True Detective Stories from the Archives of the Pinkertons. Moffett Cleveland
fact of much significance to the Pinkertons was the rather remarkable interest in the case, and apparent familiarity with it, shown by one J. G. Evans, an expert in safes and vaults and the representative of one of the largest safe-manufactories in the country.
The day after the robbery Evans had been at Bristol, Connecticut, in the interest of his firm, who, on receipt of the news, had immediately wired him to proceed to Northampton. His presence in Northampton was regarded as nothing strange, for he had been there several times during the months just preceding the robbery, and once had inspected the lock and dials of the vault of the robbed bank. What did seem a little strange, however, was Evans's evident interest in the negotiations for a compromise. On a dozen different occasions he talked with the president and other officers of the bank regarding the robbery, and insinuated quite plainly that he might be in a position to assist them in recovering their lost securities. A few months after the robbery he even went so far as to tell one of the directors that he could name the members of the gang.
This disposition of Evans to put himself forward in the negotiations had all the more significance to Robert Pinkerton from the fact that it had been rumored that a series of daring bank robberies lately committed in various parts of the country had owed their success to the participation of an expert in safes and locks, who had been able, through his position of trust, to reveal to the robbers many secrets of weak bank locks, safes, and vaults. Up to this time these rumors had remained indefinite, and no one ventured to name the man. It was known, however, that the false expert was a man of high standing in his calling and generally regarded as above suspicion. It was also known that there was great jealousy in other gangs of bank robbers because of the amazing success of the gang with whom this man was working, and that overtures even had been made by the leaders of some other gangs to win over to their own gangs this desirable accomplice. Robert Pinkerton had already concluded that the gang so ably assisted was the Dunlap gang; and he was now pretty well persuaded, also, that the Northampton robbery had been committed by the Dunlap gang. There was every reason, therefore, for keeping a sharp eye on the safe-expert Evans.
As he studied the case, Mr. Pinkerton recalled a circumstance that had happened in the fall of 1875. On the night of November 4, 1875, the First National Bank of Pittston, Pennsylvania, had been robbed of sixty thousand dollars, and Mr. Pinkerton had gone there to investigate the case. He met a number of safe-men, it being a business custom with safe-men to flock to the scene of an important bank robbery in order to supply new safes for the ones that have been wrecked. While they were all examining the vault, still littered with debris of the explosion, the representative of one of the safe-companies picked up a small air-pump used by the robbers, and, looking at it critically, remarked that he would have sworn it belonged to his company, did he not know that was impossible. The air-pump was, he declared, of precisely his company's model, one that had been recently devised for a special purpose. At the time Mr. Pinkerton regarded this as merely a coincidence, but now the memory came to him as a flash of inspiration that the man who had remarked the similarity in the air-pump represented the same company that employed Evans.
In view of all the circumstances, it was decided to put Evans under the closest questioning. He did not deny that he had made unusual efforts to effect the return of the securities, but professed that it was because he was sincerely sorry for the many people who had been ruined through the robbery. And he professed to believe, also, that he had been unjustly treated in the affair, though just how, and by whom, he would not say. To the detective's trained observation it was apparent that he was worried and apprehensive and not at all sure of himself.
In November, 1876, George H. Bangs, superintendent of the Pinkerton Agency, a man possessed of very remarkable skill in eliciting confessions from suspected persons, had an interview with Evans. He professed to Evans that the detectives had secured evidence that practically cleared up the whole mystery; that they knew (whereas they still only surmised) that the robbery had been committed by the Dunlap and Scott gang, and that Evans was a confederate; that for weeks they had been shadowing Scott and Dunlap (which was true), and could arrest them at any moment; that there was no doubt that the gang had been trying to play Evans false (a very shrewd guess), and would sacrifice him without the slightest compunction; and, finally, that there was open to Evans one of two courses – either to suffer arrest on a charge of bank robbery, with the prospect of twenty years in prison, or save himself, and at the same time earn a substantial money reward, by making a clean confession of his connection with the crime. All this, delivered with an air of completest certainty, was more than Evans could stand up against. He broke down completely, and told all he knew.
The story told by Evans is one of the most remarkable in the history of crime. He admitted the correctness of Robert Pinkerton's inference that the Northampton Bank had been robbed by Scott and Dunlap and their associates, and in order to explain his own connection with this formidable gang he went back to its organization in 1872. The leader of the gang was James Dunlap, alias James Barton, who, before he became a bank robber, had been a brakeman on the Chicago, Alton and St. Louis Railroad. His inborn criminal instincts led him to frequent the resorts of thieves in Chicago, and thus he met "Johnny" Lamb and a man named Perry, who took a liking to him and taught him all they knew about breaking safes. Dunlap soon outstripped his masters, developing a genius for robbery and for organization that speedily proved him the most formidable of all the bank robbers then operating in the country, not even excepting "Jimmy" Hope, the notorious Manhattan Bank robber. He had the long-headedness and stubbornness of his Scotch parents, united with the daring and ingenuity peculiar to Americans. In the fall of 1872 he organized the most dangerous and best-equipped gang of bank robbers that the country had ever known.
Dunlap's right-hand man was Robert C. Scott, alias "Hustling Bob," originally a deck-hand on a Mississippi steamboat and afterward a hotel thief. Scott was a big, powerful man, with a determination equal to anything. Their associates were what one might expect from these two. Other members of the gang were Thomas Doty, William Conroy, "Eddie" Goody, John Perry, James Greer, a professional burglar originally from Canada, and the notorious John Leary, alias "Red" Leary, of whom more will be said later on. In addition to these, the gang contained several members of less importance, men who acted merely as lookouts, or as go-betweens or messengers.
The first large operation of Dunlap's band occurred in 1872, when they plundered the Falls City Bank in Louisville, Kentucky, of about two hundred thousand dollars, escaping with their booty. This was satisfactory as a beginning, but Dunlap and Scott dreamed of achievements beside which this was insignificant. They began a careful investigation through many States, to learn of banks of weak structure containing large treasure. One of the gang finally found precisely what they were in search of in the Second National Bank of Elmira, New York, which institution, being a government depository, contained, as they learned on good authority, two hundred thousand dollars in greenbacks and six millions in bonds.
A survey of the premises satisfied the gang that, massive though it appeared, with its ponderous iron walls and complicated locks, the vault of this bank was by no means impossible of access. The floor above the bank was occupied by the Young Men's Christian Association, one of the association's rooms being directly over the vault. There was the floor between, and under that four feet of solid masonry, some of the stones in it weighing a ton. And under the masonry was a layer of railroad iron, resting on a plate of hardened steel an inch and a half thick. All this, however, so far from discouraging the conspirators, gave them greater confidence in the success of their plan, once under way, since the very security of the vault, by structure, from overhead attack lessened the strictness of the surveillance. Indeed, the most serious difficulty, in the estimation of the robbers, was to gain easy and unsuspected admission to the quarters of the Young Men's Christian Association, on the second floor. The secretary, a very prudent man, had put on the outside door of the association rooms an improved Yale lock, which was then new upon the market and offered unusual obstacles to the lock-picker. Neither Dunlap, Scott, nor any of their associates had skill enough to open this lock without breaking it, which would, of course, have been fatal to their plan. For days, therefore, after all the other details of the robbery had been arranged, the whole scheme seemed to be blocked by a troublesome lock on an ordinary wooden door.
So serious a matter did this finally become that Scott and Dunlap went to the length of breaking into the secretary's house at night,