Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 1

CLOUDY Cloudy, Little Change Jltoieaprtil nnnm YOUR MIND TEMPERATURE 3 m. 3 am. 4 tn. 8 a m. a m.

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182. MINNEAPOLIS, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1944 Price 3 Cents SiUS! ro UDvJ UVL as Telephone Strike Spreads to 'Washington AS TRIPLETS GET THE BIRD VI II rrv r- i iff" HOTEL DEATH CASE SOLVED IN ROCHESTER 'Didn't Mean to Kill Her Slayer Cries By MAX M. 8WART7, Mnrnlna: Trlhnna Staff Wrtlr ROCHESTER, MINN. In one of the most dramatic climaxes to a criminal case investigation in Minnesota history, Nellie V. Gilberson, cry TV UV-X Huge turkey legs pose problem for triplets Paul, Pamela and Peter Anderson on Trlbana phot Kan Ball first Thanksgiving and for parents, too Nazis EireJiobots tiy mg tortress Crashes in North Woods A Flying Fortress which roamed Northwest skies for more than five hours after, its crew of 10 had set the automatic pilot and bailed out lo safety, ended its lonely flight late Wednesday by clashing in sparsely settled, densely wooded northeastern Minnesota.

Forest rangers identified a plane which crashed near Isabella, -4lt 'y PLANES BATTER JAP TROOPSHIPS Luggers and Barges Also Blasted PHILIPPINES, HDQ. VTl American fighter planes, hammering at shipping to prevent Japanese reinforcements from reach ing Leyte Island, destroyed or damaged four troop-laden freight ers off Ormoc, Gen. Duoglas Mac- Arthur announced Thursday. Four luggers and 14 barges also were sunk or heavily damaged, during the aerial assaults Tues- day, the communique reported, WESTERN FRONT MAP on Page Three PARIS (TP) Saveme, 19 miles northwest of Strasbourg, Was engulfed Wednesday night by the Allied sweep through Alsace and Lorraine which earlier Wednesday crushed Nazi resistance in the fortress cities of Metz and Mulhouse. On the bitterly-contested northern front, where the German bastion of Eschweiler was overrun Wednesday by the U.

S. First 2,700 TO GO OUT; DETROIT TIE-UP VOTED Ohio Crisis Spreads F.R. Action Seen WASHINGTON UP) A national communications crisis developed Wednesday night as Washington telephone operators walked out In sympathy with Ohio's "hello girls." and Detroit workers prepared to follow suit. Despite a war labor board warning that interference with vital communications "at this critical period of the war can not be tolerated," operators In the capital voted to strike and throw picket lines around The walkout already was under way, curtailing service. 2,100 TO WALK OCT Mrs.

Mary K. Gannon, union president, said 2,700 operators in Washington, and vicinity would be Idle, except for an "emergency force to handle only priority calls of top emergency." She that, in addition to sympathizing with Ohio operators her union had grievances of it own. The Ohio union's complaint was that the company brought outside workers into Dayton and paid them J18.25 a week more than local operators, as living cost bonuses. Mrs. Gannon said girls also had been transferred to Washington from out of town and paid much of their living expenses.

Y. CONFERENCE HELD In New York, union officials went into a conference with offi ciaJs of the long lines department of the American Telephone Telegraph but whether New York would be affected by the spreading dispute was not immediately apparent. The war labor board prepared to take the Ohio case to the White House for possible army Intervention or a presidential appeal to the workers. Rejecting a WLB demand that they order 5,000 idle Ohio workers back to work, officials of the Ohio telephone workers union appealed for "active support" from 41 affiliated unions throughout the country. DETROIT.

SET TO STRIKE The Ohio walkout threatened to extend Thursday to neighboring Michigan. Mrs. Frances Smith, president of the Michigan Telephone Employes Federation, said 2,000 operators in war-vital Detroit would leave their jobs at 6 a.m. unless "the government takes over the Ohio strike situation" meanwhile. Long distance calls were accepted here Wednesday night xnone oirute vk 1 1 i Continued on Page Seven I yyyi 1J 1( jr DOWN FTRE ESCAPE Mrs.

Mary Gannon, head of the Washington Telephone Traffic union, fled down a fire escape Wednesday night from the meet-lnp which voted to utrike, but the cameraman "caught" her. AP Wlrephoto. aaaa. i-r 1 I VA 1 57-yar-old Minneapolis kindr garten teacher, Wednesday nist collapsed here over the body rf Minnie M. Knsthngen, fiO, another Minneapolis teacher, and sobbed: "I know I lil it.

hut know I didn't mean to." on Rochester police declared 1 hat was the "break" for which they had been waiting since Miss East-hagen's body was discovered Tuey day evening In a room she shared with Miss Gilberson at a local hotel. QUESTIONED It HOURS Shortly afterward. drtert announced that MIm Gllberton had signed a written rnnfe.lon. During nearly 12 hours of Interrogation by Thomas Scanlsn, Olmsted county attorney, Gilberson had steadfastly denied being responsible for the dath rif the woman with whom she hsl been close friends for msny ear, and with whom she had come ti Rochester Tuesday morning for medical treatment at the Maj clinic. When taken to the Vines fi.

neral chapel, which serves as th Olmsted county morgue, she brok) down, however, police said, ani admitted the slaying, later signirc a confession In the presence of Scanlan, Assistant Police Chief Arthur Nelson and Detective! GeoTge Rohde and Albert Kos. ATTORNEYS IRATE Authorities suspected foul plr when preliminary examination of Miss Easthagen's body revealei that death might have been due to strangulation. Mlsaj Gilberon's altorne), ll Hughe and Donald of Minneapolis, who taw her after police said they had obtained a written eonfeislon, de. nounred police methods in dealing with their client. "They (Rochester and Olmsted county authorities) put this woman into a very wrought-up condition, as nervous as a human being can be, then took her tr the morgue," Hughes and Morgan said.

CHALLENGE CONFESSION Hughes and Morgan declared that, while police were attempting to get Miss Gilberson to sign a confession, she kept telling them: "I don't know that I killed her. I ran't say something I don't know. Maybe, something happened, hut I don't know that I killed her." Mr. Hughes declared he quev tloned his client for one and one-half hours after the reported confession and she insisted that sh did not sign a confession or a statement of any kind. Asserting the confession which authorities said they had obtained was not a true accounting of the facts, Miss Gilberson' attorneja Issued a statement declaring: "She has been questioned all day long, from 10 a.m.

to 9:15 p.m.. Li Mis Easthagen Mix Gilberson without being allowed to get any rest, and all day long they (the authorities) have been trying to get her to say she did something she didn't do. She just doesn't know what happened." Scanlon said Miss Gilberson would be held without bail for action by the grand Jury, a spe-cial session of which has been called for next Tuesday. ARRESTED HERE Miss Gilberson was arrested in Minneapolis Tuesday night at re. quest of Olmsted county authorities after she had told a l-vl The Thirty-second division main-) The attorneys declared Miss Obtained its pressure against the berson had told them: Japanese First division battling "The police told me that if I around Limon on Leyte, with 'wanted to save my soul, I would artillery blasting enemy positions tell Minnie that I killed her." i i SABELLA sow I MINNcArOCo MAI? ION MIUAUKEbV SIOUX CITY THREE STATES figure in maverick Fortress' Odyssey.

'U' EXPERT INVENTOR OF AUTOMATIC PILOT Willis H. Gille, 39-year-old graduate of the school of electrical engineering, University of Minnesota, is the inventor of the automatic pilot which kept a "ghost" Flying For- tress in the air more than five hours Wednesday. Gille, now chief aero engineer for Minneapolis-Honeywell Heat Regulator had been working on the electric automatic pilot for some time prior to Dec. 7, 1941. After the Japs staged their surprise attack, he rushed his plans to completion.

He lives at 1924 Hillcrest avenue, St. Paul. WHERE TO FIND IT Editorials 4 Comics 14 Radio 17 Movies 20 Women's 9 Blood 20 MS. 7 CM TURKEY FIGURES .4 IN 'TRIPLE PLAY' Bird With Five Legs Would Be Handy By EARL ALMQUIST Marninf Trlbana Staff WrIUr Their "Thanksgiving triplets" put Mr. and Mrs.

Wendell Aru's-r- son In the market for a turkey or two with five legs. Up to the time Peter, Paul and Pamela were born in Swedish hospital Nov. 17 of last year, a regu lar turkey with standard equip ment drumsticks was enough for the Anderson family, for then they had only two children, Mar- lys, now 12, and Laurie Lee, 6. LIKE DRUMSTICKS But now, at the age of one year and six days, Paul, Pamela and Peter have evinced an interest in drumsticks, although turkey isn't going to be included in their diet for quite a while. A much more pressing problem in tbe Anderson home at 2752 Aldrich avenue S.

is the question of space. All seven of them live In five small rooms on the second floor of a two-family house, and since Paul, Pamela and Peter came along, tilings certainly have been cozy, to say the least. TWO IN ONE CRIU There isn't even room for all the cribs. Pamela lias one to her self, but Peter and Paul have to sleep together, because with two cribs taking up room, there isn't space for the third. But even more urgent is the laundry problem.

Ten months ago, when It looked like they had found a bigger house In which to live, Mr. and Mrs. An- "derson bought an electric washer. But they didn't get the larger house, and there's no room for the washer, which has been kept in storage. Three one-year-old babies re quire lots of three-cornered pants and other items, and washing all those clothes on a scrubbing board The Triplets Continued on Page Seven 6 Die When Bomber Falls Among Homes SAN DIEGO, CALIF.

Six persons were killed Wednesday in the crash of a navy Liberator bomber in a residential area npar the huge frontier federal housing project. Witnesses reported that a wing of the giant craft fell off. incessantly. Prayer and Work Today's Schedule Thursday will be a day of prayer for many, with Thanksgiving day services set for many city churches. For others, it will be just another day of work.

Although most business places, will be closed, full work schedules. factories and government offices will be maintained at four war plants Gopher Ordnance works, Twin Cities Ordnance plant, O. B. McClintock Co. and Northwest Aeronautical Corp.

All office of price administration offices in the city will remain open the entire day. SWEDEN SIUPS GIFTS STOCKHOLM -Ui- The Red Cross announced Wednesday that three ships would start shuttle traffic between Goteborg and Ubeck next week carrying 500,000 Christmas packages for Allied 1 prisoners of war in Germany, some 75 miles northeast of Du-luth, as the army bomber which had been abandoned by its crew earlier in the day near Marion, S. 25 miles southwest of Sioux Falls. The crew, which was from the Sioux City, Iowa, army air base, abandoned the ship when unable to "feather" the propellor of a dead engine, as resulting vibration and threat of fire made a fatal crash seem inevitable. CREW JUMPS SAFELY It was about 10:30 a.m.

when the pilot of the Flying Fortress set the automatic pilot," manufactured by Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator to steer the ship on a north-northeast course, and all hands "hit the silk," landing safely near Marion. Although buffeted by wind cur rents which deviated it from its course, the unmanned craft kept neaaing nortn-nortneast in re sponse to the automatic pilot control, which kept it flying on even keel until it crashed, presumably out of gas. Army air base authorities, when iirsc noiuied tne was flying without a crew, said its fuel supply could not last any longer than 4 p.m. The plane which crashed in woods near Isa bella was reported down at 3:45 p.m. CHICAGO ALARMED Officials of the safety division of the civil aviation authority.

believing the automatic pilot would be unable to keep the plane on its designated course because of high winds, guessed it would land somewhere In the crowded industrial area between Chicago and Milwaukee. Midwest police stations spread the alarm and were on the alert 'Ghost' riane Continued on Page Susanna Foster 111 With 'Strep' Throat HOLLYWOOD (INS) Susan- 11a JT U31CI win- versal's 19 year- old singing star, gained strength Wednesday night after a sudden illness, diagnosed as "strep" throat. She was sent to bed Tuesday 3 wit a temnera- fcV-" V. 1k army, the desperate Germans were firing volleys of V-l and V-2 rock et bombs into areas in the rear of the advancing American Ninth army. A frontline dispatch said appearance of the rocket bombs was taken as an indication the Germans were hurling everything they have in their effort to protect the industrial Ruhr from the American First and Ninth armies.

BATTLE FOR JUIJCII Heavy fighting raged along the entire front of the Ninth Wednesday, particularly on approaches to Julich, but local gains were made by Lt. Gen. William H. Simpson's forces. It was th'" French Second armored division which pushed through the Saverne gap in two streams and yien drove into the town itself from the north and south.

This French armored force is attached to the U. S. Seventh army. As the last German pocket in Metz surrendered, other doughboys of Lt. Gen.

George S. Pat-ton's Third army, who swept past the doomed fortress city days ago, smashed to the German Saar frontier at two new points west of Saarbrucken in lightning 10-mile thrusts. FRENCH REACH COLMAR More than 100 miles to the south, French armored forces plunging down the Rhine valley behind the Nazis' crumbling Vos-ges mountain positions seized Mulhouse, an important city of nearly 100,000. Gen. Charles Do Gaulle reported French troops had sped 22 miles beyond MulhoiiKe to the Kates of 'Colmar, a big road junction 40 miles south of bourg.

As the French and Americans swept down the Rhine valley and poured through the passes of the Vosges, they hourly increased threat of entrapment to an estimated 70,000 German troops remaining on the west bank of the Rhine above Strasbourg. A front dispatch said only three bridges still were standing on the Rhine in the 40-mile stretch. So swift was the French armor- Western Front Continued on Page Three BRAKEMAN WINS $47,215 AWARD Injury Verdict Sets Court Record Largest damage award ever made by a Hennepin district court jury was recorded late Wednesday when a jury before Judge Vince A. Day returned a verdict of $47,215.05 for Edwin Nelson, Ashland. in a nersonal iniurv -rninst th Northern rn Vimono Rernt 'Melsnn'e attnr- tvc contended his client had been nKrmanpntlw HisahleH as result of injuries suffered Oct.

20, 1943, at Kerrick, when Nelson was a brakeman employed by the Great Northern. Nelson, according to testimony. was on top of a freight car in the switch yards at Kerrick, and was thrown to the ground when the car was jolted. He fractured botli ankles and three vertebrae. Nelson, who said he spent four months in a hospital, appeared in the courtroom supported by two canes.

Alex Janes, attorney for the railroad, contended Nelson contributed to his own injuries through negligence, and that his injuries did not prevent him from resuming his regular duties. The jury returned its verdict after deliberating three hours and 45 minutes. No White Holiday Is Forecast Today Light snow started falling shortly before midnight Wednesday but the weatherman saw no hope for a white Thanksgiving. Partly cloudy with little change in temperature was the official forecast with indications that temperatures would be between 35 and 40. While it wasjtist below freezing at midnight, ground temperatures were above freezing and snow was melting almost as fast as it fell.

VAST POSTWAR ROAD PROJECT APPROVED FOR MINNEAPOLIS A postwar street and highway program embracing the rnost elaborate series of Improvements ever planned for Minneapolis was given official approval late Wednesday by the city planning commission. Prepared by a committee which Includes Herman Olson, city planning engineer; Fred T. Paul, city engineer; L. P. Zimmerman, county planning engineer, and Charles E.

Doell, secretary of the park board, the proposed new network be financed jointly by federal, state and city funds. With the suggested transcontinental road scheduled to pass through Minneapolis, the engineers have outlined a proposed route which they hope will meet with approval of the city council's postwar project committee, of which Alderman Al G. Bastis is chairman. No details of the proposed plan were made public by the engineers and no estimate of the cost was given. Olson said the announcement would have lo come later from Bastis' committee, which probably will meet next week to study the matter.

ture of 104 de- itr grees. Susanna Teacher Held Continued on Page Seven.