Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1906 — KELLOGG AGAIN ON TRIAL [ARTICLE]

KELLOGG AGAIN ON TRIAL

Some Very Strong Evidence Being Piled Up Against Him. The trial of U. B. Kellogg, of Canada land notorie y, and who got from SSO to S2OO apiece out of 4ff or 60 residents of Jasper county was ' begun Mo. day forenoon, at Lafayette. The particular indictment he is being tried on charges him with the larcency of a SSO check from Samuel L, Mitchell of Battle Ground. There were five counts in the indictment, but the attorneys for the defense having attacked the indictment, seeking to have it quashed, the state nolle prossed all but the third count and that heing sustained by the court, the work of securing a jury was proceeded with. Only six jur had been accepted when the time for adjournment came. Our former townsman, George W. Michael, whonas been the leading spirit in the move to punish Kellogg, has been right on deck watching the course of the trial. Soon after two o’clock Tuesday afternoon both sides announced that a satisfactory jury had been secured, and it was made of the following citizens of Tippecanoe county: Frank Delong, farmer, Herman F. Beutler, Marcellos Rawles, retired farmer, Roderick P. Fraser, merchant, Alexander Stidham, farmer, Stephen W. Brady, retired farmer, Dorr F. Lohman, farmer, El wood M. Earl, farmer, George Kidwell, farmer, Edward Huffman, J. S. Weir, farmer. At the morning session the attorneys on both sides of the case injected many personalities into the case during the examination of those summoned as jurors. Sena-' tor Will R. Wood, on the side of the state, and Charles E. Thompson, for the defendant, in their qnesfiens to the prospective jnrors, gave evidence of the fierceness of the strangle that will follow when the evidence is sabmffted.

Both sides sought to bring oat by their sarcastically applied questions points that had the ap pearance influencing the minds of the jurors. Mr. Thompson always referred to Mr. Michael as George Washington Michael,, the assistance prosecuting witness, and Mr. Wood to Charles H. Payson as the ex-penitentiary bird and disbarred attorney and colleague of Kellogg. It was a case of tit for tat throughout; and gave the only relief to Che monotony ot the proceedings. * In the selection of the jniy the State exhausted its full quota of ten peremptory challenges to eight for the defense.

Prosecuting Attorney Flannagan made the opening statement lor tl e state Tuesday afternoon and Thompson for the defense next morning. The trial is expected to last a week or more.

W. J. Murphy, a printer of Lafayette, testified that his firm printed for Kellogg the letter beads, blank contracts, etc., used by Kellogg in his professed agency of the Northwestern Land & Immigration Company, and in using which blank contracts, as was shown by other witnessees later - on, Kellogg claimed to have only a few at his disposal, for the purpose as would seem, of eansing his intended victim to grab the bait quick before some one else got it. The map which was used by Kellogg, and from which his (intended investors in Rensselaer and other places selected their quarter and half section*, was drawn for Kellogg by Frank Alexander, a Lafayette architect. A plate nsec! in printing this matter for Kellogg was <Jf sered in evidence, and a man "named El lis adnilFfedTie hadsfbleii it from Kellogg’s satchel at the House. r Charley Stocker, who invested $ 150 for himself and two others, testified that he afterwards got suspicions and wrote to a railroad

man at St Paul about the alleged Kellogg railroad being bnilt thru his Canada land and got answer that nothing was known of any such railroad. He then wrote to the presumably mythical Land & Immigration Company and the letter coold not be delivered and came back unopened. Samuel L. Mitchell, of Battle Gronnd, the prosecuting witness, testified to paying Kellogg SSO after, listening to his glowing description of the alleged land, and which he was to boy at $3.50 per acre, and the SSO was to be in part payment, and a Pall man car excursion to Canada thrown in for good measure. Mitchell paid Kellogg by a check which Kellogg had made payable to bim and not to the Company he claimed to be agent for. John Flack, also of near Battle Ground, wa3 another witness who put SSO in the deal.