Sinister Suicide “Sweep” Thirteen Sign, Nine Are Dead!

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 684, 8 June 1929, Page 18

Sinister Suicide “Sweep” Thirteen Sign, Nine Are Dead!

INISTER Inferences have been drawn from a trail of death which followed the inauguration of a mock suicide club, of which Arnold Rothstein, gambler and gunman of the New York underworld, was one of the 13 members. The revelation of the existence of this club, accompanied by all the data of the nine deaths which have occurred during the nine years since it was formed, has been mads by Sam Lester, the proprietor of a barber’s shop, patronised by well known New' York men. It was in Sam’s shop that the suicide club was first jokingly suggested, and then formed. It was in that same shop that Arnold Rothstein, who was found shot in a dark alleyway leading to the back entrance of one of the hotels which he owned, smilingly handed over the dollar which made him a member. Lester has collected all the details of what has happened to the 13 members, and it is one of the most amazing stories ever unfolded. Late in 1920 one of the members, an assistant at the shop, jumped from Brooklyn Bridge, and was drowned. His wife had deserted him, he had become more and more melancholy, and he decided that life was not worth living. Fatal “Flutter” In 1923 the second tragedy occurred. This member had -worked and saved to try to get enough to set up in business for bimself. He had been tempted to have a “flutter” with his small savings, with the idea of getting rich quickly, and Wall Street had beaten him. The disappointment unhinged his mind, and he poisoned himseif. Then, in 1925, two men customers of Lester’s, -who had been induced to |

join the club, made a determined attempt to hold up a bank on Long Island. One of them was killed by a policeman's bullet, while the other died in the electric chair for killing the cashier at the bank.

It was in 1925, too, that one of the pretty manicurists at Lester’s establishment died from gas poisoning, after being jilted by the man whom she loved, and who she thought loved her. In 1926 another of the barber’s assistants shot himself, because, as he stated in a letter which he left behind, he was “sick of it all.” In 1928, two other assistants died by their own hands, one of them entering into a suicide pact with his wife because the dread spectre of poverty would not leave them, despite thenmost earnest efforts. The other man shot himself, but so far as Sam has been able to discover, there was no reason for it. Then came the tragedy of Arnold Rothstein, when the gambling gink went to the hotel in response to a summons from a mysterious woman, who rang him up at his office. He was found riddled with bullets, with signs that he had first been bludgeoned. Again Lester Insists that Rothstein’s death was one of suicide. A day or two before Rothstein’s deqth he had lost thousands of pounds to a big gang of poker fiends (says the London “News of the World”). He declared that he had been “rooked,” and refused to pay. They said they would “get” him if he did not pay by a certain date, but Rothstein laughed at them, and dared them to do their worst.

“Rothstein knew they were desperate men and gunmen,” declares Lester, “and he knew lie was facing death when he gave them the dare. That’s suicide. There are four of us left, and I am wondering who will be the next.”