Law: Gamble

An anonymous telephone tip sent police scurrying to the tightly-barred garage operated by one Meyer Luckman in Brooklyn the night of March 3, 1935. Inside, stuffed in a bloody canvas bag in the rear compartment of a Ford coupé, they found the warm, freshly-strangled body of Meyer Luckman’s brother-in-law and bookkeeper. Samuel Drukman. Caught in the garage, with blood on hands and clothes, were three men: Meyer Luckman, a nephew Harry Luckman, and an ex-convict employe named Fred Hull.

On May 10 a Kings County grand jury failed to indict the three for murder. Nine months later, after the non-indictment had caused an election scandal, New York’s Governor Herbert Lehman ordered a special grand jury investigation. Out of a sensational welter of charges of racketeering, political corruption, jury-tampering & bribery came murder indictments against the Luckmans and Hull. On Feb. 20, 1936 all were convicted of second degree murder, sentenced to prison for 20 years to life. Because Hull’s lawyer, Brooklyn’s Joseph A. Solovei, had been absent from court during the first days of the trial, he decided to appeal for a new trial that he hoped might give him freedom. Last May it was granted. Last week it ended. The jury found Hull guilty of first degree murder. The conviction carried a mandatory sentence of death.

Said Lawyer Solovei, “I guarantee the reversal of this conviction. If I don’t, I’ll tear my sheepskin into a million pieces and never practice again and you can print that!” Fred Hull. 53, who had made the greatest gamble a man can make —and lost—said nothing. He is scheduled to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing the week of Sept. 5.