The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1881-03-17
A Long Life Of Crime Ended.

and al hour afterwards stopped in the
municipal burying- ground-the potter s
field of the vulgar and in few min
| utes a plain pine box was lowered into
a hole in the earth and the frozen clods
ratified upon the pine-inclosed form of
Wade Supple, alias Pierce, alias William
Gray, who in his day was one of the
most famous hotel and sneak thieves in
| the United States. His end was that of
nine out of ten Indicators, although
his fate had not overtaken him until he
had gone beyond the allotted three
score and ten years. For more than
forty years Sjpple had pursued a criminal
career, and in that time he had been
made familiar with the interiors of the
County Prison, the Eastern Penitentiary,
Sing Sing, Charlestown, Mass, Balti-
more, Richmond, Wheeling and Will
mngton, N. o., prisons and peniten-
tiaries. He was known to the detectives
all over the land as daring hotel thief,
the stories of whose exploits would fill
| books. He was first known here in
! 1886. when he became an inmate of the
Eastern Penitentiary.
In the great DAYS of steamboat travel
along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers,
thirty years ago, when the boats were
infested by regular coalitions of gam
blers, who preyed upon the South
ern and Southwestern planters who
Travelled between New Orleans and
Cincinnati and ST. Louis, the fine
art of sneak-thieving was adroitly
piled. The thieves stole from the
planter and from the successful gambler
alike, often taking thousands of dollars
from the staterooms, where it had been
deposited by the card sharpers for safe
ty during the progress of the famous
games in which the reckless planters
often staked, not only the ready money
derived from the sale of their crops,
but wagered, besides, their plantations,
| field hands, residences, ETC., and lost
all to the. cunning knaves whom the
blind goddess and skill favored.
Supple who was down on his +" luck"
after a term of imprisonment at Rich
mond, Virginia, encountered an ac-
,quaintance of Hi Megary, the notorious
Mississippi River thief, who was in
partnership with AL Burtis and Tom
buchanan in working the steamers ply
ing the Father of Waters. This man
took Sippie West with him and his cool
ness and adroitness so pleased the vet
Grams that he was admitted to full mem
bership in the band of plunderers, with
whom he remained many years. He
had thrilling adventure once near
Natchez, Miss, which is said to have
frightened him into abandoning his affil-
iatlon with Burtis and his other con-
federates. A party of gamblers had
come up from New Orleans, had
''eleaned OUT number of planters and
were making merry over their triumph.
The spoils of victory were supposed to
be fabulous. Sipple learned that the
money, which was mostly in bundles of
brand-new crisp bank notes, was in the
stateroom of one of the gamblers. He
determined to possess himself of it and
succeeded in his enterprise, afterwards
concealing the plumber in his own ROOM
The gambler discovered his loss in a
few hours and notified his associates.
They fixed on Sipple and another man
as the thieves. and, catching them on
the upper deck of the steamer on a
moonlight night, as she was passing
Natchez, they surrounded them, and.
with drawn bowie knives and derrin-
gers, threatened them with instant death
unless they produced the booty or told
where it was hidden. Sipple pretended
to be frightened into compliance,
and told his eaptors to accompany him
to his room. On his way thither, al
though encompassed by cleaning steel,
he sprang through his environment and
plunged overheard. An attempt was
made to stop the boat and capture the
: thief, but no trace of him could be dis
tInguished even under the moonlight,
and he was given up for lost. Not so,
however. He escaped, and not liking
the manners of the Southern gamblers,
he forsook steamboat thieving as too
perilous. The gamblers recovered their
money in Sipple's room after fight
with his companions. AS age crept
over the once daring criminal he de-
scended lower and lower in the grades
of crime until he became mere sneak
thief-a snapper up of trihes. Suspic-
ion was not likely to fasten upon a
white-haired, white whiskered, nicely
dressed old man, and so he subsisted
miserably on his pilfering where thous-
ands had been insufficient to satisfy him
before. He was arrested many times
for petty larceny and sentenced to few
months in the County Prison. In Janu-
airy, 1873, he was in custody under the
name of Peck along with Charles Blake,
the burglar, on the charge of disposing
of some = the plumber from j. E.
Baum's house, 2036 Diamond Street, at
a secondhand dealers store, represent
ing that Blake was his son-in-law, who
was breaking up housekeeping. Blake
was taken to the West Chester prison
afterwards Oh suspicion of partici patton
in the Bailey masked robbery On Octo-
Der 16. 1873, Gray is found in trouble
again, for the last time. Three men
who climbed over back fence from a
brlckyard were surprised while in the
act OF breaking into the residence 1908
Thompson Street. Two of them es.
capped from the police, but the third,
poor, old Wade Supple, who told the
magistrate afterwards that his name was
William Gray, was too stiffened by age
and rheumatism to Chamber up the lad
der again and was cornered behind a
barrel in the yard of the dwelling. He
was convicted and sentenced to three
years Imprisonment. After a little