District Attorney John E. McGeehan of the Bronx is pressing an investigation into the charge made by eye witnesses and relatives of the late Herman Schindler, that his beating and mistreatment at the hands of subway policemen who suspected him of attempting to enter the subway turnstile with a slug instead of a nickel, led to his suicide in a cell of the Morrisiana police station Tuesday night. Police Commissioner Grover A. Whalen participated in the inquiry until he became convinced that city police were not implicated.
The first hearing in the case was held Wednesday morning. Further hearings will be continued on Monday.
An autopsy is to be performed on the body of Herman Schindler, who worked as a tailor at $40 a week and lived at 823 Home Street, the Bronx, with his wife, Rose, and three children, the eldest 6.
All the witnesses in the case are to be questioned. Chief among them is Frank Wulff, a painting contractor, who said he saw Schindler pass through a turnstile at the Prospect Avenue station on the I. R. T. Bronx Park line. He saw Interborough policemen Henry Sherrock and Balke lean forward and seize the tailor. Schindler denied vehemently that he had put a slug instead of a nickel into the turnstile. The two policemen, however, punched and kicked him, according to Wulff. “When I protested they told me to stand back or I’d be locked up. too,” Wulff declared. Schindler, according to Wulff, was dragged into the change booth and showered with blows. “They even hit him with a telephone receiver. He was crying.”
Schindler was dragged to the Morrisania station where he was searched. There were no slugs in his possession. He had a $10 bill and ninety cents in change. He was booked on a charge of petty larceny and thrust into a cell. An hour later he was found hanging from the upper bars by his belt. He was still breathing but died shortly afterward.
The grief-stricken widow and brother-in-law of the late tailor, Joseph Schultz, made formal charges that the brutal beating had temporarily unbalanced. Schindler and led to his suicide.
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