100 years ago in The Record

Tuesday, May 29, 1917

Angelo Latassa is 2- 0 versus Albany County District Attorney Harold D. Alexander, The Record reports, as the prosecutor is forced to withdraw an arson charge against the Albany saloon owner this morning. Latassa is widely suspected of having killed Frank Fragola, or having him killed, and having his body stuffed in a barrel that was left to burn in a Watervliet brickyard last February. However, prosecutors were forced to withdraw a murder charge due to lack of evidence earlier this year. Alexander hoped to nail Latassa on the arson charge while continuing to rebuild the murder case against him. The arson charge depended largely on the testimony of Lorenzo Zucco, who claimed that he saw Latassa unload the barrel in the brickyard shed. Zucco repudiated that testimony during a separate habeus corpus hearing yesterday, claiming that a policeman had coerced him into testifying against Latassa when he had actually spent the night of the brickyard fire sleeping in his Cohoes home. Latassa isn’t out of legal jeopardy just yet. He remains in jail as an alleged accessory to the Fragola murder, while an investigation is expected into when exactly, and under what sort of inducement, Zucco committed perjury.

PULSE OF THE PEOPLE

“River Street,” the anonymous author of a controversial May 24 letter calling for a police roundup of downtown beggars, has one defender in today’s letter column.

“I think ‘River Street’s’ main idea is correct,” writes “Observer,” but he could perhaps have written it in a more charitable spirit.

“I do not believe the beggars are an adornment to our sidewalks or street corners. I see one or more of them every day. One of them asked me one day to give him aid to obtain an artificial leg, but I did not respond to his appeal. A day or two afterward I saw him enter my saloon. I thought to myself: if he remains inside long enough he may not need any legs at all.”

As for “River Street’s” critics, “The trouble with most of the opinions advanced is they are given in a spirit of malice and anger. Why give ‘River Street’ all the attributes your fertile minds can muster?”

At the opposite extreme, Joseph Hayes of Sixth Avenue imagines Jesus Christ rebuking “River Street”: “Do not be so arrogant as to believe that you can give vent to such unkind thoughts without deeply paining me and my father in heaven.”

Meanwhile, “Grateful” announces, “I have honestly made up my mind to land a good healthy swing on [“River Street”] if I should ever meet him.”