Evening Star Newspaper, May 10, 1931, Page 82

$15,900 Reward in Gold Train Hold-up and Murder On October ‘11, 1923, a Southern Pacific railway train was blown up near Siskiyou, Oregon, U. S. A. The mail clerk was killed and his body burned, and three train- men were shot and killed. Conclusive evidence obtained shows that ROY, RAY and HUGH DE AUTREMONT, three brothers, who lived in Eugene, Oregon, committed the crime. $5,300 Reward F .-.l.. THis roLozn CAREFULLY, 5 Glaplaped, " * Dot Phetegraphe v S - $10,600.00 Reward : ™ aoLp s Train Hold-wp and Murder ACH DEM ANOR! hariich verbronat The avalanche of circulars the post office men loosed on the world in their hunt for the De Autremonts. More than 2,265,000 of these were printed in six languages. By Alma Chesnut. T was really the pots and pans, knives I l and forks, pepper can and parts of the express tag, found as a result of a thorough search by inspectors and railroad agents, that convicted the three de Autremonts.” %his paragraph, from the inspector’s report that wrote finis on the investigation of one of the most daring mail train hold-ups in history, explains better than highly colored phrases the method followed by post office fnspectors in establishing their brilliant record as criminal investigators. Behind sensational accounts of the big coups which, during recent years, have included the round-up of the “Egan Rats’ notorious Bt. Louis gangsters; the capture of Gerald Chap- man in New York, and the successful tracking of the Roundout, T, mail train robbers who pulled the biggest job on the records, are storles of methodical, painstaking work covering weeks and months of effort. It has been said that the inspectors will spend 25 years and & million dollars to catch & person who steals as much as a 5-cent stamp, which perhaps is exaggerating a bit, but it conveys the idea. They never forget, and they never give up until the crook is in jall. Cold trails and intangible clues serve only as & chal- Jenge to their ingenuity and persistence. Every detail of the job is carefully studied. “We cannot afford to overlook a single item that might possibly serve as evidence,” Thomas M. Milligan, chief inspector, stated in one of his rare interviews. “Nine-tenths of the finds may prove to be trash, but the one-tenth brings eonvictions. Not clever Sherlock Holmes tricks, but thor- sughness and tenacity, bring success. Some- thmes it takes years to solve a case—and we don't like that, of course—but sooner or later we get the offender.” R. MILLIGAN is a tall, quiet man, modest and retiring, who refuses to be photo- praphed. From behind round, tortoise-rimmed his eyes bend upon you the inquiring m{ a student. No novice at the game, he #ame up from the ranks to his present position of great trust and has a long record of service. “Detective” is a word he does mnot like to have applied to inspectors, He points out that the activities of the men operating under his direction cover a broad field, and that only » fraction of their work has to do with runming Gown criminals. Much of it is purely constructive, designed to improve the efficiency of the post office service—a business enterprise, if you will, the biggest in the world, with some 363,000 em- ployes on the rolls and handling during the course of a year the huge sum of $3,500,000,000. Post office inspectors are special representa- tives of the Postmaster General, who appoints them, and their work includes every phase of the service. They make regular inspections of all post offices and matters connected with the service, keep the department advised of condi- tions and needs, investigate and report all vio- lations of postal law and assist United States attorneys in the prosecution of violations. They investigate post office burglaries and mail robberies, forged money orders, fires, wrecks and other accidents involving equip- ment, the mailing of poisonous, explosive, ob- scene and other prohibited matters. They check accounts, collect shortages, lay out malil routes, reorganize the forces of the larger units and arrange leases for post offices and garages. In emergencies they even serve as postmasters. The service consists of 540 inspectors oper- ating out of 15 division headquarters. XEach of these offices is under the control of an in- spector in charge, who has under his jurisdic- tion from one to eight States or possessions. Inspectors are chosen from the rank and file of post office employes and must have had four years of service. They pass a stiff examina- tion, undergo a period of intensive training at the Post Office Department in Washington and additional training in the field. Men who do not come up to the high standard of in- tegrity and fidelity that are a tradition of the service are quickly dropped from the rolls. BILLIONS of dollars in currency, bonds, stocks and other securities are dispatched through the mails. Little of it i lost, & total of only $1,619,189 the last five years, of which $604,194 has been recovered to date. One reason is that as many safeguards as possible are thrown around registered mail There are armored cars, machine gun manned, and other protective devices. Employes carry guns and know how to use them. Rewards are offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of offenders against the malls. mwpofdlthu,tbcrewutlonottheh- spectors as faithful and indefatigable trackers, and the fact that trials are held in Federal courts which impose quick and beavy sen- THE SUNDAY 'STAR, OFFICE INSPECTOR As Criminal Investigators These !Are Feared by Every Stratu Years and a Million Dolla Stamp, and They’ll Never tences, inspire in would-be holdup men a healthy fear of the post office dragnet. In cne instance perfume was used to trace a mail robber, but this is merely one method, a classic in the history of the service. An in- spector, investigating thefts of registered mail, had narrowed suspicion down to six post offices, but the questicn—which one of the six—was far from solution. Puzzling over the case he made a mental note of the fact that in each instance re- ported, the envelope had been steamed open and then resealed after the money had been extracted. He hit upcn a bright idea, fantastic for all its simplicity, . To & drug store he hied and bought six kinds of perfume—rose, lilac, heliotrope, violet, mignonette and lly of the valley. These he mixed with six bottles of mucilage which he then planted in the offices under suspicion. When the next letter came to his hands, he moistened the flap, sniffed it and knew just where to go to get his man. In any enterprise as huge as the post office system, safeguards against employes who are tempted to indulge in thefts must be provided. Perhaps a sorter flips a letter into an unused pigecnhole, then later takes another and an- other. The thefts are small, but the efficiency of the service is given a setback with each com- plaint and every one is investigated. - Post offices are designed to facilitate the trac- ing of such thefts. From secret points of ob- servation, the eagle eye of an inspector is likely to be focused upon a dishonest employe, mak- ing it easy to catch him red-handed. Clever ruses are useful in unraveling crimes against the mails, but, in the long run, they do play a minor part, as Chief Inspector Milli- gan has pointed out, and it is only by following through some of the big cases that insight may be had into the usual methods employed by the inspectors. ' Take, for instance, the Roundout, Ill., mail train affair—from the standpoint of loot, the outstanding case in the history of the mafl service. From a single clue, a small patch of blood-scaked earth, a case was built up that finally sent eight men to jail, including an inspector. MAD! up exclusively of mail cars, a Chicago and Minneapolis train, No. 57, left Union Station, Chicago, at about 1 am. Twenty miles out, with a screech or airbrakes, it came to a sudden standstill, upsetting the equilibrium of 25 railway mail clerks, busy at their sorting racks. Out from the blind vestibule of the first car and over the coal tender had crawled two masked men. From their point of van- tage they were leveling guns at the engineer and fireman. Details had been carefully rehearsed and from this point everything went like clock- work, except fcr one deplorable error. Three bandits went through the train, marshaling all abroad into a line on the right-of-way. The malil cars, lights out and doors locked, were forced open by means of gas bombs. A fourth man stood in the highway, rifie alert, to take care of any passersby who might be seeing too much. It was he who commitied the faux pas that served the inspectors in such good stead a little later on. The train had stopped several hundred feet ahead of three automobiles, parked on & road running parallel to the tracks. ‘This lookout man ran forward to make the engineer back up. One of his confederates mistook him for & mem- ber of the crew and opened fire with a “grizzly” rifle, riddling his body with bullets. Covered by guns, the mail clerks stood in a helpless line, while the bandits quickly seized 30 registered pouches, containing $2,500,000 in negotiable paper, jewelry and currency. These were loaded into the waiting motor cars, the wounded man was put into one of them, and the band sped out of sight., For & week not a clue was found except the blood-soaked earth and a gas mask, part of the robbers’ very complete equipment. Meanwhile newspaper headlines screamed the story and rewards were posted for in- formation. Even in Chicago it is not easy to hide a badly wounded man, and finally in- formation was surreptitiously given that a certain apartment might be looked over. The inspectors went to see what they might see, and found one Wiley Newton and, at the bedside, his brother, Joe. Both were placed under arrest, and the inspectors settled down at the apartment to wait. Three hours later two others walked into the trap. They were Willis Newton, a third brother, and Jimmy Murray, small-time politician and former policeman, who hastened to explain that he had come to collect the rent. Both were arrested. ROM this juncture the clean-up seemed to lag, and to the Chicago force, without the knowledge of the rank and file of investigators, were added two undercover men from Wash- ington. There had been a suspicion from the beginriing of “inside” aid, since the bandits The dynamited mail car, wher brothers got to the treasures 4 baffling case cleared up by t . had been able to select quickly from of mail aboard the comparatively sma. signment of registered matter. The W ton men could keep an eye-open for hin might throw light on this matter. Meanwhile other suspects were being in. Jesse Newton, a fourth brother, was to Mexico, lured across the line by an in who posed as representative of a rode wanted him to “perform” in Texas. F. Holliday was taken, and, in a sens raid on a fashionable sanitarium, Brent cock, who, with his wife, had been quite a figure in the social life of the co When arrested he was €quipped bullet-proof vest. He had $45,000 o person and unset diamonds worth $50,000 Adroit questioning of the seven under enabled the inspectors to get evidence tol Inspector William J. Fahy, one of the fe in the inspection service ever convicted offense against the mails. In court it was proved that he had information about the' shipment to and that Murray, in turn, had tipped d Newton gang through Glasscock. Murray and Holliday were given 25-yea tences, Wiley and Willis Newton and cock 12, Joe Newton 3 and Jesse a year half. All but about $280,000 of the loot w covered. Part of it was traced to the nof “Yellow Kid” Weil, con man extraord who also wound up in jail, and a key, on Holliday's person, led to a Kansa vault where some $99,000 was recovered. Glasscock revealed a “plant” 25 mileg of the same city where, in a thicket, t} spectors unearthed fruit jars com $50,000 worth of jewelry and diamonds. Buried stone crocks in other localitie: tained a fortine in. negotiable pape currency. At Tulsa, Okla., the inspecio