The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 114

W-7 4 Ifjfsr nfr'lVfpp Mi Threatened, Cajoled, Promised a Great Reward, i 4 Yet This Wicked Woman, Who Kidnapped Poor Little Three-Year-Old Raimonde, Refused to Tell What She Did 1 19 With the Child The Search for Raimonde Was a Complete One, Even the Canals and Rivers Being Dragged for His Body, but Not the Faintest Trace of the Child Was Ever Fund. A FEW days ago Mrs. Mary Jones sat in the prisoners' dock of the New York Criminal Court. She had just heard a jury declare her guilty of the wicked crime of kidnapping the three-year-old Mrs. Mary Jones, Who Took a Sentence of Forty Years in Jail for Kidnapping Rather Than Reveal What Had Become of Her Little Victim.

Not Once, Either Before or During the Trial, or When the Judge naa aentencea tier tor Nearly Halt a Century in Jail, Did Mrs. Jones Give the Slightest Hint of What Had Become of the Kidnapped Boy: Silent as the Sphinx, Which, Legend Says, Knows the Secret of the Ages but Will Not Reveal It, She Sat, Impassive and Unmoved, and There Were Some Who Saw Her as a Sphinx. Indifferent, Tight-Lipped, with Poor Little Raimonde Lying Across Her Cruel Paws. son of a neighbor, little Raimonde von Maluski. Cold-eyed and tight-lipped, she had listened to the evidence brought against her.

There could be not the slightest doubt that she had stolen the child. For weeks she had kept her stubborn and cruel silence as to its whereabouts or its fate. The prayers of little Kaimonde's heartbroken mother had failed to move her, and that mother's misery had left her untouched by either sympathy or remorse. Appeal of the boy's father and of his small sister had left her unmoved Threats and cajolery had been tried in vain. She had been promised a great reward if she would speak and still she would not.

That very day a woman probation officer had pleaded with her to tell. The District Attorney who had prosecuted her had her taken into his office, and there had appealed to her, promising mercy, if she would. She had even been taken into the judged chambers, where Mrs. von Ma- luski, the mother, and little Raimonde's sister, had bent to their knees before her and prayed her only to tell whether the child was dead or alive. To every tlireat, every promise, every prayer, she had remained silent or denied that she knew.

And now the judge, leaning over his bench, spoke slowly: "I will give you one last chance to tell what has become of this boy, and I warn you that you may expect no consideration from the court unless you do tell." The woman's lips tightened a little more. Her cold eyes stared back at the judge impassively. She knew what had become of Raimonde, and every one knew that she did. By a few words she could have relieved a mother's aching heart. By a few words she could have, won a light sentence.

Mrs. Mary Jones is over fifty, and of considerably more than average intelligence. She knew that it was within the judge's power to give her what would amount to a life sentence in the penitentiary and that He would do it if she did not speak. She did not speak. And the judge gave her that life sentence.

"You are utterly bad," he told her, "a wicked woman. I sentence you to a term of from twenty-five to forty years in prison." Not a muscle of her face moved, not a shade of expression crept into her eyes. Sphinxlike, this woman, who had put heartbreak and misery into a neighbor's home, listened unmoved, and, still unmoved, she was marched away to begin the long years that must end in death in a prison cell. What was the secret of her strange silence? It was on a Sunday evening, toward the end of last March, that Raimonde was playing with his dog in the apartments of the Von Maluskis. In another room were his mother, his sister, and the husband of Mrs.

Jones. About 7 o'clock the blare of cornets and the boom of a bass drum sounded from the street above. It was a Salvation Army band beginning its services on the corner. Raimonde heard it. No three-year-older could resist the call of the music.

He slipped through the door into the street and toddled up and joined a group of children clustered around the players. His mother, his sister, his father, never saw him again. As the hours wore on with no little Raimonde returning, the Von Maluskis called on the police for aid. After three days investigation and search they arrested Mrs. Jones.

It might even have been that the child's death came about by accident, and although she would have been punished for having been responsible for this, still she ould have taken advantage of thj situation and made her bargain with the law before she told whether Raimonde was dead. In any event, so anxious was the law to solve the mystery for the sake of the boy's mother and father, that without doubt nothing heavier than a second-degree murder sentence would have been inflitced. But those who watched Mrs. Jones closely during the trial believe that it was not fear of the chair that kept her silent. There is one thing about kidnaping that makes it crueler than any murder.

It is the uncertainty of what is happening to the child. There is not a mother who would not rather know that her stolen baby was dead than to feel that, lonely and among strangers, -it was perhaps suffering from cruelties, from huncer and from disease. jf I J- A Maluskis considered her an enemy. She had quarreled with her husband some little time before and had left the house, taking up separate quarters. She had visited her old apartments recently to get, as she said, some of her clothing.

During this visit she had gone into the apartments of the Von Maluskis and Von Maluski had accused her of taking away with her a stickpin and some money. She had been arrested and held in bail on the charge of petty larceny, although she had vehemently accused Von Maluski and her husband of flumping up the charge against her. It was discovered that she had subsequently threatened the lives of both the men and had tried to hire" three Bowery characters to kill her husband. One of these men told the police that he and Mrs. Jones had ridden by the Von Maluski house in a car and that she had then complained that they were keeping her husband from her.

When the trio had refused the offer of $100 apiece for the killing, she had boasted, so they said: "Well, I two other men who will do it for me for nothing." At this point the daughter of a neighbor, who had been in the group of children listening to the Salvation Army band, told the police that when the band had marched away Raimonde and some of the other children had followed. Creeping behind them in a taxicab she said she had seen Mrs. Jones 1 These threats and the little girl's story caused the police to make the arrest. Mrs. Jones was indignant.

On the day of the kidnapping she said she had arisen at noon, had gone to church at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, had returned to her home, fallen asleep on a couch, awakened at 9, "undressed, and had gone to bed. This was her alibi. But now three taxicab drivers came forward to draw the net closer about the woman. One of them said that he had been stopped that Sunday night by a middle-aged woman leading a little boy. She had given him an address anil he had driven to it, and when he had gotten there it turned out to be vacant ground being made into a park.

When they had reached the place she had hurried out of the cab, paid the fare and darted away into the darkness over the mounds of earth. He picked Mrs. Jones out of a crowd of spectators as the woman he had seen with the boy. A second taxicab driver came forward and said that on that same night he had been hailed by a woman who had forced a small boy into his cab and had told him to take them fifteen blocks further on. When they reached there the child was crying and had tried run away while the woman was fumbling in her purse for the fare.

This driver also identified Mrs. Jones in the police line-up. 4 One of Raimonde's Small Sisters Praying for His Return but No Prayers Could Move Mary Jones to Reveal Her Secret. Raimonde is so black, and her desire for vengeance so strong, that she chose to remain silent, giving up freedom and hope of freedom as nothing compared to the evil and perverted thirst which can be satisfied only by another woman's continual tears and long-drawn-out heartbreak. And the' judge believed that this, too, might be true, for, "You are a wicked woman, you are utterly bad lie said.

It may be that the child is not dead, but hidden away in some dark den. And yet it is difficult to believe that this is so, since the reward for restoring it to its people would be so great that it would not be easy for it to be moved. Recognition by some one or other in its traVels would be inevitable. Yet, againif Mrs. Jones did kill the child then how was she able to hide its body so completely? There are acids which eat away flesh and bone, but the purchasers of such acids leave clues behind them, and none were found.

Bodies can be burned, but this, too, leaves Its traces. Whatever happened little Raimonde happened within a few hours that Sunday night of his disappearance. All the movements of Mrs. Jones that night, from the time she stalked her prey in the taxi, until the time she left the second cab with the crying child, are accounted for. Between that and the next morning there is a lapse.

From that moraine on the movements of the woman had been checked up, almost minute by minute. Whatever she did, she did quickly and with extraordinary completeness. It may be that in the weary, monotonous passage of the hours in the prison to which she has been condemned to spend the balance of her life, the iron will of the woman will weaken and she will solve the mystery. She will still have a chance to tell, and if she should it is quite that recommendations would be made to the parole board, and her sentence be shortened, so that some day she would once more be able to walk the' streets a free woman. But those who have come in contact with her think she will never tell.

They believe that she will go to the grave with that cruel, strange silence of hers Little Raimonde, the Kidnapped Boy. A Dr. Robert Middleville corroborated the testimony of the first chauffeur. He had seen Mrs. Jones and the boy enter the cab when it had stopped to pick them up.

Confronting her with this evidence, the police confidently expected a confession, but.none came. Mrs. Jones stubbornly repeated her denials and monotonously, again and again reiterated her alibi. Meantime, an extraordinary search for little Raimonde was going on, a hunt unequalled in the history of kidnapping. Two hundred and fifty detectives were assigned especially to the case, squads of school children from Raimonde's neighborhood went out looking for him, hundreds of policemen made canvasses of every house and every vacant lot on their teats.

The Harlem River and the city reservoir were dragged, squads of men equipped with gas masks searched the sewers of the city for his body. Hearst newspapers in New York offered a reward of $5,000 for any information which would lead to his recovery. Not the faintest trace of the child was found. Searching back through Mrs. Jones's life, the police found some curious things.

She was an Austrian, 'had been three times married and never divorced. Twenty-one years ago she had married John Varick. They had a son. Both father and son disappeared as completely and mysteriously as had little Raimonde. Soon after this she married William Hille.

They had two children. The father and this pair vanished just as had the others. She had a wide acquaintance in the under- world and had $16,000 in one bank at the time of her arrest. It is likely that she has much more property not yet discovered. Mrs.

Mary Jones is extraordinarily expert at hiding things. What is it that lies beyond this strange silence of this wicked woman? Is it fear! Did she kill the baby who had run so gaily out that night to hear the cornets and the drums? The judge who sentenced her had this suspicion, for he said: "The child was taken to some lonely place, and I have a suspicion that is profound that he was killed." He paused and looked at her intently. All eyes in the courtroom were on her for some sign that would betray her. She stared back at him with inscrutible face and eyes and there were some in that courtroom who had a swift vision of this woman as a tight-lipped, cold-eyed Sphinx crouched in a desert of mystery, with the little body of the missing boy stretched across her cruel paws. And yet, if Mrs.

Jones had actually confessed that she had killed the child, she would not have suffered any greater penalty than she now must meet. Night and day the mother and, of course, the father, but th mother more than he has visions of the little loved one, who had known nothing but the love and care, lying bruised and beaten and calling out helplessly to her to come to it and deliver it fro.n its misery. Through the long, sleepless nights the mother sees it and hears its cry, and there comes the thought of what, if it lives, its after life will be. Brought up harshly and in ignorance, perhaps thrust out into the world like a little waif and every day that' passes widening the abyss between it and its mother, until soon enough the day comes when, even if they should meet, neither would know the other. It is all this that makes a certainty of death preferable.

Many a poor mother of such a stolen child has prayed, hour after hour, that her lost baby is dead. Then she knows that at least it is safe from blows and hunger and harshness of word and deed. Undoubtedly Mrs. Jones knows this every woman, no matter how wicked, must know it. And so it may be that her hatred against the parents of little Suspicion was first directed to her he-cause the detectives learned that the Von C) 1923, bf American Inc.

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