SING SING MURDER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 874, 18 January 1930, Page 16

SING SING MURDER

YOUTH STABBED FIVE TIMES NO CLUE TO CRIME Of the many murders chronicled in historj*, the death of a 17-years-oM convict named Reuben Kaminsky, in New York’s famous prison. Sing-Sing, has a unique place. It might be called “The Silent End” murder. In the gathering dusk one evening last month 1,730 convicts, including Kaminsky, one of the youngest of them all, stood in line awaiting their return to their cells in the new prison on the hill. Suddenly, without a murmur, without a sound, Kaminsky sank to the ground. Not another movement was visible in that long grey line. sJt • Who killed Kaminsky, and why? All the guards were at their places and the sergeant in charge, Frederick Vetter, turned his head in the direction of Kaminsky as the lad fell. ’ The sergeant rushed over and found Kaminsky bleeding from five knife wounds, one in the cheek, one under the left arm, and three in the chest. He was unconscious, and died soon afterward in hospital without being able to tell Warden Lawes who had attacked him. Every Convict Searched Meanwhile every convict who had been in the vicinity of the murdered lad was searched, but no knife was found. The prison doctors say that Kaminsky was murdered by someone standing in front of him. A complete | search of the men and their cella ; brought to light only one knife, which Mr. Lawes declares is too small to have been used. The prisoners working in the leather factory use knives, and during meal* the convicts are supplied with, then, but they are forbidden in the prisoi yards and cells. After an investigation a convict were placed in solitary confinehave been placed in solitary confinement pending further inquiry. Burakoff was Kaminsky’s companion in the Brooklyn hold-up which brought both of them into gaol. It is stated that Burakoff was caught after Kaminsky had been arrested, and on the murdered lad’s information. When Kaminsky’s mother was told of her son’s death she wept and drew from her bag a railway ticket which her son had just sent her. It enabled her to go to the prison and claim his body.