"Gussie"
is Mrs. Schiller.
Finds
'Gussie’ Hysterical
Keefe
ran to
Federal
Street, but could not see Mrs.
Schiller.
Meanwhile,
Constable Dugan of the Twelfth Ward, saw Mrs.
Schiller walking on
Federal
Street near the Cooper River. She was
mumbling to
herself and was in a hysterical condition, Dugan
said.
Dugan
telephoned police headquarters. City Detectives
Rox
Saponare
and
Maurice
DiNicola went out
Federal
Street and took her back with them to
detective
headquarters. There they sought to quiet her, but
she continually
sobbed.
"I
want to take the blame- if I hadn't gone to Pop's
home he would be
living now."
"Pop
wanted to save me," she said. "and he was shot. I
can't eat or sleep. I
think I'm going crazy."
Later,
she was permitted to return to the home.
Young
Schiller had been held in the city jail over the
weekend. Today he was
taken into police court. He wore no necktie and
carried a raincoat over
his arm. He was rep resented by counsel,
C.
Lawrence
Gregorio, who said he had been retained "by
friends" to act
as attorney for the accused man.
City
detective
Benjamin
Simon had signed the complaint in which he
charged
"on information received” that Schiller did
feloniously and with malice
aforethought shoot and kill his father.
The
complaint was read to him and
Gregorio
told him not to say any thing, as Judge
Pancoast
would enter a plea of "not guilty" in his behalf.
This was done by the
court and Schiller was then held without bail
pending grand jury
action. He was taken to the county jail.
Declared
Sane
After
the hearing, Mrs. Etta C. Pfrommer, acting overseer
of the poor, told
Judge
Pancoast
that on July 26, Dr. Harry Jarrett,
Broadway
and
Cherry
Street, well known alienist, had examined
young Schiller and
declared him sane. The examination was made on the
request of Mrs.
Schiller in police court on the previous day. At
that time young
Schiller had been released by the court in the
custody of his father.
County
Detective Chief
Lawrence
T. Doran, who was among the first to
question young
Schiller Saturday night, said the man did not seem
repentant over what
he had done. He said Schiller did not give
authorities much
information. According to
Doran,
young Schiller declared he had objected frequently
to his father that
he did not want his wife to come to their
home.
"It
doesn't seem possible," said young Mrs. Schiller
some hours after the
tragedy. "It seems as though it was only a dream. I
don't seem to
remember anything.
"Poor
Bill. He must have been crazy. He idolized his
father. You can blame
this all on the depression. He has been without work
since they
eliminated summer policemen two years ago. He has
been worried as a
result of being unable to obtain work. Just recently
he started to
drink.
"Bill
intended to shoot me but his father tried to get the
gun away from him
and I believe it went off accidentally. Nothing
could convince me that
Bill would shoot his father in cold blood.
"I
went to his father's home last night to try to
effect a reconciliation
with my husband. He had been drinking."
Registered
as Sober
The
police docket at headquarters shows Schiller
registered as sober. The
entry was not made until 2.15 a. m., and the
shooting occurred shortly
after 9.30 p.m.
Relatives
said the father had attempted for months to patch up
the marital
difficulties of the couple.
Young
Schiller had been living lately with his sister,
Mrs. Bennehler, 2530
Bank
Street and his wife with her parents at 409
North
Thirty-seventh Street. He formerly lived at
that address with his wife.
He was appointed a summer policeman in 1929 and
served until they were
all dismissed two years ago.
Coroner
Holl
and Dr. Edward B. Rogers, county physician,
yesterday performed an
autopsy on the senior Schiller's body and
ascertained that death was
due to an internal hemorrhage caused by a bullet
wound of the upper
portion of the abdomen. They said a .32-callbre
revolver had been used
in the shooting.
Camden
Lodge of Elks
will hold services tomorrow night at the Schiller
home, at which time
the body will be on view. The funeral will be
private on Wednesday with
burial in Evergreen Cemetery.
Judge
Pancoast
last night recalled that young Schiller was arrested
two months ago after he had kept his wife a prisoner
on a lot all
night. At that time
"jake,"
as he was affectionately known to his friends, tried
to act as a
mediator between his son and daughter-in-law.
The
young Mrs. Schiller at that time told Pancoast she
believed her husband
was deranged and asked permission to have him
examined by physicians
she would name.
Pancoast
released young Schiller in the custody at his
father. The police judge said the examination had
apparently not been
made as no commitment papers had been sent through
his office.
Few
political workers were better known that
"Jake” Schiller.
He was born in Philadelphia and was brought to
Camden in early life by
his parents, who conducted a saloon near
Twenty-third and
Federal
Streets.
East
Camden
was then the town of Stockton and the scene of
Saturday night's
shooting was a farm.
Schiller
recalled to friends that he drove cows through a
pasture on which his
house now stands.
He
was originally a Democrat but became a Republican
through persuasion of
the late U. S. Senator
David
Baird and remained a friend of the former
leader for 40
years.
Schiller
had been melancholy over the death of his wife on
February 13 last,
friends said.
When
his son was arrested he remarked to
pancoast:
what is next?"
Figured
In Shaw Case
None
was more in the public eye 35 years ago in South
Jersey than
Schiller.
It was the that he figured prominently in one phase
of the locally
celebrated Shaw murder trial.
It
was during the second trial of Eli Shaw for the
murder of his mother
and grandmother, Mrs. Anna Shaw and Mrs. Emma Zane.
They were found
shot to death in September, 1897, in their bedroom
of their home on
Line
Street near
Third.
Detective John Painter had found a revolver hidden
in the chimney, one
of several points in the circumstantial evidence
that resulted in the
indictment of Shaw. He was then a widely known young
man about town and
his arrest caused a big sensation. As time drew near
for the trial
feeling was intense, for there were adherents for
and against the son
and grandson, those arguments often grew
bitter.
Henry
Sidney Scovel, then one of the prominent
criminal lawyers of Camden
county, was retained to defend Shaw. Scovel was son
of James Matlack
Scovel, himself one of the leading barristers of
this section. When the
trial of Shaw was under way the city was astounded
when it was charged
Scovel had tampered with the jury. It was
Schiller
who made the charge.
The
trial stopped abruptly. Scovel emphatically denied
the story of
Schiller
and demanded vindication. An indictment for
embracery was returned and
at a trial, which had Camden on the tip toe of
expectancy for days, it
developed there was absolutely nothing to verify the
charge, and Scovel
was acquitted. He acted in two subsequent trials of
Shaw, the second
being a disagreement and the third acquittal for the
son and grandson
of the slain women.
Schiller,
strangely enough, in later years became friendly
with Scovel and when
the latter was prosecutor from 1905 to 1912,
"jake,"
as
he was familiarly known, was usually to be found in
the office at the
courthouse. Scovel was then a white haired man of
flowery speech and
impressive personality who let bygones be
bygones.
Long
Excise Inspector
For
more than 20 years
Schiller
was inspector of the Excise Commission in Camden. It
was during the
days when the principal object of the inspector
apparently was to keep
the saloonmen in line. He was considered pretty good
at that job, by no
means an unimportant one from the organization
viewpoint. It was also
during that period the city had its troubles
enforcing the Sunday
liquor laws. There were those who considered they
had enough pull to
keep their back or side doors open on the Sabbath to
let in their
regular thirsty trade. Some succeeded in getting by,
but
"jake"
had
his own troubles in keeping the boys straight and
sometimes causing
their arrest, although that was not frequent by any
means.
His
reign as inspector, too, was in the halcyon days of
free lunch and
schooner beers. Saloonmen themselves were against
the lunch idea
eventually since it meant too much of a financial
burden.
Jake
kept
tabs on the recalcitrants so that the liquor dealers
knew who was
obeying the order and who was "cutting corners" to
get some extra trade.
Schiller
was virtually raised with the saloon trade since his
father was one of
the old time German beer garden owners here, having
had a place at
Fourth
and
Line
Streets. That was in the days when that
section was largely
populated by the German, English and Irish families
lately come from
the motherlands. When he was a boy,
Schiller
entered the U. S. Navy and served several years.
When he came out he
went to the old Town of Stockton, now
East
Camden,
where he opened a saloon on
Federal
Street near
Twenty-fourth.
At that period, some 45 years ago, Stockton seethed
with politics and
it was just as natural for a young man to get into
the game as it was
for a duck to swim. Jake at that period was a
Democrat and during the
battle in the middle 90's when the West Jersey
Traction and the Camden
Horse Railway Company were fighting for the rail
franchises in the town
he was a candidate for council from the old Second
Ward. The late
Robert Lee was the Republican candidate and won out
by the narrow
margin of two votes. In later years
Schiller
became a Republican and was elected a
constable.
Never
Ran From Scrap
Throughout
his career
Schiller
never quite forgot his training In the navy,
particularly with
reference to boxing or fighting at the drop of a
hat. He was a scrapper
in his early years and never ran from a fight. That
was just as true in
political battles, frequent then around the polls,
as in purely
personal matters. And
Jake
would battle for a friend just as readily as for any
personal reason.
He was usually in the thick of the political
fracases of the years when
it was the accepted thing to fight at the drop of a
hat. But he also
had lots of native wit which kept things interesting
when he was a
frequenter of the prosecutors' office during the
Scovel and
Wolverton
regime's. In late years, with the approach of age,
he had tempered his
propensity to get into an argument and liked nothing
more than to tell
of “the good old days" when he helped the elder
Baird
in his
organization battles.
He
made his last political stand for leadership of the
Twelfth Ward in
1926 when he supported the candidacy of
Sergeant
Ray Smith
against Commissioner
Clay
W. Reesman for ward committeeman.
Schiller
was supporting Congressman
Charles
A.
Wolverton and the late Senator
Joseph
H. Forsyth
in a campaign against former Congressman
Francis
F.
Patterson and State Senator
Albert
S. Woodruff.
Reesman
won
and among the first to visit the hospital after
learning of the
shooting was the city commissioner.
Reesman
was
his latest chief as lights inspector as he was
attached to the highway
department. Commissioner
Frank
B. Hanna also visited the hospital.
"In
all the years I have known him he has always been an
enthusiastic and
loyal friend with a good heart for everybody in
trouble," Congressman
Wolverton
said when he learned of
Schiller's
death.
Schiller
was also a familiar figure at the
Elks
Club,
where he was an ardent card player. But after the
death of his wife he
gave up this pastime, contenting himself with
watching the games. He
was also a frequent visitor among old friends at the
courthouse.