BLACK HAND ROMANCE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3212, 6 May 1911, Page 10

BLACK HAND ROMANCE.

ITALIAN BEAUTY AND KIDNAPPERS.

SECOND MARRIAGE WITH MAYOR GAYNOR’S SON.

like a romance; in the mountain fastnesses t -of Italy or on the American border, where the stiletto gleamed, and the pistol'.ready for action "flashed in the sun, is the remarkable, life story of May. Queen Oddo Gaynor, formerly wife of a member of the “Black Hand” gang and of William, Rufus Gaynor, son of Mayor Gaynor, of New York, and who now, at tlie, age of 22, contemplates a third matrimonial venture.

The young woman’s fiance -is a. Harvard student. He has another year in college, and then will attend law school. After doing this he must show to her satisfaction that he can support a wife —and then, perhaps, if his .mother and father are perfectly willing, the pretty Italian girl will consent to wed him. • >

Frankly the young woman tells why she consented to the annulment of her marriage to Gaynor. She gave him this ultimatum:

“Do something or get out.” He would do, neither, she declares, so she got out. This is her story as she told) it in her apartment in the Back Bay: HERE IS HER STORY.

“The young man to whom I am engaged lias a career to make. He has studies to finish and a family to satisfy. He must do all these things before he marries me. It will be my third marriage at the age of 23, for it will not happen until a year hence. Three marriages for a 23-year-old girl is moving rapidly in the matrimonial lines. Also it being the third time it will not fail as the other two experiences did. “My father incurred the enmity of many working Italians in Italy. They all went against him. He lost his money and nearly lost his -life. They drove him out of his native country, and he settled in New London, Conn. That was .so long ago I did not understand it at the time. I can remember how they used to; follow us about, how one evil-eyed person haunted my steps until I complained to my parents about him. I feared and hated his face. For two years he was a nightmare to me. Then when I was 'about 15 lie stole me._ We reached Boston. A young man was there. They made no secret, that he was one of the younger crop of my father’s enemies. How they hated my father. This was the sweetest revenge they could obtain. They made me marry a young man I did' not know when I was 15, and the young man probably 23. “But I did not stay long. I learned that they would abuse me in many ways. They told me. that the time was quickly coming when I must be a. slave and earn money ‘for them. I made believe I would do it. Instead I got into the confidence of a. woman in the block, who sent a letter to my mother. Mother came and took me back. “My husband had the nerve to follow me and demand me on the ground that lie was my lawful husband. But they quickly disposed of him by threatening to inform the police of my true age. He ran away from the town, and I never was troubled by him again. MEETS WITH GAYNOR. “They kept telling me that I was beautiful,, hut it iseemed to me that most of the other girls were much more handsome. One day 1 was introduced to ‘Rufie’ Gaynor. He was a college boy from. Amherst. I married him, just why I can never tell you. “He was the most persistent lover a girl ever had. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He wouldn’t stay away from me nor-allow others to talk to me, hut just kept his presence forced upon me until I married him. I can never understand how 1 or why I did it. “I can .see now that I never loved young Gaynor. Perhaps I thought I did at the time. Well, we married and he slept mornings, and lolled about with companions while I went out and earned a living singing and dancing. After a while liis father helped: him, but he spent the money from homo as though it was stage money, and I kept on working to tide over those long, tedious occasions when the wolf threatened between remittances from the Gaynor home. “We -went through to the coast. I couldn’t stand it. Either he had to do liis- /share or we would quit, that was all. I was developing a lot of practical common sense by this time. I was beginning to see that the world was a cold, hard) proposition. ©Finally I gave him an ultimatum. “It was 'Do something or get- out.’ He wouldn’t do either, so I got out. I left hinii more than a year ago, in. San Francisco,.

“I came back to New England, to my mother and to Boston, and now I am engaged again.”