Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1910 — GUARDING OF AMERICAN BANKS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GUARDING OF AMERICAN BANKS

A new king of detectives has been brought into the limelight by the selection by the American Bankers’ Association of William J. Burns to head the detective service which acts'as guardian of the banks belonging to the Association. Burns may be said to have inherited his ability as a detective, for his father was a police commissioner in Columbus, O. Burns, Sr., kept a general store in Columbus; and that is where the boy got his first training. But when hi 3 father became police commissioner a new field was opened up to the lad. He was ever hanging about police headquarters, chumming with the detectives and helping them to unravel such mysteries as presented out-of-the-ordlnary aspects. It was not long before the boy’s ability became recognized. He did not go about the discovery of criminals in a hap-hazard way, but like a living Sherlock Holmes, by a process of deduction and elimination. Every thief leaves a track. There are no mysteries,” Burns says, and he has shown that his theory is correct by getting his man in innumerable cases where others have failed. In the criminal history of the United States and Europe there was never known a cleverer forger than Charles Ulrich, until Taylor and Bredell of Philadelphia made the SIOO silver certificates with the Monroe head that was so perfect a forgery that even Government experts declared it genuine. Ulrich had served a term of imprisonment in Germany and on his release all governments were warned that he was again at large and Secret Service agents learned that he was In Cincinnati. Burns was detailed to the case and instructed to get his man as soon as the evidence warranted. He decided that the only way to watch Ulrich thoroughly was never to let him get out of sight for a moment. Burns hired a flat immediately across the street from where Ulrich lived and had a wagon load- of furniture moved in. From his windows the detective saw that the forger was carefully noting all that was going on. Burns donned working clothes and every morning he left his home, carrying a dinner pail, as if going oft to his day’s labor. He would walk three or four blocks and then double on his tracks and re-enter his home by the back way. One day the detective saw Ulrich leave the house in a hurry. He followed him to the railroad station, where, without even waiting to buy a ticket, he Jumped on a train and came to New York, Burns close behind him. Arrived at the Cortlandt street ferry, the. greengoods man entered a telegraph office and wrote on a blank: "I have Just arrived ” At this point he became aware that Burns was looking over his shoulder. Are you Interested?” asked Ulrich. “If you are, perhaps you ha’d better finish the message for me.” “I can do that,” said Burns, and to the other’s amazement he wrote in the space intended for the address, the name of one of the most prominent officials of the New York City government. “What does this mean?” asked Ulrich, “a ‘pinch?’" "That’s what it is,” said the Secret Service man. So was caught the man upon whose evidence “Bill” Brockway got ten years in New Jersey, and Dr. Bradford, a well-known New York dentist, five years (n New York. In 1895 Gen. Frederica de Mora planned to start a revolution ip Costa Rica and by some means managed to get promise of support from President Zelaya of Nicaragua. Aiding de Mora in New York was Ricardo de Requesens. Part of the plan of the conspiracy was to upset the money system of Costa Rica by flooding the country with fraudulent 100 peso notes—s2,ooo,ooo worth of these were sent to Costa Rica, shipped in the back of a sofa. The Secret Service was instructed to find who had exported the greengoods from New York, and to Burns fell the tank. After a lot of work, the detective found that the only clue was a piece of the burlap in which the sofa had been packed. On it were XXX’s with the figures 64 beneath. For weeks Burns went from one store to another until he found a man who knew where that particular kind of burlap was manufactured. The factory proprietor acknowledged that the burlap had been made there, but, of course, couldn’t remember who had purchased it. But Burns was not to be denied He searched the Bales books of the factory until he traced a shipment to a Long Island City department store and there eventually found a clerk who remembered selling the piece of burlap to a woman. From the description he got Burns found that the purchaser was de Requesens’ mother-in-law and so the shipment of the greengoods was traced to-the conspirator.—Montreal Star.