Train Bandit Dies, News Fatal to His Father

St. Joseph, Missouri, 1920
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SHOCK OF BANDIT SON'S FATE PROVES FATAL TO THE FATHER

Shock of the discovery of his son's criminal career caused the death of L. T. Walton of St. Joseph, Mo., father of Horace LeRoy Walton, "lone wolf" train robber killed in a battle with a squad of Chicago police after the young bandit had robbed a mail car of the Chicago-bound New Orleans limited when within two hours' ride of Chicago, and killed a Chicago policeman in an attempt to escape with the loot.

When the lone bandit left the train at its first stop within the city limits he carried a black satchel containing about $70,000 in cash, which was recovered after the police had shot and killed him in a desperate battle at his apartments, a few blocks from where he left the train. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of $35,000, the remainder of the $105,000 said to have been stolen from the mail sacks, is one that the police are still endeavoring to solve.

Walton, the elder, was en route for Chicago with Mrs. Walton, for the purpose of taking their son's body back to St. Joseph, when he was stricken with paralysis as the train pulled into Bucklin, Mo. He was immediately removed to a hospital, where he died within two hours. Mrs. Walton brought her husband's remains to Chicago and the bodies of father and son were buried side by side at Champaign, Ill., where the boy was born.

When the widowed mother stood in the Illinois Central's train shed and watched while the bodies of her husband and son were shoved into a baggage coach she was too grief-stricken to weep. There was too much to look after, even with the assistance of kindly officials, to permit the little lone woman to give way to her pent-up grief. Time and place for that later.

Dick Smythe, aged 19, high school comrade of Horace Walton, the 22-year-old train bandit and slayer of a Chicago policeman, was arrested at his home in St. Joseph, charged with being an accessory in Walton's crimes. He was brought to Chicago, where he had been for a week or two as Walton's companion and guest.

Smythe is said to have confessed that he fled from Walton's apartment on the night he was killed, leaving at the bandit's urging and taking some of the stolen money which, he says, was thrust into his hand.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 1.