Six Students Testify on First Day of Knaus Forgery Trail

Students, faculty members, and employees representing a cross-section of the University community turned up at the Middlesex Superior Court in East Cambridge yesterday. Whether they came as witnesses, friends, or curious on-lookers, they were brought together by the long-awaited forgery trial of Albert C. Knaus, Jr 1E.

The court recessed at 3:50 p.m. before the prosecutor, assistant district attorney Lyman C. Sprague, could rest his case. It will reconvene at 10 a.m. this morning.

Knaus is charged with stealing 14 checks while working for the University Mail Service and cashing them at the Cambridge Trust Company. The prosecutor produced the checks one by one, each time calling as a witness the person who should rightfully have received it but didn't.

Six were graduate students who had fellowships or part-time jobs. They were Donald D. Dogherty 2B, Frank LeR. Raymond 2G, William J. Anderson 1PA, Paul L. Ferris 1PA, Kenneth L. Robinson 3G, and Leon Mandell 4G.

Faculty

There were two faculty members, Charles R. Simpson, teaching fellow in Law, and Lyon Southworth, manager of the Chemical Laboratories. Robert L. Wolff '36, associate professor of History, who is in Washington, was represented by his secretary, Janet Johnson.

These witnesses all said they never received the checks they were shown and that the signature on them was forged. Defense attorney Albert W. Wunderly got some of them to say their checks might not have been stolen until after delivery by the University Mail Service.

The Ross E. Fairbanks, assistant to the Comptroller, testified that the checks in question were of the sort distributed by the University Mail Service and that he had seen Knaus come to pick up outgoing mail at Lehman Hall. But under cross-examination he admitted that every noon the Lehman Hall janitor, instead of the regular carriers, took the outgoing mail to the University Post Office behind Widener Library

The all-male jury included one graduate, Gardner Murphy '10