The Great Taxicab Robbery 8

The Great Taxicab Robbery 8

The “Orange Growers” in Chicago_

 

When Daly and Clare, the two New York detectives working as the “Orange

Growers,” arrived in Chicago, they went to Police Headquarters in that

city, made inquiries about Kinsman and Splaine, and secured the aid of

Chicago detectives. Then they put up at a hotel where, by arrangements

with the house detective, they occupied a room on the second floor handy

to a little-used stairway leading to a side street, which would make it

easy to slip in and out without going through the lobby. On the trip

from New York both of them had neglected shaving, and Daly was an

especially tough-looking citizen, for his beard grows out stiff and

bristly, with black and red intermixed, and a little green to help the

general effect. With suits of old clothes and sweaters they were so

little like their official selves that for several days, though they

went rather freely around resorts frequented by crooks who knew them in

New York, they were not recognized.

 

The “Orange Growers” now became a pair of hardened “yeggmen,” or bank

robbers, and for three days were busy visiting thieves’ haunts all over

the city, from the Levee district to the Stockyards. It was found that

Kinsman and Splaine had put up at a high-class boarding house in a

fashionable residence section. Kinsman seemed to be doubtful about the

impression Splaine might make there, though in the opinion of the police

Splaine was by far the more intelligent of the pair. So he took the

landlady aside and asked her, privately, if she had objections to a

prize-fighter in her house. The landlady replied, “Why, no! if he is a

gentleman—many prize-fighters are just like other people!” Thereupon,

Kinsman undertook that Splaine should behave himself. He also wanted to

know if valuables were safe there, and the astonished landlady assured

him that her house was like a home, that the guests were like one big

family and seldom locked their doors, and that Mr. Smith, well known as

an officer in one of the leading banks, had lived there for years.

 

The pair had spent considerable time in criminal haunts, but had now

disappeared. Kinsman, as it was learned later, had returned to New York.

Splaine was apparently in Chicago still, spending his money, but the two

“Orange Growers” seemed never to catch up with him. Their man had always

gone around the corner within the past hour.

 

Finally they planned a ruse with the aid of two Chicago detectives.

Splaine had been intimate with a certain woman of the underworld, known

as “Josie.” Clare went to her, represented himself as a “stick-up man,”

said he and his partner were after that guy with all the money and

diamonds, meaning Splaine, and that they meant to rob him. If Josie

worked with them, like a good girl, she would come in for her third of

the plunder.

 

Josie professed ignorance. She was sure, so help her Mike, cross her

heart, that she knew nothing about no gent with any money or diamonds—no

such a party had been near the house in months, worse luck. Clare argued

awhile with no results, and then said he would come back a little later

and bring his pal. Then Daly was introduced to Josie as the extremely

undesirable citizen who would do the strong-arm work. But Josie still

insisted that she had no idea what they were talking about.

 

They went out, and within a few minutes the two Chicago detectives,

Dempsey and McFarland, known by Josie as officers, came in, described

the disguised Clare and Daly as two of the most desperate “yeggmen” in

the country, said that they had warrants for them, and asked if they had

been seen. Josie crossed her heart again, and said that there had been

nobody around there all evening—believe her, it was like living the

simple life, and if things kept on bein’ so quiet she’d blow the town

and go back to Keokuk.

 

Then, enter the two “Orange Growers” once more, to be warned by the fair

Josie.

 

“Say, the bulls are after you boys, an’ you better pull your freight,

‘cause if you stay around here they’re goin’ to _get_ you.”

 

“Aw, hell!” was the reply, “We’d just as lieve kill a cop or anybody

else. We stick in this house till you tell us where we can reach that

guy with the money and the diamonds—understand?”

 

Then Josie broke down, and told them Splaine had been there early in the

evening, but had gone away to take a train out of town. She did not know

the railroad, and urged them to leave. This was evidently the truth, so

they hurried to Police Headquarters, telegraphed descriptions to other

cities with a request that arriving trains be watched, and went to bed

to get a little sleep, so that they could be at work early the next

morning.

 

But in the morning word came from the Memphis Police that Splaine had

been arrested there on alighting from a train, and they thereupon

notified New York, went to Memphis, secured Splaine on extradition

papers, and brought him back to the metropolis.

 

 

_The Traps Are Sprung_

 

On Saturday afternoon, February 24, while most of the energy of the

Detective Bureau was centered on the taxicab case, a brutal murder was

committed in Brooklyn.

 

Word came that a Flatbush merchant had been found dead in his store,

shot by unknown criminals whose motive was robbery. They had taken his

watch and five safety razors.

 

Inspector Hughes was sent to the scene of the crime, and Commissioner

Dougherty quickly followed. The murder occurred about one p. m. By six

o’clock the same day the number of the watch had been learned through a

canvass of jewelers in the neighborhood, it being on record by one of

them who had repaired it, and the watch and two of the safety razors had

been found in pawnshops. Descriptions of the murderers were obtained,

and by three o’clock Sunday, the following day, their identity had been

established. Within thirty hours after the crime these men had been

arrested, positively identified as the pawners of the stolen articles,

and completely tied up in their own statements.

 

At half-past nine Sunday night, while the Commissioner, Inspector Hughes

and Captain Coughlin, in charge of Brooklyn detectives, and Lieutenant

Riley were winding up their work on this murder case, word suddenly came

over the telephone to Commissioner Dougherty from an informant that

Eddie Kinsman had been seen in New York with “Swede Annie,” and that he

was accompanied by an unknown man, wearing a red necktie, supposed to be

Gene Splaine. At the same time Matron Goodwin, stationed inside Annie’s

lodgings, telephoned that she had information indicating that Kinsman

had returned to the city.

 

When the Commissioner motored over to New York, he found his men

covering a hotel on Third avenue, not far from 42d street. Kinsman and

Annie were inside.

 

The Commissioner hurried to the 18th precinct police station and sent

out a call for twenty-five detectives. Team work on the case had

developed to such a degree by this time that, though the men came from

many stations, they were all on hand in record time, a matter of twenty

or thirty minutes. Then a squad of these plain-clothes men was sent to

watch every railroad station and ferry house, each accompanied by one of

the men from “Plant 21,” familiar with Annie from having followed her

movements for a week. Surveillance on the hotel was strengthened, and

steps taken to ascertain whether the unknown man in the red tie was

really Splaine.

 

While making these arrangements, a curious incident occurred, showing

how small is New York, after all, with its five million people. As

Dougherty sat in the 18th precinct station, Detective Rein brought in a

prisoner arrested for shooting a citizen. He was drunk and extremely

disagreeable, and gave his name as “Steigel,” living at 98 Third avenue.

Something in this address echoed to something in Dougherty’s memory—a

keen one for names, dates, addresses and facts generally. He

investigated further, and found that this prisoner was no other than the

criminal Molloy, whose urgent need of “character witnesses” had played

so important a part in furnishing the first information in the taxicab

case.

 

By some mischance, these operations came to the ears of the newspaper

men. Word went about, beginning in Brooklyn, that important arrests were

to be made. The reporters followed the Commissioner in a crowd when he

refused to make a statement. They not only hampered the work, but

greatly endangered the outcome. On the following day, Monday, the papers

published information about the police activities of the night before.

The hazard here may be appreciated when the reader is told that Kinsman

had been a persistent reader of newspapers from the day of the robbery,

and that it was largely the pessimistic newspaper comment upon Montani’s

release in court that led him to return to New York. Deceived by the

newspaper chorus of “police demoralization,” and the easy way in which

Montani had got free, he concluded that the taxicab investigation had

been given up as hopeless.

 

Kinsman was arrested in the Grand Central Station at half-past eleven

Monday morning, with Swede Annie and the unknown in the red tie. They

were about to set out for Boston.

 

There were some amusing circumstances in the arrest.

 

Kinsman’s immunity over night, and police precaution in deferring the

arrest until the last moment, on the chance that other persons would

join the party, gave him a false confidence. He afterward admitted that

ideas of a “pinch” at that time were far from his mind.

 

When a criminal thought to be dangerous is to be arrested in a crowded

place like the Grand Central Station, police officers operate by methods

that prevent a struggle. As two detectives closed in on the party,

Kinsman watched one of them out of the corner of his eye. While a waiter

at the “Nutshell Café” he had often thrown objectionable guests out onto

the sidewalk. He now fancied that one of the detectives resembled a man

he had once “bounced,” and was ready to fight if attacked.

 

“I was just folding it up,” he said, referring to his fist, “and getting

ready to land on him when one had me from behind and the other in front.

Then I knew they were cops.”

 

Annie was gorgeously dressed in a new blue suit and fine fur coat,

bought out of the taxicab money. The unknown man proved to be Kinsman’s

brother, who had come down from Boston with him. Kinsman had visited his

native city before returning to New York, but had escaped the police net

there by stopping at a hotel and sending for his brother. He sent a grip

home by this brother, and it was afterward found to contain three

packages of bills of $250 each in the original wrappers of the bank.