Woman Teacher Was With West on Evening Before Disappearance

A Brookline schoolteacher, Miss Jean Law, informed the CRIMSON last night that the spent most of Thursday, October 24, with Thomas H. West, Jr. '50, the day before he vanished from sight, but that neither the regular police not the two private detectives engaged by Mr. Thomas H. West Sr. to find his missing Freshman son have contacted her yet.

Although according to Miss Law the pair ate dinner Thursday at the family home in Hopedale, neither of West's parents saw them at this time. His visit, however, was corroborated by Thomas F. Mallory, chief of the Hopedale police force, who held a brief conversation with the youth.

She had seen West "frequently" during the last week of his attendance at the University, Miss Law asserted, and she gave assurance that "his behavior was always normal." The first indication she had of his disappearance, she said, was when he failed to call her the day he dropped from sight, as he had promised to do the previous evening.

"Saturday we were supposed to attend the Holy Cross game together," Miss Law added, "and when he didn't show up I knew something was wrong."

M.T. Christy, the manager of the New England Division of the Burns Agency, and Ralph E. Owen, who is taking charge of the case for Mr. West Sr., were checking leads with West's roommates in Winthrop House yesterday afternoon.

Two new tips have been received by his office since the Montreal lead was proven false, Christy stated. One located West in Grafton, and another in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Residents of a lonely dwelling in Grafton reported a stranger who was "a dead ringer for West" at the kitchen water tap last Tuesday. They said he fled on discovery. The timing of the identification in Woonsocket made it possible for the two to be the same man, Christy observed.

A possible break in the search for "the little private bar," West's avowed destination in his farewell note to his roommates, emerged from Christy's interrogations. He established that West was often seen in Boraschi's Cafe at 23 Corning Street. Owen declared his intention to investigate there personally.

From facts furnished by Benjamin Draper, an executive of the textile company which West's father runs, both men agreed that amnesia might be indicated. The medical report showing that West has suffered three serious concessions also give weight to this theory, they thought