Gluck entered San Quentin prison on April 17, 1929. He was then
thirty-four years of age. And for three years and a half, much of the
time in solitary confinement, he was left to meditate upon the injustice
of man. It was during that period that his bitterness corroded home and
he became a hater of all his kind. Three other things he did during the
same period: he wrote his famous treatise, _Human Morals_, his remarkable
brochure, _The Criminal Sane_, and he worked out his awful and monstrous
scheme of revenge. It was an episode that had occurred in his
electroplating establishment that suggested to him his unique weapon of
revenge. As stated in his confession, he worked every detail out
theoretically during his imprisonment, and was able, on his release,
immediately to embark on his career of vengeance.
His release was sensational. Also it was miserably and criminally
delayed by the soulless legal red tape then in vogue. On the night of
February 1, 1932, Tim Haswell, a hold-up man, was shot during an
attempted robbery by a citizen of Piedmont Heights. Tim Haswell lingered
three days, during which time he not only confessed to the murder of
Irene Tackley, but furnished conclusive proofs of the same. Bert
Danniker, a convict dying of consumption in Folsom Prison, was implicated
as accessory, and his confession followed. It is inconceivable to us of
to-day—the bungling, dilatory processes of justice a generation ago.
Emil Gluck was proved in February to be an innocent man, yet he was not
released until the following October. For eight months, a greatly
wronged man, he was compelled to undergo his unmerited punishment. This
was not conducive to sweetness and light, and we can well imagine how he
ate his soul with bitterness during those dreary eight months.
He came back to the world in the fall of 1932, as usual a “feature” topic
in all the newspapers. The papers, instead of expressing heartfelt
regret, continued their old sensational persecution. One paper did
more—the _San Francisco Intelligencer_. John Hartwell, its editor,
elaborated an ingenious theory that got around the confessions of the two
criminals and went to show that Gluck was responsible, after all, for the
murder of Irene Tackley. Hartwell died. And Sherbourne died too, while
Policeman Phillipps was shot in the leg and discharged from the Oakland
police force.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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