Private Radowski [sic], Who Was Glad of
President’s Death, Is Taken to Island Prison
Comes from Vancouver Barracks with Ten Other Military
Convicts and Is Taken
at Once under Strong Guard to Alcatraz. Prisoner Says That He Was
Convicted
Because of His Name.
FRANK RADOWSKI, the artillery private whose expressed
approval of the deed that cost President McKinley his life has gained
for him a sentence of ten years’ imprisonment on Alcatraz, arrived
here yesterday on the Oregon express in company with ten other military
prisoners. Under escort of a strong guard the prisoners were conducted
from the railroad depot to Clay-street wharf, where they embarked
on board the Government tender General McDowell, which took them
to their island prison.
Radowski, who was heavily ironed,
hand and foot, is the same Radowski who, according to a morning
paper, arrived here last Thursday and was taken to Alcatraz secretly.
In spite of the fact that Radowski was at that time in the guardhouse
of Vancouver Barracks, a circumstantial account was printed of his
trip to Alcatraz, with a full description of his guards, and embellished
with a personal interview with the unhappy soldier.
He arrived yesterday, however, and
looks anything but a dangerous anarchist. He is undersized and inoffensive
in appearance, has a good record in the army and according to the
officer in charge of the prisoners acted in a decent, gentlemanly
way while under his observation.
Radowski, while not seeming to realize
the seriousness of his punishment, speaks bitterly of those by whose
evidence he was convicted. He says:
“I’m no anarchist. I never even took
an interest in politics, and it made little difference to me who
was President—we generally manage to get a good one. When the call
came for troops for the Philippines I enlisted in the volunteers,
and when we were mustered out I joined the regular army. I was in
the infantry first, but was transferred to the artillery.
“I guess I did say what they accuse
me of. I was drunk and so were the men that testified against me.
That is, all but one man, a Justice of the Peace I think he was.
I don’t remember having seen him, although he says he first ordered
my arrest. I guess I got the worst of it because I’m a Pole and
my name ends in ‘ski.’ I was born in Chicago, where my father runs
a saloon, and I think to-day that I’m as good an American as any
of those people walking free about that wharf.”
Radowski was sentenced to ten years’
imprisonment on Alcatraz for expressing himself as follows:
“President McKinley got what he deserved.
My time of enlistment in the army will soon expire, and when it
does I’ll see that President Roosevelt gets the same dose that Czolgosz
gave McKinley.”
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