Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 62

s(Q9 ovr nil iff -5 Dooe Traffic I i. A rignti ng America mmmm.vmmmwym TTS Hairbreadth (U.S. Narcolic Escapes and i Astounding Experiences of the Man Fought the Drug Evil with Fireari and Brains, Laying Bare Sec the Illicit Trade In This Gil 7 The Cincinnati Expose and Truth These JiS I '7, I i 1 mf, Exaggek 1 I 1 I Hi i iW "Pipe Dreams (7J miKmsm ft IRREVERENT RUSE "Two-Gun Murphy Found This Bible, Hollowed to Contain Morphine Tablets, in One of His Raids. a A 0 0 rJ FUMEUSE" One of the Exotic Female Addict Heads by Raphael Kirchner, Famous Painter of Weird Panels and Screens. Murphy Believes Canvases Like This Give a False Impression.

DOPE-RING QUEEN Kitty Gilhooley, in One of the Few Photographs for (it .1 "A i I -i i 6 Bat perhaps my deep-seated convictions on this subject may have led me to digress too much. I promised to tell you this week about some of my exciting experiences in Cincinnati's dope clean-up in 1924. This Ohio case and the one in Buffalo, both of which I shall recount this week, are per-; haps the two most sensational upon. which I ever worked barring some of my experiences overseas during and after the World War. In 1924 several Federal narcotic agents, including myself, were sent to "Cincy." We had the tip that all was not well there with enforcement, but beyond that we knew nothing.

There were, we soon found, at number of flagrant peddlers doing business in the negro section of the town. A short time after our arrival another agent and I were picked up by the police as addicts when we were in the act of making "buys." Of course both of us, in dress and actions, had done everything we could to convince the dope vendors that we were hop-heads. Evidently our little act had succeeded so well that a chance policeman also was convinced. He pinched" us and, despite our protests, we were humed to the nearest precinct headquarters. mggetled to the officer that ho alto mrrett the man who had bean about to tell ut teveral "decks" of morphine.

The evidence was on hit person; ho could easily have been convicted. But the patrolman only growled and threatened to bath in my head with his nightstick If didn't hold my tongue. Evidence of Chiefs Guilt Piles Up Against Him We were thrown into a cell to await the arrival of the message from Narcotic Headquarters that would free us. Meanwhile I suspected that I was on the trail of another official scandal as important as the one described last week, in which a $50,000 bribe was offered us. peddlers were being protected.

That much was certain. But by whom? B.tM. Roberts, the agent-in-charge for out office, seemed to be an honest man, although I had heard that he liked to take a drink on occasion. Certainly that was not damning. In a few hours we were "sprung," as the underworld calls being released from the lockup, and reported back to our chief.

That evening 1 saw that teveral of the other agents who had been sent on that detail from Washington had their suspicions that Roberts, the agent-in-charge, would be worth investigating. 1 shall not go into the methods by which we cot evidence on Roberts. Suffice it to say that it soon developed that this employe of Uncle Sam. a former had achieved a greater and greater fondness for liquor, which was supplied him by bootleggers free on condition that he tip them off when Federal prohibition agents were about to get busy in that port of Ohio. Wo discovered too, that at number of ttool igMM svAo had boon giving Robertt information had received mind of hit doings in connection with the bootleggers.

They Immediately went into dope peddling on largo scale. The agenUn-charga wtw afraid to turn them in. The expose, which at first appeared to involve only one agent who had violated his trust, began to assume larger and larger proportions. DOPE CARICATURE A Humorous Drawing from the London Sket Depicting: the Pleasant Opium Dreams of creep away behind locked doors to use the enslaving needle, capsule or pipe. There is, perhaps, no other vice that likes company more, there is none in the enjoyment of which company is more compromising; the addict is torn be- tween shame and a desire to have others share his chute to destruction.

The typical opium smokers' rendezvous is a back room in some dark and unsanitary tenement places are always badly ventilated, because precautions must be taken not to have the tell-tale fumes escape and inform the neighbors what is going on. Once, when we raided a fashionable apartment in the Central Park West district of New York, we found the expensive flat dusty, dirty and dark; wet sheets hati been stuffed into, door and window jambs, and the two men, whom we arrested, were unshaven and quite miserable. None of De Quincey 's fantasies was being enjoyed by them. On this page you see a drawing by the celebrated English artist, S. G.

Hulme Beaman, from the London Sketch. The title is, "Dope!" Enchanting maidens fill the pipe dream of the Chinese upon his couch, while a bevy of comic opera cops are on the point or bundling him off to the station house. Perhaps my sense of humor is dwarfed, but from what 1 have seen of the ravages tp actual Chinese addicts, I find nothihg very funny in this subject. The picture, of coarse, is not meant to be taken literally but in it is the insinuation that opium gives its slave grotesquely lovely hallucinations. You find that insinuation in almost every painting with dope for a theme.

It is untrue and misleading and dangerous. Dope Dreams Are Nightmares, Not Visions of Paradise 1 do not for a moment contend that dries donl have a profound effect upon the imagination. They dobut many an addict has told me that his dreams approach more closely to nightmare than paradise. For the first two or three times perhaps, the dreams in an opium pill are exhilarating; though even this is not certain. Afterwards the principal sensation is one of heavy languor, a sense of empty drifting whkn is pleasant only because it is better than the tor-ments of craving another pill.

Any physician who has had experience with drug cases will tell you that. 1 with that ovary young boy or girl who hat advenimroutly contidered a tettion with drugt "futt for the experience" might read that wordi. Chinese Addict as He Is Surprised by Comic Which She Ever Posed. Murphy Met This Daring Girl Leader of a Drug-Smugglinf "Mob" Under Peculiar Circumstances Which He Relates Here. By JOSEPH J.

"rrOlJV" MURPHY (Internationally Famous Format V. S. Narcotic Squad Operative.) (Copyrlchl 1I2D. Intcraatlcral rratur krro. Inc.

Qreat BrIUla Itlht Rwrrad. DEBUNKING THE GLAMOR OF DOPE THERE has been more bunk written and talked about the beautiful dreams that come to the drug addict than about any other subject 1 know. For many years books, newspapers and magazines have been full of stories and illustrations setting forth gaudy and fanciful "drug visions." The reat "addict-author, De Quincey, defended opium passionately. He painted an insidiously alluring picture of the unearthly transports the Demon Poppy had brought him. Young people who swallow this sort of nonsense whole are riding for a fall.

Men like De Quincey possess ultra-vivid imagination anyway. Even when in their sober mindsthey are able to people their worlds with fantastic creatures. The delights and weird phantoms that are supposed to have been summoned only by drugs would undoubtedly have been just as real to De Quincey after four or five drinks of gin. On the other hand, the great rank and file or addicts who are far from geniuses experience no raptures through drugs, once the habit has been fastened upon them, but only brief surcease from the craving which is as excruciating torture as any to which the flesh is heir. That phase has not been exaggerated in the past or fn fictional accounts.

Again, there it a widespread notion thai "dope dent are generally a crott between a Turhlth harem. and a mullUmlllionaire't drawing-room. In mL "iire narcotic agent during which I raided thoutandt of placet which the newt-papert call "dope dent'" 4 found only one or two where anything approaching luxury obtained, Society has forced the addict to follow his vice for the most part in comparative solitude For one opium party or cocaine-sniffing soiree there thousands of men and women who "Cops." The Author of This Series Is Too Impressed with the Ghastliness of the Drug Traffic to Be Amused by This and Similar Drawings. When Roberts finally came to trial he had 1 of company. Forty-eight members of the Cinq nati police department and twenty'-three pro bition agents from village courts in Hamilj County, where- Cincinnati is located, were victed of connivance with the booze rings.

Mi of them "did" time in Atlanta. On January 1925, Roberts was sentenced to serve a year a day in the Federal penitentiary in Leav worth, Kansas. Roberto served his time and when I heart him last was strictly "on the up-and-up." Bo had, pulled him down temporarily, but I unc stand now ne is as straight as a die. The dimensions of a shake-up of this kind readily imagined. The Cincinnati newspad boiled with it for weeks.

Meanwhile, I had for another city; my work had been done-not before some interesting adventures. I I 'I i f- i One night for example, a cold and rainy 1 went with another agent to try to buy dope a particularly sinister part of town, it wal.