New-York tribune., 1921-02-28
jersey Bandits
CotOnl> $1,000
IL, q Robberies
Lost Most of This Shooting
Craps During 90 Days of
Holding Up Autos. Trol.
leys and Blowing Safes
Own Families III Want
Say Victims Exaggerated
Losses and Honest Jobs
Would Have Paid Better

The three bandits who for more than
two months held Union County, y. j.,
IN reign of terror and who were cap
tured Saturday after they had shot
Up trolley car near rowniey realized
only about $1,000 from the twenty-one
robberies they confess having com
mitted, Most OF this sum they lost
shooting craps, while the families OF
two of them were in want, and to-day,
when it is expected they will plead
guilty in the county court at Eliza
beth, each will be liable to prison
sentences aggregating $50 years.
THE best we got out of it was the
}krill,' said John Krebs, one OF the
despersdoes, to Prosecutor Walter L.
Hetfield. "The three OF us could have
earned more money that that in the
same length of time at any fairly good
Job. And we wouldn't be on our way
TO the big house now"
Krebs said he and his confederates
usually got laugh when they read in
the newspapers the exaggerated re-
ports The majority of their victims
gave of their losses.
Aged Mother Does Washing
Marty Shannon, one of the bandits.
lived in RoseIe Park with his aged
mother. She recently started taking
in washing to keep roof over their
heads. Charles Krebs, Johns brother
and leader of the gang, who was shot
by Carl f. Schmidlen, physical direc
tor at Summit High School, while fee
ing from the trolley c}r, has a wife
and four children in Kenilworth, N. J..
They, too, have been hard put to it to
make both ends meet. John Krebs is
single. He has been living in Roselle
Park.
1--WE got so little from these jobs"
Shannon said, "we thought we'd try
each time to make it grow by gambling.
We may have been good stick-up men,
but we were bum crapshooters. The
boys cleaned us every time, and then
we'd have TO jump out and pull another
stick-up."
The trio came east from Columbus,
Ohio, about eighteen months ago. The
first robbery they committed in New
Jersey, according to the signed con-
fession Prosecutor Hetfield said is in
his possession, was the hold-up of an
automobile near Springfield, in which
Postmaster De Camp, of Westiield, and
some friends were riding, on the night
of December IL last. That same night
they held up two other automobiles,
one containing Arthur Tuttlct brother
l
the other DIR. Arnold and his wife That
evenings work netted them $500, they
said.
Rob Twenty of $50
Five nights later they held up a troll
ley car at Springfield, obtaining $50
from twenty passengers, they declared.
The report to the police set the amount
of loot from this robbery at S700.
In both these instances, one of the
robbers told the prosecutor, the get
away was so easily accomplished that
they decided to make Union County
their field of operations. 1t was when
the series of crimes they committed
eliminated in the hold-up OF seven
teen men and women en- route home
sn autos from the Baltusrol Golf
Club and the woundlng of Robert
S. Huse, of Elizabeth, that indig-
pant citizens met and demanded the
mobilization by Governor Edwards Of
the old Home Guard to patrol the
roads. The Baltusrol robbery netted
them $210, they said.
In the mean time the three bandits,
on the night of December 21. had
bound and gagged the watchman at the
American Felt Company plant. in Clark
Township, pried open the safe, but got
nothing of value. On December % they
got $25 from safe in the Office of the
international Composition Company
Union Township. Here also they way
laid the watchman and rendered him
powerless.
Taxi Driver Held Up
taXicab driver in Railway named