1t as- sociated with itself the other de- fendants (the arms of the octopus) whose cooperation was of different kinds but always was in further ance of the single conspiracy. The arms might not help or be asSociat- ed with each other but were always attached to and endeayored to for ward the purposes of the head.
 This being so. the next question as to each of the appealing de- fendants is. was he connected there with by evidence in such a way as to support the verdict of guilty rendered by the jury?
 The Waterbury charter is a so- called strong mayor" charter of an extreme type. The mayor was not only the titular head of the city government but the actual head in direct control of almost all of Its departments and officers. Hayes made full use of his opportunities along these lines and while he ob- viously could not know Of every ad- ministrative Gsstail. kis interest in and connection with the operations of the city government were in. timate. continuous and aggressive. At