Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1901 — ORTH H. STEIN DEAD. [ARTICLE]

ORTH H. STEIN DEAD.

The End of a Brilliant Writer Comes. WAS A MURDERER AND FORGER. A Former. Lafayette Boy Dies at New Orleans After a Checkered Career—Sketch of His Life. Many of our readers will remember Orth H. Stein, a former Lafayette boy, whose escapades and outlawry some fifteen years ago, startled the whole country. He had not been beard of for some years until the announce ment of his death last Friday at New Orleans, where he had been engaged in newspaper work. Stein was born and reared in La fayette'i He was the only son of Col. John A. Stein, a prominent lawyer who died in 1886. Orth was educated in the Lafayette public schools. In his boyhood he was quite a sketch artist. At 18 years of age he took charge of the local department of the Lafayette Courier. It was while in this capacity that he first exhibited a reckless disposition. From there he went to Colorado, but returned in 1885 and his father died a year later. On returning he accepted a position as editorial writer on the Journal, and in October of the same year started Stein’s Comet, a weekly publication of literary features. He conducted its publication several months and then precipitately abandoned his paper and left with a woman named Morgan. After his departure it was discovered that most of the life insurance that had been left by his father, and which was the property of his mother, had been used by him. The money had been placed in the bank to hie mother’s,credit, and with a mother’s indulgence she signed a number of blank checks and gave them to him, with permission to fill them out when in need of money. By the time these checks were exhausted it was said Stein had drawn and used $5,000.

In his death is closed one of the most remarkable careers to be found outside the pages of lurid fiction. An alienist would describe him as a degenerate; a newspaper critic would call his writings the work of a genius; the historian would put him down as the most accomplished scoundrel of his time, for in the 40 years of his life he had swindled friend and foe the country over; had killed a man by shooting him in the back of the head; had sent his father to the grave through grief over his outlawry; had squandered the life insurance left his mother by his father's death; had been in jail for forgery, and yet during all this time had done matchless work for newspapers everywhere, and when he died was writing stuff—the “By the By” column of the New Orleans Times-Democrat—which was more widely copied than anything printed in the newspapers of America. In 1878, when Stein was 17 years of age he went to the roaring camp of Leadville, and to the environments of that then lawless town his early friends attributed the warp in his character so soon developed. He was a local reporter there, and he was thrown among the man-killers, outlaws and outcasts who infested the booming mining camp in those first days. That he became saturated with the spirit of the place was demonstrated when, in 1881, he showed up in Kansas City, for he constantly carried in his hip pocket a sawed off 44-caliber revolver, and at night ,he slept with a long sheath knife under his pillow. “He had come to regard the bad man as the normal type,” his associates commented, and, as the young man was genial, jovial and gentlemanly at all times, and carrying “guns” was not so uncommon a thing in Kansas City then, anyhow, his idiosyncracies caused little more thau casual comment. As “John Bell” Stein was then known, and his pleasing manners and bright wit made him many friends, while his newspaper work won him no small fame. He was an untiring news gatherer, wrote his stories in a bright, picturesque style that was the envy of his fellow newspaper workers; he could turn a verse in pleasing form; his fiction was far above the ordinary, and he was an artist of no mean skill. So his advancement was rapid, and he became city editor of the Kansas City Star, then, as now, one of the most important evening newspapers of the West. One night in June of 1882 a roar as of a small cannon rang out from the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets, Kansas City. There were newspaper

reporters in the police station just across the street, and they were at the scene of the shooting before the smoke had blown away. At the bottom of a stairway leading to an apartment house was the prostrate body of George Fredericks, proprietor of tbe Theater Oomique, on a corner across the way. The man was unconscious, and his brains were oozing from a terrible wound in the back of his head. Stein, or Bellkas he was then called, was startling over him, pale and~ trembling, and at the police station, where he was quickly taken, he declared he had acted in self-defense. The woman in the case was a Mattie Hartleinliy name. She was a blonde of large mold, little refinement, and had been brought from the country by Fredericks some months before. The story she told was that Stein had been an occasional visitor, that Fredericks knew of it, and had found Stein in her apartment that night, and had upbraided him. After the quarrel he turned to Stein and said: “Well, let’s you and I go out and get a drink!” Then Stein followed Fredericks out, and as tney went down stairs the shot was fired. Stein declared Fredericks menaced him and at the trial it was attempted to be shown that although no weapon was tound on Fredericks, whose death had occurred a few days after the shooting, and who had not regained consciousness—a revolver had been abstracted from his pocket as he lay in the hallway, but the desired witness to offer this testimony was never found, and Stein was found guilty of manslaughter and given z 5 years by the jury, which, under the Missouri practice, fixed the term of imprisonment as well as the penalty. It was a hard fought battle, powerful and wealthy friends of the family coming to the help of the accused. Stein’s parent#— his aged father and his charming, lovable mother—were with their son throughout the whole proceedings, and sympathy for them, as well as condemnation of Fredericks, a married man, and the keeper of a place of unsavory repute, doubtless finally influenced the jury, after much deliberation, to bring in the compromise verdict rendered, An appeal on error was taken to the supreme court, and on a new trial Stein, who had spent several months in jail, was admitted to bail. He went to Denver and did newspaper work till the time of his second trial, the witnesses having scattered and a postponement occurred, By the next time set the witnesses were still absent and the Fredericks family had abandoned the fight, so that the case finally dropped and a nolle was entered.

When the snooting occurred of course S.tein declared his identity, and although he gave no detailed account of the trouble which had induced him to take an, assumed name, it developed that he had been implicated in a theft or emblezzlement case at Leadvillp, and on fleeing thence had felt more comfortable under a name not his own.

Stein’s next appearance was at St. Louis, where he entered on a career of high rolling, faking, forging and swindling, which did not end until he landed in jail in Georgia in 1891 h In his brilliant style he wrote up a fake strike, flood and other startling stories in rapid succession for St. Louis and outside papers, and also turned his hand to various swindling devices. Though not of a pronounced bibulous turn, Stein was convivial, and among the women of the half world he was to them a hero. He told them stories, wrote verses for them, illustrated with his own pen, and he preferred their society. Indeed, it is dbubtfu’ if in all his career he ever took the pains to cultivate or know a woman of good repute outside of his mother and sister.

When St. Louis got too warm for him Stein went South. In Florida he pretended to have unearthed a South American conspiracy, which ne wrote for the New York Herald. He went over into Texas, and there he raised figures on New York Herald checks and was denounced as a swindler. He escaped punishment, however, and next turned up in Baltimore, where he posed as an English medical specialist, and attracted much attention by an able discourse in one of the Baltimore papers on Brown-Sequard’s elixir of life, then much talked of everywhere. He was banqueted by leading physicians, and turned their friendship to good account by borrowing large sums of money from them, with which he look French leave. Again drifting South he was hauled up in Decatur, Ga., on a charge of express robbery. In the investigation that followed his whole career was shown up, but he made eloquent pleas

for clemency, wrote about himself in a touching way, quoted Scripture, and so worked on the feelings of the tender-hearted Southerners that he was told to go and sin no more. He went to Atlanta and secured work offhanded on the Constitution. Here he remained till he had established a reputation for brilliant writing, and then he went over to Savannah and started another weekly paper, called the Looking Glass. It was a review of conditions socially ancf politically, locally and throughout the state. Salacious gossip and scandals about those of more or less social prominence were sought for far and near, and finally a libel suit drove the editor and his publisher to Atlanta.

Here for several years the Looking Glass flourished, with an occasional libel suit by way of variety. The paper was brilliant to a degree, both in letter press and illustration, and among the newspaper men of Atlanta there was a feeling of friendliness for Stein born of his genius as well as because of his broken physical condition. Whereas in his earlier days he had been hale and hearty and full of spirit and fun, he had grown grave and even funereal in his manner, and his hollow eyes and sunken chest confirmed the statement that everj winter brought a crisis. Tall, thin, and square-shouldered in his youth, he grew gaunt and cadaverous in his declining years. He wore a mustache and gold rimmed nose glasses in his younger days. Spectacles, behind which shone his deep-sunken eyes; a Boulanger bdard, a stoop, a backing cough and a shambling gait changed his wnole being, and the shock an old acquaintance felt on first view was repeated when he spoke. Instead of the old cheery, informal way he was now grave, serions and cold. Instead of “Tom, old boy,” it was Mr. Blank,” always “Mr.” and “ah” and “aha” took the place of the old smile and merry grip.