Part Two: Train robbery goes to court

Train robbery goes to court

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune Monday, March 25th 2019

Last week’s column was about the daring night holdup of a Southern Pacific train north of Riddle, July 1, 1895, and the case came to trial six months later.

Of the three men charged for robbing the train and stealing the U.S. Mail, John Case was believed to be the masked man who, with six-gun in hand, brazenly walked the cars of the train, robbing passengers and the train crew, while partners James and Albert Pool lit up the sky with a pyrotechnic display outside the train; their dynamite blasts and gunshots meant to terrorize and intimidate passengers.

Prior to the robbery, Case had just been released after serving two years in the state penitentiary for

burglary. He had served a previous term for armed robbery. James Pool, Case’s cousin, had been in the penitentiary three times, convicted of horse stealing, extortion and manslaughter. Albert Pool served two years for theft.

On the bench in the Portland courthouse was U.S. District Court Judge Charles Bellinger, who took an active part in the proceedings, at one point reprimanding the government prosecutor for mentioning the defendants’ previous convictions in front of the jury.

“The government,” Bellinger said as he glared at the prosecutor, “ought to be cautious to see not only that justice is done, but that no error is made!”

By the second day of the trial, Bellinger was already annoyed with both attorneys.

“Judge Bellinger infused a little ginger into the cross examinations,” wrote an Oregonian reporter, “by commenting on the lawyers’ propensity to drag and repeat themselves and go over and over the same testimony until it became tiresome.”

Conflicting testimony from a number of witnesses and physical evidence that was questionable left the outcome questionable. When the jury quickly returned with a guilty verdict for Case and James Pool and acquittal for Albert Pool, Bellinger expressed his concern.

“I am frank to say that I am not entirely satisfied with the verdict.”

Bellinger granted the defense an appeal hearing, and at the end of June 1896 issued a 35-page decision, setting aside the guilty verdicts and immediately releasing Case and Pool from prison.

Bellinger said the identification of Case by eyewitnesses “does not tend to similarity, but rather in the opposite direction.”

Among other discrepancies listed by Bellinger were horse and boot tracks, allegedly found at a camp believed occupied by the train robbers before the robbery. Discovered July 2, the tracks were not compared until July 8 — four days after a heavy rain.

“There is nothing to sustain the guilty verdict,” he wrote. “It is against the evidence and must be set aside, and it is so ordered.”

Judge Bellinger may have believed Case and Pool were guilty, but he was following the law. He said he believed they were convicted only because of their past criminal history and because evidence was gathered hastily in pursuit of the $3,000 reward offered by Southern Pacific Railroad.

The robbery was never solved and never again went to trial.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

History Snoopin': A Jesse James trick on the old SP

A Jesse James trick on the old SP

BY  Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune 

Finally free of the twists and turns of the Cow Creek Canyon, just five miles south of Riddle Station, the Southern Pacific “Overland” was running full throttle with straight track ahead.

At 10:10 p.m., July 1, 1895, the moon was hidden behind canyon walls, its soft light no match for the headlight beam on the northbound train flickering across the steel rails.

There was a thud, a flash and a loud explosion. Engineer Jasper Waite reached for the airbrakes, but too late. Two more

Train Robbery

blasts rocked the train. Its wheels screeched to a stop. Its front truck twisted and scraping along the rails.

When Waite tried to leave the cab, there was a pistol pointed at his nose. The bandit wore a white flour sack over his head, with holes cut out for eyes, nose and mouth. Ordered to keep their hands stretched above their heads, Waite and fireman Everett Gray jumped down.

“I saw three men,” Waite later testified. “He marched us on around to the express car and told messenger Donahue to throw up his hands. I helped the robber up into the car as he told me to do.”

In the smoking car, a foolishly curious young passenger put his head out the window and instantly felt the barrel of a pistol pressed against his forehead. In the words of a newspaper report, the young man heard “the magic words:”

“You d—d son of a b—, keep your head inside!”

Two of the gang walked beside the train, occasionally firing their pistols and tossing lit dynamite sticks into nearby fields.

The first masked man pushed the captured engineer and fireman through the express and mail cars, grabbing whatever he found valuable.

Then, accompanied by the hostage train crew, the bandit made a slow walk through the passenger and sleeper cars, relieving trembling passengers of their valuables.

“The very audacity of the deed by which several hundred men were temporarily deprived of their manhood and their

valuables,” wrote an Oregonian reporter, “stamped the perpetrator as a cool, nervy rascal; a real, live, dime-novel hero, who could give pointers to Jesse James.”

A headline in the Salem Capital Journal called this “Daring Robbery” a “Jesse James Trick.”

An hour after it began, the robbery was over. The first bandit warned Waite not to move the train for another hour and, before he left, he shot out the locomotive’s headlight.

With a damaged front truck on the engine, it took nearly three hours to travel the five miles to Riddle. There the crew turned the locomotive around and backed the entire 28 miles to Roseburg, where the only replacement locomotive was available.

The Southern Pacific Company offered a $3,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the robbers, a reward that inspired detective George Quinn to begin a search for evidence that within three days led to the arrests of Albert and James Pool and their cousin, John Case.

The robbers were handcuffed and taken to Portland for a trial that made headlines across the country.

Next week, the trial — with overwhelming evidence of guilt presented to a jury — yet, also evidence that may be suspect, tainted and very worrisome to a highly respected Oregon judge.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,”a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

http://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/a-jesse-james-trick-on-the-old-sp

9-year-old HERO!

The hero's little legs

BY  Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune February 11, 2019

If you’re 9 years old on a sunny, late-winter day in 1924, what could be better than taking your dog

Cow Creek Canyon, Oregon

for a walk along the tracks? You could skip some rocks across the creek, play fetch with a splintered stick, or even head off into the woods on an imaginary elephant hunt.

There wasn’t much else for Warren Loffer to do this far out on Cow Creek.

Warren’s dad, Earl, had brought his family north from Southern California just a few years earlier. The Southern Pacific Railroad hired Earl and sent him to West Fork, a small community in the Cow Creek Canyon, about 20 miles southeast of Riddle and 10 miles northwest of Glendale.

Although West Fork was little more than a railroad stop populated by railroad workers, it did boast a small hotel and a post office, as well as a depot, where hungry rail passengers could get a decent meal at the nearby “eating house.”

As he scuffed his shoes around a curve in the tracks, Warren heard a scraping and a rumbling sound coming from the canyon wall. His dog began to bark as the boy looked up. A large boulder was on the move, tumbling down in an avalanche — gathering and dragging a mass of earth, trees, bushes and rocks down upon the tracks.

When the dust cloud cleared, Warren stood just a few feet away from a 6-foot-high pile of rubble that

Southern Pacific Railroad in the Cow Creek Canyon, Oregon

completely blocked the railway.

Slides were not unusual in the canyon, so for a moment he relaxed and was happy. After all, he was still alive. Luckily that mess hadn’t fallen on a train. But then he realized another train was coming very soon. The engineer, speeding along toward the curve, would never be able to see the rubble pile in time. He would plow into it and likely tumble the entire train down the slope and into the creek.
Warren was a half-mile away from home. He turned and began to run, his little legs seldom touching the ground. Perhaps he imagined himself as one of those cowboy heroes he read about; rushing his horse back to town to warn the townsfolk of trouble.

As he paused at the depot door to catch his breath, he heard the faint whistle of an approaching freight train. He saw the station master near the tracks and shouted a warning to stop the train. The agent couldn’t hear him at first, so Warren rushed over and told him what he had seen.
The agent quickly grabbed a lever and set the block ahead signal. A few seconds later, the heavy freight rolled in with a hissing and rumbling stop.

Warren sat down on the rails, still trying to catch his breath, and already forgetting what he had done.
Three weeks later, a letter arrived from E.L. King, Portland superintendent of the railroad.
“I wish to express to Warren our most sincere appreciation for the prompt and intelligent efforts put forth by him in notifying the agent at West Fork, which possibly avoided a train accident.

“He displayed wonderful presence of mind for one so young. For his ingenuity, it is my pleasure to present to him a donation of $25, which may be the nucleus of a savings account.” That $25 is about $360 in today’s money.

In the coming years, the family moved to a Phoenix farm and orchard that Warren would eventually manage and inherit. He died in 1976.

His legs grew long and his story became legend with his family. Today, we carry their legend on.
Sincere thanks to Warren’s wife, Margaret, who told me his story before she passed in 2013.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

http://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/the-heros-little-legs

 

Legend of the Jacksonville railroad bribe

Putting an end to one of the valley’s most popular urban legends is nothing more than a game of Whack-a-Mole. The harder you beat it down, the quicker it pops up again.

Jacksonville, Oregon

 The well-worn story says the railroad bypassed Jacksonville in 1883 because the residents couldn’t pay a $25,000 bribe.

It fits so well with the image of a greedy corporate giant taking advantage of simple, small-town country bumpkins. How could it not be true?

First, consider that Jacksonville contained 1,000 or fewer people. That means every man, woman and child would’ve had to pay $25 — not exactly the national debt, but roughly equivalent to $568 in today’s dollars.

Then, there’s the “evil” chief executive officer in charge of the railroad, Henry Villard. While on a fact-finding western tour in spring 1883, Villard told a meeting of Oregon businessmen that building the railroad from Roseburg to the California border was more difficult than originally thought.

“It turned out after construction was started,” he said, “that the line will need a great deal more money than we expected. We have miscalculated the cost of the Southern Extension. We will need

Henry Villard

more money.”

But Villard wasn’t asking for bribes from the public. He was asking his original railroad investors to arrange a second mortgage at the conservative estimate of $10,000 per uncompleted mile. At the time, 100 miles were yet to be built.

“Mr. Villard declined to receive $30,000, or any subsidy whatever,” read a newspaper report. “He stated that it was not the policy of the companies he represented to take subsidies. Their intention was to furnish the citizens of the Northwest with needed transportation facilities at their (the railroad’s) own cost.”

Even if Jacksonville could have raised $25,000, it would have been chump change to the railroad. So, how did the legend get started?

Some say prominent citizens Cornelius Beekman and Henry Klippel had circulated a subscription list

Cornelius Beekman

in which residents pledged money toward either enticing the railroad to Jacksonville, or bribing it to stay away.

Whatever the facts, when it was announced that the railroad would locate along Bear Creek, five miles east of Jacksonville, in a new town to be built on land partially owned by Beekman, people began to wonder. Was Beekman cashing in because he couldn’t bribe the railroad?

Businessman P.J. Ryan placed an advertisement demanding Beekman produce the subscription list and delete Ryan’s name and pledge, but Beekman conveniently couldn’t find the list.

There’s more to refute the story, but the clincher is testimony from Beekman’s son, Ben, who was 19 at the time.

“This is not true at all,” he told an interviewer from the Federal Writers’ Project in 1939.

Benjamin Beekman

The railroad wanted to avoid the expensive foothills, he said, and have a direct and flat route to Ashland where a large maintenance yard could be built.

“Considering these things,” he said, “the citizens of Jacksonville saw it was useless to raise money. This is the real reason why the railroad now runs through Medford instead of through Jacksonville.”

Whack! Another mole down, but don’t hold your breath. Another one’s probably due any second.

Jacksonville, Oregon 1880s