Burke's, a burglar who had been in prison with him in the Utah
penitentiary, was confined in jail at Georgetown, Texas, Mr. Pinkerton
decided to go and interview this man, and see if he could get any
trace, through him, of the robber. In the meantime he instructed the
detectives at Omaha and Denver to keep a particularly close watch on
Jack Denton and Hooker.
On Mr. Pinkerton's arrival at Austin, Texas, he found awaiting him
despatches from Superintendent McParland of the Denver agency, stating
that through Hooker's talk they had learned that "Kid" McCoy, or
Burke, had been arrested at Eagle, Colorado, with a kit of burglar
tools in his possession, and was then in jail at Leadville, Colorado.
Mr. Pinkerton at once telegraphed to have conductor Ashmore and Mr.
Shaw, the well-digger, go to Leadville and see if they could identify
the prisoner. Word was also sent to New York for Mr. Pollock to do the
same. He also instructed Superintendent McParland at Denver to send
his assistant, J. C. Fraser, to watch the case, so that if McCoy gave
bail, or attempted to escape from the Leadville jail, they could be
ready with a warrant for his arrest on account of the Pollock
robbery.
Having wired these instructions, Mr. Pinkerton proceeded on his
journey to Georgetown, Texas, where he called on McCoy's former prison
associate in the Utah penitentiary, but was unable to get him to tell
anything about McCoy, though he volunteered, if Mr. Pinkerton would
furnish him a bond and get him out of his Texas scrape, to go to Omaha
and compel the "fence" who had received the diamonds to turn back the
property. But the rule of the Jewelers' Protective Union was to get
the thief first and the property afterward; so no treaty was made with
the Texas prisoner.
Mr. Pinkerton now went to Kansas City, and found awaiting him there
despatches from Superintendent McParland of the Denver agency, stating
that conductor Ashmore and Messrs. Shaw and Pollock had positively
identified the prisoner James Burke, _alias_ "Kid" McCoy, as the man
who assaulted Mr. Pollock and robbed him of his diamonds.
Burke winced perceptibly when he saw conductor Ashmore and Mr. Shaw,
and went fairly wild when confronted by Mr. Pollock. Requisition
papers were obtained from the governor of the State of Iowa on the
governor of Colorado, and the Colorado offense being a minor one,
Burke was turned over to Assistant Superintendent Fraser and another
detective, to be taken to Logan, Harrison County, Iowa. Before leaving
Leadville, Mr. Fraser was confidentially warned by the sheriff of the
county that he could not be too careful of his prisoner; for that
Burke, through a friend of the sheriff, had made a proposition to the
latter to pay him a thousand dollars if he would secretly furnish him
with a revolver when he left the jail, his design being, with this
revolver, to either "hold up" or kill the two detectives who had him
in custody and make his escape from the train.
On trial at Logan, Iowa, the man was easily convicted, and was
sentenced to imprisonment for a term of seventeen years.
The Rock Island Express
[Illustration: ROBERT A. PINKERTON]
I
The through express on the Rock Island road left Chicago at 10:45 P.
M., on March 12, 1886, with twenty-two thousand dollars in fifty- and
one-hundred-dollar bills in the keeping of Kellogg Nichols, an
old-time messenger of the United States Express Company. This sum had
been sent by a Chicago bank to be delivered at the principal bank in
Davenport, Iowa. In addition to the usual passenger-coaches, the train
drew two express-cars: the first, for express only, just behind the
engine; and, following this, one for express and baggage. These cars
had end doors, which offer the best opportunity to train robbers.
Messenger Nichols was in the first car, and was duly at his work when
the train stopped at Joliet, a town about forty miles west of Chicago.
But at the next stop, which was made at Morris, Harry Schwartz, a
brakeman, came running from Nichols's car, crying, "The messenger is
dead."
The messenger's lifeless body was found lying on the floor of the car.
The head had been crushed by some heavy weapon, and there was a
pistol-wound in the right shoulder. Apparently he had been overcome
only after a hard fight. His face was set with fierce determination.
His fists were clenched, and the hands and fingers cut and scratched
in a curious way, while under the nails were found what proved to be
bits of human flesh. The pistol-wound was from a weapon of 32 caliber;
but it was not the cause of the man's death. This, unmistakably, was
the blow, or blows, on the head, probably after the shot was fired.
All who knew messenger Nichols were surprised at the desperate
resistance he seemed to have made, for he was a small, light man, not
more than five feet five in height, nor weighing over one hundred and
thirty pounds, and of no great credit among his fellows for pluck and
courage.
The express-car was immediately detached from the train, and left at
Morris, guarded by all the train-crew except Schwartz, who was sent on
with the train to Davenport. After the first cursory inspection no one
was allowed to enter the car where Nichols lay; and nothing was known
precisely as to the extent of the robbery. The safe-door had been
found open and the floor of the car littered with the contents of the
safe.
An urgent telegram was at once sent to Chicago, and a force of
detectives arrived at Morris on a special train a few hours later.
Search-parties were at once sent out in all directions along the
country roads, and up and down the tracks. Hundreds of people joined
in the search, for the news of the murder spread rapidly through the
whole region, and not a square yard of territory for miles between
Morris and Minooka station was left unexplored. It happened that the
ground was covered with snow, but the keenest scrutiny failed to
reveal any significant footprints, and the search-parties returned
after many hours, having made only a single discovery. This was a mask
found in a cattle-guard near Minooka--a mask made of black cloth, with
white strings fastened at either side, one of which had been torn out
of the cloth as if in a struggle.
Meantime Mr. Pinkerton himself entered the car and made a careful
investigation. His first discovery was a heavy poker, bearing stains
of blood and bits of matted hair. It was hanging in its usual place,
behind the stove. The significance of this last fact was great, in Mr.
Pinkerton's opinion; from it he concluded that the crime had been
committed by a railroad man, his reasoning being that the poker could
have been restored to its usual place after such a use only
mechanically and from force of habit and that an assailant who was not
a railroad man would have left it on the floor or thrown it away.
Coming to the safe, Mr. Pinkerton found that the twenty-two thousand
dollars were missing, and that other papers had been hastily searched
over, but left behind as valueless.
Among these was a bundle of canceled drafts that had been roughly torn
open and then thrown aside. Mr. Pinkerton scarcely noticed at the
moment, but had occasion to remember subsequently, that a small piece
of one of these drafts was missing, as if a corner had been torn off.
All the train-hands were immediately questioned, but none of their
stories was in any way significant, except that of Newton Watt, the
man in charge of the second car. He said that while busy counting
over his way-bills and receipts he had been startled by the crash of
broken glass in the ventilator overhead, and that at the same moment a
heavily built man, wearing a black mask, had entered the car and said,
"If you move, the man up there will bore you." Looking up, Watt said
further, he saw a hand thrust through the broken glass and holding a
revolver. Thus intimidated, he made no attempt to give an alarm, and
the masked man presently left him under guard of the pistol overhead,
which covered him until shortly before the train reached Morris, when
it was withdrawn. He was able to locate the place where the crime must
have been committed, as he remembered that the engine was whistling
for Minooka when the stranger entered the car. This left about thirty
minutes for the murder, robbery, and escape.
Returning to Chicago, Mr. Pinkerton investigated the character of the
man Watt, and found that he had a clean record, was regarded as a
trusty and efficient man, and had three brothers who had been railroad
men for years and had always given perfect satisfaction. Watt's good
reputation and straightforward manner were strong points in his favor,
and yet there was something questionable in his story of the
mysterious hand. For one thing, no footprints were found in the snow
on the top of the car.
Brakeman Schwartz, the only man on the train who had not yet been
questioned, "deadheaded" his way, in railway parlance, back from
Davenport the following night on conductor Danforth's train, and
reported to Mr. Pinkerton the next morning. He was a tall,
fine-looking young fellow, about twenty-seven, with thin lips and a
face that showed determination. He was rather dapper in dress, and
kept on his gloves during the conversation. Mr. Pinkerton received
him pleasantly, and, after they had been smoking and chatting for an
hour or so, he suggested to Schwartz that he would be more comfortable
with his gloves off. Schwartz accordingly removed them, and revealed
red marks on the backs of his hands, such as might have been made by
finger-nails digging into them.
"How did you hurt your hands, Schwartz?" asked Mr. Pinkerton.
"Oh, I did that handling baggage night before last," explained
Schwartz; and then he related incidentally that as he was on his way
back to Chicago, the conductor of the train, conductor Danforth, had
discovered a valise left by somebody in one of the toilet-rooms. Later
in the day Mr. Pinkerton summoned the conductor, who said that the
valise was an old one, of no value; and, having no contents, he had
thrown it out on an ash-pile. The only thing he had found in the
valise was a piece of paper that attracted his attention because it
was marked with red lines.
Examining this piece of paper carefully, Mr. Pinkerton saw that it had
been torn from a money-draft, and at once thought of the package in
the express messenger's safe. Now it is a remarkable fact that no
human power can tear two pieces of paper in exactly the same way; the
ragged fibers will only fit perfectly when the two original parts are
brought together. There remained no doubt, when this test was made in
the present case, that the piece of paper found on conductor
Danforth's east-bound train had been torn from the draft in the
express-car robbed the night before on the west-bound train. The edges
fitted, the red lines corresponded, and unquestionably some one had
carried that piece of paper from the one train to the other. In other
words, some one connected with the crime of the previous night had
ridden back to Chicago twenty-four hours later with conductor
Danforth.
Mr. Pinkerton at once ordered a search made for the missing valise,
and also an inquiry regarding the passengers who had ridden on
conductor Danforth's train between Davenport and Chicago on the night
following the murder. The valise was found on the ash-heap where the
conductor had thrown it, and in the course of the next few days the
detectives had located or accounted for all passengers on conductor
Danforth's train, with the exception of one man who had ridden on a
free pass. The conductor could only recall this man's features
vaguely; and, while some of the passengers remembered him well enough,
there was no clue to his name or identity. As it appeared that no
other of the passengers could have been connected with the crime,
efforts were redoubled to discover the holder of this pass.
II
So great was the public interest in the crime and the mystery
surrounding it that three separate, well-organized investigations of
it were undertaken. The Rock Island Railroad officials, with their
detectives, conducted one; a Chicago newspaper, the "Daily News," with
its detectives, another; and the Pinkertons, in the interest of the
United States Express Company, a third.
Mr. Pinkerton, as we have seen, concluded that the crime had been
committed by railway men. The railway officials were naturally
disinclined to believe ill of their employees, and an incident
occurred about this time which turned the investigation in an entirely
new direction and made them the more disposed to discredit Mr.
Pinkerton's theory. This was the receipt of a letter from a convict in
the Michigan City penitentiary, named Plunkett, who wrote the Rock
Island Railroad officials, saying that he could furnish them with
important information.
Mr. St. John, the general manager of the road, went in person to the
penitentiary to take Plunkett's statement, which was in effect that he
knew the men who had committed the robbery and killed Nichols, and was
willing to sell this information in exchange for a full pardon, which
the railroad people could secure by using their influence. This they
promised to do if his story proved true, and Plunkett then told them
of a plot that had been worked out a year or so before, when he had
been "grafting" with a "mob" of pickpockets at county fairs. There
were with him at that time "Butch" McCoy, James Connors (known as
"Yellowhammer"), and a man named "Jeff," whose surname he did not
know. These three men, Plunkett said, had planned an express robbery
on the Rock Island road, to be executed in precisely the same way,
and at precisely the same point on the road, as in the case in
question.
The story was plausible, and won Mr. St. John's belief. It won the
belief, also, of Mr. Melville E. Stone of the "Daily News"; and
forthwith the railway detectives, working with the newspaper
detectives, were instructed to go ahead on new lines, regardless of
trouble or expense. Their first endeavor was to capture "Butch" McCoy,
the leader of the gang. "Butch" was a pickpocket, burglar, and
all-around thief, whose operations kept him traveling all over the
United States.
The police in various cities having been communicated with to no
purpose, Mr. Stone finally decided to do a thing the like of which no
newspaper proprietor, perhaps, ever undertook before--that is, start
on a personal search for McCoy and his associates. With Frank Murray,
one of the best detectives in Chicago, and other detectives, he went
to Galesburg, where the gang was said to have a sort of headquarters.
The party found there none of the men they were after, but they
learned that "Thatch" Grady, a notorious criminal with whom "Butch"
McCoy was known to be in relations, was in Omaha. So they hurried to
Omaha, but only to find that Grady had gone to St. Louis. Then to St.
Louis went Mr. Stone and his detectives, hot on the scent, and spent
several days in that city searching high and low.
The method of locating a criminal in a great city is as interesting as
it is little understood. The first step is to secure from the local
police information as to the favorite haunts of criminals of the class
under pursuit, paying special regard in the preliminary inquiries to
the possibility of love-affairs; for thieves, even more than honest
men, are swayed in their lives by the tender passion, and are often
brought to justice through the agency of women. With so much of such
information in their possession as they could gather, Mr. Stone and
his detectives spent their time in likely resorts, picking up
acquaintance with frequenters, and, whenever possible, turning the
talk adroitly upon the man they were looking for. It is a mistake to
suppose that in work like this detectives disguise themselves. False
beards and mustaches, goggles and lightning changes of clothing, are
never heard of except in the pages of badly informed story-writers. In
his experience of over twenty-five years Mr. Murray never wore such a
disguise, nor knew of any reputable detective who did. In this
expedition the detectives simply assumed the characters and general
style of the persons they were thrown with, passing for men of
sporting tastes from the East; and, having satisfied the people they
met that they meant no harm, they had no difficulty in obtaining such
news of McCoy and the others as there was. Unfortunately, this was
not much.
After going from one city to another on various clues, hearing of one
member of the gang here and another there, and in each instance losing
their man, the detectives finally brought up in New Orleans. They had
spent five or six weeks of time and a large amount of money, only to
find themselves absolutely without a clue as to the whereabouts of the
men they were pursuing. They were much discouraged when a telegram
from Mr. Pinkerton told them that "Butch" McCoy was back in Galesburg,
where they had first sought him. Proceeding thither with all despatch,
they traced McCoy into a saloon, and there three of them,--John Smith,
representing the Rock Island Railroad; John McGinn, for the Pinkerton
Agency; and Frank Murray, working for Mr. Stone,--with drawn
revolvers, captured him, in spite of a desperate dash he made to
escape.
McCoy's capture was the occasion of much felicitation among the people
interested in the matter. Mr. St. John and Mr. Stone were confident
that now the whole mystery of the express robbery could be solved and
the murderer convicted. But McCoy showed on trial that he had left New
Orleans to come North only the night before the murder and had spent
the whole of that night on the Illinois Central Railroad. It also
appeared that McCoy's associate, Connors, was in jail at the time of
the robbery, and that the man "Jeff" was dead. Thus the whole Plunkett
story was exploded.
III
Some time before this the man who had ridden on the free pass, and
given the detectives so much trouble, had been accidentally found by
Jack Mullins, a brakeman on conductor Danforth's train. He proved to
be an advertising solicitor, employed by no other than Mr. Melville
E. Stone, who would have given a thousand dollars to know what his
agent knew; for the advertising man had seen the conductor bring out
the valise containing the all-important fragment of the draft. But he
had not realized the value of the news in his possession, and Mr.
Pinkerton took good care to keep him from that knowledge. One hint of
the truth to the "Daily News" people, and the whole story would have
been blazoned forth in its columns, and the murderer would have taken
warning. Not until he had seen the man safely on a train out from
Chicago did Mr. Pinkerton breathe easily; and it was not until months
later that Mr. Stone learned how near he came to getting a splendid
"scoop" on the whole city and country.
The identification of the pass-holder removed the last possibility
that the valise had been taken into the train by any of conductor
Danforth's passengers. And yet the valise was there! How came it
there? In the course of their examination two of the passengers had
testified to having seen Schwartz enter the toilet-room during the
run. Brakeman Jack Mullins stated that he had been in the same room
twice that night, that the second time he had noticed the valise, but
that it was not there when he went in first. Other witnesses in the
car were positive that the person who entered the room last before the
time when Mullins saw the valise was Schwartz. Thus the chain of proof
was tightening, and Mr. Pinkerton sent for Schwartz.
After talking with the brakeman in a semi-confidential way for some
time, the detective began to question him about Watt, his
fellow-trainman. Schwartz said he was a good fellow, and, in general,
spoke highly of him. Mr. Pinkerton seemed to hesitate a little, and
then said:
"Can I trust you, Schwartz?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, the fact is, I am a little suspicious of Watt. You see, his
story about that hand overhead does not exactly hang together. I don't
want to do him any wrong, but he must be looked after. Now, my idea is
to have you go about with him as much as you can, see if he meets any
strangers or spends much money, and let me know whatever happens. Will
you do it?"
Schwartz readily consented, on the assurance that the railroad people
would give him leave of absence. The next day he reported that Watt
had met a man who wore a slouch-hat, had unkempt red hair, and in
general looked like a border ruffian. He had overheard the two talking
together in a saloon on Cottage Grove Avenue, where the stranger had
discussed the murder of Nichols in great detail, showing a remarkable
familiarity with the whole affair. Schwartz had a sort of Jesse James
theory (which he seemed anxious to have accepted) that the crime had
been committed by a gang of Western desperados and that this fellow
was connected with them.
Mr. Pinkerton listened with interest to all this, but was less edified
than Schwartz imagined, since two of his most trusted "shadows," who
had been following Schwartz, had given him reports of the latter's
movements, making it plain that the red-haired desperado was a myth,
and that no such meeting as Schwartz described had taken place.
Nevertheless, professing to be well pleased with Schwartz's efforts,
Mr. Pinkerton sent him out to track the fabulous desperado. Schwartz
continued to render false reports. Finally, without a word to arouse
his suspicion, he was allowed to resume his work on the railroad.
The "shadows" put upon Schwartz after this reported a suspicious
intimacy between him and Watt, and a detective of great tact, Frank
Jones, was detailed to get into their confidence, if possible. He was
given a "run" as brakeman between Des Moines and Davenport, and it was
arranged that he should come in from the west and lay over at
Davenport on the same days when Schwartz and Watt laid over there,
coming in from the east. Jones played his part cleverly, and was soon
on intimate terms with Schwartz and Watt, taking his meals at their
boarding-house and sleeping in a room adjoining theirs. They finally
came to like him so well that they suggested his trying to get a
transfer to their "run," between Davenport and Chicago. This was
successfully arranged, and then the three men were together
constantly, Jones even going to board at Schwartz's house in Chicago.
About this time Schwartz began to talk of giving up railroad work and
going to live in Kansas or the far West. It was arranged that Jones
should join him and Mrs. Schwartz on a Western trip. Meantime
Schwartz applied to the company for leave of absence, on the plea that
he wished to arrange some family matters in Philadelphia.
Mr. Pinkerton, being informed by Jones of Schwartz's application, used
his influence to have it granted. When the young man started East he
did not travel alone. His every movement was watched and reported, nor
was he left unguarded for a moment, day or night, during an absence of
several weeks, in New York, Philadelphia, and other Eastern cities.