[3] He gained national prominence in 1915, when he identified deranged former Harvard German instructor and wife-poisoner Eric Muenter as the dynamite-wielding intruder who had shot J. P. Morgan, Jr. and bombed the US Senate.

[9] The "mild-mannered, bespectacled" [10] Apted also protected students in trouble‍—‌especially those from prominent families‍—‌from publicity;[11][12][8][7] in 1932 the City Council criticized him for refusing to reveal the names of participants in a riot, which had grown from the serenading of Radcliffe women to trash fires and an assault on a police station.

[13][14] In 1933 it was into his hands that the so-called Sacred Cod‍—‌the emblem of the Com­mon­wealth of Mas­sa­chu­setts "codnapped" days earlier from the Mas­sa­chu­setts State House‍—‌was delivered by two young men at a late-night rendezvous, to which he had been directed by a mysterious telephone call.

[20][21] He delivered it some days later to Yale's New Haven, Connecticut, campus, though not before the Lampoon photographed Handsome Dan licking the boots of the John Harvard statue,[22][23] which had been smeared with hamburger.

[34] In an extortion racket smashed in 1938, two "young and good looking" girls ("one being a blonde and the other a redhead") lured their freshman victims to a Brighton, Mas­sa­chu­setts apartment, then demanded "financial assistance" in return for not alleging to Harvard officials that im­pro­pri­e­ties had ensued.

Then there is Leverett Saltonstall, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Benchley, Arthur Holcombe, Joe Kennedy, Archy Davison, and [Harvard President] 'Jim' Conant" [9] (whom Apted once called "a good boy").

[8][7] Scheduled speakers included Mas­sa­chu­setts Governor Leverett Saltonstall, Attorney General Paul A. Dever, Harvard Presidents Conant and (emeritus) A. Lawrence Lowell, as well as a senator, two judges, and the mayor of Cambridge.

[3] It was rumored that Handsome Dan's disappearance was part of a series of tit-for-tat thefts by Harvard and Yale students in alternation,[29] and in November the Lampoon exploited this rumor in a "carefully planned publicity scheme" promoting an upcoming special issue of their magazine: "a series of telegrams ... conveyed the [news] that practically all the magazines had been stolen", with the implication that the robbery was in retaliation for the Handsome Dan theft.

[25] The disappearance of the Harvard Band's giant bass drum, on the eve of the annual Harvard-Yale football game later that month, was similarly rumored to be revenge for Handsome Dan.