GRIME: California Lesson

Half a mile south of California’s San Mateo bridge on which he had been murdered last month (TIME, Nov. 27), kidnapped Brooke Hart’s body was found in five feet of water by duck hunters one morning last week. Employes in his father’s San Jose department store identified the body, painfully recalled fitting the clothes which the corpse still wore. In San Jose, where gaunt-faced Thomas H. Thurmond and hulking John Holmes had been jailed after confessing to the crime, red-hot resentment took shape as a mob. Asked if he would call out the militia, florid Governor James Rolph Jr. snorted: “What! Call out the troops to protect those two guys?” By nightfall some 6,000 infuriated Californians were swarming around the jail and on the lawn of a park across the street. When they rushed the jail’s iron doors with two great pieces of iron pipe, tear gas was as useless as cigar smoke. The sheriff was carried off unconscious. The mob found Holmes on the second floor. He put up a hard fight for life. Thurmond was in a cell on the third floor which had been vacated by Palo Alto’s Murderer David A. Lamson (TIME, Sept. 11 & 25). He clawed the ceiling like a rat in a flooded bunker. From inside the jail two trails of blood led across the court yard, across the street, stopped beneath two trees in the park. Not far from a statue of assassinated William McKinley, the murderous kidnappers were hanged. Governor Rolph, who prides himself on his hearty Western ways, declared: “This is the best lesson California has ever given the country. We show the country that the State is not going to tolerate kidnap ping. “I don’t think they will arrest anyone for the lynchings. If anyone is arrested for the good job, I’ll pardon them all. Why should I call out troops to protect those two fellows?”

In reply, famed Rev. John Haynes Holmes (no relation to lynchee) was only one of hundreds to protest. Said Dr. Holmes: “Governor Rolph’s statement . . . constitutes the crowning disgrace of the whole ghastly history of lynching in America.”

Next day, 18-year-old Anthony Catalbi claimed to be the organizer of the “neck-tie-party.” His story:

“I went out to my father’s ranch . . . and got some rope for the hanging. Then I went all over the town in my flivver roadster and passed out the word: ‘We’re going to have a lynching at the jail at 11 o’clock tonight.’ . . . Mostly I went to the speakeasies and rounded up the gang there. That is why so many of the mob were drunk. . . .

“[Inside the jail] the deputies pleaded with us not to take the prisoners. . . . One fellow dropped down on his knees at once in the aisle, and all the rest of us fellows of the gang all knelt in silent prayer. Then the prayer was broken up when a drunk guy in the gang yelled ‘Amen, Brother Ben!'”

¶ In Princess Anne. Md., State militia were ordered out by Governor Ritchie to apprehend the lynchers of George Armwood who was hanged last month after raping an old white woman. They seized four suspects, placed them in the guard room of the armory at Salisbury. When a crowd of 400 angry citizens gathered outside the armory to protest the arrest, cry for the impeachment of Governor Ritchie, militiamen threw tear gas.