The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-11-07

operators worked the Northwest as
we'll as Eastern cities, and played their
game in st. Paul and Minneapolis.
They had keys to the mail boxes and
would rife the downtown boxes of
their contents. In business letters
they would thus often secure checks,
and then by forging the Endorsements
they VictimiZed the banks of consider
able sums The PinkertOns went to
work on the case and arrested one of
the gang, Wallace, in Minneapolis; he
was sentenced to six years in prison.
Two others, Woodward and Fisher
were arrested in Cincinnati, but Fish
er escaped from Jail and went abroad.
He was arrested and imprisoned in
London for some crime committed
there and his term expired last
Wednesday. He was rearrested at
the doors of the prison, by Pinker-
tor man, and is held there awaiting
eXtradition papers to return him to
this country for trial.
There is only one bank crook at
large now" said Mr. Pinkerston. THE
gangs of them who did a thriving
business a few years ago are now
taken care of, all except one man,
and we expect to have him before
long He is known to be in the North
west now.
THE man who gave us the most
trouble to CATCH ] think, was an old
fellow named A Larkin, B. Simpson,
Brown, and a dozen other aliases. lie
was over sixty years of age, had White
hair and snowy beard, and a benign,
patriarchal look. He would go to a
small place, announce himself as from
the South, and that his intention was
to buy farm. He would make the ac-
quaintance of prominent church peo-
pie, take part in church services and
finally would occupy the pulpit in some
church of a Sabbath morning-and he
could preach right to the point. too
In the course of a few weeks he would
select a farm, go to the bank with
draft for $4,000 or $4,000 get some of
his church friends to identify him. and
then he would disappear with the
money. We finally caught him, after
he had worked dozen or more COM
munities, and he is now doing time in
Nebraska.
Another slippery fellow we gather
ed in recently, was c. H. Henry, who
Ill. He was a justice of the peace
there an insurance agent, a former
newspaper man and a highly respected
citizen. Every little while he would
take a trip to some city and work off
a forged check for $500 or $500, and
then get back home. 1t was a long
time before suspicion fell on him and
he was gathered IN.
Speaking of concealing ones iden-
tfty, reminds me of the pains a crook
named Tom Boland, a forger, took to
evade detection and arrest. We had
his description and photo in our Chi
cago office and wanted him badly. One
day the Chicago police arrested two
men as suspicious characters, and
when they were taken to the station,
one of the fellows struck a match and
burned off his moustache. This was
so singular a proceeding that we were
notified and asked to come over and
see if we could identify the fellows.
Our assistant superintendent imme-
diately placed this chap as BOland, al
though in his photograph he had a full
beard and now he was smooth shaver.
The description said that Boland had
geld filling in two front teeth; this fell
lows teeth were uuspecked by gold,
but a close examination showed that
two front ones were false. Boland was
supposed to have tattoo marking on
his left forearm, a girl dancing on a
globe; the suspect had a bunch of
flowers tattooed on his arm. Boland
had a scar on his right groin, and we
were about to look for it on this chap
when he coolly announced that we
needn't bother any longer; that he
would give in that he was the fellow we
wanted.
can Identification bureau is being es-
tablished in Chicago by the police au-
thorities of the United States and
Canada, for the purpose Of keeping a
record of criminals. The stewards are
Chief of Police Deitch, of Cincinnati;
Chief Ripley, of Chicago; Chief Gros-