Preacher’s Baby Girl/Gangster’s Wife

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Needham, Massachusetts.

February 2, 1934.

One policeman was slain, three other men shot,

and $10,000 stolen from the Needham Trust Company today

by four bandits.

Two of them armed with what bank employees

described as submachine guns.

Forbes, MacLeod, policemen shot through the stomach

as he answered the bank's burglar alarm,

died shortly afterward in the Glover Hospital.

They came into the bank just after we had opened for business,

said Miss Elizabeth Kimball, secretary.

There were four of them, dark, foreign appearing men.

Two had what looked like solid-off machine guns,

and two others had pistols.

There were 11 of us in the bank, but no customers.

Mr. Bartholomew didn't make a move,

but they shot him just the same,

as if they wanted to show that they meant business.

We were forced to stand with our hands up at our desk,

while Reardon had to hand over the money,

a little more than $10,000, I think.

Mrs. Martin E. Gaken, a bookkeeper,

managed to sound the alarm bell,

and as the bandits backed out, taking Macintosh and Reardon

with him, forged MacLeod, one of the policemen,

came running toward the bank, and they shot him down.

Macintosh said that after being forced to stand

on the running board of the car for a mile or two,

he was pulled inside the car as it drew near Needham Heights.

A short distance away, the bandits pushed him from the vehicle.

At the hospital, Haddock and Kaufflin

were described in serious condition.

The names of both men were put on the dangerous list.

Haddock had been notified at the fire station

of the likelihood that the bandits would pass there,

and as the car tore down the road,

he opened fire only to fall wounded as they returned the shots.

From Boston, came word that General Daniel Needham,

state commissioner of public safety,

and as such, commander of the state police,

had taken personal charge of the state police investigation.

The general told newspaper men he believed

the machine guns used in the holdup

might have been some of those stolen

from the state police's exhibition

at the Boston Auto Show early last Saturday morning.

A state police warning flashed throughout the east,

described the bandits' car as a large black automobile

of expensive make.

It was reported headed toward Providence, Rhode Island,

but there are many sparsely settled districts

between this town and the Rhode Island line.

Evidence that the holdup was carefully timed

to coincide with the arrival of the Needham Railroad station

across the street from the bank of a gasoline train

equipped with an automatic bell.

Police believed the bandits counted on the clang

of the train's bell, drowning out that of the bank along.

True Crime Historian presents yesterday's news,

a reading of historical newspapers from the Golden Age

of Yellow Journalism.

It's the story of a young woman,

the daughter of a prominent minister

and graduate of a fine finishing school

who fell into the wrong crowd

and married a man who would be executed

for the crimes of the gang he was trying to build.

The papers never said,

but I can't help but think that the mill and favor gang

fancy themselves to be the delingers of the east coast,

or wannabes anyway.

The story grabbed my attention

because of the way Norma Brighton-Millin

presented herself after her capture.

The question came to me,

is she the innocent doop as she proclaimed,

or was she using her pretty face

and sophisticated air to disguise her inner bad girl

and get off easy?

I'd like to hear your thoughts,

so leave some comments on my Facebook page after you listen

if you're so inclined.

I'm True Crime Historian, Richard O'Jones,

and I give you preacher's baby girl slash gangster's wife,

the trial and travails of Norma Brighton-Millin.

Boston, Massachusetts, February 19th, 1934.

The Reverend Norton Brighton and Nadek Pastor,

today joined in the search for clues

in the recent $14,000 robbery at the Needham Trust Company

during which two Needham policemen were slaying.

The pastor said he was the father of Norma Brighton-Millin,

19-year-old wife of Merton-Millin,

who, with his brother Irving,

is being sought by police for questioning.

The millen brothers, police said,

disappeared a week ago,

and the hunt has been fruitless.

Reverend Mr. Brighton, a member of the American Christian

Missionary Society, told state police

that his daughter eloped with Millen last October

and that he had not seen her since.

The pastor said his daughter was born in Des Moines, Iowa,

where he was pastor of the Park Avenue Christian Church.

Police said that the pastor and his wife were divorced

in Boston in 1921,

and that he retained custody of their three children.

Yesterday, Mr. Brighton volunteered his help

in locating his daughter and the two men sought for questioning.

New York City, February 26th, 1934.

At 3.30 this morning,

in the office of Assistant Chief Inspector John J. Sullivan

at Manhattan Police Headquarters,

there was a strange reunion.

In the presence of a policewoman and a lieutenant of Boston police,

these two met.

The Reverend Norman Brighton,

pastor of the Church of Christian Disciples of Natick, Massachusetts,

and his daughter,

young Mrs. Norma Brighton Millen,

the three-month spried of one of two brothers

who were arrested yesterday on charges of bank robbery

and murder after a spectacular battle

in the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel in Manhattan.

The two faced each other for a moment.

They embraced.

Father kissed daughter on the cheek.

How are you dear?

Said the clergyman.

All right, daddy replied the girl.

No word of reproach.

No questioning or cross-examination.

She was not under arrest

and was allowed to go to a hotel

after greeting her father at police headquarters.

Police said she had agreed to return to Boston voluntarily

and was willing to tell everything she knew about the case.

The girl told police she had graduated

from a fashionable finishing school

and had married the elder millen brother three months ago

after a romance that began last fall

at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire.

The millen brothers had been traced to this city

through the interception of telegrams,

but their presence at the hotel Lincoln was not known

until a watchful detective spotted

Merton's new automobile,

which he had purchased in Washington earlier this month.

Policeman descended on the hotel

and a short time later,

Irving Millen was arrested when he went to the hotel desk

to inquire about a message.

Merton entered the lobby an hour later

and when a policeman stuck a gun at his back,

the elder millen turned around and grabbed the barrel,

the weapon discharging a bullet into the floor.

Millen dashed for the street door

but was pounced on by other detectives.

The two brothers struggled for freedom

and in the scuffle both received considerable cuts and bruises.

The sum of $700 in currency was found in their room

and police said this money corresponded

to that taken in the holdup of the Needham Trust Company

in which $13,200 was stolen.

Question at headquarters,

the millen brothers steadfastly declared

their innocence of the robbery.

Policeman said Merton, Mill and Young Wife

had not been present at the holdup

but was a witness to the burning of an automobile

which figured in the robbery.

It was through the automobile's battery,

which was not destroyed by fire,

that the police picked up the trail

which led to the arrest of the brothers.

Irving Millen, in whose name the battery was registered,

explained police said that he was walking in Needham

the day of the robbery.

When he saw a man he knew only his Joe

trying to fix his automobile

which was the same make as the one burned.

Being an automobile mechanic Irving said,

he went over to help Joe

and found that the battery was at fault.

In order to help Joe Irving said,

he took the battery out

and substituted that from his own car.

A short time later,

police said he told them.

A man unknown to him handed him a package

containing some money

and warned him to get out of town

because police were looking for him.

He gave the money to Merton, he said.

Police quoted Merton as saying

that after Irving gave him the money,

a man warned him to get out of town

where he would be taken for a ride.

The brothers then decided to come to New York,

they said.

Dedham, Massachusetts, February 26th, 1934.

Abraham Faber, 24, a young employer

of the brother's Merton and Irving Mellon

was charged with murder while he sat

closeted with the district attorney here.

Faber had been arrested first.

He was taken into custody early yesterday afternoon

in Boston and immediately taken

to the state police headquarters at the state house.

Developments came quickly after his arrest.

The Mellon party was taken into custody

at a New York hotel and a raid on a garage

in the doorchester section of Boston

yielded a large quantity of arms and ammunition.

This supply had been stolen by gunmen

who raided a state police exhibit

in a public hall in Boston

a few days before the need of robbery.

Descriptions of the automobile cause

chief godly a lot of trouble.

He secured the number of every

Packard automobile in the state and eliminated all

except those which had spare tires in the rear.

All the Fitchbird witnesses were sure

such a car was used.

Faber said the car burned in Norwood

was the same one used here in Lynn and Needham.

That car had spare tires on the running boards

and a trunk rack in the rear.

Faber first came under police observation

when the battery was traced to Milan.

Police knew Milan worked for Faber

in question Faber in regard to Milan's habits and haunts.

Faber became nervous under constant and frequent questioning

and then began to visit the state house

without being asked to volunteer

a peculiar and unusual information.

February 28th, 1934.

Chief godly secured a complete

and detailed confession from Faber.

An MIT graduate and reserve army officer,

he told state police and other policemen

a story of wholesale murders, dastardly plots,

crime campaign and robberies

that rivaled the wildest imagination

of the most sensational movie or novel.

The story told by Mr. Faber was almost unbelievable

but the police were able to check on his statements

and verify the truth of even the wildest detail.

Chief godly did not try to talk to Faber Monday night

when state, Lynn, need him and other officers

descended on the deadham jail

and then never to get him to talk.

He waited until five o'clock yesterday morning

and then chatted with Faber.

In a few minutes, the alleged leader of the gang

began to talk and before he finished,

the chief had a long, complete and astounding statement.

Boston, Massachusetts, March 2nd,

1934.

Norma Millen, a beautiful minister's daughter,

19-year-old bride of Merton Millen,

was arrested here tonight as an accessory

in the Needham Trust Company murder

which cost the lives of two policemen.

She was placed under arrest at the state house

where for hours state police had grilled her

in connection with the machine gun slangs

with which the Millen Faber gang is charged.

She previously had told a story which implicated her husband,

his brother Irving, and their pal aid Faber in the murders.

Tonight, it was her turn to speak for herself.

Following her arrest, she was taken to deadham jail.

Tomorrow, she will be brought into deadham court

and arraigned on the murder charge.

Murder indictments have already been returned

against the Millens in Faber for a series of crimes.

Boston, Massachusetts, March 6th, 1934.

Were it from the pen of a writer of lurid crime fiction,

the story of the crime wave that swept over New England,

which was the work of the so-called Millen gang

would be criticized as being too full of improbabilities.

The center of the spotlight at the moment

is Norma Brighton Millen, 19-year-old bride of Merton Millen

who, with his brother Irving and Abraham Faber,

is held charged with the bank robbery at Needham,

Massachusetts, in which two policemen

were machine gunned to death.

The Millen brothers and the young bride,

who is the daughter of an attic, Massachusetts clergyman,

were arrested in New York following a gun battle

with police in a hotel lobby.

Faber was arrested later near his home plate.

Soon after his arrest, Rose Neller of Dorchester,

Massachusetts, presented herself to police

to return some of the loot taken from the Needham bank.

She said she was Faber's fiance and was innocent

of any wrongdoing, but she, too, was placed behind bars.

By far, the most interesting of the group of alleged bandits

is Abraham Faber, graduate of the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology and Phi Beta Kappa.

Although regarded as the most intelligent of the suspects,

Faber is the least surest.

It was his snarled confession that implicated Norma Millen

as an actual participant in the gang's crimes

after she had been released into the custody of her father

as a material witness.

The result was that Mrs. Millen was re-arrested

and is now charged with being an accessory to robbery

and murder.

Apparently, the state believes it can secure convictions

without her aid.

And contrast to Faber's attitude is that of Irving Millen,

brother-in-law of the young bride.

Even after he had learned that the girl

was willing to turn state's evidence against him

and his brother, Millen persisted in his declaration

that Norma had nothing to do with it.

He also declared himself willing to take any punishment,

only if Norma is left out of it.

But despite the chivalrous assertions of Millen,

police say they have evidence that the young

and beautiful Mrs. Millen was really the brains of the gang

and that her husband, Merton, reputed leader of the mob,

hasn't enough intelligence to come in and out of the rain.

Following the millen roundup, police investigations

revealed the gang had been well-equipped

for the campaign of crime they allegedly intended to wage.

In various hideouts in and around their Massachusetts headquarters

and even as far afield as Washington, DC,

quantities of criminal equipment were brought to light.

There were machine guns, rifles, pistols,

some of which had been treated in such a manner

that ballistic experts would be unable to identify bullets fired

from them, gas masks and gas bombs,

house breaking and safe wrecking tools, and hand grenades.

Despite the serious predicament in which his daughter finds herself,

her father, the Reverend Norman Brighton,

who is called the wealthiest churchman in America,

retains implicit faith in her.

He never approved of the girl's marriage to Millen,

but he said he did not want to stand in the way of her happiness.

Two women who are innocent victims are Mrs. Margaret Brighton,

Norma's mother, divorced from her father,

and Mrs. Norman Brighton, her stepmother.

All assert they will stand by the girl to the last ditch.

Datum, Massachusetts, March 13, 1934.

Norma Millen, whose soft-voiced, soft-eyed beauty and innocence,

caused her confessed gangster bridegroom to name her kitten,

is held in Datum jail on three charges

of helping her handsome mate, Merton Millen,

commit the chain of crimes to which police say he has confessed.

Prison bars, grillings,

but beautiful 19-year-old Norma,

the cultivated daughter of the Reverend Norman Brighton of East Natic,

whose violet eyes are wide and tearless,

baffles authorities with her poise, her happy smile,

her continual sweet voice message.

Tell, Mert, I love him, that nothing else matters,

that prison bars cannot make me forget

all the happy times we have had together.

Norma said she never was in love

until she met Merton 31, well-educated and nice-mannered.

A few weeks after Norma had met Merton,

she ran away and married him.

She left her minister father's home for him

and a brief period of madness.

Merton and his brother Irving and their chum Abe Faber,

graduate engineer, have confessed to having organized a gang,

which they hoped would master an empire of crime,

and police say, although the brothers later denied

their confession.

The child woman who sat through long evenings

in her father's study reading the classics

and longing for a life of excitement and adventure,

whose head was bowed often in prayer

through the religious teachings of her parents,

is as mysterious as she is beautiful.

Try to analyze this starry-eyed bride,

her enduring love for this man.

She says, I love my husband,

I know he loves me,

why he could have found lots of other girls to love,

and if he had wanted someone to help him

in all these dreadful things,

he would have gone out and married some sophisticated girl.

But Abe Faber, who stalks in the same prison

where Norma is held, said Norma was the lookout

for the gang.

There is a child like sweetness and innocence about Norma,

when confronted with Faber's accusation, she said,

that isn't true about me.

When the eyes of her grief stricken father rests on her,

she says, Daddy, I'm sorry I hurt you

when I ran away and married Mert,

but Dad, please try to understand how much I love him.

Norma has talked long and earnestly to me.

She has told me things very near her heart.

I have tried to look into the smiling clear depths

of her violet eyes and understand,

see the way she sees.

The man who promised to love and cherish her,

the man who wooed her from peace and security,

Mert and Millen, has caused her

by his alleged confessed yearning for thrills

to be locked in jail.

Yet, even when Norma mentions Mert and's name,

her lips tremble and her eyes shine brighter.

Is she a shy, soft voice child,

or is she the clever, scheming lookout,

which Faber calls her?

When Rose Neller, the pretty girl to whom Faber was engaged,

was found to have in the parcels Abed given her,

not to be opened until our wedding in June,

thousands of dollars, which police say

had been stolen in a bank robbery,

when Rose's plight reached Norma's ears, Norma said,

Oh, Rose and I used to go to the movies

when Mert and Annabee and Irving said

they had business to attend to.

We never knew what they were doing.

They would meet us later, and sometimes we would go dance.

I never knew what was in the parcels Abed Faber used to give Rose.

She often told me he gave her parcels.

She was thrilled that he gave them to her.

But I just suppose that she did, that they contained gifts.

Certainly not money.

Datum Massachusetts, April 30th, 1934.

As the state drew toward the end of its case today,

against Merton and Irving Millen and Abe Faber,

it seemed probable that 19-year-old Norma Millen,

pretty bride of Merton,

would appear only as a ghost witness for the defense.

Over the weekend, Norma, jailed on the charge

of being an accessory after the fact,

submitted hysterically to an examination by an alienist

for the defense.

She bared the details of her romance and married life

with the 24-year-old youth identified by witnesses

as handling the machine gun,

which took the lives of two policemen

during a hold-up of the Needham Trust Company.

Norma, daughter of a minister,

analyzing her husband's actions since she alloped with him

after meeting him in a nan-tucket dance hall

until his arrest in a New York hotel.

The story told by Norma will be translated

from the witness stand for the defense

by the psychiatrist who listened to her.

He is Dr. Max Bennett of Boston.

It is unlikely that Norma will take the witness stand herself

until she is scheduled to go into court on her own behalf.

She told me definitely she does not want to be a witness

at the Millen Faber trial, said George Douglas, her counsel.

While Norma, with her attorney objecting frequently

to certain questions, was undergoing examination

by the psychiatrist,

the Millen brothers and Faber were being examined

by three other alienists.

The defense claims that all three defendants are insane.

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The past is present.

Gatam Massachusetts, June 25, 1934.

Norma Brighton-Millen,

looking like a chastened schoolgirl.

Today told the world of her only romance.

A romance that ended in Traveille.

Red-eyed and flushed of cheek,

the 19-year-old daughter of a former minister

took the stand in her own defense

and datum superior court,

where she is on trial,

charged with being an accessory after the fact

of robbery and murder.

Her husband, Merton-Millen,

his brother Irving and Abraham Faber,

were convicted of murder in the first degree

in connection with the slaying of a policeman

in the robbery of the Needham Trust Company.

Two policemen fell in that robbery,

and Norma is accused of having guilty knowledge

of their slaying as well as of the robbery.

Norma said that after a dispute with her father,

she left home and that Merton,

who was courting her at the time,

loaned her money and got her a room in Boston

where she lived alone until they were married.

She told of meeting him in a nantasket beach dance hall,

how he took her home that night,

and how he took her driving on following days.

She brought out that she followed his suggestions

most of the time.

Every seat in the courtroom was filled

and hundreds clamored for admittance on the outside

as the slim 19-year-old bride of a convicted slayer

slowly walked to the stand.

She was dressed in the blue polka dot dress

she had worn ever since the trial opened.

Her pretty face showed signs of strain.

As she awaited the opening of court,

seated in a chair in the center of the courtroom,

she wept intermittently.

A matrix sat beside her

and a deputy sheriff stood behind her chair.

A breeze blowing in through open windows

brought partial relief to the stuffy courtroom.

On a bench directly behind Norma,

sat her father Norman Brighton,

his second wife Mrs. Muriel Brighton

and Norma's brother Clarence.

Inside the bar enclosure sat Mrs. Margaret Smith Brighton,

Norma's mother.

A look of fear crept into Norma's eyes

as the jury filed in.

The matron handed her smelling salts.

Just before she took the stand,

Judge Nelson P. Brown told the packed courtroom

that court was convened for serious business

and that it was no social event.

He said the courtroom would be cleared

if any demonstration occurred.

As Norma took the stand, she started to sob.

Asked her name.

She could scarcely talk through her choked throat.

George A. Douglas, her attorney,

asked her to talk louder,

but she seemed unable to do so.

She said she was born in Des Moines, Iowa

and came east when she was five.

Norma said she was kept back in the fifth grade in school

and that two summers she was obliged to study

so that she might advance to the next grade

when she returned to school in the fall.

Norma looked toward the floor as she testified,

her head now and then wagged

as if she was very tired.

She told of living in Natic with her father.

Only one other girl lived nearby.

She said she worked in a tea room

and Hampton Beach, New Hampshire,

but that she was discharged in two weeks

because she couldn't keep the money straight.

She denied she was discharged for dishonesty.

District Attorney Edmund R. doing continually asked her

that she speak louder.

Douglas said she is doing the best she can, Mr. Doing.

Well, she studied dramatics, said the prosecutor.

Douglas asked that this be stricken from the records.

It was, and then he asked Norma,

did you ever study dramatics?

Answer, no.

Turning to doing, Douglas said curtly,

the answer is no, Mr. Doing.

The witness told of meeting Merton Mullen at a nantasket beach.

She said that up to that time she never drank

or smoked in her life.

She said she met Merton at a dance hall at nantasket.

She said that after she had told Merton she lived in Natic,

he told her he had seen her there.

Question, did he take you home?

Answer, yes.

Question, how did he treat you?

Answer, nice.

Norma seemed to gain strength as the questioning progressed.

Her eyes brightened, some of the flush left her cheeks,

and she now and then glanced up as she answered

the questions of her attorney.

Her attorney phrased his questions

so that it was seldom that her answer was any more than yes or no.

Norma said that after she left her father,

she drove by his place of business several times,

trying to get up the courage to go in and see him.

Norma said that when she asked her mother's advice

about getting married to Merton,

her mother said, quote,

it was the best thing for me to do, unquote.

Since she borrowed money from him,

it was the best thing to do.

She quoted her mother as saying

that her writing around in Merton's car looked bad.

She said that she did not want to marry Merton at the time.

She said he proposed to her twice.

Norma said that Rose Neller,

sweetheart of Abraham Faber,

had tried unsuccessfully to find work for her.

Norma said that on November 12, 1933,

Merton came to her with Miss Neller in favor

and suggested that they go off and get married.

She said that she didn't want to get married,

but that she liked Merton and didn't know what else to do.

She said Merton told her he was in the radio business.

The witness said that about two weeks before they were married,

Merton bought her an engagement ring.

Norma said she went to New York sometime previous to her marriage

with $50 that Merton had given her.

She said that she told Merton

she wanted to buy some things for their apartment,

but that in reality,

she wanted to think it over alone.

Were you then trying to get away

from Merton Millen, Douglas asked?

Yes, replied Norma.

Did he come after you?

Yes.

The reference seemed to make her grow weak.

She turned appealingly to Judge Brown and said something.

He then called for a recess.

When court reconvened,

Norma was given a chair on the witness stand.

Norma said that when she went to New York,

Merton followed her and asked her to, quote, come back

because he didn't want me to be there alone, unquote.

They returned.

She said.

She said her mother had bought her a new wedding dress,

but that she did not wear it on the day they were married.

She said it was after Christmas

when Merton, quote, started not being nice, unquote.

She said he didn't seem pleased to see her brother clearance

when the latter came to visit them.

One day after Christmas,

he hadn't been talking to me nearly all day.

He brought me some psychology books

and told me to read them.

He told me I was too dumb to live, she said.

She was crying.

One day he dragged me into the bathroom by the hair, she said.

Then he refused to let me drive anymore.

She said he got more inconsiderate of her as days went by.

He talked little, she said, got sullen and glared at her a lot.

Question, were you afraid of him then?

Answer.

Yes.

Douglas was stressing the element of fear in their relations.

There was one time he was talking about the marriage duties,

Norma said, and he told me I was to love, honor, and obey.

I said they didn't obey anymore, but he said, oh yes, you do.

She said he glared at her as he said it.

She said she did not go to her father or her mother

and tell them of her troubles because she did not think

they would want to hear them.

She said she told Mrs. Joseph Millen, mother of Merton,

that she and Merton were not getting along together

and that she wanted to leave him.

She said Mrs. Millen, quote, did not seem to take me seriously.

Unquote.

Norma said that on the night the car used in the robbery

was burned in an isolated section of Norwood.

She followed her husband, Irving, in favor,

who were riding in the car to be burned.

She was driving a smaller machine.

She said she had become lost, but that she finally picked up

the trio and then moved over in the seat

while Merton drove them home.

She said that she had been told that, quote,

bandits who had been mixed up in the Needham job

have been after Irving to burn the car, unquote.

She said she believed it.

She testified that once she walked into a room

and she heard Merton say duck that machine gun

and that Irving pushed her out of the room.

She said that she saw something that looked like a rifle

on the bed, but that when she asked her husband about it,

he said, quote, mind your own business.

Unquote.

Datum Massachusetts, June 28, 1934.

Norma Millen dawned the somber gray of prison

garb today as the convicted accessory

to the machine gun murders of two policemen.

The polka dot dress she wore during her trial

was put aside for a regulation prison uniform of cotton.

Low-heeled shoes supplanted more dainty slippers.

She was awakened at 7 a.m. for a simple prison breakfast

of which oatmeal with milk was the most important item.

Her first meal since the jury last night

affirmed her guilt was partake enough, but lightly.

Norma faced the possibility of wearing just such garb

and breakfasting as simply for 21 years.

If Judge Nelson P. Brown decides

to impose the maximum prison sentence within his discretion.

There are many alternate sentences open to the justice,

dwindling all the way down to a reformatory sentence,

probation, or a nominal five.

J.L. attendance said Norma cried herself to sleep last night,

but that today she was more composed

and appeared somewhat reconciled to her fate.

During the morning she read and sewed in her cell,

and in the afternoon she was permitted the liberty

of the jail yard for exercise.

There was little likelihood that she would glimpse

her husband, Irving, or Faber,

who are confined in another part of the jail building.

No visitor sought Norma or the three murderers she aided

during the morning hours.

Her father, Norman Brighton, former minister,

was reported ill at his natic home as a result of the verdict.

The Norfolk County jury had deliberated more than seven hours

before it sent word that it had reached a decision.

Judge Brown was summoned in Norma at the gray stone jail

that rises above the trees not far away,

made ready to hear her fate.

The dimly lit courtroom,

foul of air and humming with excitement was crowded.

Outside a crowd of more than 3,000 persons

strained at ropes strung along the rear entrance

to the building.

Norma came on the arm of the deputy.

Her pretty face often stained with tears during her trial

was dry, resolute.

In her hazel eyes, there seemed a trace of hope.

The jury filed in, then the judge.

The clerk arose, gentlemen, have you reached a verdict?

A hush as though the room suddenly became empty,

fell over the scene.

We have, said Arthur J. Estes, Foreman.

What do you say, Mr. Foreman,

is the defendant guilty or not guilty?

Guilty.

The word seemed to unleash a torrent of emotion.

Grones startled cries swept across the courthouse.

Interspersed were sounds of approval.

Norma, standing erect, stared straight ahead.

It seemed that she had exhausted her capacity for dismay,

that the past four months of incarceration

culminated by her grueling trial had drained her completely

of emotion.

Deputies rushed forward to support her,

but their help was not needed.

She was unmoved, even as her husband had been,

when he heard the sentence that probably meant death

three weeks ago.

If Norma was listening at that moment,

she could have heard the soft sobbing of her brother,

who sat with her bowed father just in back of her,

and the size of her mother divorced from her father,

who sat in the bar enclosure.

No sentence was pronounced, and court was adjourned swiftly.

She will come again before the bar next fall,

to hear the sentence.

Norma walked from the courtroom,

and the courthouse maintaining her composure.

She even tried to force a smile on her wand unruged lips,

as cameras flashed in the moonless night at the front entrance.

Back to the jail she went,

back under the same roof with her husband

that she could not ask for comfort.

Boston, Massachusetts, June 7th, 1935.

The millen-favor trio of machine gun killers,

the brothers Merton and Irving Millen,

and Abraham Faber met swift death in the electric chair

at the Massachusetts State Prison early today,

for the murder of policemen Forbes McLeod

in the hold-up of Needham, Massachusetts Trust Company,

on February 2, 1934.

As clocks on nearby buildings told the hour of midnight,

guards led the leader of the gang,

Merton Millen, 25, from his cell,

13 paces from the electric chair.

He was strapped quickly to the chair.

The current applied at 12.05 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time,

and at 12.10.03 a.m. was officially pronounced dead.

Merton's brother Irving, 21, was the next to die.

The only one of the trio to make a final statement

in the electrocution chamber was Irving,

who said,

I salute my brother Merton.

He took his seat in the chair

and the brilliantly-lighted death chamber at 12.13 a.m.

and was pronounced dead at 12.31 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

The last of the trio, whose brief but deadly career

of crime horrified the East, was Abraham Faber, 25,

who only a few years ago was graduated with honors

from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Faber walked into the death chamber

wearing his prison hat, a striped cloth cap,

such as his worn by mechanics.

The hat was hung above the electric chair

after he had been seated and strapped in it,

and it was left there until he had been pronounced dead.

Earlier in the day, Rabbi Moses L. Cedar,

Jewish chaplain at the prison,

told prison authorities that Faber wished to wear a head

covering to his death in keeping with a ritual

of the Jewish faith.

Merton shook hands with Irving in favor

as he began the start of his last walk

and Irving similarly bade farewell to Faber

when he followed his brother, the rabbi said.

Merton's death automatically removed legal restrictions

imposed upon his 20-year-old bride, Norma Brighton-Millen,

now serving an indeterminate sentence in Deadham Jail,

as an accessory.

The killing of a policeman, Forbes McLeod,

during the robbery of a suburban bank in February 1934,

was the crime for which they paid the penalty,

but against them are charged three killings

for which they were never called to answer in court.

Deadham, Massachusetts, August 21st, 1935.

Mrs. Norma Brighton-Millen,

attractive 20-year-old widow of an executed robber

and killer, and an accessory to his crimes,

was released from Deadham Jail today.

She was whizzed out of sight and an auto

brought to the prison by her father, Norman Brighton,

former Natick, Massachusetts clergyman, and another man.

She had served a one-year sentence,

less 36 days given for good behavior,

for her part in the hold-up killing,

for which her husband, Merton, his brother Irving,

and Abraham Faber, paid with their lives

in the electric chair, June 7th last.

Testimony was given that Mrs. Millen

accompanied her husband in the hold-up.

Her destination was a mystery.

That was preacher's baby girl, slash gangster's wife,

the trials and travails of Norma Brighton-Millen.

A year after her release,

while studying at a beauty college in Greenwich Village,

Norma met and married a jazz musician from Boston.

She stepped into the spotlight for a brief moment in 1939,

when she told her story to a newspaper syndicate

to earn a little extra money

to support her musician husband and infant son.

Then she faded into obscurity, music by Chuck Wiggins.

This is True Crime Historian Richard O'Jones

signing off for now.

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing,

another checkered flag for the books,

time to celebrate with Chamba.

Jump in at chambacasino.com.

Let's Chamba.

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