The Union Daily Times

New York, Aug. 30.--Through crowds of morbidly curious men and women tense with expectancy of the outbreak of gunplay, "Kid Dropper," dreaded Eastside gang leader, today was whisked in a hearse traveling 50 miles an hour to sleep the long sleep in the quietest corner of an east New York cemetery.

As the cortege, supported by police motorcycle outriders, sped through the halted traffic, the wheels of justice were revolving at equally high speed to punish his slayer. Scarcely had the cortege reached the cemetery when word came that the grand jury had indicted Louis Cohen, youthful member of the "Little Augie" gang, for first degree murder. Before the little handful of mourners for the "Dropper," whose real name was Jack Kaplan, had reached their homes after the interment, Cohen-all his swagger and bravado gone--was facing Judge Moncuse and asking for the appointment of counsel to defend him.

The powerful "Little Augie" gang, at whose bidding he is alleged to have shot the Dropper down Tuesday, in front of Essex Market Court, had forsaken him. He stood slouched, shrunken, staring vacantly, apparently not realizing what it was all about. It was not until the clerk asked him the second time, that he mumbled he was without counsel and without means to employ legal aid. The court postponed formal arraignment until tomorrow, and Cohen slunk back to the Tombs to await the coming of his strange lawyers.

The Dropper's funeral, heralded in underworld rumors as the signal for an outbreak of gang fighting, provided ample excitement for the thousands that crowded the streets about the One Hundred and Twentieth street funeral parlor, where the gangster's body lay. But there was no shooting.

Police and detectives, sprinkled through the milling crowd, arrested seven men of "Kid Dropper's Roughriders," who attempted to maintain an auto patrol before the chapel. They searched dozens of hard faced men who circulated through the crowd or sat in automobiles at the curb, but they found no firearms.

As the Dropper's plain coffin was borne from the chapel, fire fighting apparatus dashed up, summoned by a false alarm--whether accidentally or maliciously turned in, nobody knew. Through the apparatus and the excited crowds the Dropper's hearse dashed, followed by two automobiles bearing members of his family and nine others with members of his gang and detectives, strangely mixed in the flying procession. The Dropper's young wife, his mother, his sister and two of his brothers, were the only mourners save for the little handful of loyal gangsters.

The trip to Mount Hebron cemetery was accomplished through halted traffic at a speed of nearly 50 miles an hour. To avoid pursuit by rival gangsters, who, it had been reported, planned to interfere, orders were left with patrolmen to hold all traffic behind the cortege at a distance of a quarter of a mile.