Today -100: February 25, 1922: Of ice chips, regular extraditions, bluebeards & death villas

Some NYT article links are currently redirecting to a generic page, so no links below for those stories.

A big explosion hits Chicago. Dynamite at an ice plant. No one knows why.

Latest theory in the murder of director William Desmond Taylor: he was killed because he was fighting a dope gang to save some woman.

North Carolina, still trying to get Matthew Bullock extradited from Canada so he can be lynched or whatever, refuses to send witnesses to Ontario as the judge there is demanding. Gov. Cameron Morrison tells the State Dept that if Canada fails to extradite Bullock “in the regular way,” the state won’t honor any Canadian requests. Under the extradition treaty, the court in Canada can require evidence that the fugitive would be charged if the alleged crime had been committed in Canada.

Serial killer Henri Landru is guillotined. “His head fell into the basket as the first rays of dawn gleamed in the sky.” Pres. Millerand rejected the jury’s recommendation of mercy (which they presumably made because no bodies were ever recovered). Such recommendations were always respected before this case. The villa in Gambais where he killed many of his victims was bought for a lot of money and opened to paying tourists, as is the custom.

A few days ago, the Mississippi State Senate voted 25-9 to ask Harding to forgive some of the European war debt in return for some piece of colonial Africa, and then to ship the state’s black population to the new “final home for the American negro.” Mississippi was 52% black as of the 1920 Census. The measure will fail in the Miss. lower house, because white plantation owners needed the super-cheap labor force.  (I originally missed this story, by the way, because the NYT didn’t report it. h/t to Jon Schwarz for the WaPo article, which I must pedantically point out is wrong about who the KKK imperial wizard was.)

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.