Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1907 — CAN’T WAIT. [ARTICLE]

CAN’T WAIT.

Deittle and McCoy Break Out of Jail. SAW THROUGH BARS AND ESCAPE. n _____ Horsethief and a Would-Be Rapist Take “French Leave” of Jail Mon- • day Night.—Still at Liberty. For want of a nail the shoe waa lost! For want of a ahoe the horse was lost! For want of a horse the ma n was lost— And all for the want of a horseshoe nail. [The escape of two prisoners from the county jail Monday night calls to mind the above lines that appeared in a reader that was used in the country schools of New York state when the writer was a boy, and suggests the Moral at the bottom of this article. Ed.]

In fooling away the circuit court’s time Monday on Halleck’s ‘•case” against the Democrat editor, the trial of John McCoy,the wouldbe rapist, which was set for the same day, has been delayed, temporarly at least. McCoy decided that such dilatory tactics were improper, and as the day and hour for his trial had come and gone and his attorney —Halleck—was otherwise engaged in using up the time of the court, he quietly slipped his body through a hole that he had cut in the bars of the jail Monday night, and with Frank Deittle, the Newton county horsethief, departed in the early hours of the morning for some healthier olime. —— The sheriff and his family calmly sept on, dreaming of the time when they could return to their own vine and fig tree in Walker tp., where the dares and responsibilities of official life would be unknown, ’Abe is supposed to have also been taking a few cat naps while studying up some new “case” against The Democrat man. But his client was not asl£p. Armed with an old pair of scissors he and Deittle worked industriously for several days, it is supposed, in sawing away at a couple of bars in one of the east windows to the jail corridor, carefully covering up all traces of their work with soap. And when the city was asleep and the nightwatch was peacefully sno —walking his beat in some other part of town, and the man in the moon had accommodatingly hid his face behind a cloud, they carefully squeezed their bodies through the hole in the bars —which was large enough to admit of a large man, shch as McCoy was, to pass through easily —and slid down a towel hitched to another dar, to the ground, and decamped, vamoosed, skidooed and skeedaddled.

They are supposed to be still on the skeedaddle. At least they had not been apprehended at the |time of going to press, although the telephone wires have been kept working overtime and the sheriff and his deputies have scoured the entire country. The getaway was first noticed by James Brown, who was passing the jail about five o’clock Tuesday morning. He saw a towel hanging out of the window and told Joe Jackson, the bussman. Together they made an investigation andsaw that something unusual hadhappened. Sheriff O’Connor was aroused and it was found that his two prisoners had made good their escape. An active search has since been made without reeult, although some clues are being followed up that may lead to something. _ Diettie’s wife in Paris, 111., had sent her husband some money a few days previous to his escape and had sent him some papers to sign in the transfer of their residence property there, she having sold same, and she left Wednesday of this week, presumably to meet her husband at some pre-arranged point. Both prisoners were pretty certain of having a good long term in the penitentiary given them, and while McCoy would have been tried Tuesday, Deittle would not have been tried until court sets in Newton county next iftonth. McCoy is a big, full faced, heavy set man, about 36 years of age, 5 feet and 10 inches in height and weighs about 185 pounds. Deittle is 49 years of age, about 5 feet 6 inches tali ana weighs about 135 pounds. He is a Ger-

man, and speaks English very imperfectly. These prisoners were the only ones in the jail for some time and they had been given the liberty of the corridor outside their cells and were not locked in their cells at night. Moral:— Had the machinery of the law been used in pursuing real criminals instead of imaginary ones, McCoy would now be safe in the penitentiary, no doubt, and the taxpayers of Jgsper county would have been saved a whole lot of expense in hunting the escaped criminals and repairs to their county jail.