Saturday we were taken to Faribault, the county seat of Rice county, in
which Northfield is, and here there was more talk of lynching, but Sheriff
Ara Barton was not of that kind either, and we were guarded by militia
until the excitement had subsided. A Faribault policeman, who thought the
militia guard was a bluff, bet five dollars he could go right up to the
jail without being interfered with. He did not halt when challenged, and
was fired upon and killed, the coroner’s jury acquitting the militiaman
who shot him. Some people blamed us for his death, too.
Chief of Detectives McDonough, of St. Louis, whom I had passed a few
months before in the union depot at St. Louis, was among our visitors at
Faribault.
Another was Detective Bligh, of Louisville, who believed then, and
probably did ever afterward, that I had been in the Huntington, West
Virginia, robbery, and tried to pump me about it.
Four indictments were found against us. One charged us with being
accessory to the murder of Cashier Heywood, another with assaulting Bunker
with intent to do great bodily harm, and the third with robbing the First
National bank of Northfield. The fourth charged me as principal and my
brothers as accessories with the murder of Gustavson. Two witnesses had
testified before the grand jury identifying me as the man who fired the
shot that hit him, although I know I did not, because I fired no shot in
that part of town.
Although not one of us had fired the shot that killed either Heywood or
Gustavson, our attorneys, Thomas Rutledge of Madelia and Bachelder and
Buckham of Faribault, asked, when we were arraigned, Nov. 9, that we be
given two days in which to plead.
They advised us that as accessories were equally guilty with the
principals, under the law, and as by pleading guilty we could escape
capital punishment, we should plead guilty. There was little doubt, under
the circumstances, of our conviction, and under the law as it stood then,
an accused murderer who pleaded guilty was not subject to the death
penalty. The state was new, and the law had been made to offer an
inducement to murderers not to put the county to the expense of a trial.
The excitement that followed our sentence to state prison, which was
popularly called “cheating the gallows,” resulted in the change of the law
in that respect.
The following Saturday we pleaded guilty, and Judge Lord sentenced us to
imprisonment for the remainder of our lives in the state prison at
Stillwater, and a few days later we were taken there by Sheriff Barton.
With Bob it was a life sentence, for he died there of consumption Sept.
16, 1889. He was never strong physically after the shot pierced his lung
in the last fight near Madelia.