Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 125, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1909 — AUTO MYSTERY CLEARED; THERE WAS NO TRAGEDY. [ARTICLE]

AUTO MYSTERY CLEARED; THERE WAS NO TRAGEDY.

Chicago Tribane Prints Story That Sets at Rest Foul Play Talk and Brings Ending to Search. - The Chicago Tribune, acting information furnished to its reporter, Peter Vroom, by the Republican, has cleared up the auto mystery and brought to a close one of the most mystifying questions with which the , officers and newspaper men of Lake f and Jasper counties ever had to deal. ‘ The story follows: The automobile mystery of the Jostedt farm near DeMotte, Ind., where a body—the body of a $5,000 Pope- - Toledo car—was found buried, was cleared in large part Thursday by Detectives Conick and Culhane, of the central detective bureau and Sheriff Thomas Grant, of Lake county, Ind. The identity ot4.be fourpersons who took the wild seventy mile joy ride from Chicago in the rain the night of October 23 was learned, and only the “deep motive” for the reduction of the pleasure car to scrap remains unsolved. Theodore Josetdt, 10617 Stevenson street, West Pullman, a son of Mrs. Christine Jostedt, at whose farm the joy riders stopped at the end of their journey, was one of the members of the party, and he told the story of the 'Vide and of the smashing of the car which followed. Mrs. Lottie Hopkins, a stenographer and a sister of Jostedt, admitted she was the woman in the car, as her mother previously had told Sheriff Grant. The “rich” man was “Jack” Woods, head Salesman for N. S. McGillivray & Co., jewelers, 167 Dearborn street, and the fourth member of the auto party was Fred Gage, a chauffeur, said to be employed by A. W. Bensingef, 4508 Calumet avenue. Gage is the fiance of Mrs. Hopkins.

The" Jostedts declare McGillivray was one of the men who went to the farm after the machine had been abandoned and wielded an ax to destroy it. Woods, it is asserted, also assisted in the destruction of the automobile, and tjie able machinist who did the most of the dismantling of the automobile is declared to have been Harry Griffin, of the Auto Salvage and Parts house, 513 Wabash avenue. Griffin is the man who sold the remodeled Pope-Toledo to S. R. Smalley, manager of the McGillivray company. Mr. Smalley sticks to His first 'story that friends of his whom he will not . name took the machine at Thirty-fifth street and Cottage Grove avenue. He also insists that he has received 94.75 Q damages from the "friends.” Mr. McGillivray says he knows nothing of the automobile’s destruction and was never at the Indiana farm. The police say they have finished the case unless the insurers, Moore, Case, Lyman & Hubbard, 159 LaSalle street, care for further investigation. They point to the fact that the machine was insured for 93,000. Mr. Smalley, a few days after he had notified the police that his automobile was missing, canceled the policy. According to Theodore Jostedt, Woods, and his sister, Mrs. Hopkins, Who lives at the Hotel Bristol, 216 East Thirty-first street, called at his home on the evening of Oct. 23 in the Smalley automobile. Gage was driving. He said be joined them in the car, which he was informed belonged to Woods, and went to his mother’s farm. "The stranger told me he did not like the tonneau of his machine," said Jostedt, “and asked my mother to store the machine there, after he had dtaken the tonneau off and put it into the barn. This man and others made three trips back to the farm, and one day when I went out there I found the machine ripped to places.”