South Bend News-Times, 7 December 1928, page 3: Cleveland police round up bandits in fashionable hotel

Page 3 of a section of the South Bend News-Times for Friday, 7 December 1928 (image 17 in the Library of Congress viewer). Near the top of the second column is “Cleveland Police Round Up Bandits in Fashionable Hotel,” credited to the International News Service and datelined Cleveland, December 6.

It reports that twenty-three alleged gangsters who had been arriving in the city for two days were arrested in the luxurious suites they occupied in a downtown hotel, most of them carrying pistols, and later names the hotel as the Statler. It says the hotel register gave home addresses in New York, Chicago, Brooklyn, Tampa and Tarrytown, N.Y., quotes Safety Director Ed Barry’s theory that the men were bound for Baltimore, and notes another theory that they were under the command of Al Capone.

The dispatch prints only two names, which the OCR garbles and which are not repeated here. No record filed here identifies the men or ties the arrests to any organization. The theories are the police’s and the press’s.