“i Love You! I Love You!

*

By
PETER BRUTON

*

FRIGHTENED and_ pathetic
A looking figure was taken from
a cell on Oakalla_ prison’s
death row, led between two guards
along “the last mile,” and forced up
the five steps leading to the gallows.

There he fell to his knees and
sobbed out a _ prayer. He rose—
shakily. A black hood was placed over
his closely-cropped head of hair and
the new hemp noose was adjusted
about his neck. The trap was sprung
and the body disappeared from the
sight of the viewers.

Justice had meted out its penalty
for Sonny Jones, 21-year-old USS.
boxer, convicted of the brutal ham-
mer-slaying of a middle-aged Van-
couver housewife last March.

Two Schools of Opinion

Criminologists and others con-
into two

nected with the case fell
distinct schools of opinion.

Some saw Jones as a “crazy, mixed-
up kid,” involved in something he

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.. . Said condemned negro killer Sonny
Jones to bis sweetheart as be was
led to prison cells.

was not able to handle, and goaded
into murder by a 44-year-old woman
who tried to separate him from the
only thing he ever loved.

Then there is the other school
which viewed Jones as a hardened
man brought up the tough way on
the sidewalks of New York’s East

a crime
the
case of Sonny Jones
from discovery of the
vicious murder to the
final hanging.

Peter Bruton,
reporter, covered

side—a boxer imbued with the
killer instinct which he failed to con-
fine to the ring.
It all started in September, 1952.
Sonny Jones, whose real name was
Charles Matthews, was a promising
young welterweight struggling to get

fight engagements in New York’s
boxing empire. Boxers were 10 a

penny and fights were hard to come
by.

Then one day in September, Jimmy
Smith, a Vancouver boxing trainer,
arrived in New York to look for a
fighter he could take with him back
to British Columbia. He feund

Sonny Jones pounding a punch-bag

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in a Bronx gymnasium and decided
the youthful negro was just what he
wanted.
Jones
proposal.
He fought well and was soon being
eagerly sought after by promoters in

readily agreed with the

Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Ta-
coma, and Spokane.
Meets Religious Negress
It was in November that the

fighter met Peggy Bowen, a pretty
and very religious young negress.
Rather ironically, the two were in-
troduced by Smith’s wife, 44-year-old
Mrs. Los Angeles Smith.

“T saw him often after that,” Miss
Bowen later recalled. “Just before
Christmas I told him I wouldn’t
marry him and he could go back to
New York.”

By the next morning, however, she
had changed her mind. The two be-
came engaged on January 15.

When this news got out Mrs. Smith
became very upset and tried to make

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