Turner, alias Legenza, and
Spencer, alias Dwyer, Easily
Identified In New York Rogues�
Gallery; Furniture Stolen from
Metuchen Found in
Park Ave. House
_____________
Special to the Courier-News: South Plainfield, July 21 [1926]. -- The
criminal records of William Turner alias
Walter Legenza, and Frank Edward
Spencer alias William Dwyer, alias
George Kent, two of the men captured
following the round-up of the bandit
retreat on Park avenue here Saturday
afternoon, were unearthed by Chief of
Police McCarthy as a result of a visit to
the Rogue�s Gallery in the New York
Police Department yesterday afternoon.
The records reveal that Turner�s
career as a criminal began as far back as
1910 when, as a boy of 13 years, he was
sentenced to a term in Elmira
Reformatory on a charge of burglary. He
was known at that time as John Woods.
In 1913 under the name of John
Donbell, he was sentenced to a year�s
imprisonment on Blackwell�s Island
Penitentiary for larceny. He was arrested
three times in 1914, in Providence, R.I.,
Boston, Mass., and Hoboken, on charges
of burglary. In 1918 he was given a
suspended sentence in Brooklyn on a
charge of burglary. As Wadeck Legenza
he served five months in the work house
for attempted grand larceny and another
five months� confinement in the
workhouse on a similar charge in 1921.
In 1923 he was arrested in Memphis,
Tenn., for complicity in a bank robbery.
The record of Spencer or Dwyer,
shows that he has served terms in the
New Jersey Reformatory and the Federal
Prison at Leavenworth, Kansas.
The police yesterday removed
from the Park avenue house the furniture
found there at the time of the raid. A
considerable quantity of the latter has
been identified, so it is said, as having
been stolen from the Metuchen Country
Club about a month ago. Law books,
treatises on chemistry and books and
pamphlets on welding, were also found.
A watchman in the employ of the
Castle�s Ice Cream Company when the
concern�s payroll was taken on July 6,
visited police headquarters here today
but was unable to identify any of the
guns found in the Park avenue house last
Saturday. When the bandits entered the
premises of the Castle�s Company the
watchman was held up and his gun taken
from him.