Nation: Death No. 3

The way San Francisco's Dow Wilson saw it, leaders of the Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers were more interested in lucre than lacquer. As secretary of San Francisco Local 4, the brotherhood's largest, Wilson waged a tireless battle against union officials' chicanery, citing as one instance a union-employer welfare fund in Sacramento that he claimed had been mishandled. Wilson was shot to death for his pains April 5. This month Lloyd Green, another crusading official of the same union, met the same fate. After the arrest (TIME, May 20) of five murder suspects—two of whom had been fund trustees, another its auditor—authorities understandably started taking a closer look at the disputed $500,000 welfare account.

The fund's administrator, Sture Youngren, 57, at first insisted: "There has been no till tapping that I can see." Last week, however, Youngren, a Sacramento insurance executive, told the district attorney's office that he and two of the men indicted for conspiring to murder Wilson had in fact tapped the till of $76,000. U.S. Labor Department investigators promptly made an appointment to meet Youngren at his office that night for further questioning. When they showed up, the office was dark. They found Youngren's body in a rest room, a bullet wound in the head, a .45-cal. pistol on the floor. Near by were a will and a note Youngren had scrawled to his wife: "I know this is the coward's way out, but I'm going to take it."