Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1897 — GIVEN A LONG CHASE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GIVEN A LONG CHASE.

Man Wanted in lowa Brought Back from the Klondike Country. , Frank Albert Novak, under charges of murder and arson, has arrived at Walford, lowa, the scene of his alleged crime. YVhen interviewed Novak deified being guilty of the charges laid up against him. He confesses, however, that he is Frank Albert Novak, and not J. A.. Smith, as he represented Himself when entering the Klondike mining country. At first he insisted that C. O. Perrin of the Thiel detective service of St. Louis was mistaken when he accused him of having murdered Edward Murray at Walford last February, setting fire to the store and taking flight, hoping thereby to make it appeay that it was Novak that had been burned alive. Had he established that-as a fact his wife and others whom the detectives believe were confederates would have cleaned up $30,000 of insurance which Novak had taken but on his life in his wife’s favor. All that Novak really confesses is that he is Novak and that he is from Walford and had a wife and two children there. The insurance companies will not therefore have to pay the $3’0,000 of life insurance which they have brought suit to recover. If the State of lowa ca.nnot convict him of the murder of MurrAy or of having set fire to the building occupied by him he will escape. Detective Perrin traveled 20,000 miles to capture Novak, and in getting into the Klondike country he made" the quickest trip on record, traveling from Juneau to

Dawson City in three weeks, during which time he had 1 to raft logs five miles and Saw them up for material for a boat. He then started down tne lakes and Yukon river, shooting all the rapids, a thing he says he would not again do for all the gold in the Klondike country. In his haste he passed in the middle of Lake Bennett the man he had already traveled thousands of miles to capture. Novak, under the name of J. A. Smith, was going leisurely down the lake with a party of miners as Perrin passed., Perrin talked with members of the Novak party, but did,, not recognize the fugitive behind his heavy growth of whiskers. At Dawson City Perrin could find no trace of Novak, as he had not arrived. For a day br two he was afraid he had traveled all the way to Dawson on a blind trail. But inside of two days he had located the wife of a member of the party Novak was known to be traveling with. She relieved Perrin by informing him that her husband was expected the next day. On the third day after Perrin arrived Novak’s party came in. The mounted police were summoned to make the arrest through courtesy. Perrin pointed out Novak and had him brought to headquarters. Novak stoutly declared he w 7 as not from lowa. Perrin then sent for the mounted police doctor and had him examine the fillings in Novak’s teeth. In every respect the maijks of identification on his teeth tallied with those given out by the lowa authorities, and it was deemed satisfactory proof that the prisoner was Novak. Up to that time Perrin had passed in Dawson City as the representative of a big Colorado syndicate that was going to buy half of the new gold district. When his true errand became known, he was given an ovation. Novak had no money,’ although he had earned s4l carrying other people’s supplies on his back over the Chilkoot pass.

FRANK A. NOAK.