Indian Lore

On the afternoon of March 27 a neat little Chinese student in blue serge suit, brown tie and rimless octagonal spectacles was seen sprinting for dear life across the campus of Northeastern Oklahoma State Teachers College at Tahlequah. Daniel Shaw (born Hing Sieu) had traveled all the way from Hongkong in 1931 to study in the U. S., had wandered through colleges in Walla Walla, Wash.. San Francisco, Lynn, Mass., Cicero, Ill. and Lexington, Ky., trying to make up his mind whether to be a missionary or a diplomat. Finally he ended up in Tahlequah to study American Indian lore. Now he was learning it first hand. On his heels loped a husky, handsome Indian girl banging away with a revolver. She winged him twice.

Last week, still looking a little surprised, Daniel Shaw appeared at the trial of dark, thin-lipped, high-cheek-boned Lois Thompson, 18, charged with assault with intent to kill. Calm as her Cherokee ancestors, Lois Thompson told her story. Last winter she had refused Daniel Shaw a dance date. Shortly thereafter came the first of a series of extortion notes, threatening her with death unless she handed over $3,000. Daniel Shaw was the gang's agent. On the afternoon of March 27 he had set out to kidnap or kill her. She had decided to kill him first.

Just why a gang should pick the youngest of a poor widow's eight children as a likely extortion victim, Lois Thompson could not explain. Neither could anyone else. Daniel Shaw politely denied the whole story, said he hardly knew the girl. But as defense attorneys pointed out, he had admittedly sojourned in San Francisco "which is the headquarters of the white slave business" and in Illinois "where John Dillinger and his gang had their hideouts." Anyway, concluded one attorney, he was probably a Japanese spy.

The prosecution's explanation was simpler: Lois Thompson and her sister Lelia had cooked up the whole thing just for excitement. A Department of Justice agent testified that the handwriting on the extortion notes was Lelia's, held up enlarged specimens to prove it. Two of the jurors could not read or write, but with the rest they brought in a verdict of guilty, condemning Lois Thompson to 30 days in jail. Shortly thereafter Daniel Shaw, having quit Northeastern State Teachers College forever, was well out in the Pacific.

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