Evening Star
- 15 DEAD, 30 INJURED AS LA PLATA COUNTS TOLL OF HURRICANE
- FALL AND DOHENY PLEAD NOT GUILTY AT BRIEF SESSION
- Seminole Slayer Is Sentenced to Die By Cudgel With Which He Killed Friend
The Evening Star's front page for November 10, 1926 led with a staff correspondent's report from La Plata, Maryland, where a tornado the previous afternoon had wrecked a schoolhouse full of pupils and several nearby homes, with a probable 15 dead, 13 of them children, and a school bell left silent under the wreckage. In Washington, former Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall and oilman Edward L. Doheny pleaded not guilty in an arraignment lasting under five minutes on a charge of conspiring to defraud the government over the Elk Hills naval oil lease, the first of four Teapot Dome indictments, with trial set for November 22. An Associated Press story from Miami told of Seminole justice in the Everglades sentencing a killer to death; the legible portion stops at the tribal gathering that opens the account.
Translation
15 DEAD, 30 INJURED AS LA PLATA COUNTS TOLL OF HURRICANE
LA PLATA, Md., November 10.—This little southern Maryland town was groping dazedly today in an effort to take stock of the casualties from its greatest catastrophe—the wiping out by a freak tornado yesterday afternoon of its student-filled schoolhouse and several nearby residences at a probable cost of 15 lives, 13 of them children. The school bell, which yesterday called to their classes the threescore laughing children from the village and surrounding farms, lay silent today beneath a mass of tangled wreckage. It had summoned more than one-fifth of them to their death.
FALL AND DOHENY PLEAD NOT GUILTY AT BRIEF SESSION
Albert B. Fall, former Secretary of the Interior, and Edward L. Doheny, wealthy California oil operator, pleaded not guilty in the District Supreme Court today to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the Government in connection with the Elk Hills, Calif., naval oil reserve lease, which Fall executed to Doheny in 1921. The proceedings, which lasted less than five minutes, were held in Criminal Court No. 2, before Justice Adolph A. Hoehling, the arraignment being on the first of four indictments growing out of the celebrated Teapot Dome investigation of the Senate. Proceedings were cut short by the announcement of counsel for the two defendants that they were ready to stand trial on the conspiracy charge, which is set for November 22 in the District Supreme Court.
Seminole Slayer Is Sentenced to Die By Cudgel With Which He Killed Friend
MIAMI, Fla., November 10.—In the Everglades justice of the Seminoles has meted out the penalty of death to a murderer to atone for the life of a slain brave. Two weeks ago the boom of the tocsin and tomtom resounded through the 'Glades, heralding a celebration of the Seminole Nation. Decked in their glittering finery, the remnants of the vanishing race assembled.
Context
How early reports counted the La Plata dead and injured
The Star's correspondent put the toll at a "probable" 15 dead, 13 of them children, and although the headline speaks of a hurricane, the story itself calls the storm a tornado. Other reports from the same days broadly agree while differing in detail. An Associated Press dispatch of November 10, collected in the US Deadly Events compilation, said the storm killed 15 and injured about two score, mostly schoolchildren, and severely injured four more at Cedarville, 14 miles to the northeast. The same dispatch said 61 pupils, teachers and attendants were gathered in the schoolhouse, which fits the Star's "threescore" children. The Cumberland Evening Times reported on November 11 that more than twenty other pupils were injured and that a Black couple living nearby also died, which accounts for the Star's count of 13 children among 15 dead. The Star's figure of 30 injured therefore sat among several early estimates, and none of these numbers was final on the day this page went to press.
Why Fall and Doheny were charged over Elk Hills
Fall had been a United States senator from New Mexico before President Warren G. Harding appointed him Secretary of the Interior in March 1921. Soon afterward Harding persuaded Navy Secretary Edwin Denby that Fall's department should take over responsibility for the naval oil reserves, including Elk Hills in California. The ties between the two defendants were old ones: according to a Homestead Museum account, Doheny met the lawyer Albert Fall in New Mexico Territory in the early 1880s. That account says the leases were made under wraps and without public bidding, and that Doheny gave Fall an "interest-free loan" of $100,000 widely understood to be a bribe. The museum dates the leases to 1922, while the Star says Fall executed the Elk Hills lease in 1921. In the paper's telling, the Senate's Teapot Dome investigation produced four indictments, and the brief arraignment reported here dealt only with the first, the conspiracy count.
The outcome of the conspiracy trial set for November 22
The trial for which the defendants declared themselves ready did take place. According to the Homestead Museum account, the case went to trial late in 1926 and the 70-year-old Doheny and Fall were both acquitted, after which Doheny took the train home to Los Angeles. The museum describes the charges loosely as bribery and defrauding the government, but the Star's report makes clear that the November proceeding concerned the conspiracy indictment, the first of four. The acquittal on that count therefore left the separate bribery charges still to be tried.
How the later bribery cases ended
Fall's legal troubles continued after the 1926 verdict. On October 24, 1929, he was found guilty of bribery and conspiracy, and he was jailed for one year, becoming the first former cabinet officer sentenced to prison for misconduct in office. Doheny, by contrast, was acquitted on the charge of bribing Fall. The result was that the official accused of taking the money was punished while the oilman accused of paying it went free, and Fall is described as the only person convicted as a result of the Teapot Dome affair.
Original
15 DEAD, 30 INJURED AS LA PLATA COUNTS TOLL OF HURRICANE
LA PLATA, Md., November 10. - This little southern Maryland town was groping dazedly today in an effort to take stock of the casualties from its greatest catastrophe-the wiping out by a freak tornado yesterday afternoon of its student-filled schoolhouse and several nearby residences at a probable cost of 15 lives, 13 of them children. The school bell, which yesterday called to their classes the threescore laughing children from the village and surrounding farms, lay silent today beneath a mass of tangled wreckage. It had summoned more than one-fifth of them to their death.
FALL AND DOHENY PLEAD NOT GUILTY AT BRIEF SESSION
Albert B. Fall, former Secretary of the Interior, and Edward L. Doheny, wealthy California oil operator, pleaded not guilty in the District Supreme Court today to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the Government in connection with the Elk Hills, Calif., naval oil reserve lease, which Fall executed to Doheny in 1921. The proceedings, which lasted less than five minutes, were held in Criminal Court No. 2, before Justice Adolph A. Hoehling, the arraignment being on the first of four indictments growing out of the celebrated Teapot Dome investigation of the Senate. Proceedings were cut short by the announcement of counsel for the two defendants that they were ready to stand trial on the conspiracy charge, which is set for November 22 in the District Supreme Court.
Seminole Slayer Is Sentenced to Die By Cudgel With Which He Killed Friend
MIAMI, Fla., November 10. - In the Everglades justice of the Seminoles has meted out the penalty of death to a murderer to atone for the life of a slain brave. Two weeks ago the boom of the tocsin and tomtom resounded through the ' Glades, heralding a celebration of the Seminole Nation. Decked in their glittering finery, the remnants of the vanishing race assembled.
Source: Holding institution