100 YEARS AGO

Dramatic chase ends in arrest

An unknown man jumped on the running board of a Black Taxi on the corner of State and Pearl streets at 4:30 a.m. and ordered the driver, Edward Rappe, 23, to “catch that Hudson; they’re stealing my girl.” Rappe took off after the automobile and the man stayed on the running board in a position the police later described as being “prepared to shoot.” The high speed chase lasted until Rappe got to Southern Boulevard and stopped the taxi, refusing to go any further. The two men nearly came to blows over both Rappe’s declining to continue the chase and the man’s refusal to pay the fare. As Rappe returned toward downtown alone, he was confronted by police who had assembled following several tips coming into the station. A member of the city’s new rifle patrol arrested Rappe and charged him with speeding. He pleaded not guilty, but the taxi service announced he had been fired. Police believed the man who instigated the incident was a well-known local gangster pursuing a rival who kidnapped “a member of the female colony of the gang world.”

—Times Union, April 24, 1922