CROOKED CROOKS IN PRISON
What brilliant minds are sometimes confined within prison walls! And how
they work and fret and stew from morning till night and frequently from
night till morning in an effort to “beat the prison.” Such men soon put
certain kinds of machinery in operation which might aid their freedom,
but when the authorities find it out they clip their wings, and their
good conduct marks disappear.
A few years ago an old crook tried to get out of the old Tombs by
digging through the wall of his cell. After he had made the “hole” he
found to his surprise that it would land him in the warden’s office. A
man named Smith escaped from Blackwell’s Island in the summer of 1905 by
swimming across the East River. He did not make the attempt till he saw
a schooner coming his way, then he pretended that he had cramps and must
be rescued. It would fill a very large book to tell one-half of the
crooked deeds done in an ordinary prison in one year.
In 1900 a young man was arrested in this city named George E. Shep. In
due time he was indicted for the crime of grand larceny in the second
degree, and sent to Elmira.
Dr. F. W. Robertson was then superintendent of that institution, and was
able after a few interviews to “size up” his boarder. It could not be
denied that Shep was a young fellow of considerable ability, but all who
knew him believed that he needed “watching.”
Dr. Robertson saw that he was an expert bookkeeper and could handle both
the pen and typewriter with amazing agility. As he showed unusual
brightness and precocity he was made assistant bookkeeper in the
Clothing Department under Officer Weinberg. In the summer of 1901 Shep
came to the conclusion that he had better abandon the seclusive
privileges of Elmira and seek “fresh fields and pastures new” in some
more congenial climate where the restraints of prison life were not so
oppressive and where he would have room for the development and display
of his mental powers.
When Shep found that he would be compelled to live in the Reformatory
longer than he thought necessary, he very cautiously put out “feelers”
to see if money could help him to freedom. As we read over the
ramifications of his correspondence and follow the unraveling of his
deeply laid schemes, we are forced to believe that some person or
persons in the institution must have given him encouragement. From this
time on, Shep, who possessed the luxury of a cool, calculating head, set
himself to work by a well laid scheme to secure his liberty.
Shep must have had a fertile brain. Whether the information was sent him
or not we do not know, at any rate he knew that there was a large
corporation in Baltimore, known as the Shep Knitting Mill Company. As he
had access to the Prison Printing Office he had letter heads struck off
with the name and address of the mill. After this he wrote typewritten
letters to the chairman of the Board of Trade, of Spencer, Mass.,
offering to build a knitting mill in that New England city, on which he
proposed to spend $14,000, provided the citizens would give a site and a
bonus of $2,500. The correspondence between Shep and Spencer Board of
Trade was voluminous.
Shep had also written to a Philadelphia firm who promised to furnish the
machinery and he was able to have an architect and a representative of
the machinery firm meet in Spencer and look over the site for the new
mill—all of which impressed the citizens of Spencer with the “realism”
of the scheme. By December, 1901, the Spencer Board of Trade had raised
the necessary bonus of $2,500 to send to Shep, as soon as the details
were arranged, but alas, the whole project had no foundation whatever
except in the fertile brain of Shep, the Elmira convict!
About this time Dr. Robertson, the superintendent, was making herculean
efforts to stop the importation of tobacco into the Reformatory. Some
person was smuggling the contraband, and the authorities set themselves
to find out who it was. One of the first to be suspected was Officer
Weinberg, who was instructor in the tailoring department. One evening
after Weinberg had gone for the day, Dr. Robertson and some of his
associates raided Weinberg’s rooms and captured some tobacco and many
letters that came through the mails addressed to Shep. The
correspondence between Shep and the Spencer Board of Trade showed
clearly that for months this convict had been “dickering” to secure from
them by fraud the sum of $2,500. During all this time Shep’s mail had
been clandestinely brought into the Reformatory without the knowledge of
the Superintendent and in violation of the rules. Officer Weinberg was
at once suspected and a watch put upon his movements. Weinberg’s letter
box in the Elmira post office was also watched by detectives, for mail
addressed to Shep. On January 2nd, 1902, a letter reached Elmira by the
morning mail addressed to George E. Shep, Esq., Elmira, N. Y. In the
afternoon Officer Weinberg came to the post office, looked all around to
see that no one was looking, secured the letter from the clerk, put it
carefully in his inside pocket and departed. At that time, Dr.
Robertson, the superintendent, had a detective in the post office
concealed from public view, who saw all of Weinberg’s movements from the
time he came into the office till he carried the letter away. That
afternoon he reported the matter to Dr. Robertson, who awaited further
developments.
Next morning at exactly six o’clock Officer Weinberg reported at the
Reformatory, as was his usual custom, signed the register, and then went
to breakfast. Afterwards Weinberg was called into the front office,
where he was closeted with Dr. Robertson and several of the officers for
two hours; he was asked if he had been in the habit of carrying tobacco
and mail matter into the Reformatory against the rules, all of which he
denied. Then he was asked to surrender the letter he had received the
day before in the Elmira post office addressed to Shep, which had the
postmark of Spencer, Mass., and which he had then in his pocket.
Weinberg finally broke down and surrendered the letter. This letter was
from the chairman of the Board of Trade of Spencer, Mass., asking for
final instructions as to how the bonus money should be sent to Shep and
closing the bargain for the bogus knitting mill.
While Weinberg was undergoing a rigid examination at the Reformatory the
police searched his rooms in Elmira and found more letters and a suit of
clothes belonging to the Reformatory. He was then placed under arrest
charged with petit larceny. Further investigation revealed the fact that
no less than two hundred letters for Shep had been brought into the
Reformatory in the course of six months. Some of the letters showed that
Shep had secured a firm of architects in Worcester, Massachusetts, to
prepare plans for the new $14,000 building and that Weinberg was to be
general manager. Arrangements were also made with a Machine Company, of
Philadelphia, to furnish the plant with several thousand dollars worth
of new machinery.
About the same time a long article appeared in the Spencer Herald, on
the new Shep Knitting Mills, so soon to be operated in that city, and
congratulating the city fathers on the success of their negotiations,
and promising that the city would build new sewers and some of their
enterprising citizens would erect a row of houses and possibly a street
for the mill hands.
After several weeks of investigation the authorities came to the
conclusion that all that convict Shep wanted was the money to bribe some
of the Reformatory guards so as to make good his escape. In working up
his scheme, Shep showed himself to be an expert forger, as he involved
several other persons in his plans by forging their names to his papers,
although they denied all knowledge of it. Great credit is due to Dr.
Robertson, who nipped the scheme just in the nick of time and before the
Spencer people had paid over the money to the noted crook.
Soon afterwards Shep was transferred to Auburn Prison to serve out his
maximum sentence of five years.
Bold Counterfeiters in Auburn Prison
A few years ago the authorities of Auburn Prison were startled by the
discovery that two of their convicts were engaged in the work of
counterfeiting, which is a crime against the United States Government.
The two prisoners who were caught red-handed were Louis Julien and
Adelbert Chapin. They are good mechanics and know how to handle tools.
The curse of our prison system is that those who are sentenced to a term
for hard labor have only child’s play for work, hence it is that many
convicts find that time often hangs heavily on their hands.
Julien and Chapin, the Auburn counterfeiters, were indicted by the
United States Grand Jury at Syracuse, in June, 1904, but were left to
fill out their unexpired sentence before being put on trial for the
crime of counterfeiting.
On June 14th, 1905, Julien and Chapin, after they had finished their
imprisonment in Auburn, were placed on trial in the United States
District Court for the crime of counterfeiting while in prison. As both
were caught “red-handed,” or as they say “dead to rights,” and with the
goods on them, they, on advice of counsel, pleaded guilty and were
sentenced, Chapin to two years in Clinton Prison, and Julien to one year
in the same place.
It may be of interest to know that these convicts worked in the same
shop in Auburn. Their benches joined each other. In their idle moments
they conceived the idea of coining money. It was not difficult to carry
out this plan, even under the eyes of the prison guards. They succeeded
in making a mould for silver dollars and one for nickels; one of the two
men was engaged in work that required the use of molten metal. At the
proper time Chapin had the moulds all ready and Julien at intervals
would carry over the metal in ladles and fill the moulds, until they had
made several hundred dollars worth of money, the guard supposing all the
time that they were doing their regular prison work. The counterfeit
money is said to have been well made and before long much of it placed
in circulation.
Two female friends of the convicts came at intervals to visit them
during each month and carried away pockets full of the spurious coin and
exchanged the same for commodities, which they sent to Julien and
Chapin. When one of the women was arrested for passing bad money she
confessed everything and then a watch was put upon the men in prison,
who were afterwards caught “red-handed.” The astonishing thing is not
how they made counterfeit money, before the eyes of the keepers and
guards, but how they were able to carry pockets full of the “stuff” to
the women in the waiting room.
This is not the first time, however, that counterfeit money was made in
a prison. A few years ago a full set of dies, moulds, etc., were
discovered accidentally by secret service officers of the Government in
the Eastern Prison of Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.
This was one of the biggest finds ever discovered in a prison and it
made a sensation at the time.
Four “cons” were involved in that crime, Hoffman, Smith, Hall and
Ashton. Before they had served their time they were indicted and
afterwards put on trial in Philadelphia for counterfeiting. Smith and
Ashton pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence and have been
living straight ever since. Hoffman and Hall were released on their own
recognizance, but having broken their promise to keep out of crime, were
re-arrested and are now serving time for the crime of counterfeiting.
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