Part 5 (2/2)

Who knows but the infinite G.o.d has destroyed reason to prevent the power of darkness over this poor, unfortunate being. Or who knows but the demands of justice are met in the terrible conscience blows which have staggered and shattered that which originally was in the image of G.o.d.

LIFE INSURANCE AND MURDER

Mc.n.u.tt and Winner.--These are two of the most noted criminals in the penitentiary, rendered so because of the dastardly crime committed by them, and the high social relations of the latter. They came from Wichita, and have been in prison almost fifteen years. Mc.n.u.tt is a fine artist and painter. He had his paint shop in Wichita, and was doing a very successful business. Winner was his a.s.sociate, and the two plotted and carried into execution the following horrible crime: Mc.n.u.tt got his life insured for $5,000, his wife being his beneficiary. It was a dark, stormy night when Mc.n.u.tt and Winner enticed into this paint shop an unsuspecting mutual friend. Here they murdered him in cold blood. They then set fire to the paint shop and took to flight. After the fire was put out, the charred remains of the murdered man were found, and supposed to be those of Mc.n.u.tt, the owner of the building. The wife, cognizant of the awful deed which her husband had committed, followed the remains of the murdered man to the grave, dressed in her garb of mourning.

Shortly after this she applied for the insurance money on her husband's life. Some doubts were raised as to the ident.i.ty of the body. Detectives were employed to make an investigation of the case. They made use of a deception, and thus got the woman to confess. They told her that they had found an accomplice who had confessed the crime, and was in jail.

They promised the wife that if she would tell the truth they would not prosecute her. She consented. She narrated the sickening events as they had been plotted in her presence and under her roof. Officers were now despatched to find the murderers. Mc.n.u.tt was found in Missouri plowing corn. Winner was found near Wichita. They were brought to trial, convicted, and sent to prison for life. Winner was unmarried at the time of his conviction. His father and only brother are very wealthy, and living in Kansas City. I have been told they offer $20,000 for Winner's pardon. Mc.n.u.tt is a very useful man in the prison. He has charge of the painting department. He has done some fine work on the walls of the prison chapel, covering them with paintings of the Grecian G.o.ddesses.

Both of these prisoners hope to receive pardons. Whether they will regain their liberty is a question which the future alone can answer.

THE HOG-THIEF

In the coal mines, as before stated, the convicts are permitted to converse with each other. I improved this opportunity of acquiring the histories of the five hundred criminals with whom I daily worked, eight hundred feet below the surface. I would talk with a fellow prisoner, and get the details of his crime as we sat together in the darkness.

Understanding ”short-hand,” I would go to my cell in the evening and jot down what I had learned during the day. I had no fears of any one reading my notes, as I was the only short-hand writer about the inst.i.tution. Day after day I kept this up, until I had material sufficient of this nature to fill a book of more than two thousand pages. My readers should also know, that a convict will tell a fellow-prisoner the details of his crime, when he would not think of saying a word about it to others. As a rule they deny their crimes to those who are not, like themselves, criminals, pleading innocence. It is not difficult for a prisoner to get the confidence of a fellow-prisoner.

In fact, criminals love to unburden their minds to those who possess their confidence. The truth is, convicts have related their crimes so often to me that it became tiresome. They say it relieves them to communicate their troubles. Pinkerton, of Chicago, the prince of detectives stated at one time that a criminal could not keep his secret.

It is true. I know it to be a fact. It has been demonstrated a hundred times in my a.s.sociation with these convicts in the Kansas penitentiary.

Securing their confidence, these men have not only told me of the crimes for which they have been sent to prison, but also of crimes that they have committed, and, in the commission of which, they had not been detected, which, if I should make them known, would cause a number of them to remain in the penitentiary the rest of their lives. I am not in the detective business, and will therefore keep what was confided to me. I have met but few criminals in the mines that would not admit their guilt. I have thought in many cases, convicts received sentences too severe, and not at all commensurate with the crime committed. I have met a few men, however, who would stubbornly deny their guilt and stoutly affirm their innocence. I have worked upon these men day after day, and never got anything out of them but that they were innocent. At times, in tears, they would talk of their sufferings, and wonder if there was a just G.o.d silently permitting the innocent to suffer for the guilty. I am satisfied these men are innocent, and they have my sympathy. They are exceptions. Others, while admitting their guilt on general principles, and a.s.senting to the justice of imprisonment, yet maintain that they were innocent of the particular crime for which they stand convicted.

I trust the reader will not get his sympathies wrought too high, as comparatively few angels find their way into modern prisons. I will give you a few ill.u.s.trations. These are just samples of scores of histories in my possession.

A hog-thief worked in the mines with me for a few days. His dose was five years at hard labor. He had stolen an old sandy female swine with six pigs. I asked him if he was really guilty of carrying on the pork business. ”Yes,” said he, with a low chuckle, ”I have stolen pigs all my life, and my daddy and mammy before me were in the same business. I got caught. They never did.” He then related the details of many thefts. He made a considerable amount of money in his wicked traffic, which he had squandered, and was now penniless. Money secured in a criminal manner never does the possessor any good. I asked him if he had enough of the hog business, and if it was his intention to quit it, and when he got out of the pen to earn an honest living. ”No,” he replied, ”as long as there is a hog to steal and I am a free man, I propose to steal him.”

Imprisonment failed to reform this convict. Although a hog-thief he was an excellent singer and a prominent member of the prison choir.

There are many murderers in the mines. In fact, nearly all the life men are there. Some of them speak of their crimes with a bravado simply astonis.h.i.+ng, showing their utter depravity. Others, admitting their guilt, say but little of details. The following will give the reader some idea of the stories that greeted my ears almost daily, and led me to conclude that the coal mines of the penitentiary are not inhabited exclusively by Sunday-school scholars. This cruel and heartless wretch had murdered an old man and his wife. The old people lived on a farm adjoining the one where this criminal, who was then a hired man, worked, It was the talk of the neighborhood that they had money. This human fiend undertook to secure their ”loose change,” as he called it. He procured a shotgun and an axe, and, in the dead hour of night, went to the house of the old people. He forced open the kitchen door and went in. He had also brought with him a lantern. He quietly stole to the bedside of the innocent and aged sleepers. He had no use for his lantern as the moonlight shone through the window opposite and fell upon the faces of the unconscious victims. Setting his gun down by the side of the bed, so that he could have it handy for use, if necessary, he took the axe and struck each of his victims a blow upon the head. He said, with a demoniac chuckle, that it was more difficult to kill a woman than a man, as it required two blows from the axe to kill the woman, while one was sufficient for the man. He then ransacked the house, and, between some blankets underneath the straw-bed upon which the old folks were sleeping, he found a small bag, which contained some gold, silver and paper money, amounting to over one thousand dollars. In a cold-blooded manner he further stated (and as I pen his words my blood nearly freezes in my veins), in order to search the bed upon which his victims were lying, it became necessary for him to remove the bodies; so he lifted them up one at a time, and placed them upon the floor, face downward, for the reason, as he said, that their eyes bulged out and seemed to stare at him.

After securing the money he fled and returned to the farm where he worked. He slept in the barn, as is very often the case with farm laborers during the summer season. Entering the barn he procured an old bucket, places his money in it, covers the top with a piece of board, and buries it in the earth east of the barn. He also buried the axe near the bucket. He said there were clots of blood and hair on the axe, and he thought best to put it out of sight. He then returned to the barn, and, strange to say, soon fell asleep and slept sweetly until morning.

He went to work the next day as usual, and his mind was taken up more by thinking of what a good time he would have after a little, spending that money, than in worrying over the terrible crime he had committed. He reasoned that the money would do the old people no good, but that he could use it to advantage.

The discovery of the murder was made the next day about noon. The alarm was given. The whole country was aroused and excited over the commission of such a horrible crime two innocent, helpless and highly-respected old people murdered for their money. A couple of tramps had pa.s.sed through the neighborhood the day before, and, of course, everybody thought it must have been the tramps that committed the murder. The object now was to find them. They were overtaken the next day and brought back to the scene of the murder. They both stoutly denied any knowledge of the crime. They were separated, and each was told that the other had confessed. This was done that a confession might be forced from them.

They continued in their affirmation of innocence. They were then taken to the woods near by and each hung up until life was almost extinct, but they still denied the commission of the crime. They were at length taken to the county seat, not far distant, and, on a preliminary examination, were bound over to appear at the next term of the District Court, and put in the county jail. The majority of the people believed that the perpetrators of this crime had been arrested and were now in durance vile; the excitement soon pa.s.sed away, and very little was said about it.

”It was at this time,” said my informant, ”that I made the mistake of my life. I had worked hard on the farm for several months, and thought I would take a lay off. I felt it was due me. I now made up my mind to have a time. I went to town and soon fell in with a harlot. I got to drinking. I am very fond of strong drink; it has been my ruin. I became intoxicated, and during this time I must have betrayed my secret to this wicked woman. A large reward had been offered for the murderer of these old people. This woman who kept me company having thus obtained my secret, went to the city marshal and made an arrangement that for half of the reward offered she would show him the man who had committed the crime. This was agreed to. While I was drinking and having a good time with my 'fast woman' three men were on the road to the farm where I had been working. They found and dug up the old bucket containing what money I had left in it, and the axe. All this I learned at the trial. I was arrested and bound over to the District Court on a charge of murder in the first degree. The officers had to keep me secreted for some time, as there was strong talk of lynching. In due time I had my trial and got a life sentence.”

I asked him if he had any hope of pardon.

”Oh yes,” said he, ”in the course of eight or ten years I will be able to get out once more.”

”What became of the tramps that came so near being compelled to suffer the penalty of your crime?”

”They were released as soon as I was arrested, a snug little sum of money was raised for them, a new suit of clothes purchased, and they went on their way rejoicing, thinking themselves creatures of luck.”

As we sat together in a secluded place in the mines, with the faint light of my miner's lamp falling on his hideous face, the cool, deliberate manner in which he related his atrocious doings, the fiendish spirit he displayed, led me to regard him as one among the most debased and hardened criminals I had met in the mines--a human being utterly devoid of moral nature--a very devil in the form of man!

A NOTED COUNTERFEITER

One of my companions in the mines, and with whom I worked a couple of weeks, lying almost side by side with him as we dug coal in the same room, was a noted counterfeiter. He had plied his trade for many years successfully. Whisky finally sent him to the penitentiary. If professional criminals would only let strong drink alone not half so many of them would get caught. They get drunk, and in this condition expose themselves. We don't mean to use this as an argument against the prohibitory law! It is, perhaps, proper for them to drink. This counterfeiter makes his dies out of plaster paris. They are very simple and easy of construction. He explained to me the manner in which they were made. I would give his method of making these dies were it not for the fact that some smart boy getting hold of this book and learning the method would undertake the business, and as a result his good old mother would be going to the penitentiary to visit him. When this counterfeiter would run short of funds he would purchase the necessary material, go into the woods on a dark night, and in a very short time would have plenty of bogus money. He taught the trade to his brother and to some bosom friends, and it was not long until they had a regular organized gang. Getting drunk one day one of them displayed too many s.h.i.+ning new pieces of money. He was ”spotted.” A detective was put on his track.

He was traced to the headquarters of the gang, and in a few hours thereafter the entire posse were locked up in jail on a charge of counterfeiting and pa.s.sing ”bogus money.” They now formed plans for their escape from jail. They adopted the plan of seizing the jailor, as he brought in supper, thrusting him into a cell, locking him in, and then making good their escape. They made the attempt. The jailor was locked in the cell according to the programme, but so much noise was made in the struggle that the sheriff put in an appearance with a loaded revolver. The prisoners made a dash for liberty. A brother of my informant was killed; another of the gang was wounded and dragged back into his cell in the jail; the others got away. It was in the winter time. The succeeding night was extremely cold. Wandering about all night in the snow, their feet were frozen, and they were easily recaptured the next day. They had their trial, and all were sent to the penitentiary.

They got eight years apiece, three for counterfeiting and five for breaking jail. In this manner was broken up one of the worst counterfeit gangs of the West. Whisky has trapped many a criminal. There are but very few that do not ”indulge.” In fact, I cannot now recall a single professional criminal but would take a drop if he could get it. They must have whisky to nerve them for their iniquitous business. When the crime is committed they drink again to soothe their wounded consciences.

<script>