MRS ECHIFFMAN She waited in fear
IT
IT was a glossy picture of a beautiful woman and Gunter Podola, could not resist stealing it.
That theft led him tỡ thy Old Bailey, and because of it he will
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1959.
VERNE
She collapsed after
helping
trap a man who turned killer
in
PODOLA: The
by RODNEY HALLWORTH and ARTHUR TIETJEN
THE story of Gunter Podola is a story of lost opportunities. Time and again fate gave him the chance to make something of his life-to turn his good looks and better-than-average intelligence to good use. And time and again he threw his chance away or had it snatched from him by forces beyond his control.
He was a gentle, solitary child, the son of poor, hard-working parents his father a barber, his mother an ex-nurse, working as a packer in a factory. They lived in a cramped, dark apartment. in the "Soho" of pre-Hilter Berlin, an area of the garish, brightly lit Koenigstrasse, which now lies within the Soviet zone.
Podola's mother had hopes of A better life for her blond, curly- haired only son, who was born In their apartment in February 1929. She made him study the plano and taught him the im- portance of good manners, hoping these accomplishments would help him rise in the world,
And so he might have done but for the squalid Influence of the district in which he grew up, but for the moral degenera- tion of the Hitler Youth Move- ment, which he later joined, but for the hopelesmess of life In 1 shattered, defeated cliy under Communist domination. and but for the fatal weakness which drové him first to petly theft, then through burglary and blackmail to murder,
They remember him well- those who survived the war-in the district where he was born and brought up.
He
Defeat
MURDERED
who
Page
ma threw away
his life
CHINA MAIL FOcus on the ASTONISHING STORY OF GUNTER FRITZ PODOLA
first job was on a farin, but he stayed only six month;.
From there he went to Mont- real, where he first worked in an aircraft factory, then as a tailor's assistant, handyman. warehouse worker, street photo- grapher.
there Hl landladies -- and were many as he skipped from one district of another -- re- garded him as a lone wolf. He would often. stay in his room all day and leave for his "work" at night. No friends ever called and his only mail was from his mother.
Àlone
And soon afterwards she slipped on an ley pavement and died from her injuries, so when the friendless Podola was de ported In August 1938, he was utterly alone in the world.
He look a job as an uiskilled lobotrer
Bremerhaven-
a
the among
best- dressed of the boys who played in the garbage-strewn streets where, in the evening, bars filed carly with gamblers, crooks, pimps, prostitutes, and pediars of dope.
metal resping works, earning Mama Podola - strict and
£7 103, week. Again his housepraud-did her
manager gave him a épod work bes! to mulatio
Tepart. Gunter's Young
Again he might have He tried to bargain with the standards of dress and behaviour.
done well had he stuck to it. siplen pasports. She realised She would chase out into the
But in May of this year he tre wis the burglar and told street to corb his blond curls; tramped Fouth from Berlin packed the job in. Opportunity Chelsea polico... Mrs Schiff disarranged in Jomt gutter acrOKS his war plundered No. 4 was gone. man, sometimes known by herscramble. She would con- country trying to reach Switzer-
never sus in flima and blood the Judgment he found himself model whose picture It was telephone kiosks, ringing her Blonde, 30-year-old Verne and pleading for a date, Schiffman.
It was on July 8 that Podola Klippd A strip of celluloid around the lock on the door of Mrs Schiffman's studio fat.
Detective-Sergt. Raymond Purdy shot by Podola on July 13
At 17 he left his mother and
1
stage names of Verne O'Hara, stantly remind him to watch and and new opportunities. Ho On May 21 he arrived, In Mrs Schiffman was out shop collapsed at the news of Detec= |his manners and his language. was arrested on the border, London. ping Poola went in. and tive Sergeant Purdy's death And every evening. to the tried to escape, but was re- He had tasted priser, de- helped himself to jewellery, while arresting the caller, excophony of blaring radios, arrested. A year later he re- portatlan, coüd speak English, threw passports, and the Now in New York, she is still bawling drunks, and shouting turned to Berlin where he although in u pronounced glamorous photograph.
avolding visitors, still dogged by neighbours, he would be made picked up his plano lessons at American recent with gutteral The photograph fascinated the memory of the afternoon to practise his scales at the muele school.
undertones-and he had a gun. family's walnut piano. him. And against his better she helped trap Podola,
When the airport bus dropped During this time he met again him off at the terminal in then came Hitler, and his childhood sweetheart, Ruth Kensington he asked a BEA war, und filler Youth with its Quandt. They planned to wed, clerk If he could recommend goose-stepping and gums, ibe but
at the last, although she an hotel in the vicinity. The death
Podola's father at became the mother of his child, clerk gave him the name of an Stalingrad, followed by defent Podola shied away from the hotel in Cromwell Road nearby, and the Omminista.
and Podola booked in.
SHIRLEY
After the shooting she brought comfort
By ARTHUR COOK
UNTER PODOLA, with his gun and his big talk, was something of an actor. But the
only time he ever got near to real show busi- ness was when he broke into Verne Schiffman's flat.
Mrs Schiffman, though she never hit the heights, had taken Emall parts in television shows. Among her friends were several names which are seen in bright lights, and it was to
them-singing one
star of Shirley Basxy...that she turned for comfort when it was known that there was a murderer loose who might call on her again.
evening newspaper lay and
SICKLEY BASSEY Applause, then a call
K
her make-up, and drove home to her Paddington flat,
Then the telephone rang. was
And Mrs Schiffman: what she told Shirley brought back to her the horror of facing Shirley remem- Acunman. bered how, less than two years make-up
before, she had been held at Number dressing-room at the Prince of gunpoint for hours in her Lon- don hotel room by a rejected
An among Creams
the in
One
Wales Theatre that evening of
July 13. The headlines told of suitor.
the death of a policeman, but Early next morning Shirley
Shirley Bassey hardly glanced Bassey wak with her friend,
ut it before she hurried OTL
stage to sing to
audience.
Horror
comforting her as she sat ner-
+ packed vously under the constant
guard of two deterlives,
"Verne was terribly worried, every knock on the door scared
The headlines were forgotten her. Time and again she told as she bowed to the applause of me of the night she had found her last encore, as she took off her fat burgled--how jewels,
STARKEY
tells his story' to Louis Kirby
move
I day to start their job by
But
responsibilities of marriage.
It was the defeat of Germany Marriage might well have yet that robbed Pocola of his first Podola on a straight path. But furs, and three passports be-big opportunity. Evacuated he rejected it and Opportunity longing to herself, her daughter, with his mother, he was sent to
bomb-shattered from
Berlin No. 2 war gone. und a friend had disappeared.
"Many times when I was work in the Heinkel aircraft For three years he worked ng with her Verne talked about factory at Rastock.
4 welder in an engineering firm. the shot polletman and the There his quick intelligence His manager described him as family he had left behind.
was noted and he was moved good, reliable worker." He become an apprentice might have done well there, but, draughtsman. The end of the in 1852, bored with the dullness war and the shutting down of of East Berlin, he decided to Heinkel's put an end to that. emigrate.
In
WITC
a way she felt she was respon- sible But the police wonderful to her, and said she was in no way to blame."
Help
over to
A sweetheart
*
For, tew weeks he lived
quietly, finding his way about the city.
Automatically, it seemed, his footsteps led to Soho. To him Soho was a mirror of life in Berlin clubs, all-night cafes, women, drink, and violence.
Can
With his swagger, his Ameri- accent, and his fondness for telling everyone to "Call me Mike." Podola soon, became 2 Tamillar gure in the "clip- joints," near-beer parlours, and
Fascinated
He had cast,away Oppor- cafes. Zunity No. 3. Opportunity No. 1 had gone, It broke his mother's heart, The Berlin to which Podola She eried: and his mother returned their don't go. Don't leave me. You're "Please....please dat was in one of the few build all I've got." But Podola's mind "Mike"-the ings in the neighbourhood that was made up, His mother sold was still standing-was a jungle most of her furniture to find his where people lied, cheated, ond passage money to Canada. Even stole to stay alive.
the
cherished
later about the man he knew as A Sono club proprietor spoke
girls around him, who fascinated stan 'who liked them with his big talk and big spending, but whom they never plano last quite liked.
After Podola's arrest MTA Schiffman left Endard for her bome In America. Shirley was cne of only three friends who knew she was going, and would have liked to have been at the ciation to my goodbye.
But the show had to go on.
In that jungle sotme were symbol of respectability--was Another audience was waiting.lamba, some were wolves, and sold.
way in her dressing-room some were jackals, scavenging She
On August 14, 1952, Podol2 again that might when Mra among the ruins for sustenance, sailed on the ss. Harry Taylor Schiffman telephoned, this time picking up the left-overs from from Hamburg to Halifax, Nova
"I kept try eyes on him. HS to say: "Thank you, Shirley, the Black Market deals of the Scotta. In Canada, as in Ger used to call in my place every
know how much wolves. You'll never
Podola became just many, he made no friends, end night and say until the early you helped me.”
such a scavenger.
was unable to settle down. His hours. I took fum pround Д
CHRISTINE YOUNG
I'll never believe it
CHRISTINE
How did I know that he was
going to kill a policeman?
By STANLEY BONNETT
"I could no more have known where he was living sx junything that was going to happen than 3- Uke that. could have known that Manuel
"I first came to know some- thing about him when one of the girls came to me and spoke about him,” he said.
bit
"I guessed he was playing the lone wolf at the time.
"He was known to everyone na ‘Miko' and was very generous· to the girls, giving them huge tips, even for a cup of coffee, He asked me if I knew of a girl who would team up with hind, but I never introduced him to anyone."
By this time Podola hari turned to blackmail. One of the hats he had broken into was that of TV walk-on girl He stole some Verne Schiuman, in Kensington.
valuables, and,] thought were in- criminal documenta,
Five times be telephoned her. the
我
taken
was murdering all thore people,” "But, when he was
Club-girl Christine met Podois from hospital to prison i spplied Then, pære. Setultimat, told in a club in the same way that for permission to use him. It Podolk was, was refused. the mot hand. CHRISTINE YOUNG, kind and gene
the blonde-about- her. Just like Manuel.
polic. They kept watch - arid Le next Ainé Potola phonedi? THE worst
ing, whether the letter meant ever made in my that Mike remembered me.
understand why, a public phone booth” ini 30-odd years
because the police have never South Kandligions Tube stations was to His two-page reply was stop-Soho, who was Gunter (Both men, with her, would, sit "so much as been to race, Detective – Sergsends Hay
ped by the prison governor. For
Juka · Santiforti- quistly, mying little, I like ither my dat or where Purety and write the postcard that "Mike" wrote things like: "How Podolafs girl friend, said quiet syn, the said They're else. Mhid you, if they'd liked paced on him, trapped my friend Mike are you keeping yourself these
equations gouldn't have Podols made a bolt for free- -the man the world days, old buyyn. And he called absently: "I suppose it way to get along with."
Just as Christine knew Manuel helped.. He was just a man -1 dom su ih led him to their me "Ronnie.” All I wanted does seem rather odd." only by the size of "oni" so met who was using writher wasting police car. They,corner knows as Gunter Podola, was to help him. All I asked
[ed÷tim, in the hall gf a nearby Podola always tund, the, fides name. for was a visiting catch, I wasn't Add that Podols should have nazne Mike with hors:
block of data, A fit you go around the clubs Podplatil bad one last Although he has done an un- condoning murder, but I de-bean her second man" friood: 101: We didn't son each other and placed you are bound to opportunity of life. He could forgivable wrong, I feel a ter- elded I could cheer him up by jul over an your to have been every day and 10 Chek notaur zont a lot of page, I do bave stoo quietly and keyw rible responsibility for having taking in.... mome, food and corivicted of murder. The Gaas connecting him, “with helped send him to the death cigarettes, 2] M
was Scottish mass – murderet, man who - Lampp cell.
Instead of which the presocu-Peter Manual Opera tion, were able to rely on hii "Look,” she said, "how win “unid. letter to me to "prova, he knew I to know that Pedda won betw very well who 1 has and that to kil" a polemany: The there was nothing, wrong with bellave, he did. It delibera kia ananuNCY STAT
anyway.
It was Inevitabis that the judge would point, to the signi» heance of the latter: "Dis" wrote in reply to that postcard. Me fold the first, jury on Duna-
"The deal I knew about it.
the police because 'I didn't know
hen-Christine which hynin: received perhape no mara, ihata wopbeat, dous posen, odda abortis prison sentencS FOR! #knew was both, but, theft vande dattáryding motomy. honestly how was I to know with menacea:k
“But no dow bla gin, and, indt Bergesol Psirds, dond
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