CRIME IN NEW YORK.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 542, 8 July 1869, Page 4

CRIME IN NEW YORK.

A correspondent, on Ist April, writes : — The efforts made in the Criminal Courts here to alarm the criminals by sentencing one man to be hanged and sending a dozen or twenty others to the State Prisons for life, has now passed over, and the thieves and murderers are becoming as bold as ever again. The man who is sentenced to death was a Deputy-Sheriff. He had a feud with a police officer, who had frequently arrested him for various offences ; and one night he lay in wait for the officer, and shot him through the heart. The execution is set for to-mor-row ; but all the thieves, roughs, and murderers in the city, and half of the politicians, are moving heaven and earth to obtain a respite for the condemned man, with the intention then of getting a new trial and a final acquittal. The case is looked upon as a test one — a trial of strength between the criminal classes and the law-abiding community ; and it is understood well enough that, if this murderer escapes, it will be useless to try to hang anybody in New York by process of law. Two murders, and an abduction which is supposed to have ended in a murder, have occurred here, or in the suburbs of the city, this week. The body of a man stabbed to the heart, and the body of a woman who had been strangled to death, were picked up in the river, and the police have no clue to the murderers. On the New Jersey side of the river, opposite the city, is the suburb of Hoboken. There is a trans-railway running through the town, and at a late hour the other night, in one of the cars on this road, there were three passengers — two men unknown to each other, and a young and handsomely dressed woman. As the car reached a lonely spot near the river, one of these men, who had been conversing with the woman, suddenly seized her, dragged her out of the car, knocked down the driver who tried to interfere, and disappeared among the docks leading to the river. Neither the man nor the woman has since been seen, and probably she was murdered. But even in the city the state of things is no better. A man living near here came to the city the other day with $500 in his pocket. A gang of outlaws attacked him in a house into which they had decoyed him, robbed him of his money, and then were about to murder him when he promised silence and was suffered to escape alive. The thieves were arrested ; and as they were found to be " men of considerable political influence in the 4th Ward," they were admitted to bail in the paltry sum of $2000. The thieves easily gave the required bail ; but their victim, being unable to furnish security for his appearance as a witness, was locked up in the House of Detention. This is a sweet kind of justice, I is it not ?