Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1919 — TOLLESTON MURDERERS SENTENCED TO ELECTRIC CHAIR. [ARTICLE]

TOLLESTON MURDERERS SENTENCED TO ELECTRIC CHAIR.

Four bank bandits were sentenced to death by electrocution Thursday by Judge Martin Smith in the Crown Point circuit court. They were 1 found guilty within twenty-four hours of their confession that they had killed Herman Uecker, cashier of the Tolleston First State bank, when he resisted them during a robber raid June 14. The four will die in the electric chair at Michigan City “before sunrise November 1.” The four are: Al Batchelor, Chicago ; Tom Batchelor, his brother, Valparaiso; Harry Parker, Chicago, and Dan Trkulia, Gary, leader of the gang, who admitted driving the automobile that bore the slain cashier’s widow in the funeral cortege. Those receiving life sentences were Lee Spiers and D. Bieleck. In speaking of the swift justice meted out by the Indiana court, the Chicago Herald-Examiner has the following to say: “Three Chicago desperadoes made the mistake of. taking their murderous notions over into Indiana. There they joined with a trio of their own kind? held up a bank and killed the cashier. Yesterday, less than three weeks after the crime, the three Chicagoans and one of their Indiana friends were sen- ’ tenced to die in the electric chair. Another, the ‘squealer,’ was given a life term. Still another will get a chance to speak his piece in court on Monday. * “They seem to know the value of speedy and salutary justice at Crown Point. Illinois was a year and a half hanging Earl Dear. “In the same column we read that three murderers who escaped the noose in this■ state and are living in Joliet prison will have ‘hearings’ before the state pardon board next Tuesday. One is George Rabenau, who shot Mrs. Kauffman to death while attempting a holdup. “His plea is that his victim screamed, causing his revolver to go off ‘accidentally.’ He thinks the people of Illinois ought to let him out, that he may mingle with them again, perhaps until another innocent life is snuffed out ‘accidentally.’ He doesn’t know he is in luck to be where he is, alive in a nice penitentiary. He might have committed his crime in Indiana. ‘'ln the same day’s news we find a man accused of robbery with a ’ gun turned loose unpunished after confessing that he placed a pistol at the head of a man with the intention of killing him, the victim being saved by the failure of a cartridge to explode. “Where are the deterrents to murder in Illinois?”