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Show 'I PARALLEL IFfJe crminal Teiis j g How He i lanncd the g I STORIES Deed and Sou-ht to Close I f r- "AffAnc? Every Avenue of Knowl- & i' ili.iUUC? edge Leading to His Guilt. E 4T3 V3 1 "EV7 TC" GI T'ie Detective Shows IIow 1 l 1 iVl . 3 Futiie These Efforts Were and g B IIow the Old Adage, Murder S By HENRY C. TERRY Will Out, "Always Holds Good." g (Copyriclit by 1''. L ho-lson STRANGE CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY. fTf HAVE often been asked If LpV professional criminals suf- V V fer from the Iashi"Ss of viy! k- conscience. I have no hesi-A73 hesi-A73 tation in replying that many of them, perhaps a majority, major-ity, do. At least, if it is not conscience, con-science, it is the admission, after the experiences of a lifetime of crime, that crime is futile, that it brings no mental satisfaction to the criminal, and that the ways of honesty are to be preferred. It is. perhaps, that form of regret over a misspent life that is akin to remorse. TOM LYNCH'S STORY. "Thieves, I suppose," said Tom, "have all sorts of notions as to why they steal. Few of them, perhaps, will agree with me. I believe that a man has the right to take unto himself him-self any property that may be in the possession of another, but which Is not being used by the owner at the time of the theft. This draws the line at picking a pocket. I would not steal anything from another's pocket. But, If I entered a man's house and there found in a drawer a $100 which he had taken from his pocket I would not hesitate to steal it on the theory that it was property out of use at the time. "You will understand me now when I speak of being proud of a certain piece of work in my line. Well of all the tricks I have pulled off 1 am prouder proud-er of the robbery of a certain great New York wholesale house than any other, even if it did land me for a fifteen-year stretch. I am proud of it as a work of art. It was all of that and would have been a masterpiece but for the one little slip in the cogs that a thief never counts on, yet so often encounters. en-counters. "The idea came to me one day when I was passing the wholesale house of & Co., on Church street. The night watchman was just going on duty. I looked at him In astonishment. It was none other than Sam Snyder, one of the smoothest bank burglars who ever held a candle. How Sam ever succeeded in getting a job as a night watchman was a mystery mys-tery to me. Talk about setting a thief to catch a thief. "Well I walked on to Billy the Bite's place on Thompson street to have a drink and think it over. Who should I see sitting there at a table but Sam Snyder himself. "'You beat it over here from your Church street job in a hurry,' I said to , him. "His only answer was to look at me j In blank surprise. Then I told him ; how I had just seen him in a wateh-I wateh-I man's uniform over at the big wholesale whole-sale house. " 'Billy,' he called to Billy the Bite, who was behind the bar, 'How long have I been sittin' in this here chair?' "Billy looks at the clock and says: 'Tree hours, an' youse has had foive ! drinks. Dere never was no profit in I temperance blokes.' "Billy might have lied but at that Sam couldn't have got out of hia uniform and beat me across town, f it wasn't Sam it was a dead, living ringer for him. Like a nasn it came to me. " 'Sam,' I said, 'this here has been handed to us by Providence. If you haven't got that job as a night watchman watch-man you've got to grab it.' "With that I took him over to the place and we hung around until we could get a pipe at the watchman. With Sam standing there at my side I bad to rub my eyes to believe that wasn't him on the other side of the big plate glass. I kidded him along by saying: " 'There's no watchman in there. Bam. That's just your reflection In the glass.' " 'By , if it wasn't for the uniform uni-form he's got I'd be willing to believe It myself,' he said. "With that we hikes right back to Billy the Bite's and frameB up the job. This is the way it worked out. "First we pulled in Ed Kelly, Pete flail and Billy Myer, all men we could trust. We put a plant onto the store and got every movement down so fine that if the proprietors had been willing will-ing to step out and turn It over to us we could have run it without a hitch. We found that a very heavy trucking business left the storo in the early hours of the morning in order to get shipments out of the way before the itreets were blocked with traffic. "Pete Hall, who tood in with every ev-ery fence in town, then got about a dozen trucks together so that they could he used at any time on call. My part of 1 lie rally work was to go over to t lie east side and hire a house on Madison street that could be used for storage purposes. We then started the trucks to running back and forth in the neighborhood of the Madison street place. Each truck carried a load of packing cases which were dummies. My partners did the trucking truck-ing and handled the cases. It soon became be-came thoroughly established in the neighborhood that we were doing a legitimate trucking and storage business. busi-ness. "While this was going on I laid all the plans for cracking the store. I fixed upon Monday morning as at that time in the week they carried an unusually un-usually heavy stock of shipments ready to go out. "Everything being In readiness, 1 gave the gang the tip to report at the store with the teams at a quarter of four on Monday morning. We had five trucks ready but only one drove up to the shipping door first. I had learned learn-ed that the truckmen were In the habit of signalling the watchman by tapping on this door with an Iron bale hook. I gave him the signal and the minute he opened the door Sam Snyder laid him out with another hook. "He lost no time In stripping the watchman of hU uniform and getting Into ft himself. To get rid of Sam's clothes we slipped them onto the unconscious un-conscious watchman. The whole gang gave a start to see what looked like Sam himself, lying there stiff. "We worked as fast as possible and I doubt if five trucks ever were loaded so quickly. When we had as much as we dared carry we drove off. As we -had at least an hour before us, I had Sam Snyder stay at the store, intending intend-ing to make a return trip with one truck for some velvets that I had my eye on. We dumped the stuff Into our storage house and hustler1 back on one truck at lightning speed. "I went to the door and gave the signal to Sam Snyder with the bale hook. I waited a long while and he did not reply. I finally came to the conclusion that he had seen something some-thing suspiciou; and had made off. So we reluctantly returned to our storage house, compelled to be satisfied satis-fied with the five loads. We put up the horses and awaited the day's developments. de-velopments. I was greatly troubled in mind when, at the close of the day, Sam Snyder had not put In his appearance ap-pearance at the warehouse. DETECTIVE CARPENTER'S STORY. "Although the thief is the natural enemy of mankind, occasionally a job of thievery is done that cannot help but arouse a certain degree of admiration admira-tion either for its ingenuity or its daring. Such a case was the robbery of the big wholesale house of & Co. "When I first received the commission commis-sion to look up the burglary it seemed like a very easy task. The thieves had left behind them a most unusual clue, no more nor less than one of their number. But beforo I got through my head was in a whirl. "When the clerk whose duty it was to open the store in the morning arrived ar-rived at the place he was surprised to find both doors to the shipping room standing wide open. All the goods which had been boxed Saturday Satur-day for shipment on Monday morning morn-ing were gone. "He could not understand this, but he presumed that all was regular and that some arrangement of which he had not been informed had been made for an earlier shipment than usual. He called the name of the watchman, but received no reply. Even this failed to arouse his suspicions, as on several occasions the watchman had left the store a little while before the arrival of the first clerk. "But when the shipping clerk arrived ar-rived he also was ignorant of any plan for an early shipment. The two men called a policeman and together they searched the store. They found the watchman lying on the floor unconscious un-conscious and bleeding from a cut in his forehead. Then it was plain that a robbery had been committed. "I reached the store early in the morning, shortly after the arrival of the heads of departments. I saw at a glance that it was a case of burglary, bur-glary, and by a gang of the most expert ex-pert and daring men in the business. While the clerks were figuring up to find how many thousands of dollars' wortn had been taken I made a tour of the store to find out, if possible, how entrance had been gained. "I went first to the cellar and had i not got very far until 1 saw something some-thing that gave me a start. "Two feet were sti'-king out from between some packing boxes that stood directly en an open Hatchway leading to the first (ioor. I pushed aside the boxes and found the body of a man lying in a, pool of blood. I felt his pulse. It was still beating very faintly, but 1 -could see that he was in a critical condition, lie was wearing a watchman's uniform. Yet we had found the watchman upstairs. I called some of the clerks. With one breath they declared it was the watchman. watch-man. Then who was the man we had sent to- the hospital with a broken head? "We carried the man upstairs. Several Sev-eral more of the clerks took a look at him and were unanimous in declaring declar-ing that this certainly was the watchman. watch-man. There was a letter in the pocket of his blouse addressed to the watchman watch-man at Hohoken. I did iot know what to believe. One of the two men was the watchman, but which I was unable to say. His wife had been seut for and was on the way. She would be able to settle it . beyond doubt. "When she arrived at the store she gave one look at the body of the man I had found In the cellar, shrieked, threw herself on the body and fainted dead away. That settled it. This was the watchman himself. To uake It doubly sure, as soon as she had recovered re-covered sufficiently to talk, I asked her If there: were any marks upon the body of her husband by which he could be positively Identified. She replied re-plied that her husband, who had been In the navy, had the picture of a full-r full-r jged Bhip tattooed on his chest. "I quickly stripped off the man's shirt. No ship was there. The ambulance am-bulance was at hand and, taking the wife, I went with it to the hospital where the first man had been taken. "ho had the ship In the right place. I was glad of it and the wife was overjoyed, for the doctors said tha real watchman was but slightly hurt, while the fellow I had found was certain to die. "It was then clear to me that the man in the cellar was one of the thieves who had fallen through the open hatchway. The plot was apparent. Acting upon the most remarkable re-markable resemblance between the Lwo men, the thieves had waylaid the real watchman, knocked him out and substituted their own comrade in his place. Even the policeman on the beat, who knew the watchman well, had talked with his prototype without scenting the deception. No blame was attached to him when even the man's own wife was deceived. "My thread to the solution of the mystery was now the bogus watchman. watch-man. I kept close watch on him in the hospital. In a few days he died. I had it publicly announced in all the papers that he would be buried in the potter's field. But the next day an undertaker un-dertaker appeared with a permit to take the body. I let him have it, but also got a strong pull on him and had myself appointed his assistant. "Now I was in a position to learn who was Interested In the bodv. It was a woman. I put shadows on her and soon found out that she was a Miss Snyder, who had a brother Sam who was something of a crook. That was enough for me. I soon had the body fully Identified as that of Sam Snyder. "Still I was a long way from the living liv-ing members of the plot. But with Sam Snyder dead I was convinced that the thieves would do something for his sister and only living relative. I kept a close shadow on her. Soon I was rewarded by finding that she was in receipt of money from some source. The i.mounts came on the first of every ev-ery month from different places. Then the payments stopped. "As a last resort I went directly to the woman. I told her that I was a crook and an old friend of Sam's who had frequently worked with him. I told her so many things about Sam that I bad learned that she was convinced. con-vinced. "She began to talk freely and gave me a lot of information about Sam's affiliation with Tom Lynch's gang. "It did not take me long to find out that she had a grievance against Tom Lynch. She said that Tom Lynch had agreed to take care of her after Sam was hurt in the Church street robbery, rob-bery, but had failed to keep his promise, prom-ise, and she was then In desperate straits. Upon my promise to see Tom and urge him to help her she gave me the full details of the plot. She named as the members of the gang Ed Kelly, Pete Hall and Bill Myer, besides Tom i.ynch. She gave me a tip on where the stolen goods were stored. "I turned my attention to the place and finally spotted Pete Hall, who had cme to the place to attend to the shipment of some of the goods. By shadowing him I finally nailed the whole gang in Philadelphia. They bad been disposing of the goods in small lots in various cities. "Much of the loot was recovered in the storage house. All of the gang were identified by the policeman who had talked with the watchman and they 'were sent away for 15 years each." |