POLITICAL NOTES: In Dunton

The final finger at the end of the Law’s long arm in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania is a tall gaunt man named Robert G. Elliott, official executioner for those four States. After society had finally decided it must take the lives of Communists Sacco & Vanzetti last summer, it was Executioner Elliott who threw the electric switch. He also killed Ruth Snyder, Judd Gray, and over 100 less famed criminals. When he took up his profession in 1926 he tried to keep it secret. But his name leaked out after a year. He has been uneasy ever since.

Mr. Elliott’s house is in a place called Dunton, a drab quarter of the Borough of Queens, N. Y. One night last week, an hour past midnight, a bulky object lying on the porch of the Elliott house detonated with a roar of which the magnitude befitted the object of its protest. This object was not Robert G. Elliott or his wife and two children, all in bed upstairs. It was society.

The neighborhood was shaken awake, showered and riddled with flying ragged slugs and chunks of metal. The front of the Elliott house yawned wretchedly in the night. People stumbled down the street to see. The police riot squad swept up. All yammered and exclaimed over the explosion, little realizing the full justice of its result. Robert G. Elliott, Mrs. Elliott and their children all came out of their house unhurt.

Police tried to trace a Red motor car.