This Day in History: 1934-09-18

A jury of six men and six women deliberated for thirty minutes before bringing in a guilt verdict against Warren A. Ackerman for embezzling Mahwah Township funds in his capacity as Tax Collector. He is to return on October first for sentencing before Judge J. Wallace Leydes. He faces a maximum of seven years in prison for the offense. He was the tenth tax collector to be charged in Bergen County within the past few months. Prosecutor Breslin ridiculed Ackerman’s defense that he knew nothing about the shortages in the accounts. Mrs. M. Ella Ackerman, his wife, testified that she personally put the receipts into the safe in their home. She could not account for the missing money except to suggest that it might have been stolen. Both denied taking the money, but the prosecutor, using the results of an intensive investigation of Ackerman’s financial records, demonstrated that he maintained three bank accounts and deposited Township funds into the account into which he deposited his own salary checks. He could not believe that Ackerman, a banker for over thirty years, did not produce any cancelled checks or detailed financial records of his own money in his own defense. Ackerman received the verdict calmly, but his wife collapsed and had to be revived in the courtroom. The money had not been recovered at the time of the trial. (Bristow)