Alexandria Gazette

TOKEN OF NOTED DEAD
RECOVERED BY DIVER

New York, Dec. 23.—Friendly ghosts of Grover Cleveland, E. C. Benedict and the last Czar of all the Russias may have hovered over the diver who sank from near zero air beside a boat on Manhasset Bay today to the bottom, 20 feet below, in search of a jewel box.

Treasured tokens from each of these three noted dead were among the precious contents of the little box stolen last autumn from the Sands Point home of Frank S. Hastings, executor under the will of former President Cleveland, who bequeathed to him his seal ring, "the most personal memento I can leave him."

The Czar, in July, 1903, conferred the Order of St. Stanislaus and its jewel on Mr. Hastings for his loyal support of the Russian Symphony Orchestra. Commodore E. C. Benedict was the lifelong friend and close business associate of Mr. Hastings, who is rear commodore of the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club.

Boatmen pumped air to the diver and shivered in the biting cold 600 feet off shore for an hour before the signal "got it" shook the line overhead.

"Pete" Anderson, Merritt-Chapman veteran of wreck salvaging, was pulled up clasping the safe in his arms.

It was hurried to Mineola, and the office of District Attorney Weeks, where Mr. Hastings awaited it.

Within was a fortune in stocks and bonds—168 shares of Standard Oil for one item, a pearl necklace worth more than $20,000, many pieces of jewelry so set with precious stones that the nondescripts who confessed stealing the safe had not dared to face anyone and offer to sell them.

But they had given to women and sold to buyers of the underworld many less valuable articles.

Claus P. Claus Oleson, a young Swede employed in the Hastings home, listened to the tempting of Michael Picnardi, mechanic in a nearby garage.

Oleson stole the safe and carried it at night, during the absence of the Hastings family, to a distant part of their estate. He and Picardi opened it and took out money and the smaller jewelry, together with a few securities.

They buried the rest with the safe, but grew alarmed several days later and took the safe to the bay, rowed out in a boat, made memorandum of the location and tossed the little iron box and its $50,000 contents overboard.