Indianapolis Times, Volume 38, Number 176, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 October 1926 — Page 13

OCT. 29, 1926

SLATER, ‘MODERN HAWKADDS •ANOTHER VICTORY Countrified Sleuth Gets Fame in McDermott Capture. Bv JfEA Service , * CANTON, Ohio, Oct. 29.—They Bald the Canton underworld was too tough for Detective Ora Slater, the “private Hawkshaw.’’ His critics couldn’t see how a coun tryfled sort of fellow who seemed to have nothing much more than a fund of funny stories could capture the slayers of Don Mellett, the crusading Canton editor. Slater’s "sugar catches more crooks than vinegar" gave the hardboiled police departments of the big cities a hearty laugh—even a guffaw. As Fiction Would Have It But, working on a cold trail, Detective Ora Slater captured the “key man’’ In the murder, Pat McDermott, the former convict who had been hunted over the Nation for three months after Mellett was shot down at his garage door one July nfght. It was a bloodless capture. Slater hadn't even a gun when he went to bring McDermott back to the scene of the crime. He simply walked up to McDermott and said: "Pat, I'm very glad to meet you." Pat, without a word, went right From Twin Rocks, Pa., to the unarmed Slater and Merode quietly back to Canton. It was like leading McDermott back by the hand. Wagging Tongue Is a. Winner On the way back Slater entertained. His humorous stories, his quiet way, his “sugar"—these made an immediate friend of the man police of the nation hand hunted as a desperate criminal. # It was not the first big murder case into which the stocky little Hawkshaw from Cincinnati had stepped—nor the first that Slater's quiet way had worked out. A few months before, at Troy, | Ohio, he won a confession from Jake Nesbitt, noted wife lhurderer. Here, too, "sugar" did the work. He won Nesbitt by talking of the weather and the crops. Slater’s methods have worked out many other crimes, but his quiet, eccentric ways were too much for the newspaper men covering the Canton murder. They had been on the job hardly twenty-four hours when funny stories about‘‘Hawkshaw” Slater began to trickle out. Slater was too good a subject for banter to pass up. He seemed to be wasting his time. He dawdled around Canton, talking to this one and that. To cap the climax, after* he had been at work •n the case two months, Slater announced he thought he ought to take • ten-day vacation. “After that,” he said, "I’m coming back and get McDermott.” Curses, Jack Dalton, I'll go and a nap and when I awaken, be flßtre, for T shall camp upon your wrail! That was the way it sounded to the visiting humorists of the press. Slater was hurt when the stories were printed. His pride rankled. Fifteen Years a Crook Chaser For fifteen years he had camped on crime’s trail. When he was a sheriff out in Indiana, back in 1907. he jailed thirty-eight men who had attempted to yjreck a train. But per haps the humorists had forgotten that. Perhaps they forgot, also, that In 1922 Slater put. five men behind the bars in a big Cincinnati hold-up. He trailed and caught "Red” Holt after Holt had killed a Cleveland po lieeman. His “sugar” coaxed a. confession from a prominent official of a Michi gan concern that, he had swindled the company out of more than a quarter of a million dollars. Then the famous Nesbitt case. Then this—these stories about the Hawkshaw who probably knew more funny stories than Chauncey Depew. but who was just a bit out of his line at detecting criminals. Vacation Ends— Back to Work But after his ten-day vacation Sla ter came back. He quietly resumed work. "If they'll only let old ‘Ory’ alone a while maybe he’ll show 'em yet,” he confided to a friend in Ctoton. They let him alone. Slater began se wing his net. It was on the members of Pat Me Dermott's family at Nanty Dio, Pa., that his "sugar” was used. He won • eir aid. It's history now how this message went out to Pat over "grapevine" lines of communication: “Your mother is very 111, and hasn't long to live. Send the family some signal as to your whereabouts.” It worked. Pat went to Twin Rocks. Soon McDermott and Slater were face to face. "Pat. I'm very glad to meet you,” Slater said. FARMERS’ RADIO CHOICE Educational programs are liked best by farmers, while classical and jazz music have their place. This is the conclusion of Sam Pickard, chief of radio of the Department of Agriculture, who has completed a farm radio survey tour through twenty agricultural States.

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES.

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