New-York tribune., 1922-08-17
Bandit Reveals
Details Of Big
Mail Robbery
Declares His 2 Compan-
ions, Who Deny Guilt,
Held Out ON Him I'm Di-
viding the $2,400, 900
Tells of Plotting Crime
Ex-Convict Played Part
i'm Trapping Men and
Aided Express Detective

The whole story Of the Leonard
Street mail robbery last October came
out In Federal Court yesterday when
Charles Loerber, confessed driver of
the bandits car, was placed on the
witness stand before Judge Edwin
Holmes to testify against Gerald Chap
man and George Anderson, the other
defendants.
Loerber spoke in low tone, which
contrasted strongly with the shouts of
Chapman's lawyer as he subjected the
witness to a cross-examination which
amounted almost to a third degree.
But his assurance never faltcred and
his testimony stool unshaken after the
attorney had been fined for contempt
OF court in his noisy questioning.
Loerber told of meeting with his
alleged fellow conspirators in Auburn
Prison; of their encounter last gum
vigils they spent night after night
watching the City Hall Station until
they knew every detail of the regis
tered mail movement; of following the
treasure van up Broadway again and
again to determine the safest corner
on which to carry out their design; Of
the tips they got from an employee
inside the station, now facing trial
for completely in the robbery.
Tells Of Dividing Loot
Then came the night of October "a,
when, according to his testimony, he
picked up Chapman and Anderson on
West End Avenue early in the evening
and drove them to Mail Street, where
they parked the car opposite the post
office and waited in tremulous excite
ment for the truck to start up Broad
way with its S2,4oo,ooo cargo. Then
the actual hold-up and a wild night
ride across Long Island to Lake Ron
konkoma, where they split the loot in a
barn belonging to one OF Loerber's rel
atives. The witness declared that his
share was $4,000 in cash and 100000
in securities, all of which he bureid
beneath the stable floor.
1t was over the division of the loot,
according to Loerber, that the
quarrel with his alleged associates
arose which led him to break the code
of the underworld to testify against
them. He declared that he had reason
to believe that Chapman and Anderson
held back $4,000 worth of bonds by
the assertion that they had fallen from
the car and that they had later real
lied on them in Detroit without giving
him his share.
Loerber admitted that another rea-
son for turning states evidence was
the learning that Teddy Rose, an ex
convict to whom he turned over $21 900
worth of securities to negotiate, was
q stool pigeon and that he himself was
Caught with the goods on"
/ He depied that AndprcOr and Cham
man were merely intelligent men whom
he asked to help in disposing of his
loot. He identified two revolvers as
those they carried during the hold-up
And the attempt of the defense to
show that the prisoners who are pro-
testing their innocence were fences
rather than bandits received another
setback when Havanrick, the driver of
the truck which was held up, identified
them as his assailants.
Ex-Convict Aided in Arrest
Roses name had not been mentioned
in the reports of the investigation into
the hold-up, and his share in the work
of the postoffice inspectors was re-
vealed for the first time yesterday by
Inspectors Doran and Wick, from whom
he took his orders. Rose it was, they
declared, who introduced to the under
world Gordon Mccarthy, the American
Express Company detective who has
heretofore received most of the credit
for the arrest of the three defendants,
portraying him as a stick-up man from
the West. Later Rose himself wormed
the story of the robbery out of the
bandit driver and so far won his con-
fidence that he was intrusted with.
some of the bonds; and Rose gave the
tip to the inspectors that the robbers
suspicious had been aroused against
Mccarthy by the sharp eyes of a wom-
an friend of theirs.