Evening Star Newspaper, May 10, 1931, Page 83

INGITON, “D.: C, MAY 10, 1931, BUILT UP THEIR ANTI-CRIME He bought six kinds of per- fume, mixed them with mu- cilage and ceught his thief. ardians of the World’s Biggest Business the Underzworld, for They’ll Spend 25 p Get the Thief Stealing a Five-Cent t a Case Till Their Crook Is in Jail. clerk was killed. How the De Autremont rn Pacific train No. 13, in Oregon. A Dffice inspectors. out from behind the demolished woodwork of a wide door, in the living room of a house owned by Glasscock’s brether-in-law, some $500,000, to the great consternation of that young man, who had been absent when the cache was made. So it went, N ALL the history of the service there has probably never been a case more brilliantly and successfully prosecuted thah that involving the $2,400,000 robbery perpetrated at St. Louis by the so-called “Egan Rats,” notorious gang- sters. Powerful in their political connections and with plenty of money at their disposition, this gang had ridden roughshod over the city for years. Then they made the mistake of trying to buck the federal officers. Arrested dozens of times, on charges varying from mur- der to bank robberies, they had always walked out of the State courts free. Early in the morning of April 2, 1923, William Kelley, a Negro, came upon a U. S, srmored mail truck abandoned in an alley. From inside came frantic cries for help and the sound of fists pounding on locked doors. “l don’t know you. What are you doing in there?” inquired the terrified Kelly irrelevantly. Pingers all thumbs, he finally managed to open the doors. Out jumped Edward M. Cunning- ham, truck driver, and Adrian C. Dorlac, post office registry clerk. They had a wild story o tell At 6:40 a.n. the truck had been forced to slow down behind a car ahead and out of a limousine had leaped six bandits, som2 of them masked and all armed with sawed-off shot- guns and revolvers. 2 The employes, who had not had time to reach for their own guns, were forced at pistol point into the limousine, while other bandits extracted from the truck nine pouches of 13 registered mail. The enployes were then pushed into the truck, Jloeked in and abandon=d. % INSFECTORS under F. W. Reuter of St. Louis were on .the ground within 40 minuies of the holdup, but the only evidence they had was the license number of the car, and it was - found to. have been stolen. However, they immediately began to set their traps. In all cases where the loot contains negotiable securi- ties, the procedure is the sames Hundreds of lettcrs, asking for descriptions of the securities, are prepared and sent to every person who had dispatched as much as one piece of the missing registered mail. From this information lists are compiled and broadcast to banks and brokerage houses throughout the country, and sooner or later an attempt is made to cash in a coupon or bond, and the inspectors are tipped off. On April 16, as a result of the St. Louis bond filter, & local broker advised that he had innocently purchased $26,800 worth of the stolen securities. The man who had nego- tiated their sale had given a fictitious name and address. Two days later another broker reported that & man was trying to arrange the sale of $40,000 worth of the securities and, working this tip, the inspectors captured John H. Niedringhaus. He admitted that he knew that the bonds were “hot,” and said they were in the possession of William F. Doering, ex-convict, and David Weisman, who had arranged with him to sell them. Arrested, he said that he would be willing to testify for the Government, and, to protect him from the gangsters, the inspectors locked him up in jail for safe keeping. Implicated also were Edward Linehan and Ray Renard. A sedrch warrant was obtained for Doering’s home, and there in am old suit case $2.303,367 worth of the Joot was recovered and, in addition, $29,850 worth of Liberty bonds, which later were found to have been stolen from three Illinois banks. During the search Doering and Weisman drove up and were arrested. Renard and Linehan were ar- rested at Clayton, Mo, the same day. On August 13 more than a score of persons were indicted. Among them were William P, (Dinty) Colbeck, Democratic city central com- mitteeman and head of the Egan gang; Walter Kelly, blind lawyer, and John A. Dummeyer, broker, charged with assisting in the disposi- tion of the stolen securities; Max Simonson, a tailor, to whose place at Fenton, Mo., the bandits had fled after the holdup; Rudolph Schmidt, David (Chippy) Robinson, Ray Renard, Stevie Ryan, Louis C. (Red) Smith, charged with the actual holdup, Doering hav- ing been the sixth. The trial operied on October 31, 1924. Seores of witnesses were marshaled, and the defense was pathetically weak, but the jury disagreed and a new trial was set for January 13. How- ever, it was not necessary to wait that long. The evidence uncovered included proof that another mail robbery, in May, 1923, at Staun- ton, 111, had been pulled by the same gang. Colbeck and his pals went on trial for the Staunton job a few weeks later, and this time the verdict was gullty. Colbeck and seven others all got 25 years and fines of $5,000 each. They were en route next day to Leavenworth, Four others, involved in the St. Louis rob- bery and not included in the Staunton verdict, were sent up a few months later. The Egan Rats had been wiped out and every cent of the St. Louis booty had been recovered. Entrance to the railway tunnel in the Siskiyou Mountains in Ore the De Austremont brothers held up a mail train and coused one of ¢ man-hunts in history. ONVICTED by “pois and pans, knives and’ forks,” Ray, Roy and Hugh de Autremont were jalled for life in June, 1927. How they were identified with the holdup of Southern Pacific train No. 13 and eventually captured is one of the department’s real thrillers, the story of one of the most extended man hunts in history. It took three and a half years to get these men, and the search extended ulti- mately around the world. On October 11, 1923, train No. 13 was wind- ing its way up the slopes of the Siskiyou Moun- tains in Oregon. At the throttle was Sid Bates, one of the oldest and most reliable engineers on the road, and with him his fireman, Marvin Seng. After a brief stop at the lonely station on the summit, the train slipped down the mountainside and came to a sudden stop at the far portal of a railway tunnel. There was an explosion, and the hundred or more passengers riding the crowded coaches were thrown into turmoil, J. ,O. Marrett, conductor, accompanied by volunteers, seized a fusee for a light and started toward the head end of the train to investigate. A gruesome sight met his eyes. The door of the mail car had been blowm off with dynamite, and the mail clerk had been killed. Engineer Bates lay dead in the cab, bullets in his jaw angd head. The lifeless body of Fireman Seng lay at the west portal of the smoke and gas filled tunnel. Brakeman C. O. Johnson, six feet away, was gasping for breath, fatally shot. Word of the wreck and murders spread quickly and postal inspectors, aided by agents of the railroad company, immediately took charge of the investigation. Over telephone and telegraph wires information buzzed, noti- whaere greates® fying all peace officers In Oregon and Calle fornia. If scouring the mountains failed fo reveall . a clue to the whereabouts of the bandits, the search for evidence near the scene of the crime and in its vicinity yielded plenty of maw terial to identify them. A blasting maching was found near the entrance of the tunnea and close by an old pair of overalls whic turned out to be important. N the pencil pocket was a bit of paper, almos§ which, upon examination, proved to be a s issued from the post office at Eugene, Oreg., September 14, 1923, for a letter mailed by Roy . de Autremont to his brother, Vern, at Lakews wood, N, Mex. This numbered slip was theg opening wedge in the solution of the crime, Paul de Autremont, father of the boys, wag Jocated at Eugene and thoroughly inten'ogau'& He told how three of his sons, Hugh, 19, a Roy and Ray, the ‘23-year-old twins, had . worked at a lumber camp in Silverton, Ore, until the end of August, - They had come home in the middle of Sep= tember with a new car, stayed about a week - it appeared tha§ to burn all cookw p equipment. Pots ashes, small pieces an express tag and that had been used apparently to bind a wooden trunk or box. Not far from the tunnel was found a Colt 45-caliber revolver, the outside number of which had been filed off, a bit of fuse wire and three pairs of footpads, made of fuUnny= sack soaked in ereosote, which, if worn would have covered the trail in case bloodhounds were used in the hunt. Other articles found in the vicinity included some canvas-pack sacks and about a mile and & quarter down the tracks, a small black trave eling grip with the remains of a numbered express tag on it. Each article was traced to the De Autre= monts, then carefully labeled and filed away for future use. At ihe lumber camp it was found that the boys had with them a large wooden box, with strap-iron around the edges, and that this corresponded to the bits found in the burned camp in the Siskiyou Moun= tains. From the camp, Investigation showed the trio had gone to Portland, Ore., where they purchased their car. The hotel where they had stopped was lo- eated and near-by a hardware store, whose proprietor identified the knives, forks, _pans snd other utensils found as having been sold S0 three young men resembling the De Autre- monts. The dynamite, blasting machine and fuse"wire were found to have been stolen from ® wafiroad eonstruction camp on the right-of- Continued en Pouricenth Page