Two years ago in New York there were two two fatalities involving Freemasons. The first was the accidental shooting of one Freemason by another. A report of that tragedy is the first article below. The second article concerned the murder of a Freemason by someone trying to steal his Masonic ring. Both accounts of these incidents are taken from the original sources (to which due acknowledgement is made) in the United States. One of these stories appeared the in Scottish newspapers, local and national, over a period of one week and one was not reported at all. After reading both stories can you guess which one featured in Scottish newspapers and which one did not? 

Deadly Shooting Puts Spotlight on Masons

by Frank Eltman
Associated Press
Posted on Saturday, 13th March 2004

PATCHOGUE, N.Y. - They still greet each other with secret handshakes and use rituals that date to the Middle Ages. But members of the Free and Accepted Masons insist that none of their sanctioned rites has any connection to the death of a man who was shot during an initiation.

"It has nothing to do with what we're about," insisted Richard Fletcher, executive secretary of the Masonic
Information Center based in Silver Springs, Md.

William James, a father of five, was shot in the face Monday night at the Southside Masonic Lodge during an initiation rite into a Masons social group called Fellow Craft.

Fletcher said the shooting "has to be put into context" and should not be used to disparage the roughly 1.5 million Masons nationwide, who he said participate in many charitable activities.

"It was an accident that happened," he said. "You can't blame an entire fraternity that had nothing to do with it. If this were part of some common everyday occurrence that would be one thing. It isn't."

The man accused of shooting James is Albert Eid, a 76-year-old retiree who police say mistakenly pulled a loaded .32-caliber handgun from his left pants pocket instead of a .22-caliber pistol with blanks that was in his right pocket.

Police called the shooting "completely accidental," but Eid was charged with second-degree manslaughter. He pleaded innocent and bail was set at $2,500.

Detectives said James, 47, of Medford, was seated in a chair and a small platform holding several metal cans was placed near his head.

Eid stood approximately 20 feet away holding a gun and a third person stood out of James' view holding a stick.

When the gun was fired, the man with the stick was supposed to knock the cans off the platform to make the inductee think they had been struck by a real bullet.

Police said the stunt was designed to create "a state of anxiety" for inductees, and had been used in Patchogue since at least the 1930s. Police also found a guillotine, rat traps, and a board used in a "walking the plank" exercise.

"I have been a Freemason for 47 years and I have never, in that entire time, heard of anything so off the wall," said Fletcher. "That's what makes this so difficult."

"I have never heard of anything like that," agreed Len Henderson, a 30-year member of a lodge in Portsmouth, N.H. "I was extremely upset to think people would think this had anything to do with a legitimate Masonic initiation."

Eid, described by police as "quite stunned and ... distraught," has not said publicly why he took a loaded weapon to the ceremony. Authorities said he had held a gun license since 1951.

Carl Fitje, grand master of the New York State Freemasons, said in a statement that guns have no role in any sanctioned ceremonies.

"The only secrets we really have anymore are a few handshakes," Fitje, a retired New York police detective, said in an interview with The Associated Press last year.

There are three levels of entry into the organization: apprentice, fellow craft and master Mason. Although the Patchogue group used the name "Fellow Craft" for its social group, it is unrelated to the second-degree moniker officially sanctioned by the Masons, said Robert Leonard, a spokesman for the New York State Freemasons.

The group's rituals are rooted in the traditions of the stone mason guilds of the late Middle Ages, when master craftsmen traveled Europe building cathedrals and castles. The use of handshakes and passwords helped identify a person as a qualified mason, skilled in using tools such as the square and compass.

"You heard of the expression `giving someone the third degree?'" said Steven Bullock, an author of several books about Freemasons and a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. "That's where it comes from."

"What they do is sort of like participatory theater," Bullock said of Masonic initiations. Inductees are "put in awkward, odd position. ... They're supposed to feel strange, feel some measure of uncertainty, if not precisely fear."

Bullock and others said it would be unfair to liken the ceremony to hazing.

"There are readings from the Bible, and there's talk of the building tools having moral meanings," he said. "The square represents being upright and doing the right thing. The compass is seen as keeping members within moral bounds."

ON THE NET
New York Freemasons: http://www.nymasons.org/

Stabbed for his gold ring

Kerry Burke and Jonathan Lemire
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Saturday, 1st May 2004

An elderly Harlem man was butchered for refusing to hand over his gold Masonic ring to a parolee who lived upstairs, police said yesterday.

The killer bashed William (Jack) Willis, 61, over the head with a baseball bat and an ax handle, stabbed him twice in the torso and cut his throat, police said. Willis was found lying in a pool of blood in his third-floor apartment on Eighth Ave. Thursday afternoon.

"I'm in shock. It's tragic, terrible," said Lillie Daniel, 41, Willis' longtime girlfriend. "The man who did this should be put away and stay there."

Detectives found James Wilson, 45, who lives three floors above Willis, in the victim's apartment with blood on his sweater - but he initially told them he had been trying to help his friend, a law enforcement source said.

After intensive questioning, however, Wilson admitted to trying to rob Willis of the ring and killing him when the older man resisted, the source said.

"[Willis] didn't let anyone take his property," said Daniel, who added that the victim was very proud of his ring. "He was a Mason for years, going all the way back to the '60s."

Willis, a retired Sanitation Department worker, was a popular figure in the Drew Hamilton Houses, where he worked on tenant patrol five nights a week and frequently hosted parties in his apartment.

He also was a skilled amateur auto mechanic who freely offered his services to neighbors, friends said.

"He was a very nice person. Whatever you needed, he was there," said Alfreda Richardson, 50, a friend of Willis' for decades.

"He was the car mechanic for the neighborhood and helped out no matter what."

The suspect was on parole and had been arrested seven previous times on charges that included robbery and drugs, the source said.

He was charged with second-degree murder, which provided a measure of relief to Willis' family.

"It's not easy. We're hurt," said Willis' cousin Sammy Keys, 53. "The main thing is that they got the guy who did this."

New York Daily News

Two tragic stories. One was an accident and the other a murder. One ran in Scottish newspapers for seven days and the other was never publicised. Have you decided which one appeared in the press?

Whilst these events were terrible for all concerned - the individuals, their family and friends, accidents and murders are, very sadly, not unusual. In that light it is curious as to why the Scottish press would find that one of the two tragedies, in another country, received so many column inches whilst the other received none.

The Grand Lodge of Scotland extends its condolences to all concerned.