Indianapolis Times, Volume 44, Number 313, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 May 1933 — Page 9

Second Section

MILLIONAIRE IS MURDERED IN CELLAROFFICE Aged Eccentric Had Vowed to Find Slayers of His Secretary. By United Press NEW YORK. May 11.—An 83-year-old eccentric milllionaire, who two years ago vowed to spend the remainder of his life searching for tne murderers of his secretary, was found beaten to death today m the underground office he maintained on New York’s lower east side. Beside him lay the bullet-riddled ’ body of the man who succeeded his murdered secretary. Every afternoon at 1 o'clock, for many years, Edward A. Ridley had come up from his subterranean of- i lire for a breath of fresh air. The j habit had become so traditional that j neighbors could set their clocks by j his appearance. His failure to re- j emerge led to the discovery of the murder. Two Found Dead The cubbyhole of an office is forty j leet, below the street level, beneath ! * garage. The garage used to be a stable and Ridley had his office there. He was a millionaire several times over, but he always said he liked to have his office deep in the ground beneath New York’s Ghetto because there he escaped from the noise of the elevated railway. Joseph Fiduccia, who operates a freight elevator in the garage, was one of those who noticed the old man had not come up to the street. He investigated and found the bodies. Old Edward Ridley's clothes had been torn to shreds. His left ear was almost torn off, his skull had been crushed. The office was wrecked, indicating that there had been a terrific struggle. Five bullet wounds were found in the body of Lee Weinstein, the millionaire’s secretary. A rusty safe in the office had not been touched. Struggle Is Unheard The fact that the office is far below ground made it impossible for any one in the garage or on the street to hear the struggle, or even to hear the shots. The elevator operator said that earlier in the day two men had come to the garage and asked for Ridley, saying they had a real estate deal to talk over. Two years ago Herman Moench,! the old man’s secretary, was mur- | dered in the same office where Ridley and Weinstein met death. The j murder was never solved, and it j was known that Ridley spent large i sums trying to find the killers.

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ZEMURRAY KNOWS HIS BANANAS AND PROVES IT

Rushes Out of Retirement to Put Great Fruit Concern Back on Its Feet

Samuel Zemurray came up from New Orleans to become managing director of the United Fruit Cos. last June, and since that time the stock has jumped 38 points. And he now is on his wav to another and greater fortune than that he assembled as head of the Cuyamcl Fruit Cos His methods and his personality George Britt reveals in this last of six articles on depression wealth. BY GEORGE BRITT Times Special Writer SAMUEL ZEMURRAY, retired from the tropics and enjoying well-earned ease in New Orleans and at his lodge in the pine woods, a spacious estate formerly owned by a Louisiana lottery king, saw himself becoming a poor man if this depression kept up. He was down to his last few millions. Late in 1920 he had turned over the Cuyamel Fruit Company, child of his own fighting and planning, to the United Fruit Company for 300.000 shares of stock. It was a stupendous deal, and never again, it appeared, would he need to worry about bananas. More than half the Cuyamel stock was his. In October. 1929, it stood at 124, making his personal holdings worth $18,000,000 or $20,000,000. He also had in bank some millions in cash earnings from Cuyamel. Even after the market crash, his share opened the new year, 1930, worth well over $15,000,000. But United Fruit stock in 1931 went on down to 17/2. On June 2, 1932, it reached its depression low of 10 \i. The Zemurray fortune in stock now was shrunk to around $2,000,000. The fruit business itself was Zemurray’s love, and when it languished he felt ill himself. So Sam Zemurray packed his bags to attend a directors’ meeting in Boston. He took along his boundless knowledgs of the banana business, which he always carried in his head. And he also was provided with some hundreds of proxies from other worried stockholders. The report—which he has denied—is that he spent his own free cash to buy additional shares as part of his preparations. If he did, it was bargain speculation, for prices never have been so low. He had felt very much like a fifth wheel at these Boston meetings. His fellow directors courteously had voted him down and put through other men’s policies that he scorned. He was a diamond in the rough, which Boston didn’t understand. But he made everything clear at directors’ meeting last June. an 7! THE best years of his life had been spent in the dank, murderous, mosquito-bitten lowlands of Honduras and Nicaragua. His lean six-foot presence was packed sufficiently with vitality to bring

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him through unscathed in those lands of the revolver and the machete. He swore fluently in three languages. And he knew his bananas. When he had finished his remarks at the directors’ meeting, it was unnecessary to go into any count of stock proxies. And anything resembling polite commiseration of one another at the company’s low estate was out. To their surprise the directors found themselves creating anew office of managing director, carrying sweeping dictatorial powers. To fill it they elected Samuel Zemurray. United Fruit stock, which had touched 1014, has been around 46 recently, and the morale of the company has been invigorated likewise. Such advances as United Fruit has been making in the depression dates from tha> meeting last June. It is not for either the company or for Zemurray a work of fortune making. It is rather conservation. The tropical fever that was wasting a strong concern has been halted apparently —and convalescence has begun. And the Zemurray fortune has been stabilized and increased in the process. tt tt a ZEMURRAY. who is 56 and a Rumanian Jew, came to America as a child, was supporting himself, his parents and his brothers at 16 and went down to the tropics almost by the time O. ACTRESS KIDNAPED, BEATEN AND ROBBED Sister of Raquel Torres Victim in Coast Crime. By United Press HOLLYWOOD, May 11.—A man accused of kidnaping and beating Nancy Torres, pretty Mexico City actress and sister of Raquel Torres, was sought by police today on a description furnished by the victim. Fainting and hysterical, the actress was found Wednesday on the doorstep of S. M. Schomann, wealthy Santa Monca business man. She told of attempting to flee from a night club in a taxicab when her escort, an old friend, became involved in a melee. ‘•Two men grabbed me and threw me into a roadster.” she said. ‘Then they took me to the Pacific Palisades and beat me.”

INDIANAPOLIS, THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1933

Henry and Richard Harding Davis were falling in love with their luried colorings. He knew Lee Christmas, an acquaintance not hard to pick up around the bars in New Orleans. Through that agency he had a hand in a revoltuion that removed one president of Honduras, elevated another and proved of lasting value to himself in the fruit business. His business career in New Orleans began with the sale of “ripes,” which were thrown away at that time as the banana boats tied up at the docks. Later he had a contract to buy them, for they proved salable in the local market. Then he advanced until he and a partner named Ashbel Hubbard chartered a small vessel and brought in their own bananas,, Mr. Hubbard withdrew in alarm as Mr. Zemurray kept expanding and enlarging. His business, the Cuyamel Fruit Company, was the greatest challenge ever presented to the United Fruit, Yankee overlord of the tropics. It fought United, grabbed off choice banana acreage ahead of it, cut in on its best markets. Sam Zemurray gave up his Louisiana comforts and leisure last June when he began running the United Fruit Company. Half his time is spent in Boston, from where he supervises the producing end of the business, the .rest in New York at the sales office. He says nothing about himself and issues no statements thus contributing in the most effective way to building up the Zemurray myth.

land in a revoltuion that removed )ne president of Honduras, elevatripes,' 1 which were thrown away 1 ‘iff • it that time as the banana boats Zemurray kept expanding and engf ever presented ? to the United if it, cut in on its best markets, ■<. p , iis time is spent In Boston! from ~..^^

The Tenadores, a United Fruit Cos. boat, and William Zemurray, managing director.

Second Section

Etitered as Second-Cla** Matter at PostofTiee, Indianapolis

T>UT he is no man of mystery south of Yucatan. He is one of the established verities. He is self-educated, and his mind, unencumbered by scattered reading or dependence on records, is concentrated on the one big interest. His memory is prodigious. Reading a current report, he has more than once checked discrepancies hinging on ?, parallel statement five years beck. Unlike many large corporation executives, he gives his men responsibilities instead of rules and routines. He follows the old system of the jungle plantations, where men have to sink or swim by their own initiative. What he demands is the result. Personally his hobby is fasting. Twice a year at least he retires to his big farm eighty miles from New Orleans and goes entirely without food, taking only water. A week's fast is too short, in his opinion. He has gone as long as two weeks. It is his private health method, beneficial to body and mind. After his fast he returns to his office explosive with new ideas. Within less than a month after he took charge of United Fruit its stock had risen from 10 U to 24 and that price held steadily throughout the year. Thanks to a better price for sugar, which gives the company almost double revenue from its Cuban plantations, and to the general inflation rise. United Fruit stock this year virtually has doubled again. (The End)

SISTERS GO RIDING; SHOT BY FATHER One Is Slain and Farmer Ends Own Life. By United Press EL RENO, Okla., May 11.—Enraged because they went riding with some boys against his will. Ed Etheridge, farmer, shot his two daughters and himself. Bernice 'Etheridge. 12, was killed, as was the father. Elinor Etheridge, 13, was taken to a sanitarium in a critical condition. The tragedy took place Wednesday at a railroad bridge, one mile east of here.

10,000 HITLER BACKERS BURN | GERMAN BOOKS Volumes Containing Doctrines Hostile to Nazi Ideals Cast Into Flames. BY ERIC KEYSER United Press Staff Correspondent BERLIN. May 11.—Ten thousand singing, shouting students marched, around a blazing bonfire in Opera Square until the early hours rs to- ■ day, jubilant at destroying books ; representing ideas and doctrines considered hostile to Nazi Germany. Some 20.000 books were consigned, to the flames. The works of some of the most celebrated of modern German aut thors, books of social and political theorists inimical to Nazi rwliefs, and books detailing the horrors of war. such as “‘All Quiet on the | Western Front,” made a tremendous [ fire that blazed for hours while po- ! lice and firemen stood by to prevent j it from spreading out of the street into surrounding buildings. “German education has been purged of smut and dishonesty,'* Student Leader Gutjahr said when the fire burned itself to embers and the students marched home. The books destroyed were random copies of widely printed works and represented only a slight percentage of the total number of each work extant in Germany and the world. While the students destroyed contrary thought, Nazi storm troopers and police were completing the total suppression of the Marxist opposition. A raid on the Socialist faction rooms in the Reichstag building definitely ended Marxist parliamentary opposition. The rooms were sealed and party legislative records confiscated. Verified reports from Wittenberg said twenty-one Socialist leaders were arrested and their homes searched for documents as Nazi officials throughout Germany proceeded with confiscation of the party's funds. DANCING IS POLL ISSUE Texas City Residents to Vote on Ordinance Repealer. By United Press VENUS, Tex., May 11.—Residents of this city that bears the name of the goddess of love will vote on whether a city ordinance forbidding dancing shall be repealed. The election was called by the city council. Its opinions were divided on the morality of dancing.