CONVICT TRAPPED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 661, 13 October 1933, Page 7

CONVICT TRAPPED

FATE PLAYS STRANGE TRICK ON CONVltT. CHANCE CAPTURE. New York, S'ept. 19. ; Fate played an unkind trick on " Harvey Bailey, America's most " notorious convict, when it sent him to a farmhouse near Decatur, Texas. The farmhouse was under police suspicion because of a number of lux- ' urious motor-cars which drove up ' to the door, but the police had no idea 'that Bailey was within. They approached the farmhouse ' and found a man sleeping in the back porch as peacefully as a little child. But under his pillow was a revolver, while a machine-gun lay under the bedclothes and another stood against his' bed. Not far away was a .motor-car also well supplied with armament. Federal Officer Jones immediately recognised the sleeper from photographs as a man wanted for the murder of a convict named Nash and four >policemen outside Kansas City station ,last June. ^ Hoping to secure the arrest of two ,of Bailey's confederates, the police \kept Ijis capture secret until later. 'They" stumbled on a second remark'.'able discovery. The farmhouse bore frequent fin- [ gerprints of the millionaire Mr. ' Charles Urschel, of Oklahoma City, who was kidnapped and ransomed for £40,000. Not only had the police found the place where Mr. Urschel was kept prisoner, but also they found a sum of money on Bailey believed to be part of the ransom money. Bailey had no chance to put up a fight. Two other men and two women were arrested in the farmhouse. Bailey was one of five convicts who escaped from Lansing State Prison last May. He was serving up to 50 years for a Kansas bank robbery and was also wanted in Nebraska for a £400,000 robbery from the Lincoln Bank Trust Company in September 1930.