San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1926-01-03

q 0MEWHERE just outside San An
tonic, Texas, there is buried about
half a million dollars of train rob
bers' treasure, and great many people
from that city are trying to locate it and
get their fingers on bit of it.
The treasure is part of the loot the no.
5orious Newton gang of bandits got away
with when they held up and robbed Mail
Fall of 1924. 1t is hidden somewhere in
4 twenty-eight-acre patch of wilderness
eight miles out. The section is desolate and
rocky and covered with the gray mesquite
bush, and night and day, since the news
leaked out, men, women and children have
flocked there from the city, with picks.
spades, and even dynamite, to hunt for
the stolen riches.
Some of the scenes have been like the
stirring ones of the old 40 gold rush.
Business men have closed up their offices
and gone out TO hunt or watch others hunt;
stenographers have left their machines to
urge on their sweethearts to greater eff
forts with their spades; laborers have left
their jobs to strike out likely claims.
Hundreds of holes have been dug, and
sometimes even in the night the rat-tat-tat
of picks striking rocks, the swish of SHOW
els hurting out the dirt, and the noise of
small charges of dynamite exploding can
be heard in the locality where the fortune
is supposed to be buried.
How did that loot, gathered away up in
Illinois, get down to southern Texas?
That's curious story. The Newton gang
was made up of four brothers, Texans
their names, Willis, Jesse, Joe and Wiley
and Brent Glasscock and Herb Hollo-
day. For about eight years they had car
ried on highly profitable train and bank
robbng business. In 1924, William j.
Fahy-before that one of the bravest, most
resourceful and successful Of the Govern
ment's Post-office Department inspectors
slipped some moral cog and made up
his mind to Ego wrong" Fahy arranged
a meeting with the Newtons and tipped
them off to shipment of $1,000, 600 in
specie and S10,000,000 in negotiable Sc
curities on Train 81, westbound out of
Chicago.
Willis rehearsed the gang till each was
letter-perfect in the part he bad to play
and then held-up Train 81 at Rondout,
Ill. They smashed the windows of the
treasure car and threw in glass bombs
filled with formaldehyde, which, breaking,
filled the ear with choking gas.
The clerks were compelled to open the
doors 10 find breath. A gas mask was
forced on the chief mail clerk, and one of
the robbers jumped with him into the car
and compelled him to pick out the sacks
which Fahy had told them would contain
the most valuable shipments.
The gang would have made. without
doubt, clean getaway except for an un-
foreseen accident A. the last sack was
being thrust into one of the waiting auto
mobiles, Glasscock saw d lone figure COM
ing up the track He fired five bullets
into il and then discovered that he had
shot Wiley Newton, who had inadvertently
gotten out of his place in the well-re-
hearsed routine of the hold-up.
Blood was thicker than water with the
NewtOns, bandits as they were. and Willis
insisted upon getting his brother to Chi
cago for medical aid. They stopped about
eighteen miles out of that city and divided
the SZ,UVU,VUU MOftl OF 1901 among lltIIs
burning what they thought they could not
dispose of. Willis then went on with the
wounded Wiley, and Jesse Newton and an
other member Of the gang started out in
his car for San Antonio with 100000
of the booty. BY hard driving night and
day they reached San Antonio in eighty
hours.
Jesse was seen around San Antonio
for day or two, and then he disappeared.
About this time Fate decided to turn
thumbs down on the Newton gang.
Wounded brother Wiley was located by
the police and the hospital was watched.
Brother Willis, anxious about him, was
picked up when he tried to slip in to see
him. Brother Wiley "squealed," and soon
all the rest Of the gang, including Fahy,
the fallen "ace" Of the pOst-office inspec-
tors, were in jail. The game was up.
And now certain prosperous business
man of San Antonio got severe case of
chills, extending TO his feet until they had
become icy cold. He visited Chief Gus
toms Inspector Devices and confessed that
he had acted az fence" for the Newtons
that is, had disposed Of stolen securities
4