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The Brussels Post, 1962-07-05, Page 4-..+,1,11111119.011991 d Of Royalty WORKING FOR PEANUTS—Mary Lee Mills, had to stretch the point a little in order to feed this giraffe at the Audubon Park Zoo, New Orleans, La. Their Business Was Unwanted Babies Spy 'Wgs Frie.„ Som e $py for .money, others for love of a cause. For ,Anna Wolkoff Red Telee Kent there were no mereenary motives to. drive them into the 'network. of espionage. Tyler Kent entered the United States. .cliplomatie servlee et the age of twenty-three in 1934. father was a diplomat and the whole of Kent's .echaeation had been designed to make him. fit to he an American ambassador one day. But he began work lowly code and cipher elealt in the American Embassy la Mos- cow. • He held this 'wet until 1939. 'then. he was transferred to the London Embassy, and soon after this ha became a spy, . Early in 1 940, through .friends he had made in London, Tyler Kent met a Russian woman. named Anna Wolkoff, then thir,- ty-six years old, She was natur- alized Britieh, working in the. Auxiliary Fire Service, Anna had been a childhood friend of Princess Marina of Greece — later the Duchess of Kent — and by 1935, when Prin- cess Marina was married to Brit- ish royalty, Wolkoff decided to try to cash in on her friendship. She set up a millinery establish- ment to which she invited the Duchess of Kent, now Princess Marina. Thri ugh the Duchess., she be- • TEMPTING — Kristina Kauff- man, 17, ploys opposite Tony Curtis in the forthcoming film, "Taros Bulba," based on a classic Russian tale. Born in Austria, the new screen "find" was seen previously in "Town Without Pity." ribie thing's happened, it woke up, and there. it was—dead," Annie's display of grief wait touching and sincere. Thanks to the policeman's kindly help the death was accepted as the ueir dent Annie assured everyone it A couple of months later, An- nie came hatne With another baby wrapped in a new shawl, She spent a few days playing with it as though it were a doll, and then it died as mysteriously as the alleged coastguard's in- fant. This time when Annie came downstairs in. tears with her lit- tle act ready, it didn't go over, The policeman decided Annie Walters should be investigated, and. he started over the break- fast table. Some of the questions he ask- ed were so searching that Annie became scared, She packed her things and 1 of t her lodgings, which was the stupidest thing she could have done. The policeman reported her to his sergeant, and Annie was ar- rested. To help herself out of an im- possible situation, Annie fell back on her too-lively imagina- tion, She told a garbled story about meeting a rich woman in a car- riage, Annie apparently had brought her a baby from the nursing home run by Amelia Sach, The meeting-place was the most unlikely in London — Pic- cadilly, Anyway, according to Annie, she had climbed with the baby into the woman's carriage, and the stranger had at once dressed the baby in lace robes and a beautiful cloak, She went even further than this. She claimed the rich lady in the carriage produced a bottle of champagne, and the two wom- en had had a friendly tipple in the middle of Piccadilly. Questioned closely about this incredible story, Annie fell into another trap. She had to admit it referred to a third baby. The , police didn't delay in visiting Amelia Sach's nursing home. They wanted the facts about the first dead child. Ame- lia said the child's mother was a, woman named Galley. She insisted that she had not given the child to Annie, except to take to a foster-mother, but she did het name the foster- mother. The police found the woman tarried Galley, and. were told a touching story about love that had been unwise. Mrs. Sach's advertisement seemed the only way out to the unmarried mo- ther-to-be. "She assured me," she told the police, "that for £30 she could find the right sort of foster- mother who would bring up the baby as her own," A fee of £25 was finally set- tled on, It was paid in banknotes. When the police proved that those notes had been shared be- tween Amelia Sach and Annie Walters, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided to prose- cute the baby-farmers for mur- der. Found guilty and sentenced to death, they were the first pri- soners to be hanged in Hol- loway's prison for women, He .kept Movie Stars Ovt Of JcdH Hardly anybody had a glance. to spare for the lank,,heiresi. young man who stood, alongside Clarence Darrow and tall Rogers In as close-packed 140s Angeles courtroom on a long-ago day of Darrow, renowned legal strategist and spellbinder, then can .otgal anol. richot e,gres,s (1=1,5 jur attorney, were the foremost crim- inal 'lawyers of their time. Who had ever heard of liareld Lee • Giesler? To the spectators, if any saw him at all, he was just en. obscure assistant .who came along to carry Rogers' briefcase. "I felt kite a New York Yankee bat boy being told ho was going to pitch in the World Series," Gloster himself subsequently re- called, Giesler quickly learned that his curving writs and scorching briefs were good enough for the major legals, When Darrow was acquitted, Giesler's name wont on. Rogers' office door, then on hit own,. and eventually, Mar- quee-modified to Jerry Giesler, to the point where he needed no nameplate at all, He Was never as flamboyant as Rogers or as socially conscious as Darrow. But where .tney had . been merely sensational, Giesler — as the mouthpiece tifsuch...tiomigods and goddesses as Errol 'Inyori, Charlie Chaplin, Walter Wenger, Marilyn Monroe (for whom he got a di- vorce from Joe DiMaggio), Rob- ert Mitchum, and Lana Turner (whose daughter Cheryl Crane he defended)—was supercolossal, "Get me .Giealeri" became the stock cry of any star in trouble, with the law or bored with a spouse, He advanced from featured player to star billing in 1931 by defending Alexander Pantages, owner of a vast chain of theaters, against the charge of defiling the. honor of en athletic, 17-year-old daneer,When the girl appeared shirt-waisted and hair-ribboned, Giesler got the court to. order her into the uniform of the day . in question: Low-cut red gown. Pantages went free on appeal, rew. headlines of history mat,. • ched the banners flown by .016- slot. on the .Chaplin and Flynn cases, Chaplin, accused of vio- lating the Mann Act by tran- sporting e young Woman .actosS state lines for immoral purposes, went free when Giesler establish- ed the IMplausihility of the evi- dence. To free Flynn, charged with statutory rape, Giesler shoWed that the charmer who said she was seduced while view- ing the moon through a pottliole could not possibly side seen th.6 moon from that side Of the yecht, "Good old. Jerry, the springer," said Flynn, draping an arm 'about. Giesler's.. shoulders as they left the courtroom,. "That isn't very funny," Gie- sler muttered and cast off the arm. Amid. such triumphs and fat fees (repeatedly $50,000 for dea fending Flynn), Giesler might well have gone as Hollywood ee his, clients. He was, after. all, just a country boy who left his birth- place of Wilton Junction, Iowa, in 1905 to attend law school at the University of Southern Cali- fornia. But Giesler dressed as soberly as a banker, which his father had been, and took pains with his work ("He handled my cases at if he were directing a picture,". Chaplin said), He lived. quietly with his ;wife (his • sec- ond). of 31 years in Beverly Hills and there., at 75 and after a series of heart attacks, he died quietly ill T his lte'cileefeek'nse, as 'The New York Post observed, had finally rested. Vrom lOWSWB.$H.: , As the chief counsel for the prosecution let the word" "mur- der" ring across the Old Bailey, scores of eyes turned to stare at the two figures in the dark structure of the dock. It would have been difficult to, imagine a greater contras( be- tween two women, One was young, the other mid- dle-aged, One was a woman of poise, with looks that drew sec- ond glances from most men. The other had a repulsive face and was almost shapeless. One was smart, the other a slut. The prosecution claimed they were partners in murder. A par- ticularly nauseating form of murder. The phrase that shud- dered on most people's lips was "baby-farmers." According to the prosecution, these two women had formed an unholy alliance to rid mothers of unwanted babies. Another notorious c o u p l e, Amelia Dyer a n d Ada Chard Williams, had only recently shocked Britain when their mis- deeds were related in court. They had made "baby-rfarmer"- a particularly dirty phrase. However, that notable fail- ures as baby-farrnete had not deterred the two dissimilar wo- men. who stood in the dock that day in 1902. The young, good-loking wom- an with the intense dark gaze who was following closely the_ words of the accusing counsel was Mrs, Amelia Sach, The slump-shouldered woman in shabby clothes, who kept glancing around furtively was Annie Walters, The defence was an outright denial of the prosecution's charges, with Amelia Sach main- taining that at no time had she handed a baby into Annie Wal- ter's charge. "Annie Walters," she had in- sisted throughout a long period of questioning by the police; "is only a help employed "in my nursing home. At no time have I ever handed Annie a babe to dispose of." The police thought otherwise, so did most of Britain. For all het good looks, Amelia Sach was a hard and ruthless. woman. As for Annie Walters, she was an ill-educated 'creature employ, ed,lay the astute and Wily Ame- lia, who soon learned to use her Q. Is it necessary to write anything, besides your name, on the card, that you enclose with a wedding gift? A. No. Good wishes and con. gratulations may be offered at the reception. overwhelming greed and attach- ment to a gin bottle for her own profit. Profit that was counted in blood money. The blood was the blood of babies only a few weeks old. However, although the prose- cution hammered at the part- nership between the ill-assorted pair, everyone in the packed court knew there were other un- named partners who were not being mentioned. The women who for £20 or £30 had surrendered their un- wanted and embarrassing babies, shared some of the guilt of that evil partnership. These strange partners in baby-farming might have got away with everything, if the un- intelligent Annie. Walters hadn't taken lodgings with the wife of a London policeman. By that time the carefully worded advertisement Amelia Sash placed in selected news- papers had brought a steady stream of customers, The advertisements ram "Ac» couchernent. Before and after, - skilled nursing. Home comforts, Baby can remain." The last three words held the real appeal of the advertisement for certain women nearing their time in pregnancy. One day Annie came home carrying a baby wrapped in a new shawl. "Isn't she a little pet?" she leered. "Whose baby is she?" asked. Annie's landlady. "She's the daughter of a coast- /guard who lives in Kensington," was the amazing nonsensical an- swer. Probably Amelia Sach, who had handed her the baby, employed Annie in the first place because she was so dim- witted. Perhaps the cold and clever Amelia thought her eery stupidity was a safeguard. If so, she badly, miscalculated. Annie might have been lack- ing in wits, but there was noth- ing wrong with her imagination, writes Leonard Gribble in "Tit-, Bits." In fact, it was a great deal livelier than Amelia's, as events were to prove. Annie kept the baby in her lodgings for several days. Then she startled the policeman and his wife by coming downstairs one morning in tears. "The baby's dead, Oh, a ter- .. Kent was convicted, London was being bombarded from the air. It was October, 1940, Feelings towards spies were not kindly; the court took fifteen minutes to bring in a verdict of guilty. • Anna Wolkoff was convicted in the record time of twenty sec- onds. The judge sentenced her to ten years' hard labour for at- tempting to send letters to Wil- liam Joyce, and to five years' hard labour, for obtaining the secret documents from Tyler Kent. When Kent came up for sen- tence he was shaky and pale. The judge told him that he was in a unique position as lie was not a British subject, nor even volun- tarily living in Britain, He was in Britain serving his own gov- ernment, "Your primary allegiance you owe to your own government," the judge told Kent, "but while you are living in Britain you have to conform to the laws of this country. You will, go to prison for seven years." In 1945, when the war ended, Tyler Kent was escorted to the freighter "Silver Oak" bound for New York, under an explusion order. Anna Wolkoff was not so for- tunate: she served three-quarters of her sentence before she was released on parole and divested of her British nationality—al- though she could not be deported to Russia. This, Anna baid, could b.‘ ac- complished without Kent ever being suspected. He handled all the top-secret messages passing between the President of the United States and the British Cabinet, and all other top secret messages given to him code and cipher clerk by his Ambas- sador, Mv. Joseph P, Kennedy. "Make copies of the infoirna- am that wilt wake the American people up to their danger," Anna said, "and I will see that the in- formation gets into the right hands so that they can be fore- warned against Mr. Roosevelt's dangerous course." For four months Tyler Kent copied down every message that passed through his hands for cod- ing and transmission. He faith- fully handed them over to Anna -who passed them to Berlin, writes Bill Wharton in "Tit-Bits'a unknown to the two spies, Department M.I,5 was watching Anna Wolkoff for subversive activities. It was known that she was one of the band of women plastering notices ealculated to undermine the morale of Britons. And on two occasions within two weeks, British monitoring sta- tions had picked up top-secret messages being flashed to Ger- many. The code had been broken by the British, and everything pass- ing from German agents to Ber- lin was, being intercepted and decoded. What troubled the men of Brit- ish counter-intelligence was the source of the information. It was either the British Admiralty or the United States Embassy. Ev- ery possible suspect in the Ad- miralty was checked and cleared. The leak, Scotland Yard de- cided, was from the American Embassy. Then, to prove the sus- picion, a woman counter-intelli- gence agent who had had Anna Wolkoff under observation for thirty hours, saw Tyler Kent en- ter her apartment. Air raid sirens were howling Over London when two Intelli- gence agents from M.I.5 walked into Tyler Kent's apartment in Gloucester Place, London. He was told that he was sus- pected of the theft of vital in- formation and communicating in- formation to a person unauthori- zed to receive it—espionage. Kent rose and waved towards the door. "You men can get out of here" he snapped. "I am an American citizen and I have diplomatic immunity." "The Ambassador for the Unit- ed States is empowered to waive your diplomatic immunity, sir," James told Kent. "He has done so." When the trial of Anna Wolk- off and Tyler Kent opened In London at a secret session, the prosecution set out to prove that Kent was guilty of copying top- secret documents and communi- cating them to Anna. Wolkoff, and that these documents were useful to the enemy. The prosecution then played its trump card, It produced evidence that Anna Wolkoff had sent several letters to William Joyce, a man known to the British dur- ing the war as "Lord Haw-Haw." Joyce was well known for his attempts to undermine British morale by his broadcasts from Germany during the war. Short- ly after the war he was brought back to England, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. In some of these letters, Anna Wolkoff had used information obtained from Tyler Kent and this information Joyce relayed back to Britain in his broad- casts. The reasons Kent gave for copying the documents were to- tally unacceptable to the court. He explained that he copied them in order to give Anna Wolkoff a clearer picture of the European situation. On the afternoon when Tyler game friendly with Mrs. Simp- eon, who soon afterwards became the Duchess of Windsor, and ale so with the Duchess of Glouces- ter. Anna Wolkoff was a good Nazi disciple, she believed implicitly that National Socialism was fox the good of. mankind. German espionage knew ablaut Anna Wolkoff and her desire to be helpful to Hitler. She hall only to be put on the right track, to be told carefully how she could help the Nazi cause. Anna, though possessing none of the proverbial beauty of a fe- male spy, dominated Tyler Kent. She printed into his mind, so he told the court later, the idea that Britain was steering Am- erica straight into a bloody war and that he could help stop this war by co-operating with her. This was the very line her Nazi masters had suggested she take with the susceptible Kent— and he fell for it. "What do you want me to do?" he asked Anna when they met in her apartment, "How can t a mere code and cipher clerk, help prevent America from entering the war?" Anna had her answer ready. If the American people knew of the disastrous policy being followed by President Roosevelt, and of the friendship between Roosevelt and Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, the public's eyes would be open- ed. Roosevelt would be voted out and a man who was not a war- monger would be installed in his place. 'STUCK IN A BIG HOLE Tailes1 rriall-reidd* structure Oregon is the Thomas Creek bridge near greckirige Steel Support towers rite 350 feet JbOVe the ttream bed. The pot 4 957 feet iorig and reiodatev d state highway route, Twenty-Nine Chops At One Meoi! Like lots of other people, you probably enjoy .'eating a nice lamb chop—but how would you like to eat twenty-nine latrib- chops at one sitting? That's what at Australian did recently to Win an eating con- test. These competitions have sud- denly had a burst of popularity in various parts ee the world. ":Burst" is the word, because you'd think that's just what would happen to e man who eats 100 eggs, shellt and all, at a single sitting, as an Atittrian lorry-driver did some time ago. Another fantastic feaster is a Eterichttan Who, in a competition. for big eaters, consumed five legs of /Mitten, tiee large bowls of Salad and 51bA, Of biscuits which he washed down with three pots Of tea, Ile won WO for this et, fort, Extraordlitere eatera have airs ways exittel. A Itent Man, Nich.; alas Wood, could eat a *hole sheep at One Sitttrit, Ito *at torriethnea invited to perform ittit feats at the' inalialorta of noble then near' iii village. At MC these diSPleYe bOlbg, of thetTlet; . ittAbEti ISO .. It ?Hi Duith 'carrier Karel Dooemorl leavesR frorti otterdatn WI cY trip which might lead to the troubled wafers Of Dutch New GUirieci. +.3 3 33301..