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mNEW YORK TRIBUNE. SUNDAY, JUNE 9. 1918Jurors Who Convicted Paul Chapman, for Murder of Regensburgs Sign Petition Urging Clemency—His Own Story of CrimeFrank and UnshakenBy Robert H. RohdeHarry regenSburg is deadand Sam Regensburg is dead. That can’t be mended. In no wav can I,aw be applied to bring themback.Hughes Davis is dead, too which i* just as well. He had gone into the Regensburg home to steal, had stayed to kill and had killed wantonly. His life was forfeit. Had bo lived through the rain of police bullets which found him in biding near the scene of bia crime, then he must all but inevitably have died by legal execution.Harry Regensburg dead. Sam Regensburg dead, Hughes Davis dead; and now it is Paul Chapman's turn.Paul Chapman is sixteen years old — and in the Death House. He is tie youngest prisoner who ever has entered that steel-walled one-way corridor between here and the hereafter, liis status is the condemned murderer's. His prospects are the condemned murderer's. An appeal has been taken for him. Beyond the appeal is the possibility of n new trial; beyond that possibility the Governor. Hut beyond all the door to the death chamber stands ajnr.deed, be no more than seven, law will call him killer.util thePut On As His Own WitnessJurors Sign a Clemency PetitionThe twelve men who convicted him think it is too much that Paul should die. Every one of them has signed a petition urging clemency. Herein is their final judgment. They may be jurors no longer, nevertheless they are the same dozen who heard and weighed all the evidence which the state was able to pile up against Paul.What they did when they returned their verdict finding Paul guilty of murder in the first degree they are now only too anxious to see undone. Is it too late?The Society whose will the Law aims to interpret is an abstract thing. More often than not the voice which speaks through the Law is the voice of u generation over whose graves centuries have rolled.Will the actual Society of to-day the men who vote and think and the women who always have thought and now may vote countenance the execution of Paul Chapman?Paul, us he sits in his cell in the Death House, is neither angel nor devil. He is just a boy, sixteen years oil. and, calamitously for himself, big for his age. With a man’s physique to carry him through, he had tasted something of a man’s experiences before he came to the moment of temptation. Of his stature and his minor adventures in life the state made much. They were put into issue against his age in proof of his accountability.But Paul Chapman is only sixteen years old. The brain which directs the body that has outraced it is a sixteen-year-old brain. That the jury, reconsidering. has come to realize. The hue and cry has subsided long since and there has been time, all around, for reflection. Directly as a result of the fate which confronts Paul a bill passed the Assembly at the last session • if the Legislature providing that only rien past twenty-one may be required to pay the death penalty. The bill was lost in the confusion of the last three clays in the Senate, so that, as concerns Haul Chapman, the legislation inspired by his plight is a hint to the Governor, end nothing more- a suggestion of Society’s” will in regard to Paul.It was this technicality in the law which menaced Paul Chapman. Wood :’ound another technicality to serve as ii foundation of the defence. For the ’.aw allows opportunity for repentance. Let a transgressor weaken in his criminal resolve and turn his back upon the crime in contemplation; from that instant he is clothed with innocence. Let him he frightened* awny from a crime and kill a policeman, say. in his flight it is written then that it was not in pursuance of a criminal act he did the killing. It is all highly technical.Anyhow. Wood decided to put Paul on the stand. Satisfied the boy had been telling the truth right along and would tell it again in the same straightforward manner, the lawyer called him as his own witness. When Paul was sworn the main facts in the case had been established. For that matter they were conceded.There was no disputing that the murdered Rcgensburgs had been decent and pcaccablo citizens, and for vheir taking off there was no excuse. Harry Regensburg, years before, had opened n little stationery store at 63C Pork Place. Brooklyn. He and his wife had moderately prospered there, and there a son was born.On the night of Sunday, October 28. 1917, the Rcgensburgs had about $400 on the premises, hidden in divers parcels in the shop and the living rooms '.o the rear. They weren’t expecting burglars; the precautions were routine.Sam Regensburg, Harry’s brother, had been a visitor that evening. He helped in the store until it was closed at 11 o’clock and then accepted his relatives’ invitation to spend the rest of the night with them.At 11:30 Harry Regensburg, his wife, his four-year-old son and his brother were all in bed and asleep. An hour later Sam Regensburg, sleeping with his small nephew curled to him, awoke with a Btart. The window beside his bed wus wide open. He. rose on his elbow to meet a blow from a blackjack or jimmy. There was a heavy odor of chloroform in the place. Sam struggled to his feet, screaming.he knew. He was visibly frightened, but his answers were quick and specific. To this day the detectives who questioned him express no doubt that he was telling not only the general truth, but straight fact in every detail.At least three times during the day Paul told his story to the police and to District Attorney Lewis, on the scene of the crime, in Captain Coughlin's ofliee at the .Sixth Branch Detective Bureau nnd in Lewis's office. He tolil it undeviatingly. On obscure points he was as certain and unchangeable as on major points. Wherever n was possible the police checked up on him, even while he waa still under examination. Wherever they checked up they found corroboration. The story stands. It was on the case against himself which Paul then disclosed that the prosecution was based, and tho.vi' same statements were taken as a bulwark of the defence.Paul didn’t attempt to justify himself. ID- was beyond quibbling. Ho had gone with Hughes Davis nnd Leonidas Davis, he said, to rob the Regensburg*. It. wasn’t his plan, nor did lie expect any larger return from the adventure than the price of a suit of clothes. But lie needed now clothes and he had gone along.Two automatic pistols had been found on the roof of G36 Park Place. Although there was nothing to prove Paul carried one of them he unhesitatingly admitted it. The pistol wasn’t his, and it wasn't even to have been carried by him. he said. But the plans had been changed and he had taken the gun. He said he hadn't intended to use it, wouldn’t have known how to use it, anyhow, and hadn’t used it.Pau! Not Shaken*By ExaminationThe Woman Only Survived the CrimeThe Story As Paul Told ItNow. aside from the question of Paul‘’hnpman’s age if for a single moment i: is possible to explore into th© facts and forego that question—there ia certainly another as to the measure of his guilt.At the trial expert had faced expert and the wise men had disagreed. One set was sure that some of the bullets which had been fired had come from the automatic pistol carried by Chapman. Another set, equally learned in the use of firearms, had testified it wasn’t ho. Paul, retelling his own story on the witness stand —exactly n» he had told it again and again on the day of his arrest—had usserted he had abandoned the crime before ever the shooting started.I wna in it, and I ought to be punished; but I backed out short of murder and I shouldn’t be killed—that was the gist of hia narrative, and that was his plea.It wasn’t apparently just a matter of words, nor of playing for effect. What Paul Chapman said he seemed sincerely to believe. He felt that punishment, • nd severe punishment, was his due. He had said as much to Matthew Wood, his lawyer, and Wood at his suggestion had proposed to District Attorney Lewis of King* that his boy client be permitted to plead guilty to second degree murder. The sentence then could not have been less than a twenty year term. It might have been imprisonment for life.The prosecutor was rather confident then Uiat he could prove Paul was on the firing line with Hughes Davis when th© Regensburg brothers awoke to And burglars at their elbows. To convict, he didn’t have to prove that. It is the Law that one who Joins in the plotting of a crime ii equally guilty, if murder grows out of it, with the murderer. It is not even necessary to conviction that the eo-plottor of the first part be present during the commission of the crime. He may be sixteen years old or sixty e-tfc* same law applies. He may in-Harry Regensburg, half awake, cam* running from the next room. He never knew what hit him. As he appeared in the doorway, a white target in the bluckness, a spatter of lead eliminated him as a combat factor—also as h factor in the Park Place cigar, cigarette and stationery trade. His wife, following him through the door a mo ment later, was hit by several bullets of the fusillade which greeted her. She was a red-haired woman. With wounds that ordinarily would Have been mortal she kept her feet, ran to the front door through the store, and gave the alarm by breaking the glass, collected the $400 from its several hiding places, told the first policemen to arrive what she knew of what had happened, and finally insisted on walking unaided to the ambulance which had been called to- her. And she is alive to-day, a widow. She still runs the stationery store in Park Place and lives iri the rooms behind it. There are bars on the windows now.But Harry Regensburg und Sam Regensburg had received their death wounds. Before the end each hud spells of consciousness, but if the po-ico had been forced to rely on what tho dying Kegensburgs could tell there would have been scant hope of bringing the murderer to book.Eyewitness testimony, however, was not necessary to make it plain that the windows opening on the back yard had been used to enter the Regensburg nome and again to escape from it. Detectives climbed into the yard. A couple of them started over the fences. Others found a cellar door open nnd stumbled down the precipitous steps -stumbled straight onto what they were seeking.In the dumbwaiter shaft an unnatural commotion had arisen. Somewhere above u tenant had reached out into the shaft ami caught the rope and waa holding on for dear life. The dumbwaiter wus stuck between two floors. Aboard it was a passenger. The policemen. achieving a vuntage point over his head, called on the passenger to explain himself. No answer came from tho dark figure below. Threats to shoot were likewise ignored. And then the detectives turned loose.Hughes Davis, immediately recognized as a one time tenant in the Park Plnco apartment house, was dying when he was lifted out of the shaft. Naturally he couldn’t have much to soy then; but a notebook found in his pocket talked for him. In tho book names and addresses of several Paul Chapman's waa amongAs concerned hi? own part in the tragedy Paul was not to be shaken under the most rigorous cross-examination.Hughes Davis, he said, had been a school friend. He was three years older than Paul, but the two had had the same playmates. Hughes had gone to work while Paul was still floundering along with his elementary studios and for years thereafter they had seen little or nothing of each other.Then Paul, hack from a sortie into the world on his own hook-in the course of which he had penetrated as far into the Wild West as Akron, Ohio—had run across his former chum. Hughes had changed. In school, despite the disparity in their ages, Paul had been the leader. He was big for his age even then, and chunkily built, lie excelled in athletics. Hughes hud been a frail youngster. Unfitted to compete with his fellows in their games, lie had abandoned himself to the gay life. When he wasn’t smoking a cigarette there was usually the ghost of one pendant from the corner of his mouth; and if there had been a school prize for picturesque swearing It would have been his without opposition.Hughes had learned to play poker, and be passed on h s knowledge to the gang. Self-taught, he had become an expert picker of locks. He found solid satisfaction in demonstrating his skill on any old lock that cam.* to hand with.a set of mysterious, home-made tools. In bis field he was supreme and much admired. Elsewhere Paul was his protector.This new Hughes Davis that Paul Chapman met when he returned from liis travels was a man of the world. He wore rubber-rimmed spectacles and was rather fussy in regard to cigarette brands. Upon him the glamour of gasolene reflected. He worked in a garage not as a mechanic, you may be sure, but as a stenographer and typist and general office man. He seemed 1o have plenty of money and he hinted to Paul he knew where to get plenty more.The Lure Held Out to HimHe Was Ready To Tell the StoryPaul was arrested the next morning.By refusing to admit his complicity he might have saved himself then and there. Not a bit of evidence stood against him except that of the notebook. He was acquainted with Hughes Davis that was all Getting Paul lo talk, though, was no difficult task. Ife seemed glad of an opportunity to free bis mind of whatBrooklyn Women’s Club and Other Organizations Circularize Governor in Youth’s Behalf—Record Shows Generous Spirit in theGrip of Wanderlustother to he consulted. That was Leonidas Davis, Ilughey’a 23-year-old brother. Leonidas was married and lived in Providence, R. I. That evening he had popped up unexpectedly in Brooklyn. Together Hughey, Leonidas and Paul sallied forth. They rode on the Brighton L and Hughey left Leonidas nnd Paul waiting on a station platform while he took himself off on nn errand. Tie had expected to bring back another boy, with whom the ultimate decision should rest in regard to Paul. The fourth boy, under parental restraint, couldn’t join the expedition; but. Hughey brought back with him various paraphernalia of crimo which, Paul understood, had been stored with the stay-at-home.His first stop of the day had been arranged in advance; and some very flno police v/ork bad been done wfflit he slept. When Paul arrived to keep his appointment detectives vvero on hand to receive him. A few minutes later they were listening to his confession of complicity.Manifestly surprised when told that murder had been donp, Paul at once denied he had used his pistol. The two guns found on the roof#were put before him and he picked out the one he had carried. There were seven cartridges in the magazine, which might have hold nine. In the magazine of the second pistol two cartridges were left. Ton might have been squeezed into it.The fact that two cartridges were missing out of the pistol which Paul admitted having carried might have meant much. Again it might have meant little. By the closest police calculation just eight shots had been fired. Eight empty shells to correspond had been found scattered about the rooms behind the Regensburg store. While Hughey’s pistol was technically a nlne-shooter, there might have been ten cartridges in it when he cut loose. They would have been a tight fit, but the pistol would have held them and discharged them. Ten cartridges to 3tart with, minus the two that were left—eight fired. Eight shots fired from Hughey’s gun and eight cartridges found where they had fallen from the ejector; it tallied.be a benefit 'o the widows and the ful men have had in their boyhood %nifhave lived to laugh over. A trua^fatherless children left by Harry Regensburg and Sam.Rather than b bad boy. Paul Chapman hns been an unfortunate boy. He is the son of a trebly unfortunate mother, a woman so schooled to ca-1 tastrophc that the situation of Pau! in the shadow of tie chair is but an added chapter in a book already written 'uil of troubles.The Story of His Mother’s LifeWhen Pistol Experts ClashBy that time Hughey had upon his person two automatic pistols, rubber gloves to shield tell-tale finger tips, n jimmy, a black-jack.Paul said always lias said—he began to lose his nerve right there. He didn't like the look of the pistols. Plain stealing was another matter. This array of deadly weapons looked altogether too desperate.But the fact is that Paul didn’t then and there back out of the party. The suggestion from Ilughcy that he wna “yellow and a quitter” was sufficient to steel him. He went ahead. Moreover he was persuaded to curry one of the pistols, Hughey and Leonidas were to have been the amcd men of tho expedition, according to Paul’s story, and Paul’s share in the enterprise was to have been to serve as outside lookout. He was to stand in the street nnd at the approach of a policeman ro signal to Leonidas, who was to have been posted at the back door of a shop which afforded a clear line of vision through from the sidewalk, Then Leonidas was to have passed on the warning to his brother.It seemed, though, that Hughey had no mind to let Paul earn his suit of clothes so easily. First he called it to Paul's attention that Leonidas had a wife and baby. It wouldn’t do, if anything went wrong, for him to be found with u pistol in his possession. Better to have the bachelors take n chance. Couldn’t Paul, as a man and a bachelor, see that? Paul could. Re-luctant or not, nevertheless he took the gun and stowed it in his coat pocket.time. Regensburg’s eyes opened. He saw the dark figure bending over him and started to climb out of bed. Hughey raized his blackjack and in that instant lost an accomplice.Of course this is all Paul Chapman’s story. No witnesses survive to corroborate or contradict him. But the police have 110 reason to doubt that Paul (old the truth here as he did everywhere else.Protecting A Family ManIn the Matter of Buying ChloroformPaul was in desperate straits in what way will be developed further on. He needed clothing and was bound to have it. Readily he fell in with Hughes’s suggestion that the two collaborate for profit. Paul didn’t have1 the stamina which keeps many a poor boy from making a bad thing worse -for which an explanation is corning. He was willing to go wrong. In fairness that, muat here be conceded, as Paul conceded it jr. his confession.Just before the Regensburg murder' Hughes Davis had planned another “job. lie and another boy went into a hardware store in the Bedford sec-1 Lon of Brooklyn, leaving Paul posted across the street. When the others I returned, as Paul eaid, he learned for| the first time they had contemplated I robbery* They had known the brooms were kept in the cellar and while the | proprietor of the store was getting one 1 for them it had been the scheme to rifle tho cash register. It might have1 Worked but the hardware man had 1 company.That was Paul’s introduction to the source of Hughes’s easy money. It: was good and sufficient warning that Hughes Davis wasn’t square and ai preparation for what happened subsequently.Or. the following Sunday evening Paul met Hughes in a Brooklyn poolroom by appointment. Hughes said he thought ho saw R way to make n little money for nn old friend—one.! say, who needed a new suit and had no means of getting it. He wasn’t J aurc. Ho just thought lie could help I out. The final decision rested with others than himself.As it developed there was only oneThou there was chloroform to be bought. That task, too, Hughey put up to Paul. He and Leonidas were well known in the neighborhood, ho argued, and the cunning trick would be for a total stranger to make the purchase. And for another thing: Wasn’t it Paul who was all the time objecting to rough stuff and threatening to hack out if the pistols or the blackjack were going to be used? \\ ell, wasn’t chloroform u concession to him, then? That wouldn’t hurt anybody-just make ’em sleep sounderHughey temporarily took chargtof Paul’s pistol and Paul canvassed the drug stores of the neighborhood for chloroform. In the first store he was shrewdly questioned. He withdrew in disorder. Farther on he found druggists who were not so curious. They filled his orders without question until Hughey thought there was enough chloroform on hand for the night’s business,As a matter of fact it was only chloroform liniment which had been sold to Pnul. Uneasy the slumber of him under whose nose it were held. Indeed, it was Hughey's effort to induce a state of artificial repose in him which awoke Sam Regensburg. Hughey had run up the window by Re-gensburg’a bed and was waving a rag saturated with the stuff under the victim's nose. Tho chloroform liniment might hove been so much ammonia. Regensburg stirred and Hughey, thinking the stir was his lost for hours, crawled through the window nnd across tho bed.To make certain he wouldn’t haveAs Hughey mcved to strike Paul says he was seized with panic. For there had been another change of plans to which Hughey had won his agreement through tho old argument that Leonidas was a “family man and it was Paul who at the last moment had been assigned to act as the lookout in the yard. Leonidas, as Paul's story has it, was in the street anil comparatively safe. (As after events proved he was nil hut absolutely safe.)Paul resolutely denies he stayed long enough outside the Regensburg window even to see Hughey's blow fall. It had been in the compact there would be no violence. By Paul's lightning reasoning the partnership was dissolved when Hughey lifted his arm. Thereupon Paul’was through. Aa his story continues he turned and fled into the cellar, losl his way in the darkness, bumped his head nnd tumbled while searching for the stairs into the building and at lust groped his way back into the yard, there to meet Hughes Davis.Hughey had u flash lump. He was at the top of cellar steps when Paul rejoined him and fairly flew down, hi* light twinkling. Paul followed. in the glow of the flash lamp the other stairs were quickly located.As Paul reached the first floor hall at Hughey's heels he saw a shadow flit past tlie front door. He took it to be a policeman’s shadow and raced blindly on upstairs. When ho paused for breath he and Hughey were on the roof together. But by way of the roof there was no escape. No. C3G Park Place, is an island block.At Hughey’s suggestion Paul threw away his pistol, Hughey did likewise. Then lie slipped onto the dumbwaiter. There was only room for one. If two trips must bo made, Hughey would go first— he wus that kind of leader.Paul didn’t wait for the dumbwaiter to descend and come back to him. He started down the stairs. Half wav to the street he met a man.Goin* down to see what's the matter,” Paul panted, and the man wu satisfied.The pistol which had been intrusted to Paul Chapman might never have been loaded to capacity. For eure it hadn’t been if his story is true—and don’t forget the police believe he tells the whole truth. But supposing it had been: It was a nine-shooter, too, andonly seven cartridges were left in its magazine. Two were missing then, making with the seven gone from Hughey’s pistol a total of nine shots fired. Tf nine shots were fired, how had tho ninth bullet managed to d s-appear without trace? What might have happened, then, to the ninth empty shell?If Paul is truthful the answer to the problem is simple enough; if lube a liar behold the complications!As has been said. District Attorney Lewis had an expert at the trial to testify that one of the bullets which were fired nnd which took effect came from Paul’s pistol. As has further been said, experts of the defence were quite as positive it hadn't.And as has been said beyond, it didn't make much difference anyway. The Law is the Law, and Paul's own confession damned him. Accepted in part, that is, it damned him. Accepted in full, there was his panicky repentance and his abandonment of the I crime to consider.For four days the trial went on. Then, after a summing up by the state, , Judge Kapper charged the jury they must either find Paul Chapman guilty as charged guilty of first degree murder and subject to the death penalty— or they must acquit. The jury began its deliberations imbued with the idea that there could be no compromise.In the petition which the jury now have signed (again in solid 12-0 agreement) they refer to the strictness of Judge Kapper’s charge. This charge, incidentally, is one of the grounds on 1 which Mr. Wood intends to base his appeal. He believes much more should properly have been left to the discretion of the jury.The Trial and Public IndignationAt the time, however, the verdict was not unpopular. Indignation had run high, for the killing of the Re-gensburgs had been as senseless as brutal. Other ways of escape hud been open to the burg!ai^-or the burglars— than by murder. Public opinion was against Puul. He was overgrown, loutish, lie sat through his trial apparently unmoved. Mr. Wood, who was at his side through every minute of the ordeal, says Puul was frozen with fright.But the reporters in the courtroom didn’t know that. They saw in the hoy’s glum demeanor stoicism, indifference. So they wrote of him.Others who followed the trial — women, mostly—formed their own im prcssions. They remembered Paul’s age, and upon his conviction set actively to save him from the chair. Th*About all that Paul Chapman ever got without working for it was an endowment of good health. Ho was born with that. The strength that had been denied to his father and the sturdiness that liis older brother Harold locked seemed to have reverted to him when finally ho came into the world. As a baby lie was a perilous climber. As a growing child in knickerbockers he wa3 precocious and hardy. He v.as the kind of boy who must he active to keep himself amused. Men of deeds develop from that type of boy.But Paul had started life on the wrong foot—which brings to bear the story of hi3 mother’s life.As a girl Mrs. Chapman (she has married a second time, but no need of using the new name ) was Louise Long, and she lived in a'country town in Illinois. Her father died when she was only a few months old. When she was sixteen her mother died. Until she was eighteen she lived with an uncle in Springfield, 111. Then, with a snail estate left by her grandfather to buck her, she went to Chicago. For a short time she went to a business college.” Before she was nineteen she had met Charles Chapman, a railroad clerk, and had accepted his offer of marriage.Chapman was many years older than his bride and was father to her aa well as husband. For years things ran smoothly. A soji was born and then another, five years later. The second son was Paul.In the railroad office Chapman shared a double desk with a clerk who was consumptive. The two used the same telephone and through it the germs passed from ono to the other. Never robust. Chapman fell an easy victim. For a year lie was a dependent on hia wife. Tart of tho year the family spent in Arizona; the rest, in Cana'da. In its course what was left of Mrs. Chapman's inheritance was spent. At its end Chapman died.One of Mrs. Chapman’s four brothers, a floor-walker in a New York department store, travelled to Canada to attend the funeral. He proposed that his sister return with him to New York and furnish a flat, volunteering to live with her and maintain the home.Mrs. Chapman came to New York. The flat was rented and furnished out of her small stock of insurance money. This was six years ago, when Paul was ten and Harold, his brother, was fifteen. For a time again things went well. The brother kept his end of the bargain. Then, one day, he told Mrs. Chapman he had found the right girl nnd was going to marry her. The next day Mrs. Chapman found work in a department store. From that time on, she suspected, it would b? up to her to keep the family together.The first job paid $15 a week, and it was about as good a job as Mrs. Chapman has ever found since. In the year before her brother married the woman of his choice she contrived to save a little money.That money wasn’t to stay long in the bank. Harold Chapman, always sickly, was stricken with the disease that had carried off his father. He had been employed for a couple of years as runner in a broker’s office, and for a period the firm continued his pay. Eventually, with the boy in a sanatorium at Liberty, N. Y., the burden fell on the mother.officer visited his mother one In the preceding month, as he strated, Paul had skipped i ous number of days a* school.As a result of the truant offiwr't visit Paul was giv^n his choice of tending school regularly 0r quitting altogether. Even before then he hid wanted to 'ret a job. Soon after**!* tho summer vacation came, and for months he tried one job after another None suited him. He wanted outdoor work, and such work he couldn't find ;n New York.Tie wont back to school again in tht fall, was as discontented as ever and in December persuaded his mother let him strike out for himself. §he put him aboard a train bound forBridgeport. « :nn . with n ticket in hi* hand and S!5 in h s pocket. He was only fifteen then, but the motherith the thoughtcontented herself he was man-size.In the Grip ofthe WanderlustBridgeport didn’t look as good Paul close up as it had looked fro a distance. He stayed there only, hour and a half, sent a tei hia mother and struck for phia. There he worked a while 1 nn express company as a husky a then moved on t , the du Pont p’,iat Carney s Point, X. J.. opposite 7j mingtoh, Del.The letters Paul wrote to hiafrtm Philadelphia and Carnc-y’3 were good manly letters. Any might be proud of them. Ho waa m ing his way in the world and • satisfied with life. A good share of time he made his home in Y. M. C dormitories.After several months the want hist renewed his grip. The trace it is in the letters to Dearest Moth Sometimes Paul wrote of plans travel on to the Pacific Coast; ag to ship for Europe. When he acta did weigh anchor Paul cam,- to t at Camp Meade in Delaware. F-there he went to Akron, from Ak to Cleveland, from Cleveland to D rfirx, N. y.. where he worked fc time m a vineyard; from Dunkirk Jamestown, and so on home.So long us h*? had been reguli employed Paul's letters ro his imv were regular. Two or three of th reached her every week. After le.t lt;araey’s Point jobs were htn to get. Occas ona! postcards look place of the letters..It was rough sledding for Paul Ohio and rougher on the way I once he had resolved to get back ho • i'- = *iy he journeyed on freight tn andf when he reached New York c!p*hing was in tatters.October 19, 1917. was the cote Psuls retnr-.. Th,.t h„. fine,tTthdoy cor ill h- , rags and his gr •us mother took him literally tobreast.Paul’? stepfather gave him a suit, and r» ha* and a pair of were bought to fill out hi* temr wardrobe. It wasn't exactly the nt that Paul would have pick wear on a canvass for work, and he found it hard to get a job hlt; the difficulty to h U clothing, wanted another suit, wanted it bs and along cnrr.o Hughey Davis.Leonidas DavisGoes Scot FreeThen He Was Left to HimselfGetting Away Frcyn the SceneRegensburg on his hands prematurely Hughey held the rag to his nostriff■gain. It was too much for him thiaNobody questioned Paul when he walked out the front door. For a few minutes he stood in the scantily attired crowd on the sidewalk. Leisurely then he strolled away. Between the crowd and tho L” station for which he was heading he mot a policeman.Guess you’re needed back there, Paul blandly informed Tiim. There’* been a robbery.And at that moment, Paul insists, he didn’t know a crimo graver than robbery had been committed.An I. train carried Paul safely away from Park Place. He snatched a little sleep on a station bench and in the morning resumed hia search for work.Brooklyn Woman's Club started the fight. Organizations by the score and individual- by the thousand took it up. Petitions began to circulate; petitions are circulating yet; all will find their way to Albany.These disinterested worker.* in Paul Chapman’s behalf have made it their business to find out more about Paul and the case against him than the newspapers found space to tell.Justice Kapper saw no reason why Paul should not die, and he fixed the first week of April last for his execution. Paul is alive to-day only by virtue oi the appeal taken by his lawyer, which automatically acts as a stay.But by the verdict of those who have acquainted themselves with *11 tho circumstances—a good many of them circumstances of which the law takes no consideration, weighty though they may he—there is every reason it, the world why Paul should live. For one thing, certainly, killing Paul will make a bad business no better, they assert. In no way can bis executionHarold died, and was buried at Lib- | erty. What spare time Mrs. Chapman had she had spent with him, and Paul,] perforce, had been permitted to run I wild. He didn’t become wicked -just wild. He conceived a dislike for school and study. There were pleasanter 1 things to do with his time, he discovered, than to sit in a classroom.Mrs. Chapman has called herself a half-time mother.” That is an overestimate. She didn’t have time enough to herself for half-time motherhood. From early morning until evening her work kept her away from her home. Paul, who had been tremendously fond of his brother and had been restrained by him, was his own muster. He might go to school or not as he pleased. When his numerous absences showed on the report cards a scolding was the worst that could happen to him. His mother didn’t believe in corporal punishment.!Left to himself Paul became lazy, | shiftless—but not bad. Just once he : got into trouble, when he and other 1 youngsters threw stones at a passing train.Perhaps as much to put a stronger general manager over Paul as ior any other reason, Mrs. Chapman married again. Her second husband was younger than she. He was a man with some material prospects, but one who neither at that time nor now had n sufficient earning capacity to meet all the bills.Mrs. Chapman kepi on working. And Paul continued to do largely as he pleased.Once again Paul got into trouble — auch trouble a* a good many tuccm-There is Paul Chapman’s And in what degree was Paul mar.'a guilt greater than the glt; Leonidas Davis?Leonidas was tried after Paul Mad been disposed f. The pnli found Hughey's brother in bed they reached his home, but the wrung a confession from him. Chapman would have testified, 1 been brought down from the House as h witness, that Leonid been standing watch outside th-enshurg store no more than minutes before the shooting, must have threatened the alibi si by the defendant's mother and father, who testified Lconida home and in bed at that time.5?re *.aS anolher potential w Mrs. Agnes Powers, who wa called. Mrs. Powers, a neighbo-r eger.sburgs, says she saw iwj bo from tho entrance hall at «36 Flace shortly after the shootin of whom disappeared around th ner while the second darted into tho building. Neither lt;pair, she is sure, was Paul; so t ference to be drawn from her is that the boy who returned in house was Hughey, and hia comj a third participant.District Attorney Lewis did nEear personally In tho prosecut eonidaa Davis, and jn genen state did not seem to prosecut* nearly so much vigor as in th« of Paul.It was Justice Cropsey, Mr. predecessor as District Attorn King?, before whom young Davi tried. In public speeches the J had more than or.ee upheld th* viction of Paul Chapman, yet w came time for him to charge th* with whom the fate of Leonidas rested he pointed out they migh Jict on several lesser counts first degree murder.Notwithstanding that the verdbnot guilty.’’ Straightway oth* aictmenta pending against Davis quashed. He is ecot free. He can be tried again.What the Public Thinhof the Chapman CA dozen letters toTribune voicing* public “ f Pauliion on the case o.____man appear on Page 1 tion VI.. of this issue, letters were written ’ sponse to a brief articb lished some weeks ago. is in response to a de for fuller informatic the subject that the article is printed.
Newspaper Details
New York Tribune
New York, New York, US
Sun, Jun 09, 1918
Page 72
Full Page
Clipped by
Jessie D.
USA 16 Jun 2023
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