Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1904 — BANDITS FACE COURT. [ARTICLE]

BANDITS FACE COURT.

Trial of Van Dine, Neldermsior and Marx Benina in Catcago. The trial 6t the Chicago “car bam bandits" was begun Wednesday In Judge Kersteu’s branch of the Criminal Court, with the three young defendants—Van Dine, Niedermeier and Marx —surrounded with a cordon of Jail guards and deputy sheriffs so formidable that it half filled the court room. Fear that the prisoners would resort to a desperate dash for freedom caused extraordinary precautions to be taken, and to prevent the presence of accomplices among the spectators, no one was admitted unless he had a pass bearing the signature of the sheriff. While the lawyers wrestled with the week’s task of selecting a jury a great crowd of people in the corridors of the building clamored for admission. Bailiffs three deep pushed them back, but finally, apprehensive that they would be overcome, appealed for an order forbidding the elevators to stop on Judge Kersten’s floor. . The issuance of such an edict prevented further trouble. The three prisoners, with shoes polished, trousers creased and hair carefully plastered and parted in the middle, came into the room, through the private passage from the jail, in the center of a revolving wedge of officers, Jailer Whitman at the apex. All of them wore a front of careless bravado, and Niedermeier smirked aimlessly as a guard shoved him into a chair. Niedermeier and Van Dine put their heads together and talked earnestly, while one of the attorneys made a perfunctory plea for a continuance, but

Marx wus not invited into their conference. Marx is an outcast from, his erstwhile companions. He betrayed them after he killed Detective Quinn, and they have little more to do with him. He sits alone, looking vacantly out of his bullet eyes and rubbing his cocoanut-shaped head with his long fingers. The particular charge on which the trio of desperaßoes is being tried is the murder of Frank W. Stewart, the clerk who had charge of the money at the car barns of the Chicago City Railway Company on that memorable Sunday morning when Stewart and Motorman Johnson were shot down without warning. Emil Roeski, the fourth member of the quartet, is not implicated in the car bayn murder case and was not present in the court room.