100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Friday, April 19, 1918. The manhunt for an ex-convict who killed a man this morning over a property dispute in Thurman is the top local story on The Saratogian’s front page.
Sam Pasco kills Orley Eldridge in front of two state troopers who had brought the men together to settle their dispute over land Eldridge has been occupying despite Pasco’s claim of ownership. Unusually, Pasco, who has a “bad record,” is identified by name as the killer in the headline.
Pasco was convicted of stealing timber “some four or five years ago,” but was given a suspended sentence on the condition that he sell all his Warren County property and leave the area. When he violated that condition he was sent to the Clinton penitentiary at Dannemora, where he remained until winning parole last January 23.
The troopers rouse Pasco out of bed this morning, finding him armed, after learning that he had confronted and threatened Eldridge yesterday. They intend to walk him toward Eldridge’s place, one trooper on each side of Pasco. When the party meets Eldridge on the road, Trooper Herrick puts a gun to Pasco’s back and warns him against any “funny work.”
Herrick isn’t ready for the funny work that follows. After arguing briefly with Eldridge, Pasco suddenly whirls and, apparently unfrisked, fires three shots at the trooper. Herrick barely escapes injury or worse, one bullet going through his coat, but in the confusion Pasco turns on Eldridge and kills him with a single shot.
“So sudden and unexpected was the attack that before the troopers had recovered from their surprise Pasco was sprinting down the road to freedom,” the report continues, “The troopers at once opened fire on him and once he jumped as though a bullet had struck him but he did not stop and finally disappeared in a swamp.”
As the evening edition goes to press, an additional detail of troopers are beating the swamp in search of Pasco.
What’s Happening
Dancer turned dramatic actress Irene Castle, billed as “Mrs. Vernon Castle,” stars in “Sylvia of the Secret Service” at the Palace today. The advertising promises that Castle, whose husband died in an air training accident earlier this year, wears “a different costume in every scene.”
At the Lyric, Harry Morey, the “Exponent of American Vigor,” and Gladys Leslie, the “Girl with the Million Dollar Smile,” star in “His Own People.” The film is a “smiling drama of a big-muscled Irish Blacksmith and his Colleen Sweetheart, assisted by ‘Patsy,’ a fuzzy-faced canine hero.”
The weekend program at the Broadway features four live vaudeville acts and Emmy Wehlen in “The Shell Game.”