Look Back: Druggist kidnapped in 1938
Feb. 18—Druggist Howard Aston had locked up his drug store at 453 N. Main St., Wilkes-Barre, when he was bull-rushed by two cold-blooded gunmen on Feb. 18, 1938.
Aston was forced into his automobile and instructed to "just drive."
"How much money have you got? I've got a gun and I'm a bad man with it," said one of the assailants, as reported in the Times Leader Evening News on Feb. 19, 1938.
Aston turned over $3 from his overcoat and continued to drive to Tunkhannock and Scranton when the thugs told him to turn around.
Aston returned to his drug store where he was forced to open a safe as the thugs stole $280, the newspaper reported.
Before leaving, the thugs tied up Aston and struck him in the head with the butt end of a gun.
Aston told a newspaper reporter he was knocked unconscious and when he came to, he freed himself and called Wilkes-Barre Police Headquarters.
Four days later, city police detectives John J. Burke and George Williams arrested five youths for a series of burglaries and robberies in the downtown area. Two of the youths, John Farrell, 21, and James Graham, 20, who sold magazines, admitted to the Aston kidnapping and robbery, the newspaper reported.
The three other youths arrested were John O'Donnell, 17, William Smith, 17, and Carl Bush, 15.
"The master mind of the outfit, according to their admissions,' was John Farrell, whose home was a basement at 193 Lincoln Street. He was the last to fall into the strong arm of the law. He was captured in a girl's room at the home of Simon Usavage, 256 Sheridan Street, hiding under a bed when the detectives arrived," the Times Leader Evening News reported Feb. 24, 1938.
The newspaper reported the five youths burglarized the Miner Hillard Milling Company on East Union Street; Jones, Abbott & Monument Work on North Pennsylvania Avenue; Engel Brothers Clothing Store on South Main Street; a street mugging of John Norris on Northampton Street; Walter Kosinsky's gasoline station on South Pennsylvania Avenue; D.M. Jones Hardware Store on East Market Street; a customer at a gasoline station on North River Street; Smart Shop on South Main Street; and a street mugging of Chasa Balin on East Market Street.
In total, police said the five youths committed more than 20 burglaries and robberies from Jan. 3 to the day of their arrests Feb. 24. Detectives Burke and Williams said Graham scouted victims and places to rob as a magazine salesman.
"Detectives Burke and Williams said Farrell in nearly all the jobs took three fourths of the loot for himself and divided th remaining one-fourth among the others," the newspaper reported the day of their arrests.
On the day of their arrests and without a defense attorney present, the five youths pleaded guilty for their crimes.
Farrell was sentenced to two-to-five years at the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia and Graham sentenced to two years at the Philadelphia Protectory for Juveniles Detention Center on March 15, 1938.
O'Donnell, Smith and Bush were sentenced to one year at Kis-Lyn, a juvenile detention facility for boys, in Butler Township.
