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Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1928, Page 4

GUNMAN’S SILVER COFFIN. NICW YORK. July 1. An extraordinary procession of denizens of the underworld to-day filed past a solitl silver casket in which reposes the body of Frankie Vale, the fat gunman from Chicago, who on Sunday received a fusillade of bullets lrom a passing motor-ear while he was driving through a Brooklyn street. Tale is commonly reputed to he one of the murderers of Dion O’Bannion, who three years ago was shot dead by several gunmen who invaded his sumptuous florist’s shop in Chicago. O’Bannion was given the most expensive funeral in the history of Chicago's underworld, hut the underworld of New York has decided that the obsequies of Yale shall bo a spectacle no less gorgeous.

£2OO BILLS. Accordingly more than a score of them met last night in a little house in Brooklyn. Each of them threw on the table a £2OO bill. Thcty then proceeded to a merchant in the neighbourhood telling him that “ Frankie wanted the host.' He’s to get it. If you need more money you shall have it.” So Frankie’s body clad in a dinner jacket, with diamond rings on its fingers is on view to-day in a carved silver coffin, an exact replica of the one used at the funeral of O’Bannion. Plans for the coffins were drawn several years ago. lhreo ttere made. In the first an internationally known financier was buried. The second was sent west for O’Bannion. Yale gets the third. More than 5,000 persons to-day viewed the coffin, which is smothered in £6,000 worth of flowers.;