Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1893 — HOLDING UP TRAINS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOLDING UP TRAINS.

A BOLD AND PECULIAR CRIME ON THE INCREASE. Brief History of Some Famous Hold-Ups tn the United States—A Dark and Bloody Page irom the Criminal Annals of the Country. Beffan Since the War. Solitary travelers were first intimi4*ted and robbed by solitary highwaymen, stage coaches were stopped by •me or more men and the passengers relieved of their valuables and the holding up of railroad trains at the point of revolvers by a limited rfnmber of desperadoes and determined men was a natural evolution. Highway robbery on the rail was unknown before the' war. There had been instances of express messengers being robbed and murdered by persons who had obtained •eoess to the car, but the bold capture of train crews, the forcible rifling of the treasure boxes of the express companies and the subsequent robbery of •n entire train-load of passengers, dates from 1866 only, and this particular form of piracy may be said to have been

started by the Reno gang of four brothers and their brother-in-law, Anderson, who lived in and about Seymour, Ind. There was, previous to this, an extensive robbery of passengers that was semimilitary in its nature. On September 24,1864, occurred at Centralia, Mo., the memorable massacre of thirty-two Union soldiers by Bill Anderson’s band of guerrillas. The band of robbers and murderers, from which were afterwards recruited the world-famous James and Younger gangs of desperadoes, had ridden into Centralia, pillaged the town and then taken possession of the depot. When the North Missouri train came along it was captured by Anderson’s gang of cutthroats, the thirty-two soldiers taken out, disarmed and then stood against a wall and murdered. After the cowardly deed of blood the guerrillas went through the train and robbed all of the

passengers without distinction. This was, however, an incident of the war, and police officers in discussing train robberies always date from 1866, when the Renos began operations in Southern Indiana. The Reno Gang ot Robbers. There were four brothers, Frank, Jessie, Sjm and Jack Reno, and their brother-in-law Anderson, all four boys who loafed much of their time about the streets of Seymour. One night in September of 1866, the west-bound Ohio and Mississippi train was on its way westward from Seymour and had reached Brownstown, where it stopped, when the engineer and fireman found themselves suddenly looking into two revolvers held by two masked men and heard an imperative order to pull out. As the engineer complied, the express car was cut off from the train, a simple matter in those days, and the engineer forced to run ahead two miles, when

he was ordered to stop. One man remained on the engine and three entered the express car, which had end door*, overpowered the messenger and forced him to open the safe. They g<A £12,000, and then fled, leavfaf the engineer to return wrtth Ma locomotive to his train. ' *at a shot was fired. This bold •Ml saeeefoful crime created the profoafofoat teaaatiom Col. L. C. Weir, OMfo •»* a* the time agent of the Mm* gjrprw Company, recognized foK Ml was bat the first of what

must prove a long series of comparatively safe and profitable crimes, and he at once began that course of procedure which has made his .name a terror to express robbers and his conduct a

model for the thief-takers of the country to emulate. The Reno family were at the time under some slight suspicion, but there was no tangible evidence against them. Three months later the coupling pin was pulled out of an east-bound train, the engineer forced to run down the track, the messenger held up and

robbed of $3,000. This was the work of twojjoys. neither of them 19 years of age. They were delivered to the officers by their fathers, who had seen them making masks, the money recovered, and they were sent to the penitentiary for long terms. The express people began to think that the new industry had been nipped in the bud, when, nine months later, the country was startled by another train robbery of most brutal and aggravating details. Jack Reno had in the meanwhile gone to Missouri and was arrested for his share in the robbery of the Daviess County Bank, for which he was sent to the penitentiary for twenty-three years. The third train robbery was on the Jeffersonville, Madison andj Indianapolis Railroad, and occurred at Seymour. The engineer was captured at the water tank, and the express car entered while the train was in motion.

He offered some resistance and was beaten over the head and then thrown bodily from the train, inflicting injuries that made him an imbecile for the rest of his days. This job was done by Frank, Jesse and Sim Reno and Anderson. They secured $135,000, with which they made their escape. Thev were located through the untiring efforts of Col. Weir, who diiected tho operations of the detectives, at Windsor, Canada, where they were found living under aliases and engaged in business. They were well supplied with money ana made a hard fight against extradition. It was over a year, and their cases were taken to the court of last resort before they were surrendered to the United States authorities. Six Indiana Robbers Lynched. A circumstance had occurred at Seymour during the interim that made the Renos equally desirous not to be returned to Indiana. Six young men

living in the vicinity of Seymour, fired to the point of enthusiasm by the success which had attended the two trainrobbery exploits of the Renos, banded together for the purpose of enriching themselves at the expense of the express company, A time, train and place had been selected, but a weakkneed confederate betrayed the plot, little dreaming of the fearful results to follow. The doomed train was mounted with a strong guard, and when the point of attack was reached the would-be robbers found themselves

face to face with a heavily armed posso 'of determined men. They fled and ! were pursued. Three of them were | captured and put In the Seymour jail. At daylight a mob stormed the jail, took them to a point one mile and a half west of the town, where in the midst of a field stands to this day in plain view of the railroad track a tree, to which they were hung. During the day the remaining three would-be robbers were captured,, and that night they were hung to the same tree. The six bodies on the one tree presented a grewsome sight, and were permitted to remain there all of the next day. that some such treatment as this awaited them urged the Renos to make a desperate fight against extradition. When all was lost with them they begged not to be taken back to Seymour, and the officers accordingly took them to New Albany, Ind., where they would be presumably safe from mob violence. Bat they were not, for on the night of the day which they were confined a mob of nearly a thousand people came to the city over the J., M. & I. Railroad from Seymour and adjacent towns, attacked the massive jail, which for four hours resisted their assaults, forced their way to the prisoners’ cells, and despite a most desperate resistance, during which the four prisoners defended themselves with savage fury, armed only with portions of the cell furniture, they were taken out and hanged to a telegraph pole. It is said that the men were as a matter of fact dead when hanged, having been shot and beaten to death in the ceils. Of the Reno gang Jack is alive, having been released from Jefferson City several years ago, and was recently keeping a saloon at Seymour. The very decisive method of showing disapproval of the profession of train-robbing in Southern Indiana had the effect of discouraging the business both there and elsewhere, and it was not until seven years later, June 6, 1875, that the country was startled by the daring attempt to rob a Vandalia express car and the murder of Milo Eames, the engineer, at Long Point, a water station about thirty miles west of Terre Haute. The east-bound train stopped at the tank, a lonesome place, with but one hrftntation in siglat, and it a little groggery, that was supposed to have been established by the robbeps, when three men, heavily masked, and further disguised with slouch hats and linen dusters, boarded the engine, and drawing their pistols, shot Eames dead. The fireman, who was standing on the tender, gave one look and fen off the tender into the ditch. One of the robbers understood an engine, and he pulled out, carrying the express car, which had been previously uncoupled, two miles down the road, where a confederate with a horse and wagon was waiting on the opposite side of a field. The Adams Express

messenger, Burke, a brave man, took in the situation and made preparations to defend the car, which was an old Pennsylvania car without end doors and as strong as a fortress. He piled up freight so as to make a barricade on either side. To the demand of the robbers to open up he returned a defiant answer. They went to work on the car with axes, but gave up the job in disgust. They then began to fire through the car. He returned the fire, wounding one of the robbers, as blood stains in the -field proved, and was slightly wounded himself. Over forty shots were exchanged. Steel Masks and Breastplates. In th<?ir flight they threw away three sets of bullet-proof steel armor, tho like of which had never been seen before. The steel mask, which covered the face and neck, was like a section of stove-pipe, with holes cut for the eyes and mouth. The breastplates, which reached below the hips, were made in three sections. It was afterwards learned that this armor had been made in Indianapolis to the order of the robbers. Rewards were offered aggregating $14,000 for the arrest of the robbers and murderers, but the guilty parties were never apprehended. About five years ago it developed that the conspiracy was formed in Terre Haute, and that the leader was a man named Shoemaker, whose brother was at the time Chief of Police of Terre Haute, and who was one of the most vigorous of the officers engaged in the two months' hunt for the robbers. This was the last case of holding up a train in Indiana. The subsequent murder of an express messenger on the Rock Island Railroad and his rpbbery by one of the train's crew is not a case in point. After the Vandalia affair train-robbing began to be heard of west of the Mississippi, where, with the exception of the comparatively recent effort of an insanely reckless man at Schenectady, N. Y., the Rube Burrows exploits in Tennessee and the Gulf States, and the efforts of the present year, it has since been confined. Some Statistics for 1893. The Railroad Gazette has collected statistics of train wrecking and train robbing for the first six months of 1893 which yield some surprising results. One is accustomed to think of train wreckers and train robbers infesting sparsely settled Western States, but the statistics show, on the contrary, that such crimes are most prevalent in well-settled States. The Gazette's figures show sixty-one attempts to wreck trains and twenty-one attempts to rob them. Massachusetts and Illinois head the list in the number of attempts to wreck trains, and Ohio follows. In these three advanced States were made more than one-half of all the attempts to wreck trains, and the State of New York follows. The only explanation offered for this preponderance of trainwrecking in well-settled and, generally speaking, well-governed States is that the mileage of railroads is greater in those States than in others, and that tramps, who are responsible for most attempts to wreck trains, flourish in thickly settled regions. The geographical distribution of attempts at train-robbing are still more curious. lowa heads the list, Indian Territory and Oklahoma taken together have the same number. Texas foli lows, and then comes Kansas and Ne- ■ braska. Sixty-seven per cent, of all ■ the train-robberies or attempted trainI robberies occurred in these four States ; and two Territories. The Crime on the Increase. This form of crime is on the increase ! rather than on the decline. Yhe per- • centage of increase is so great that I many men are ’tempted to attempt it. , The majority of the cases of the past , ten years seem to involve railroadmen. ■ Climbing over the tender and stopping I the engineer on duty is peculiarly the j plan of the railroad man turned robber.

ONE WAY OF OPENING THE EXPRESS CAR.

ATTACKING THE ENGINEER AND FIREMAN.

ROBBERS CAUGHT IN A TRAP NEAR ST. JOE MO.

ORDINARY SCENE AT A HOLD-UP--USING DYNAMITE

THE BLIND BAGGAGE CAR.