# Looters of the Public Domain/Chapter 31

Chapter XXXI
ALTHOUGH indictments had been returned against F. A. Hyde, John A. Benson, Joost H. Schneider and Henry P. Dimond on February 17, 1904, the defendants were not brought to trial until April 1. 1908. Legal efforts to prevent the case from being reached at all were responsible for some of the delays, but generally the continuances and repeated postponements were brought about through technical questions raised to hinder proceedings. At all events, it has taken the Government more than four years to bring the quartet of alleged conspirators into Court, and there is a strong likelihood of the case dragging its weary length along for some time to come before any final determination is reached, the trial being still in progress at this writing.
Three of the defendants—Hyde, Benson and Dimond—reside in San Francisco, California, while Schneider is engaged in business at Tuscon, Arizona. They were accused under Section 5440, of the United States Revised Statutes, with having defrauded the Government of its public lands, their plan of operation, according to the theory of the prosecution, embracing a system without parallel for its magnitude. In brief, it contemplated the fraudulent acquisition of title to thousands of acres of school lands within the confines of forest reserves in California and Oregon by process of "dummy" and fictitious applicants, and the exchange of tracts thus acquired for valuable timber lands of the United States under the forest reserve lieu land Act of June 4, 1897. It was through this exchange with the Government that they became involved in trouble, as the United States has no authority over State lands of any kind, and had the alleged conspirators confined their operations to the acquisition of title to the 16th and 36th sections of townships in the two States named, the chances are that nothing in the nature of a criminal proceeding would have resulted from their scheme of looting. As soon, however, as they undertook to select Government land in lieu of their fraudulent State holdings, it brought them within the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam, and entailed a condition that has resulted in a long legal battle for their liberties.
Dimond was stationed at Washington, D. C, during the period it was claimed the frauds had been committed, and his supposed connection with Hyde and Benson as their legal representative at the National Capital is responsible for the case being tried there. It was set up in the indictment that the fact of his appearing before the Land Departments at different times in the interest of the two alleged arch conspirators formed the connecting link, and entitled the Government to try the defendants wherever any part of the plot was hatched. The attempt to remove the quartet to Washington for trial was resisted to the utmost, but without avail, as the United States Supreme Court sustained the Government's contention that if any part of the proceedings tending to connect the defendants with the commission of a conspiracy originated in Washington, they could be brought across the continent for trial.
Acting under these instructions, Holsinger proceeded to Tuscon, where on November 6, 1902, he held his first interview with Schneider in the presence of Attorney Zabriskie. Several days were consumed in securing full details from Schneider, so that it was not until November 12, 1902, that Special Agent Holsinger was prepared to make his report to the Commissioner of the General Land Office. This he did from Phoenix, Arizona, on the date indicated, covering practically every feature of the conspiracy as described by Schneider.
In brief, the admissions of Schneider amounted to a confession that he had acted as the agent for Hyde and Benson in procuring "dummies" to locate the school lands in existing and proposed forest reserves of California and Oregon, with a view of their subsequent exchange with the Government for other lands. In this manner several hundred applications had been filed, many of which embraced the names of fictitious persons.
Holsinger transmitted his report to the General Land Office, and it was promptly pigeonholed by Commissioner Hermann, and probably would never have seen the light of day again had not a clerk unearthed it, and its contents become known to Secretary Hitchcock, months after it had been filed with the Commissioner. The Secretary of the Interior at once instituted an investigation, intrusting this feature of the case to Arthur B. Pugh, an attorney for the Interior Department. The latter proceeded to California accompanied by Special Agent Steece, of the General Land Office, and the two secured much damaging evidence against Hyde, Benson and others. Later William J. Burns, of the Treasury Department, was called into the case, and he spent several weeks in San Francisco and Oregon in unearthing the frauds, with the result that from the mass of evidence in the possession of the Government from these various sources, the indictment was returned.
When Burns returned to Washington from his preliminary investigation of the Hyde-Benson case, he asked the Chief Clerk, James T. Macey, of the General Land Office, for a confidential stenographer to write up his report. Macey sent Irvin Rittenhouse to him for a few days. His work was of such value to Burns that he was retained by him indefinitely. This was the early part of November, 1903. About December 28th or 29th, 1903, Secretary of the Interior E. A. Hitchcock received two anonymous letters from San Francisco concerningthe Hyde-Benson case. One was typewritten and the other pen printed. He turned them over to Burns and the latter brought them to the Land Office, where he showed them to Rittenhouse and asked him who he thought wrote them. Rittenhouse, who had been handling a lot of typewritten papers in connection with the case, noticed at once that the anonymous letter was written on a Blickensderfer typewriter and immediately called Burns' attention to the fact that all of Dimond's letters to the General Land Office, entering his appearance as attorney in the Hyde lieu selection cases, had been written with this type of machine, and that it was his opinion Dimond wrote the anonymous letters.
Burns had not accepted the theory of Rittenhouse, and was working on other lines to connect Dimond with the letters, but had been unsuccessful. One afternoon after Court had adjourned, while Dimond was still on the stand, and the Government officers had almost concluded it would be impossible to break him down, Judge Pugh, Rittenhouse, and Burns accompanied Heney to his offices, and while there discussing the case, Heney asked Burns for the anonymous letters, which Rittenhouse had brought to San Francisco, and was reading them over in an effort to find some connection with Dimond in them. The anonymous letters had erroneously spelled the Special Agent's name STACE instead of STEECE. As soon as Heney read this part of the pen written letter "If your Mr. STACE had been worth the powder to blow him up," etc., Rittenhouse remarked in the presence of Burns and Pugh, "Why, Dimond has been calling STEECE STACE all afternoon." Heney looked up and said: "By, G—d, that's right, Rit!" Burns gave a look of doubt as to the correctness of the statement, but both Heney and Pugh immediately recalled the fact. Mr. Heney read the following portion of the letter which referred to a Mr. BROHASKI in Tucson, Arizona. This meant Zabriskie, who had been Schneider's attorney when he first made his confession of the conspiracy to Special Agent Holsinger. As soon as Mr. Heney read the sentence containing this name BROHASKI, Rittenhouse again remarked, "Dimond has been calling Zabriskie BROHASKI, too." Heney looked up with the smile of satisfaction that had not then become famous and said:
"That's right; Good for you, Rit!" and brought his fist down on his desk, saying "We've got him; We've got him!"
Burns was inclined to doubt even this statement, but both Heney and Judge Pugh recalled it, and the former paid no attention to the doubts of Burns. Turning to Rittenhouse Burns said:
"Now that goes to show the importance of you being down there all the time, Rit."
Rittenhouse immediately rejoined, "What's the matter with the 'King of Detectives?' he was asleep this afternoon."
As a result of these identical errors by Dimond on the stand in the course of his examination and numerous other coincidences which Rittenhouse then pointed out to Mr. Heney in Dimond's admitted correspondence, it was clearly proven that Dimond had written the two anonymous letters to Secretary Hitchcock, and the Government even proved that he was the writer of one which he claimed to have received from some unknown source, and which he had written to himself to use as a "club" on Hyde to make the latter pay him a fee of $10,000 which Dimond claimed was due him from Hyde.