Hanover's Famous May "Murder"

What has happened to college humor? With virtually no sign of it today, has the student prankster (such as he who put Mickey Mouse hands on the face of the Baker Library clock) gone into historical limbo, to be recalled only by college men of an earlier era?

Spring was the season when student spirits soared and the jokester's brain began to spin a plot that had to be clever and neatly executed to deserve the laughs it was intended to produce. One of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on Hanover was a Main Street "murder" in May 1932; in fact, it was a prank within a prank. The story was told in a BostonPost column by the late Bill Cunningham '19, who was at his incomparable best with that kind of subject. Here is his version:

They had another sensational Dartmouth murder in Hanover the other night. The case didn't get to the newspapers, but according to my information, Forrie Branch, the well-known football player, was shot in cold blood back in the phonograph department of Allen's drug store by a wild-eyed fellow student who then fled so precipitately that he all but wrecked the joint.

Branch was dragged into a waiting automobile by Bill Hoffman, the football captain. He was covered with blood and apparently suffering. A lot of the town was up most of the night, the correspondents of the newspapers were up beagling the news ... and then came the dawn.

It seems that Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Branch were sitting in the back end of this hallowed establishment eating strawberry jiggers and listening to Miss Ruth Etting when in walked Danny Degasis, the Nashua Viking who flings the javelin afternoons and a heavy line evenings. Mr. Degasis' blond locks were disarrayed and his eyes wore a cellophane gloss.

"Where's Branch?" he roared as he strode through the tables.

The second show at the Nugget had just ended and the place was filled with young gentlemen who were having a touch of this and that before retiring to their quarters for the evening. At one of the tables sat a couple of ladies. Perhaps it's significant of nothing in particular that they were quite close to the Messrs. Hoffman and Branch.

Spotting Branch, Degasis walked over, whipped out a pistol, pointed it dead at his breast and said, "Now, you dirty rat—"

Hoffman leaped to his feet, made a laudable if ineffectual effort to grapple with Degasis and shouted, "For God's sake, Dan ..."

But he got no further.

"Ker-BLAM," went the gun, and Branch, who had half arisen, slumped back in his chair. The front of his white shirt was all covered with blood. He doubled over with both hands tearing feverishly at the bloodiest spot, and things began to happen forthwith.

The place was bedlam in a moment The women screamed. One account says they fainted. Degasis dropped the gun with a clatter and fled for the back, knocking over a chair and a table and all but felling the thunderstricken students who stood in his way.

Degasis reached the back door with a leap and started a sprint across the alley, but just as he cleared the back door another gun spoke. The bullet apparently fired point blank at his fleeing figure whizzed by his head and struck a wall just beyond.

Phil Sherman, the scribe, chanced to be in the store, and with the characteristic sang froid of a trained newspaper man, he fought his way to the side of the stricken Branch, signalled Hoffman to help him and together they rushed the wounded lad through the front of the store and into Sherman's ancient and asthmatic automobile. The dazed crowd in the store followed them dumbly, saw Sherman leap into the seat and spin the starter. The car was off with a leap in the direction of the hospital.

After that all was a blank.

The whole town had heard the shots and the whole town began to gather. People poured in from the streets and out of the nearby addresses. Eye-witnesses were quickly surrounded and they told the story many times with growing thrills and embellishments. The major facts, however, dove-tailed in all instances. Branch had been sitting with Hoffman, Degasis came in looking wild and completely off his nut. Version varied as to what he said preceding the shooting, but all agreed that he had growled something. Then he whipped out the gun and let poor Forrie have it. All had seen Forrie fall. All had seen the ghastly stain upon his shirt. All had seen Sherman and Hoffman lug him limply through the front door and drive him away.

Where was he now? What had happened? What was it all about?

The telephone up in Dick Hall's House, the college infirmary, began to buzz as fast as the calls could go through. No satisfaction could be had from the information headquarters up there. A delegation of Branch's friends went up to the hospital in person, but the nurses were professionally noncommittal, and the harassed investigators left no wiser than when they arrived.

Some of the gents remembered that this was a newspaper story and so a delegation duly called at the Zeta Psi House, there to rout out "Col." Thompson, the demon college correspondent for a string of metropolitan dailies.

The colonel, like all good newspaper men, was in bed and asleep, and he arose with' the characteristic remark that if somebody had to shoot somebody, why the etc. couldn't he do it in time to catch the midnight editions and before gentlemen had retired for the evening.

Anyhow, they searched high and low without trace of either victim or criminal. The story was that Branch had been whisked to a hospital in Leb and the thing was hushed up to save the college unfavorable publicity. Things quieted for another hour or two and then came another wild flareup around 3 a.m. when the white and apparently haunted Degasis broke into a dorm where some students were asleep, and demanded they hide him because "they" were after him.

Right after him broke in Hoffman and two or three more. They immediately jumped Degasis with wild shouts about "Look out for his gun," and in a free-for-all fight they finally flattened him and dragged him down stairs and into a car, leaving the dormitory in an uproar, and the wild tales flying all over again.

The cold light of dawn developed that it was all just an act. Degasis, Hoffman, Branch and Sherman had rehearsed it all carefully and then pulled it off according to scenario. The blood was mercurochrome Hoffman threw on Branch's shirt as he leaped to his feet pleading with Degasis not to shoot.

The only unrehearsed feature was that mysterious second shot fired at Degasis as he raced through Allen's back door. The "murder gun" was a starter's pistol borrowed from Track Coach Harvey Cohn, and Harvey, that fun-loving fellow, had unbeknownst to Degasis placed a guy at Allen's back door with another blank cartridge to fire at Danny's coat tail as he whizzed past. To make it sound better, Harvey told the firer to throw a stone past Danny's ear to sound like a bullet. Thus, Daniel, racing as per scenario for the Phi Gam bulkhead, thought he really and truly had been shot at by somebody and they do say the time he made between the spot and the neighboring cellar would rate at least a place in the Olympic finals.

And thus, my franz, are May evenings beguiled in some of our establishments for the higher education.

Do we—or don't we—have fun?

ADDENDUM

Two other participants in the hoax, not mentioned by Bill Cunningham, were Howard Chase '35 and Dan Reagan '35, who were seated at the table with Hoffman and Branch when the shooting took place. Reagan had the assignment to chase Degasis out the rear door, and Chase and Hoffman were delegated to lug Branch out the front door into Sherman's car.

Chase recalls: "We raced down Main Street, down Lebanon Street and back to the campus, down Tuck Drive, up West Wheelock Street and into the Phi Gam cellar. There was Degasis holding Harvey Cohn by the throat with Reagan trying to separate them."