Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 106, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1911 — Poole Begged For Protection While Being Taken to Fowler. [ARTICLE]

Poole Begged For Protection While Being Taken to Fowler.

A. Z. Sleeper was over from Fowler this morning exhibiting some automobiles. He drove the machine that brought Sheriff Shackleton and Marshal John Bowman over from Fowler and took Poole back Tuesday night. He stated that Poole became very much frightened as they approached Fowler and begged like a good one for the officers to protect him from a mob. He crouched down in the bottom of the auto and bad the officers cover him with a laprobe. The officers were none too sure what their reception might be and before leaving here they had arranged for Sheriff Hoover to call up Fowler and report that Poole had not been found. This ruse worked very well and the crowd that had been waiting for the return of Poole, was largely dispersed when it was given out that Poole had not been found.

Sleeper tells of many of Poole’s escapades there and states that he has been a terror there for a long time. He threatened to kill the railroad agent at Swanington not long ago and went to his house and got his shotgun and returned but the agent got the drop on him and felled him with an iron bar. Poole was, regarded as a great deal of a bluffer and it is thought that he always went after a man from the rear, as he has been frequently bluffed out. Prosecuting Attorney Longwell relates that on the occasion of the Haynes trial here he leaned across the table in the court room and told Longwell to “keep his dirty tongue off me or I’ll kill you.” Longwell met him with the statement, “If you ever make a crooked move at me, I’ll kill you dead as a doornail.” Fred didn’t know what might happen but he prepared himself by carrying ts pistol. The Haynes case, however, was dropped because the Haynes family seemed to want a cash settlement and the state did not care to aid that sort of a proposition.