ARREST AND CONVICTION OF BILLY LOWE AND GEORGE EBBERLING.--A PIECE OF
QUICK WORK.
Glencoe is a small station on the Missouri Pacific Railway, twenty-nine
miles west of the city of St. Louis. An east bound train which carried
both mail and passengers was boarded on the night of February 21, 1910,
by two men, who climbed on the front end of what is known by railroad
men as the blind baggage, next to the tender of the engine. These men
were unobserved until the train had passed Glencoe station, when they
climbed over the top of the tank to the engine and covered the engineer
and fireman with drawn revolvers. They were both masked with
handkerchiefs tied over the lower portion of their faces, which entirely
concealed their features below the eyes. They wore slouch hats and were
described by the engineer and fireman and other members of the train
crew who saw them--one as a short, stout built man with very black hair;
the other as a tall, square-shouldered fellow with light-brown hair,
and apparently younger than his stout partner. The stout man was
described as having handled and carried his revolver in his left hand,
while his right hand was bandaged and appeared to have been injured. He
also was reported as having acted as chief and to have given all orders,
and to have handled the locomotive as though he was as perfectly
familiar with the work as an experienced locomotive engineer. These men
compelled the engineer to bring the train to a full stop. They then made
the engineer and fireman accompany them back to the rear end of the last
mail car, when the engineer was forced to disconnect the two mail cars
from the rest of the train. Then the engineer and fireman were marched
back to the engine, and after all four men had again entered the cab,
the short man took charge of the engine, and pulled the express and two
mail cars to a point about three miles east of where the rest of the
train had been left with the crew. They stopped at this point on the
main track and began rifling the sealed mail pouches in one of the mail
cars, continuing this for several minutes, cutting open the sealed
pouches and taking therefrom all the registered mail. They finally
concluded that they were consuming too much time, as trains were liable
to approach from the east. They, therefore, seized a number of large
mail pouches filled with registered mail, and, after instructing the
engineer and fireman to back the engine to Glencoe and take up the rest
of the train again, the men left the railroad on foot, each of them
being loaded down with the registered mail pouches, which they had taken
from the car. They hid these mail bags in a stack of corn-shucks in a
cornfield near the bank of the Meramec River. They had previously stolen
a skiff, or rowboat, which they had hidden in a clump of bushes on the
bank of the river near the cornfield. They took this rowboat and made
their way down the Meramec River a few miles, where they left the boat
and made their way overland back to St. Louis.
On the morning of February 22, I happened to be in New York City and
upon picking up a morning paper I read the account of the train robbery
and the description that had been given by the train crew of the
robbers. I immediately telegraphed to the manager of my office in St.
Louis to go and tell Mr. Dixon, of St. Louis, Postoffice Inspector in
charge of the district of Missouri, that I knew who the train robbers
were, and where they could be found, and that I would be in St. Louis
the following Saturday and that I would get the guilty men and turn them
over to him or to his assistants in case he, Mr. Dixon, and his force
had not succeeded in locating and arresting the guilty men before I
returned to St. Louis.
On my return the following Saturday I found Mr. Dixon awaiting me. I
told him that I was satisfied, from the description of the robbers, that
Billy Lowe was the leader in the Glencoe Train Robbery. I told about
having arrested Lowe eleven years before for having taken part, with
others, in the Leads Junction Train Robbery, which had occurred on the
Missouri Pacific Railroad just east and south of Kansas City. He with
the others had held up the train and had blown the express car to pieces
with dynamite. I also told him that I had finally succeeded in obtaining
from Lowe a complete confession as to the part he had taken in the Leads
Robbery, and also the names of his associates in the crime.
Some of his other companions were also arrested at the time. Lowe took
the witness stand and by his testimony fully substantiated the
confession that he had made to me in the presence of John Hayes, who was
then Chief of Police of Kansas City, Missouri, and D. F. Harbaugh, one
of my men at that time. Lowe afterwards reiterated this confession to
the prosecuting attorney of Kansas City. The prosecutor's name I do not
now remember.
Lowe having taken the witness stand and having promised the Chief of
Police and Prosecuting Attorney and myself that he would thereafter lead
an honest life, the prosecuting attorney annulled the proceedings
against him and after the trial of his associates Lowe was dismissed. He
was a thorough railroad man. He came to St. Louis and obtained
employment as a switchman in the yards of the Iron Mountain Railroad,
where he met and formed the acquaintance of one George Ebberling, also a
switchman. He and Ebberling became fast friends and continued to work
for the Iron Mountain for several years, when they left the company's
service and went to St. Paul, Minnesota, where they obtained employment
in the train service of the Great Northern Railway Company, and finally
worked their way to Spokane, Washington.
In the meantime I kept track of them, believing that it would be only a
question of time until Lowe would become a train robber again. During
the years of 1908 and 1909 a number of trains were held up and robbed in
the vicinity of Spokane, and I, knowing that Lowe was there, wrote the
officers of the Great Northern Company that I believed that I knew who
the guilty parties were and where they could be found. But these
officers apparently did not deem the information I had sent them worth
answering, as I did not hear from them.
I knew that both Billy Lowe and Ebberling were in St. Louis prior to the
Glencoe Train Robbery. They had returned early in January and I
immediately had placed a shadow on their movements, and when I read the
description of the men who had robbed the train at Glencoe I at once
became satisfied that Lowe was the man who had handled the engine. He
had visited my office the day preceding the Glencoe affair, and his
right hand was bandaged by reason of boils that he had on his wrist
just above the hand; and then the description in the New York papers was
almost a perfect description of Lowe, and also the description of the
tall man given in the paper was that of Ebberling.
As soon as they arrived in St. Louis, Lowe had rented an office room on
the upper floor of the Granite Building, on the southwest corner of 4th
and Market streets. Lowe furnished his office and had a number of maps
and charts of mining lands in Alaska, and offered mining stocks for sale
in that country. Ebberling left St. Louis immediately after the Glencoe
robbery.
A day or so after the robbery, a country merchant, who resides in a
small town near Kansas City, furnished the postoffice inspector with a
clue which afterwards proved that I was right in suspecting Lowe and
Ebberling of the crime. This merchant owed a St. Louis wholesale house a
bill in the neighborhood of $100.00. He had, on the day before the
robbery, remitted the amount by registered letter, keeping a memorandum
of the size, series and numbers of the bills. When he first heard of the
robbery, and knowing that his package was probably a part of the loot,
the merchant sent a copy of the memorandum to the postoffice inspector.
The inspector had several hundred copies of the memorandum printed and
forwarded to the officials of the banks within a radius of five hundred
miles of St. Louis. Within twenty-four hours after the distribution of
these circulars, one of the bills, a ten-dollar gold certificate, was
presented at the receiving teller's window of a Hot Springs National
Bank, by one of its lady depositors--the keeper of a rooming house in
that city. On being questioned as to where she had obtained the bill,
the lady told the teller one of her roomers, Mr. George Ebberling, had
given it to her in exchange for a week's room rent.
In the meantime, I having learned that Ebberling had gone to Hot
Springs and his address there, notified Inspector Dixon, who immediately
sent one of his assistants to Ebberling's lodging place, where he
secured an adjoining room to enable him to keep a closer watch on the
suspected mail robber. The teller of the bank reported the finding of
the bill to Inspector Dixon promptly, and we immediately planned the
arrest of Lowe.
[Illustration: WILLIAM W. LOWE.
Train robber and thief now doing a long sentence for robbing a mail
train near St. Louis.]
[Illustration: GEORGE EBBERLING.
Train robber and thief who assisted Lowe in many of his robberies, also
doing time.]
The following morning accompanied by two of Mr. Dixon's postoffice
inspectors, James Smith, Chief of Detectives of St. Louis, and two of
his men, and my Assistant Superintendent, J. S. Manning, I went to
Lowe's office in the Granite Building, having previously been advised
by Mr. Manning that the man under suspicion was in his office. I pointed
Lowe out to the city officers, who arrested him promptly. He was locked
up and after his arrest, Mr. Dixon telegraphed his inspector at Hot
Springs to arrest Ebberling immediately and bring him to St. Louis.
After Ebberling had been arrested at Hot Springs, when he was asked how
he got possession of the ten-dollar note, before mentioned, he confessed
that he had gotten it from Billy Lowe and made a further and full
confession as to how he and Lowe had robbed the train at Glencoe.
Lowe did not make a confession, nor did he make any admission as to his
connection with the robbery; on the contrary, he strenuously denied
everything.
In his confession, Ebberling stated that Jimmy Lowe, a younger brother
of Billy's, knew all about the robbery, and would have taken part in it
but for the fact that he became intoxicated on the evening the robbery
was scheduled to take place and could not make the trip. Ebberling also
stated that James Lowe had visited the cache in South St. Louis where
the guns and masks had been hidden, and brought them to St. Louis and
delivered them to Billy Lowe at his mother's house.
The amount of money secured from the rifled mail pouches, according to
Ebberling, was between six and seven hundred dollars, but the pouches
which had been "stashed" in the cornfield by the robbers, and afterwards
recovered by the officers, contained a great deal more than this amount.
Ebberling and Lowe were tried in the April term of the Federal Court at
St. Louis and were convicted--Lowe being sentenced to forty-three years
at Leavenworth, United States Penitentiary, and a fine of $3,000.00, or
the equivalent of two years in prison. Ebberling was sentenced to
eighteen years in Leavenworth Prison, and fined $3,000.00. Jimmy Lowe,
who had laid in jail for months and had taken the witness stand for the
Government, was released and is now leading an honest life, so far as I
know.
After arriving at the penitentiary Ebberling made a further confession
in which he stated that he and W. W. Lowe had held up and robbed eleven
trains at different points on the Great Northern and the Northern
Pacific Railway lines in the vicinity of Spokane, during 1908 and 1909,
and in this statement he described so accurately the places at which he
and Lowe had hidden certain property they had secured in these robberies
that the United States authorities went to the places designated and
recovered the property. Lowe and Ebberling have since been indicted for
these robberies, proving conclusively that I was right when I wrote the
officers of the roads named that I believed I knew who the parties were
who had been holding up and robbing their trains.
The Great Northern and the Northern Pacific had offered rewards for the
arrest and conviction of the parties who had committed these
depredations, which aggregate, I understand, $20,000.00; but, as I have
always strictly adhered to a rule that I formed early in my career,
never to work for or receive rewards that might be offered for the
arrest and conviction of any person, I did not claim the rewards offered
by the two railroads. My reason for not accepting rewards is fully
explained in another portion of this book.