GANG KILLINGS

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 453, 22 June 1937, Page 2

GANG KILLINGS

BACK TO DEVIL’S ISLAND White Slaver Murdered Paris, May 12. Roger Vernon, fugitive from Devil’s Isle, lay behind double iron bar, m a prison ceil, facing Devil’s Isle again. Thirty-six-year-old Vernon ' was found guilty of the murder of Red y.l x Kassel, gangster and white slaver, in .the Soho flat of Suzanne Bertron, Vernon’s mistress. He was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude and 20 years’ banishment from his native- Paris Suzanne Bertron, accused of aiding and abetting the murderer, was acquitted and set free. Parle gangsters and their women, to whom the name of Red Max was i. name of terror, were in the Paris Assize Count to see the closing stages of the trial. Watching, too, ware Frenchwomen whom the deal man had sold into white slavery in Soho. They saw Vernon wrestle with gendarmes in the dock, while his wife — reconciled to him since his arresit — clung sobbing round his neck, kissing him wildly. Black-haired SusLnne Bertron talked with me after she stepped down from the dock.

“Vernon,” she said, "was the only man I ever loved. - To me he was gentle and kind.” She went back to the home of her widowed mother, where the room in which she slept las a girl has been kept waiting for her through the years. 1 knew ithe verdict before it was announced in Court. The jury had retired. Down a corridor rushed M. Vesienne-Larue, defending Suzanne Bertron. “She is acquitted,” he said to me. “Vernon is guilty. He will go to prison.” Such a procedure would be impossible in England. Incredible, too, when Me. II rue took me behind -th? dock to talk to his client, when Me. Legrand, Vernon's defender, questioned him on my behalf, while the judges were considering th? sentence. Vernon said: ‘‘l want to see Suzanne Bertron once more, to say goodbye to her for ever.” A few minutes later he was clinging to his wife and sobbing. Human Monster. In their closing speeches counsel P’.c.ured Max the Red «as a human monster, Verton as “a man of horrible and macabre cruelty.” Me. Legrand roared at the jury in a voice that echoed far beyond tlie Court.

He gave ithe names of members of Soho’s Iron Gang ruled by Red Max in 191-I—Titine the Clum-sy-footed, Mariot of the Big Eyes, Albert the Arab, Scarflaced Chariot, Coco the Calf and Sour Bibi. Me. Legrand attacked Scotland Yard. He alleged that important documents —iLpert, invoices and bills showing that Vernon had been engaged in a legitimate car business in London—were kepit back by the Yard.

Then Me. Legrand handed out a bouquet to British justice. “They judge a n.Ln in England on the charge he faces—not on his past life,” he said. When the trial was over Vernon’s wife saw him behind his double-bar-red cell in the Bastille, she said to me: “I shall work land save and have a home ready for him when he comes out.” As she spoke .Suzanne Bertron was preparing to .attend a champagne Party to celebrate her freedom. That famous writer of “thrillers,” Edgar Wallace, was a great smoker. Like so may literary men he sought and found—inspiration in tobacco. Affixed to a wall of his study he had a big pipe-rack holding perhaps a dozen pipes, and it was his practise before speaking into the dictaphone he always used (he never used a pen) to “load” three or four pipes so that directly he had smoked out one ho could light another, without interrupting his train of thought. But tobacco is just as necessary to brain workers in other walks of life. The harassed business man, the scientist faced with some abstruse problem, and many others find solace in the weed. In all such cases there is nothing like a good comfortable smoke, and no tobacco half so refreshing as “toasted” Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. “Why toasted?” it used to be asked. Now every smoker knows that toasting eliminates the poisonous nicotine (common to all tohaccos) and renders “toasted” pure, sweet, fragrant and very comforting.