The New Haven Union

HINDOO MUST GIVE BIG BAIL

Is Held For "Passion Night" Fanaticism.

New York, May 8.--When Magistrate Breen committed Pierre Bernard, alias Peter Coon, alias "The Loving Tantrik Guru," to the Tombs Saturday in default of $15,000 to await the action of the grand jury he closed the first chapter of one of the most peculiar exposures of pseudo-religious cults ever aired in a New York police court.

While the charge against Bernard is the abduction of 19-year-old Zella Hopp, a Harlem girl of respectable family, the police court investigation revealed circumstances and facts that seemed to widen greatly the scope of the grand jury's investigation.

By his own admission Bernard is known to be the leader of a cult of Oriental origin, based largely upon the teachings of the Hindu order of Tantriks, a sect whose adherence to the ancient code of sex worship has long been discountenanced even in India and whose presence in the United States, would if widespread, strike at the very root of the nation's morals.

The testimony which prompted Magistrate Breen to hold Bernard to the charge of abduction as laid out in the complaint, was wrung from Miss Hopp and Miss Gertrude Leo, of Seattle, Wash., another of Bernard's alleged victims after three days of prolonged examinations and cross examinations and many painful court room scenes. So vile was much of the evidence that the magistrate decided at the outset to hold the hearings in chambers. The hearing brought out the details of what took place at some of the "passion nights," as the special Tantrik evenings were called. Enough was told to indicate that a group of from 10 to 20 men and women of excellent family, imbued with the fanaticism of cultists met on these evenings and in the lightest of attire practiced strange voluptuous rites.