Bandits Slay Mine Boss; Get $11,000

1916

FIVE HUNDRED WORKERS HUNT OUTLAW PAIR.

Pay Roll Carrier's Car Is Halted and Official Shot Without Warning — Driver Unhurt.

MARTINS FERRY, Ohio — Police and specially employed detectives are still out searching for the two masked bandits who shot and killed Lee Rankin, superintendent of the Youghiogheny & Ohio Coal Company, and escaped with $11,000 which Rankin was carrying to the mine to pay the employes.

Rankin was on his way back from the bank at Martins Ferry in a taxicab driven by Paul Pickens. At a lonely spot in the road two masked and armed men emerged from the bushes and without giving the two men in the taxicab a chance for their lives, began to shoot. Pickens threw up his hands and was spared.

The robbers quickly seized the money from a suitcase and disappeared. Rankin was hurried to a hospital by Pickens, but died without regaining consciousness. In Rankin's pockets was found $1,000 that the bandits overlooked.

Rankin was popular with the miners, most of whom are foreigners, and a posse of 500 men was formed as soon as the news of the robbery reached the mines. Armed with rifles and revolvers, these men hastened out to scour the country, declaring they would kill the murderers on sight.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 5.

Villa Again Heard From

1916

EL PASO, Texas. — "I'll shout 'Grito' in Chihuahua City on the eve of Mexican independence day, Sept. 16," is the threat Pancho Villa is making to natives along the line of his northward march, according to a Mexican rancher arriving in Juarez.

The rancher declared that Villa had 1,500 men with him, all fully armed. From the seat of a wagon, Villa addressed the populace of Satevo, Chihuahua, when his forces captured the town about two weeks ago according to an American arriving here.

"You see before you 'Pancho' Villa, Villa the bandit. But you see also that I am paying my soldiers in silver and I promise you it will not be long until I have a large army," Villa is quoted as saying.

"The 'gringoes' are harder fighters than the Carranzistas, but I bear them no animosity. All I am interested in is punishing traitors and putting an end to Carranza."

Texas rangers exchanged shots with Mexicans across the Rio Grande near Fabens, twenty-five miles south of here, wounding one, it was reported. The rangers had captured a horsethief, who later escaped and fled across the river.

—The Saturday Blade, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 3.

Villa Rumors Not Confirmed

1916

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The War Department has received from General Funston additional information discrediting reports of Villista activities. Funston's message included the following from General Pershing:

"Reports regarding Villa's movement north continuously received thru El Paso authorities. So far these reports cannot be confirmed here, altho every possible source of information is being used."

—The Saturday Blade, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 3.

U.S. Liable For Mexican Claims?

1916

HELD RESPONSIBLE BY OTHER NATIONS, IS REPORT.

Foreigners Said to Have Been Told That This Government Is Bound to Settle Damages for Them.

NEW LONDON, Connecticut — After an agreement is reached on the question of safeguarding the Mexican border from Mexican bandits, one of the most important matters which will come before the American and Mexican joint commission, according to Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior and chairman of the American section, is that of finding a method of settling claims for the loss of property and life by Americans and other foreigners in Mexico.

These claims, as told in The Saturday Blade last week, total at least $1,000,000,000 and may exceed that figure. About $400,000,000 of them are held by foreigners and the rest by American citizens.

Altho the Government of the United States is not known to have ever officially admitted any liability for the losses of persons belonging to other nations, the consular representatives of Germany, England, France, Spain and other nations in Mexico have told men of their nationality that the United States was bound to settle their claims, according to Americans who have recently arrived from Mexico.

Mexicans Want Money.

At the conference here this week the Mexican representatives were told flatly that unless the United States was assured that Mexico would guard its border effectively and that the property and lives of Americans in Mexico would be protected, American mining and ranching interests in that country would be unable to furnish any part of the revenue of the Carranza government.

The American commissioners also advised the Mexicans that the order imposing confiscatory taxes on certain foreign-owned mining properties in Mexico ought to be rescinded.

Try to Show Mexico Is Safe.

At the suggestion of the American delegates the Mexicans began presenting detailed reports as to the progress made, since the recognition of Carranza, toward re-establishing order. Whether Americans are to be invited by their own Government to return to their properties, it was indicated, depends apparently upon the showing that can be made as to the ability of General Carranza to protect them from bandits.

—The Saturday Blade, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 3.

Like Jesse James, All But The Horse

1920

Tippler Hurls a Parting Shot at the Booze Bandit.

One of those present at the funeral of John Barleycorn was a negro who entered a saloon in St. Louis, Mo., and called for a drink of whisky. He laid down a dollar bill. The bartender rang up 50 cents and handed back the change. After glancing at the change and then at the register, the negro called for "another drink of the same."

He drank it and pushed over the half dollar. The bartender rang up the 50 cents, smiled and stood at attention.

"Are you the boss?" inquired the negro.

"Sure."

"Have you got a horse?"

"No, why?"

"Well, Jesse James had a horse," said the negro, turning on his heel and departing.



Found It So

Molly — "Our doctor told me today that hammocks are not good for one."
Cholly — "He's right, dear; they're not good for one, but they're all right for two."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 13.

Fiendish Mexicans Slug American Boy

1919

BANDIT ASSAULTS HIM WITH CLUB AFTER ROBBERY.

Victim Tells of His Escape After Three Days of Torture in a Lonely Shack.

DENVER, Colo. — After three days of terror in the custody of two Mexican bandits, who on the third day slugged and robbed him and left him for dead, Granville Coster, 18-year-old Denver boy who disappeared recently from Allison, N. M., has turned up alive at the office of the Allison Coal Company, by which he was employed as a truck driver, according to word received by his mother, Mrs. William Coster, of this city.

Five hundred and twenty dollars, which he was taking to Gallup for deposit in the Gallup State Bank, was taken from him by the bandits. According to his story, he reached Gallup and was driving his delivery truck into the suburbs when two Mexicans sprang from the side of the road into the truck, jerked the curtains down, drew their guns and ordered him to drive according to their direction. He was compelled to drive across the Arizona border, fifteen miles away.

"Just over the line we came to a farm house," said Coster. "The Mexicans told me if I made a sound they would kill me. We got out of the truck, and they made me walk the whole distance to Winslow, more than 100 miles. We arrived there the morning of the third day.

"They took me into an old shack on the outskirts of the town. They had already taken the money from me. One of them grabbed a club from the floor and struck me over the head with it. That's all I know."

The boy did not regain consciousness until evening. He staggered into Winslow, where he fortunately found friends, who supplied him with enough money to return to Allison. The bandits took everything from him except a bunch of keys, he said.

Coster has been employed driving a delivery truck from Allison to Gallup three times a week. The day before he was kidnaped he carried $5,000 to the Gallup bank.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 7.

Deep Breathing Helped One Sufferer With Insomnia

1908

Troubled All His Life

"I have been troubled with insomnia all my life," remarked the nervous man, "and like most people similarly afflicted I have tried all the familiar dodges to induce sleep. The results were never particularly satisfactory in the way of producing the desired effect until one night I thought I had actually found a sleep-inducer when I chanced to grasp one of the rods at the head of my bed with both hands and practically hung the weight of my body on them. That sent me to sleep and it did the same thing for a few times, when to my extreme disappointment, I found it had ceased to work.

"I was as badly off as recently, until one night, when I had a bad cough, as well as an attack of sleeplessness. I tried the well-known remedy of trying to send myself off into the land of nod by taking long deep breaths. What it did to me, and has done several times since, was not to only send me to sleep, but to stop my cough. Just why it did so is not of much consequence. That it did so is the thing that concerns me most."


Poetry Wins Bandit's Heart

Prof. Bliss Perry tells a story to illustrate the advantages of literary wisdom. A friend, he says, was traveling in French mountains when on a lonely road he was stopped by highwaymen, his life threatened, and his valuables demanded. His literary instincts were to the fore, even in his extremity and half unconsciously he burst forth with an appropriate couplet, quoted from some obscure French poet.

"Hold!" cried the leader of the highwaymen. "My comrades, this gentleman is acquainted with the works of our friend, M. So-and-So! He is, then, our brother."

The purse was returned, courtesies extended, and the traveler and three bandits adjourned to an inn near by and spent a pleasant evening. — Boston Herald.

Sledgehammer Bandits Raid St. Paul Safes

1920

Also Steal 800 Quarts of Liquor From State Asylum

ST. PAUL, Minnesota — The band of "sledgehammer" bandits, after looting more than fifty safes in Minneapolis in the past month, evidently have begun operations in St. Paul by raiding three Como avenue business places.

The lock of a safe at the Great Lakes Coal and Dock Company was hammered open and $500 worth of Liberty bonds and $40 in cash was taken.

The same gang is believed to have hammered the lock from the safe at the Carnegie Dock and Fuel Company, and strong box in the office of a third Como avenue company.

That the "sledgehammer" bandits have a taste for good liquor as well as safes became apparent when nine of them in three automobiles made an informal call on the State asylum for the insane at Anoka.

Eight hundred quarts of liquor, used for medicinal purposes, packed in the refrigerator, were stolen.


Hens Laying for a Record

LINCOLN, Nebraska — Twenty-six hens laid 23 or more eggs each during February in the national egg-laying contest being conducted by the Nebraska agricultural experiment station. One hen laid 28 eggs. She is a Rhode Island Red, owned by M. C. Peters, of Omaha. Two others, both White Leghorns, laid 25 eggs each. Seventeen hens laid 22 eggs each.

Arizona's Stage Robbers — Dan Elkins and Wilbur

1896

Histories of Two Men Who Terrorized the Southwest

One Man "Holds Up" a Stage Load of Eight Passengers — Tracked to Their Hiding Place by Apaches

DAN ELKINS is remembered as the original lone bandit of the Southwest, because, single-handed, he once held up a stage load of eight passengers, besides the driver, all of whom were armed. For weeks the exploit was the talk of the men in and about Tombstone. Judge Bennett, now of San Gabriel, Cal., was one of the passengers, and he tells how the robber worked his desperate game.

"We on the inside of the coach had just been talking," says the Judge, of the robberies that Elkins and his partner, Wilbur, had committed in the Territory, and the shame it was that an organized effort was not made to go and keep after the villains until they were killed, even if it took a year, when we heard a rifle crack, and a man shout to the driver:

" 'Come, now, stop those horses or you'll drop dead.'

"We were traveling through a rocky region along the foothills, and each of us knew instantly that all were in for a hold-up then and there. Every one wondered what his neighbor would do with his pistol.

" 'I'll be hanged,' said a big man from Texas, 'if I'll stand this nonsense,' and he snatched his big shooting iron up from the seat at his side.

"The driver put on the brakes and the stage was stopped at once, when we heard a voice outside saying:

" 'Now you fellers on the inside get out on this side. The first man who gets out on the other side will drop dead as a smelt. Don't be lazy. All of you throw down your shooters as you file out of the coach, for there's a lot of sure rifle shots that's got their eyes on you and are hiding in these here rocks to lay you out cold dead if you don't mind what I'm telling you.'

"When I got out of the stage I noticed that the highwayman wore a wire mask contrivance over his face, and had a big black beard and a whole arsenal of weapons in a belt about his waist. He stood on a commanding boulder, and kept his Winchester repeater moving slowly over us. I took particular pains that he saw I threw down my two pistols on the ground, and I noticed that every one of us, including the Texan, did the same thing.

" 'Throw up your hands, gents, said the masked robber, when we were all on the ground and our pistols lay there in a pile by the side of the coach wheels. 'Now get in line there, quick and face this way. Keep your hands above your heads, don't move; keep your months shut or you'll know how quick a man can go plumb to death."

"We got in line facing our commander in a moment, and none of us could extend his hands quite high enough.

" 'Now, you young fellow with the monkey whiskers,' said the highwayman, 'you just shell out there where you stand. Turn your pockets inside out, so me and my pards can see that you're dealing fair. That's right. Now, while me and my pards keep you in gun range, you search that next man, turn his pockets out. Keep your hands up high, gents, and save trouble. Don't speak.'

"In a few minutes that seemed like ages of an awful silence, each man was searched," and we all stood there in a row with our pockets turned out and flapping in the morning breeze, our hands a full foot above our heads, and a small pile of wallets, watches, little pocket leather and cloth bags of coin lay at the feet of the young man of our party, who had been compelled to search his companions.

" 'Now, you driver, throw that money box off quick, while my pards keep you in range,' said the robber when we had been searched. 'There; that's right. Be lively. It may cost you your carcass. Get that ax under the back seat and chop the box open. Hurry up. Don't speak, and don't get behind that coach, or you'll drop.'

"The ax was got, and the driver chopped open the box near us while we stood there like metal forms in front of clothing stores. When the box had been split apart and the valuables thrown out, the highwayman, all the time keeping his rifle slowly moving up and down our line of silent, hand-uplifted men, said:

" 'Now, driver, get up on your seat. You gents get into your coach. Don't let me hear you peep. Driver, lick your horses up fast and get out of this.

" 'Now, gents,' said he, as the last of us had got back into our seats, weaponless, 'you can brag that you've been held up by a single-handed in the profesh. I don't mind telling you that I'm all alone to-day and that I need your money awful bad. Tell them Tombstone fellers that Dan Elkins has a new trick in his line of business.'

"The horses were whipped up, and the last we saw of Dan Elkins he stood there on that big boulder keeping his head still on us until we turned in the foothill road a mile away. I think the rascal must have got $1000 that day. You see we did not carry much money on our persons in those days when there was danger of highway robbery."

During the winter of 1879 and 1880, the recklessness and bravado of Elkins and his partner, Wilbur, became unbearable, and people began to see that the stage robberies were hurting the name of Arizona, so an unusual effort was made to get the rascals. An extra reward for their capture was offered, and two or three detectives from Los Angeles, Cal., began work. Several half-breed Apache Indian trailers were hired, and after a few weeks the trail to the bandits was found. These Apache trailers are the most wonderful of their kind. They sometimes follow a man's tracks across a desert of sand, even after a windstorm, when the tracks have become obliterated to white men's eyes. They can follow at break-neck speed on a horse the trail of a man who has run in moccasins and taken pains to leave only the faintest traces of his course. They see signs of a trail through cactus and sage brush that no white man would recognize.

After a short period of more trailing and questioning of the few white settlers in the region Elkins and Wilbur were located. Their hiding place was thirty miles south from Benson, among the granite foothills, where no white man but they had probably ever been. Indians were hired to go to the spot, and to act as if they were out hunting and had unwittingly stumbled upon the bandits. Then when the Indians had engaged Elkins and Wilbur in conversation they were to give a signal. A posse of twenty men was to ride at once to the scene. Each man in the band was to take his chances of getting shot by the robbers.

The plan worked well. The bandits were asleep when the Indians came to them one warm afternoon. The Apaches asked for food, and while Wilbur went to get a knife to cut a slice from a deer hanging in the mesquite brush near at hand one of the Indians, pretending to be interested in one of the white stranger's pistols, discharged it. A few minutes later the posse rode up pell mell from behind a low foothill that impeded the view half a mile away.

"We're trapped! we're trapped!" shrieked Elkins as he jumped from his couch of leaves and saw the horsemen encircling about his hiding place.

In a second he and Wilbur were behind two great oaks, and were prepared to fight for their lives. They forgot the Indians at their rear, and no sooner had they turned their faces toward the advancing posse than they were shot dead in the back by the Apache trailers.

There is good reason to believe that if the men had been captured alive they might have been induced to tell where they had hidden the greater part of their stolen money and gold, for no one thinks that, living as they did, they spent more than a small part of their ill-gotten gains. Both the robbers were buried where they were killed, and to this day there are people who go out from the now well-populated town of Benson every little while to the scene of the old camp of Elkins and Wilbur in the hope of finding the secret storehouse of stolen riches among the boulders and foothills that surround the spot. — New York Sun.

Cole Younger

1903

COLE YOUNGER. [Good link]

Unfortunately Minnesota omitted to stipulate that Cole Younger must not write a book.—Milwaukee Sentinel.

Cole Younger, the paroled bandit, is being given public ovations in Missouri, and yet the man never won a prize fight in his life.—Denver Republican.

Cole Younger is now in our midst; but this fact does not cause anything like the alarm it would have caused 26 years ago.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Cole Younger's refusal to consider himself a hero will be likely to give the country the impression that there really is some heroic stuff in him after all. —Denver Republican.

Cole Younger is indignant in his denial of intention to go on the stage. This entitles Mr. Younger to an unconditional pardon, nem con and eo instante. — Cincinnati Commercial Tribune.

Col. Cole Younger is preparing to enter Missouri by way of Kansas City and Kansas City is purple with mortification that Cole Younger should see her union depot at its worst—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Cole Younger has advised the Missourians that he does not wish to be received as a hero. In deference to his wishes no brass bands nor beautiful maidens laden with high-priced flowers and with their sweet lips trembling with welcoming sons will meet him at the Lee Summit day-po.—Denver Post.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 4, 1903, page 4.

Train Bandit Dies, News Fatal to His Father

St. Joseph, Missouri, 1920
----------
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.