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THE MASKED WAR
WILLIAM J. BURNS
WILLIAM J. BURNS
THE
MASKED WAR
THE STORY OF A PERIL THAT THREATENED
THE UNITED STATES BY THE MAN WHO
UNCOVERED THE DYNAMITE CON-
SPIRATORS AND SENT THEM
TO JAIL
BY
WILLIAM J. BURNS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1913. B7
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I The Betrayal of Labor to Anarchy
II Attempts to Kill Burns ....
III Following a Sawdust Trail . . .
IV Rich Man Driven to Germany . .
V Attempt to Kill President Taft .
VI Burns Busy in Los Angeles . . .
VII Tracing Unexploded Bomb . . .
VIII Burns Himself Shadowed . . .
IX After Two Hired Anarchists . .
X Work in Tacoma Anarchist Colony
XI Burns Shadows the Anarchists .
XII Detectives in the Red Colony
XIII Burns in Anarchists' Nest . . .
XIV With no Law and no Morals . .
XV A $350 Taxicab Ride
XVI Tracked to Wilds of Wisconsin .
XVII Detective Gets Suspect's Picture
XVIII The Meeting of the Dynamiters .
XIX Shadowing the McNamaras at Home
XX Burns' Meeting with Hockin . .
XXI Bribes Offered at Time of Arrests
XXII McManigal Decides to Confess .
XXIII McManigal's Start as a Dynamiter
PAGE
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30
40
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54
62
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72
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86
92
98
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118
125
132
137
148
156
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIV McManigal Cheated on Pay Roll . .162
XXV Paid $200 and Expenses per Explosion . 171
XXVI Hoboes Built Fire Over Nitro . . .178
XXVII The Los Angeles Massacre Ordered . 182
XXVIII Jim McNamara's Story of the Crime . 188
XXIX Burns Lands the Man Higher Up . . 199
XXX Peter Currant's Classic Letter . . .211
XXXI Jim McNamara Loses His Nerve . . . 218
XXXII J. J. McNamara and His Women . . . 223
XXXIII The Tragedy of Mary Dye 230
XXXIV The Story of the Odd-Job Man . . . 239
XXXV Death Threats to Witnesses .... 254
XXXVI Efforts to Buy off Witnesses .... 260
XXXVII How Evidence was Destroyed .... 270
XXXVIII McManigal Nearly Driven Crazy . . 277
XXXIX Worse Than any Third Degree . . .283
XL The Organization Exposed 290
XLI Expected "Great and Bloody War" .296
XLII "Down with Detective Burns!" . . . 302
XLIII The Union was Gang-Ridden .... 309
XLIV Burns Refuses $1,000 a Night . . . .315
XLV What D arrow Had to Say 320
XL VI The Mystery of Two Lost Men . . .325
THE MASKED WAR
THE MASKED WAR
CHAPTER I
THE BETRAYAL OF LABOR TO ANARCHY
In order that this story may not seem utterly in-
credible to the great majority of American citizens
who take life complacently, depending entirely on
the machine of government to look after their
safety and welfare, I shall give them assurance in
the first paragraph that they shall find in this vol-
ume full proof for each of the startling facts nar-
rated, giving for the first time the evidence I gath-
ered against John J. McNamara, James B. Mc-
Namara and the conspirators of their union who
were convicted at Indianapolis.
The evidence did not come out at the trials of
the McNamaras, for they pleaded guilty to mur-
der. As I look back over my diary and the reports
of my operatives it seems strange to me that men at
the head of a once powerful labor organization
could have worked hand in glove with Anarchists
to murder and destroy for a series of years,
fool the honest workmen supporting the union,
9
io THE MASKED WAR
and evade the penalty of the law for their crimes.
There are, perhaps, scores of people who will
read this story and who would rather read my death
notice. I do not say that there are hundreds or
thousands who would slay me, but I do know of
those who tried their best to eliminate me. So far
as I am concerned — and I am now fifty-two years
old — they have failed, but these same people have
taken the lives of over a hundred other human be-
ings. I have brought a number of them to justice,
and I am still alive and watchful for my own
safety. My name is William J. Burns, and my ad-
dress is New York, London, Paris, Montreal, Chi-
cago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New
Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and wher-
ever else a law-abiding citizen may find need of
men who know how to go quietly about throwing
out of ambush a hidden assassin or drawing from
cover criminals who prey upon those who walk
straight.
It will be well for honest, clean-living working-
men with a family, a craft and a spark of patriotism
in them to read the reports of my operatives as
they gradually unfold the story of anarchy, for
then they will come to know by actual evidence the
nature and quality of those in whom they have put
their trust as leaders and to whom they have given
week after week a percentage of their wages. It
will be more important for them to read and con-
sider than for the employer, although there are
THE MASKED WAR ri
thousands of employers who will have their eyes
opened wide.
Every possible lie that could be hatched was
aimed at me while my net closed on the McNa-
maras and those of the International Bridge and
Structural Iron Workers, who betrayed the workers
of that union to the Anarchists. Not only were ef-
forts made to kill me, but every conceivable effort
was made to kill my reputation. I am called the
arch-enemy of organized labor. The fact is that
I believe in organized labor, and believe that it has
helped the workingman and will help him more
when the unions shall purge themselves of such
men as fight for their leadership to graft, to destroy
and to kill.
The war with dynamite was a war of Anarchy
against the established form of government of this
country. It was masked under the cause of Labor.
This is not figurative at all. It is fact. My re-
ports of investigations among the Anarchists in
this country, written in the terse and simple lan-
guage of my investigators, will prove it. Person-
ally, as well as through these reports, I know this,
for I spent a part of my time trailing the Anarch-
ists and living among them in their nest at Home
Colony, near Tacoma, Wash., the community which
provided two of the men who assisted J. B. Mc-
Namara in blowing up the Los Angeles Times
Building and sending to a dreadful death twenty-one
hard-working, innocent heads of families.
12 THE MASKED WAR
Were it not that my operatives proved of excep-
tional ability and in their reports gave names, ad-
dresses and dates, and that each operative was
checked up by another, this book would read as a
product of remarkable imagination. But the reader
is not asked to take it on its face, for the same proof
that would have been offered in evidence at Los
Angeles will be given him just as it would have
been given to the jury chosen to try the McNa-
maras.
J. J. McNamara, the secretary-treasurer of the
International Union of Bridge and Structural Iron
Workers, and his brother, J. B. McNamara, were
pictured as martyrs, and great mass-meetings and
parades were held by Socialists and by workingmen
who were not Socialists to enlist the country's sym-
pathy for them. An immense fund was drawn from
the pockets of union men to pay Darrow and his
advisers in the defense. A threat was made to call
a general strike and tie up every industry in the
United States so that the courts might be intimi-
dated. A social revolution seemed at hand, but the
martyrs who bring revolutions to a head are men
with the good of humanity at heart, and the Mc-
Namaras were not of that kind.
When J. B. McNamara was starting for the
Pacific Coast to blow up the Los Angeles Times
Building his brother, J. J. McNamara, insisted on
his buying a round-trip ticket so that he would save
money. On another occasion, when J. B. McNa-
THE MASKED WAR 13
mara reported at the International Headquarters in
Indianapolis after exploding nitroglycerin in a non-
union plant without doing any vast damage, J. J.
cried with a profane utterance of the Savior's name
as prefix: "Don't you know that stuff costs $1.30 a
quart?" It would be hard for any man capable of
the least degree of thought to picture J. J. McNa-
mara as a martyr.
With J. B. McNamara there was no such thing
as conscience. He was deep in the dregs of im-
moral living, as was his brother, who directed him
in his tours of murder and destruction. After de-
stroying the Los Angeles Times Building and its
twenty-one occupants, he enjoyed a long carouse on
a hunting trip in Wisconsin, he nfcver expressed any
remorse for his act and continued his course as if
nothing had happened. He started as a boy in a
childish way that landed him in a house of correc-
tion, and as a young man he debauched himself so
that when he was not murdering and destroying he
was drinking and pursuing women. He generally
carried with him pictures so unfit that the mere
mention of them is a matter to cause hesitation.
There could be no stuff of martyrs in that man.
But this is not the place in the story to treat of
these two labor "leaders" as specimens of criminals
and degenerates. The facts are merely put forth as
introductory so that the reader will be ready for
the evidence as it comes along. Their actions will
tell the stories of their lives. The reports of my
14 THE MASKED WAR
investigators will give the really honest and hard-
working man an idea of what they did with the
money workingmen turned in to the union, the money
their wives and children had to manage to get along
without.
CHAPTER II
ATTEMPTS TO KILL BURNS
Prior to September 4, 19 10, I was considered
anything but an enemy of labor. That was the date
upon which I began an investigation of the men
back of the reign of terror for the employers of
labor in bridge and structural iron work throughout
the country. A national strike of the structural
iron workers had been called, back in 1905, and for
five years buildings, bridges and structural supplies
had been wrecked with bombs, buildings had been
fired and men slugged, maimed and killed.
The employers demanded the right to employ
both union and non-union labor. The union insisted
that every shop and every job should be closed
against workers who did not belong to the union.
It was on this date, the date of the employment
of my agency, nearly a month before the destruc-
tion of the Los Angeles Times Building, that my
forces were turned against the criminal "repre-
sentatives" of labor. Prior to that I was in high
favor with the unions, for I had been employed to
uncover and bring to justice the doers of evil among
the rich. The Oregon land fraud cases had
been brought to a successful conclusion, and I
had been called to San Francisco to clear up
is
16 THE MASKED WAR
the graft situation there for those people who
wanted corruption driven out of their munici-
pal government. My quarry was the rich then,
and I went after the rich crook just as I would go
after any menace to society. Whether a crook has
millions at his command or just his wits and a knife
makes no difference to me. My business is to de-
tect criminals and bring them to the courts for trial.
In San Francisco, when I was after the men of
wealth and long-established political power, a price
was set on my head just as it was set afterward
when I started to drag from their hiding places the
men with torch and dynamite who fired and killed
in labor's name.
These two situations, bringing about personal
peril, may be interesting just at this juncture; the
one coming about through the prosecution of the
rich malefactor and the other through the search
for the malefactors who posed as representatives of
labor.
The wealthy criminals felt my net drawing closer
and closer, and they seemed to realize that my elimi-
nation would help destroy that net. A man from
the sub-strata of human depravity contracted with
certain parties to murder five of us and to murder
our chief witness, Gallagher. His price was three
thousand dollars for the five lives. The deaths of
Gallagher and myself would have meant the com-
plete ruin of the chances of the prosecution for suc-
cess. This assassin got busy but fortunately we
THE MASKED WAR 17
learned of his contract in time, and he was balked.
Not, however, until he had blown up Gallagher's
house. It is clearly in the recollection of the major-
ity of newspaper readers what the next tack was.
Francis J. Heney, the special prosecutor of the graft
cases, was shot down in open court. Fortunately his
wound was not fatal, and the prosecution went right
on to a successful termination.
Some of my reports will show how, on the other
hand, those alleged representatives and apostles of
labor involved in the dynamiting outrages tried to
plant dress suit cases filled with nitroglycerin in
rooms adjoining mine at hotels, and how they
planned to blow up my offices with every one in
them. The most daring of all efforts was checked
in a way that was simple and that proved most ef-
fective.
When it was certain that the McNamaras were
doomed, when my array of witnesses to back up the
McManigal confession was scanned and found to be
frightful for the chances of the defense a certain
once eminent gentleman of the Pacific Coast — who
later came upon disgrace — let it be known that only
the withdrawal of Burns could save the accused
men.
Now this statement, coming from a man of edu-
cation and some fame, a man deeply interested in
the acquittal of the McNamaras, meant more peril
to me than all the loud-mouthed threats that might
be made in every corner saloon from Los Angeles
18 THE MASKED WAR
to New York. His suggestion would carry further
than the commands of the McNamaras themselves.
I had one of my operatives in touch with this gen-
tleman — a fact which may cause him much surprise
and disgust. That operative, a man of high intelli-
gence, realized in a moment what that remark,
meant. It was the signal to go out and "get"
Burns. There was only one way, as I saw it, to
have that order recalled. I sent the operative back
to this gentleman to inform him that if anything
happened to me the same thing would happen to
him.
"But, my God!" cried this gentleman from his
swivel chair, "some crank might kill him 1 I would
not be responsible."
My operative reported to me.
With another message my representative re-
turned to the office of the gentleman who thought
that my withdrawal was the only hope of the Mc-
Namaras.
He said:
"Mr. Blank, Mr. Burns asks me to tell you that
if he is killed by a crank another crank will kill
you."
The suggestion about my withdrawal was hur-
riedly recalled, and we proceeded with the selection
of a jury, that is, counsel for the prosecution and
the defense went about that work while my agency
proceeded about uncovering the attempts to bribe
jurors and talesmen as they were called.
THE MASKED WAR 19
Therefore, on September 4, 19 10, I turned from
hunting down wealthy criminals and began, at the
request of the McClintic-Marshall Company, to
hunt down the dynamiters who had carried on a
masked war for five years through the United
States. Another detective agency had been em-
ployed before that and had drawn a great deal of
money from those companies which had suffered
from these attacks in the dark. Their usual re-
ports were to the effect that explosions had oc-
curred at such and such places on such and such
dates, and that they were being investigated. No
one was arrested.
On my return to my Chicago office in the summer
of 19 10, after an absence of several days in New
York on important matters connected with the
American Bankers' Association, I was informed
that our Chicago office had been called on to inves-
tigate a very important dynamiting case for the Mc-
Clintic-Marshall Construction Company, of Pitts-
burgh. A railroad bridge at Indiana Harbor, Ind.,
constructed by this firm had been dynamited, and
the explosion took place just before a crowded pas-
senger train had approached it.
As I had organized the William J. Burns Na-
tional Detective Agency with a view of succeeding
where others failed, and having just come into the
private detective business, I felt that we should do
more than make a merely perfunctory investigation
on important matters of this character. Therefore,
20 THE MASKED WAR
I sent for the operative who made the investigation,
and questioned him as to what he had accomplished.
In reply he stated, in a great deal of language, that
he had proceeded to the point of the explosion at
Indiana Harbor, had determined that it occurred
between certain hours and at a certain point, and
that dynamite was used. He then made a thorough
investigation to determine whether or not strangers
were seen in that vicinity, and also whether it was
possible to obtain dynamite there or thereabouts.
After covering considerable ground along these
lines I finally summed up the result of his investiga-
tion, and suggested to him that he was able to re-
turn and inform the client positively that the bridge
had been dynamited. He admitted that he sup-
posed that about covered the result of his investi-
gation.
He further stated that the McClintic-Marshall
Company were running an open shop. They were
paying higher wages and the working conditions
were better than those required by the Union, but
the fight was for the closed shop. I then asked if
he was satisfied that the motive was to enforce the
closed shop, and that if that were true might it not
be possible that the Bridge and Structural Iron
Workers' Union was responsible for the explosion.
If so, then the proper place for the further investi-
gation would be this Union.
Further inquiry developed the fact that this was
one of a great number of similar explosions,
THE MASKED WAR 21
amounting to over one hundred, and covering a
period of several years.
We then communicated with our clients and asked
permission to reopen the Indiana Harbor investiga-
tion, but not being impressed with the results thus
far obtained, and unquestionably because of the fact
that they had paid out tens of thousands of dollars
for useless work and with no results, they naturally
concluded that it would be of no use to delve further
into this. In the meantime, however, I made a per-
sonal call on the McClintic-Marshall Company and
impressed them with the fact that I would be able
to make a successful investigation of that character
of work, and was sure I would be able to apprehend
those responsible. As a result, when a similar ex-
plosion occurred at Peoria, 111., we were again called
in, and this time I took personal charge of the in-
vestigation and directed the movements of my oper-
atives.
This was a series of explosions, and did great
damage. One charge of ten gallons of nitro-
glycerin was placed under an 80-ton girder manu-
factured by McClintic-Marshall, which was intended
to span the Illinois River for the Pekin & Peoria
R. R. The other took place in the iron works of
Lucas & Sons, and both charges exploded at the
same hour and the same second, of the same night;
the escape of five lives on this occasion was nothing
short of miraculous.
It so happened that this night it rained, and for
22 THE MASKED WAR
that reason the railroad watchmen would make a
round and then enter a box-car for shelter. They
had just entered the car some short distance from
the explosion when it occurred. Had they been at
any other spot where it was required for them to
traverse their work, they would have been killed.
At the iron works the watchmen had passed the
spot where the explosion took place within only a
moment of safety to them.
At the iron works it was learned that J. J. Mc-
Namara, the secretary and treasurer of the Inter-
national Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, and
H. S. Hockin, organizer and field worker of the
same organization, visited the office only a few days
before and strongly urged that the employers run
a closed shop. McClintic-Marshall had been noti-
fied in advance that the explosion was to take place,
and they in turn notified the officers of this concern
that there was danger to their property. These of-
ficers, notified by the McClintic-Marshall Com-
pany, at Peoria and East Peoria, realized that vio-
lence might be used by these Structural Iron Work-
ers. Apparently they did not take this advice seri-
ously enough, however, for, on the night of Sep-
tember 4, 1910, at the hour of 10.30, the iron
works in East Peoria and the McClintic-Marshall
girders in the railroad yards were blown up by
nitroglycerin.
CHAPTER III
FOLLOWING A SAWDUST TRAIL
I have always insisted that every criminal leaves
a track — that many times Providence interferes to
uncover the footprints left by the criminal. And
so on this occasion, one charge under a second gir-
der failed to explode, due to the fact that the dry
battery used in the clock bomb lost its voltage. In
this way we were able to determine the method used
by the dynamiters for bringing about those simul-
taneous explosions, as through this clock-working
device they were enabled to set the explosion for
ii hours and 59 minutes and 59 seconds, which
would give them plenty of leeway to escape. They
could thereby establish a perfect alibi. They fig-
ured, of course, on the total destruction of the
bomb, which would obliterate every vestige of evi-
dence as to the character of the explosive used.
I detailed the very best operatives in our service
to make this investigation and personally directed
each step of their operations. They returned sev-
eral times with final reports, and each time would
be sent back to the work to dig further.
Knowing that nitroglycerin could not be trans-
23
24 THE MASKED WAR
ported on railroad trains, we felt that it must have
been manufactured within easy reach of where the
explosion took place. Besides, the dynamiters used
the original can in which they purchased the nitro-
glycerin. In addition to the can filled with nitro-
glycerin that failed to explode, there was also an
empty can found in the vicinity, and in this same spot
were found some grains of sawdust, all of which
was carefully gathered up. And this indicates the
care with which the trained detective does his work,
for, by a similar circumstance many years before, I
was able to bring about the conviction of the no-
torious Bill Brockaway, by finding at the counter-
feiting plant an oilcloth apron used by the counter-
feiter while printing his notes at 542 Ann Street,
West Hoboken, N. J. And at the room of Brock-
away on Avenue A, in New York City, I found a
small strip of the same oilcloth, with the same pe-
culiar design; and by fitting them together there
was the glazed portion missing from the apron that
was supplied by the small strip, and vice versa. I
was informed by two of the jurymen in the Brock-
away case that this bit of important evidence elimi-
nated the last vestige of doubt from their minds,
and caused the conviction of Brockaway, who paid
the penalty of ten years in prison.
So, by gathering the bits of sawdust found on the
same spot, with a can identical to that in which the
nitroglycerin was found, it was subsequently proved
that it had been left there by the person who pur-
THE MASKED WAR 25
chased the nitroglycerin from Fred Morehart, of
Portland, Indiana, who sold it to a man who gave
his name as J. W. McGraw. This man's descrip-
tion tallied exactly with that of a man seen in the
vicinity, and whom we traced to a hotel at Muncie.
We found his signature on the register, and made a
tracing of it.
We then determined that all of those dynamit-
ings occurred in the same way, and from that we
could deduce the fact that they were guided by the
same mind. This deduction having been reached,
the next logical step was Indianapolis, which was
the headquarters of the International Bridge and
Structural Iron Workers' Union. I was convinced
that McGraw was working as a dynamiter for the
union.
McGraw's excuse in purchasing the nitroglycerin
was that he represented the stone quarry of George
Clark & Company, and reminded Mr. Morehart
of the fact that they had made a former purchase
from his concern through a Mr. Kiser. A search
was promptly made for Kiser, and he was located
in Oklahoma.
One of the essential features which go to make
up the efficient detective is the vigilance over small
details. Therefore, the operative had in mind the
fact that he would follow, step by step, J. W. Mc-
Graw, from the time he first met Mr. Morehart,
and interrogate Mr. Morehart as to every word
spoken.
26 THE MASKED WAR
I assigned an operative to this task. His report
shows how he uncovered helpful evidence at this
early stage of the investigation.
Operative H. A. G. reports:
"McGraw, at the time he first met Mr. More-
hart, stated that he had formerly purchased nitro-
glycerin from Kiser at Albany, and had gone there
on this occasion, August 20, to purchase some more,
but was told at Albany that Kiser had gone away,
and that Mr. Morehart had the agency at Port-
land. McGraw then came to Portland and in-
quired of Mr. O. O. Gaskill, No. 216 Meridian
Street, for Morehart. Gaskill says that he never
saw McGraw before and merely directed him to
Morehart, but did not tell Morehart that he knew
McGraw. McGraw told Morehart that he bought
some of the stuff of Kiser about June 1, 1906. This
was his first purchase from Kiser, but he made other
deals later. This Morehart has been unable to
verify as Kiser's books and records show no such
sales.
"McGraw told Mr. Morehart, on August 20, the
date of his first visit, that he represented G. W.
Clark & Co., of Peoria, 111., that they had some
very hard rock and they could use nitroglycerin
there with better results and less expense than dyna-
mite. He also said that Mr. G. W. Clark lived in
Indianapolis. (There is no G. W. Clark in the
directories there.) When the stuff was delivered
THE MASKED WAR 27
by Morehart to McGraw at Albany on August 30,
McGraw had a camera and took a picture of More-
hart on his wagon. This is a specially made rig
and bears the words in large letters, 'Nitro Glyc-
erine — Dangerous,' on the sides and rear. On it
also is the apparatus for well shooting, which busi-
ness Morehart is engaged in. McGraw gave as a
reason for coming to Indiana for the stuff that the
roads were much better between there and Peoria
and the difference in mileage was more than com-
pensated for on that account. Although McGraw
promised Morehart a copy of the picture he took
he has never sent it. There were no marks on the
boxes which McGraw had on his wagon. The place
indicated by me as the spot where the transfer was
made and from whence I took the sawdust is pro-
nounced by Morehart as the exact spot where he
met McGraw. He remembers very distinctly that
the sawdust was unusually coarse stuff. Paper was
in the bottom of one of the boxes and was cast aside
by McGraw and left lying there when he departed.
McGraw was talkative, and was apparently not a
drinking man. He proved himself a genuine K. of
P., but did not state the name or location of his
lodge. He claimed to be well acquainted in Fos-
toria, Ohio, and mentioned a number of places there
with which Morehart is quite familiar. He men-
tioned no names of acquaintances, however. Fos-
toria is near Toledo, about 10,000 population, and
Morehart is quite sure that if McGraw lived there
28 THE MASKED WAR
at any time he could be easily traced in the town.
McGraw told Morehart that he had used nitro-
glycerin, and that he was familiar with its use. In
paying Morehart he exhibited a large roll of
twenty-dollar bills, and the money he took from the
roll did not appreciably diminish its size. McGraw
seemed familiar with the proper method of hand-
ling the stuff as well as with the law regulating its
transportation, storage, etc. He said he would re-
quire another consignment in a short time, and
would return and obtain it from Morehart. I ar-
ranged with Morehart that in case McGraw or
any other stranger makes overtures to him for the
purchase of any of the stuff in the future, he will
put the man off 24 hours on a plea of being out of
stock, and he will then communicate by telephone
with our Chicago office at once. This he can easily
do without arousing suspicion, as it often occurs
that the supply is exhausted before a new lot is re-
ceived."
That little pinch of sawdust taken as a sample
near the railroad yards in Peoria came in very
handy. It established the fact that the man who
bought the nitroglycerin from Morehart had car-
ried some of the explosive and had set it off with the
time clock attachment in Peoria. The sample
showed that it was the same sawdust as that found
sprinkled in the road two hundred miles away at
the point where the explosive was transferred from
Morehart's vehicle to McGraw's.
THE MASKED WAR 29
We had a good description of McGraw. Next
was to get his signature. Operative H. A. G.
hunted through the various hotels in the towns
around Portland, and finally came to a register in
Muncie, Ind., with the name J. W. McGraw upon
it. H. A. G. made a tracing of this signature. We
then found the liveryman who had rented McGraw
a light wagon and the man who had sold him a
long-handled shovel observed by Mr. Morehart in
the wagon. From these we got good descriptions.
My operatives found the sawdust pile in the yard
of a farmhouse on the road leading to Morehart's.
Here McGraw had stopped to take enough for his
needs in packing the explosive. We could now
prove that the sawdust found in Peoria was the
same sawdust as that stolen from the farmer's yard
and the same dropped from the wagon when the
nitroglycerin was transferred from Morehart's ve-
hicle to McGraw's. We had made an advance
upon the dynamiter that was worth while. We had
his description, his signature and a clearly marked
trail connecting him from the place where the ex-
plosive was bought to where it was touched off. We
also had one of his little clock machines. Further-
more we would trap him if he called on Morehart
for more nitro.
CHAPTER IV
RICH MAN DRIVEN TO GERMANY
The opening of the trail to McGraw was accom-
plished after about three weeks of hard work and
the running out of many clues that proved value-
less. It was the first opening after five years of
continued warfare against the employers of struc-
tural iron workers by the men who levied on the
pay envelopes of those who would work and could
get the chance to work; by the men who at Inter-
national Headquarters in Indianapolis used this
money for their own ends, for drink and the pay-
ment of money to blackmailing women; by the men
who never did a day's honest work themselves and
whose only occupation outside of licentious indul-
gence was the occupation of destruction and murder.
It was indeed a reign of terror. The police are
always in politics, and politics in the police system.
The labor leaders are in politics, and this triangular
state of affairs made it no cause for wonder that no
one was arrested and no crime was avenged by the
law.
If the United States was a free country during
those five years the employers did not have good
30
THE MASKED WAR 31
reason to believe it. A record of over one hundred
cases of assault on non-union workers during that
time is available. It ranges from throwing acid in
the face of a worker to the hurling of a special po-
liceman from the structure of the Hotel Plaza in
New York City when that building was in course of
erection. The officer was slugged first and then
thrown to his death to hide the marks of the as-
sault.
David M. Parry, formerly president of the Na-
tional Association of Manufacturers, a wealthy resi-
dent of Indianapolis, incurred the hatred of the
leaders of the hidden forces. He was compelled to
walk about the streets of his native city with a
heavy bodyguard and with an automatic revolver
in each coat pocket. Mr. Parry is a dead shot,
and is afraid of no man. His brother is the cham-
pion pistol shot of the National Guards of Indiana.
It sounds like melodrama, but the two Parrys were
ready to make somebody pay for their taking off.
The telephone was kept busy in Mr. D. M. Parry's
office by people who made threats to kill him and
burn his house. He surrounded his splendid resi-
dence with guards and kept on his course.
Finally the terrorists threatened to kidnap his
children. The father's heart in Mr. Parry beat
with fear at this threat. He determined to move
his family abroad, and he took his wife and children
to Strasburg in Germany. There he got a home for
them until the reign of terror would come to an end.
32 THE MASKED WAR
He, a millionaire American citizen, then went to
the chief of police of this German city and recite'd
the facts and asked that should his enemies pursue
his family to Strasburg police protection be given
them.
All the while the planted mines and bombs were
being set off. Here is a partial list of explosions
from the time of the declaration of the strike of the
structural workers up to the terrible climax of the
first of October, 19 10, when the Los Angeles Times
Building was utterly destroyed with twenty-one in-
nocent people:
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39
CHAPTER V
ATTEMPT TO KILL PRESIDENT TAFT
The explosions given in the preceding chapter all
occurred prior to October i, 1910, the date of the
Los Angeles Times destruction. They did not stop
then by any means. In fact, the terrorists were not
satisfied even with this terrible climax of the five
years' war. They sent back to Los Angeles a man
with nitroglycerin and dynamite to destroy the aux-
iliary plant of the newspaper and the Baker and
Llewellyn Iron Works. And then to give the idea
that these crimes were locally conducted affairs they
set off two bombs in Worcester, Mass., on October
10. There were twenty-five explosions altogether
in the year 19 10, and they went on during the first
part of the year 191 1, amounting to ten in number,
until the arrest of the McNamaras, which was on
April 12.
There were no explosions or attempts to dyna-
mite after the arrests. But in October of 191 1 an
attempt was made to blow up a Southern Pacific
Railroad bridge near Santa Barbara, Cal., just be-
fore a train bearing the President of the United
States was due to cross it. Thirty-nine sticks of
40
THE MASKED WAR 41
dynamite with fuse attached were found in the
bridge structure by a watchman.
A careful estimate shows that to perpetrate all
of these crimes between three and four hundred
quarts of nitroglycerin and over 2,000 pounds of
dynamite were lugged about the country in passen-
ger trains to the imminent peril of thousands of
innocent men, women and children. A heavy jolt
in coupling, a slight accident and a train would have
been blown to pieces on the rails.
It is almost impossible to conceive that human
beings in a stage of civilization could have so lightly
borne responsibility for the preservation of their
own kind. Things were done in the bloody war
culminating in the Los Angeles disaster that would
not be tolerated on fields of battle in the Far East.
One railroad bridge that had been built by non-
union men was destroyed by the wreckers employed
by the McNamaras just before a heavily loaded
passenger train reached it. Another minute and
every man, woman and child on that train would
have been sent to death.
The cost of this warfare for both sides was tre-
mendous. The actual cost in material and struc-
tures damaged or destroyed for one hundred explo-
sions was figured at more than a million. The loss
to the companies aside from this ran higher,
for every job and every plant had to be heavily
picketed with guards. On one job alone in Cleve-
land a company paid $17,000 for guards. Then,
42 THE MASKED WAR
too, is the loss from contracts unfulfilled or delayed,
the cutting down of the degree of efficiency as the
result of fear following these attacks and employees
giving up their work through intimidation.
The McNamaras were given and spent one thou-
sand dollars a month for two and a half years to
finance the murder and destruction. That money
came out of the pockets of the comparatively few
men of the union who held jobs and from contribu-
tions made by other unions. The working union
man was gouged for at least $190,000 for the de-
fense of the two McNamaras, who didn't work, but
who spent the money of those who did work on
drink, on women and for nitroglycerin and the hire
of Anarchists. The trial in Indianapolis, where
forty-five union "leaders" answered the charge of
conspiracy, cost the working union man $5,000 a
week. The trial lasted three months or more.
What it cost in lost wages to the men who were
ordered on strike and kept on strike during this
period of warfare it is almost impossible to conjec-
ture. Days, weeks, months and years of living from
hand to mouth, of character being sapped by hang-
ing about corner saloons, of homes partly paid for
being sacrificed, of women and children half starved
and half clothed, of drunkenness, despair and pov-
erty. The price was frightful. Moreover, the
union, built up, after years of struggle, into a large
organization, was ruined. The cause of organized
labor was pushed back a quarter of a century.
THE MASKED WAR 43
Wealth did not do this, the laws of the country did
not do it. Anarchy did it.
Ending this digression, we will go back to the
first day of October, 19 10, when newspapers the
world over told the story of the destruction of the
Los Angeles Times and all the people at work in
the building.
CHAPTER VI
BURNS BUSY IN LOS ANGELES
On the first day of October, 1910, I was on my
way to the Pacific Coast to attend the convention of
the American Bankers' Association, my agency be-
ing under contract to guard the banks of the Asso-
ciation from thieves and yeggmen.
I was en route when I received word from Mayor
George B. Alexander of Los Angeles asking me to
take up the investigation of the destruction of the
Times.
Los Angeles seemed to be in a state of panic.
Another earthquake would not have created such
fear as the citizens were experiencing. An earth-
quake is an act of nature, but what was going on in
Los Angeles was the act of a cunning, heartless,
ruthless enemy of society. It seemed as if a homi-
cidal maniac of the most terrible type was doing
his work. The shattered walls of the Times build-
ing were still sending a column of smoke to the sky
and beneath the wreckage lay twenty-one human be-
ings, broken, dead and charred. Crowding the po-
lice lines were the wives and children of these inno-
cent victims of the masked war. The white faces
44
THE MASKED WAR 45
of these widows and children were strained with
horror, and their cries of anguish broke above the
excited talk of the crowd.
A great quantity of eighty per cent gelatin — dy-
namite — had been exploded in an interior alley of
the building among the rolls of paper and barrels
of ink stored there. Eighty per cent gelatin is of
such tremendous explosive power that it is seldom
made or sold. It is the kind of stuff that might be
used in blowing up the fortress of an enemy in time
of open and fair war. The destruction it had
wrought was complete and awful.
But this work, as terrible as it was, did not seem
to have been sufficient to appease the craving of the
men who lurked in the dark. They had also placed
under the home of General Harrison Gray Otis, the
proprietor of the Times, enough explosive to
wreck it and kill his family. So also had they
placed an infernal machine under the home of the
secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers' As-
sociation. Both of these mines were set to spring
at the time the newspaper building was destroyed.
Had the plan worked out, Los Angeles would have
been shaken from one end to the other, and two
homes would have gone to destruction with all in
them, as the Times building was destroyed.
The bomb under the home of General Otis was
discovered in time. A detective cut open the suit
case in which it was hidden, but the time clock within
had ticked off the moment for the explosion. He
46 THE MASKED WAR
heard the whirr of the alarm winder and ran. The
bomb exploded in the open and no damage was
done. The other bomb failed to explode, the bat-
tery being so weak that it proved ineffective.
The Mayor called on me at the Hotel Alexandria
and there urged me to take up the investigation. I
assured him that I would, and at the same time in-
formed him that we were already investigating the
work of the same dynamiters, and that I was sure
I would be able to apprehend those responsible for
the explosion at Los Angeles. Not only that, I gave
the Mayor the names of the men responsible for
the blowing up of the Los Angeles Times. This did
not impress the Mayor, however, as he merely
looked upon this as the proverbial speculation of the
detective. Subsequently, however, as told by the
Mayor himself, when we apprehended those respon-
sible for it, he then realized, for the first time, the
great importance of my first statement, which accur-
ately outlined, in a speculative way, those who were
later found to be actually guilty.
I cautioned the Mayor, on this occasion, that if
I was to make the investigation that fact should be
confined to as few people as possible, and my con-
nection with the investigation should be kept an ab-
solute secret. He agreed with me, and left.
Within an hour he returned and stated that a most
peculiar situation existed in Los Angeles. The town
was divided into two political factions.
In view of the fact that I had made the graft in-
THE MASKED WAR 47
vestigation at San Francisco, and had sought to jail
those responsible for the frightful municipal condi-
tions found there, and because of the further fact
that I was no respecter of persons, but had sought
to do my whole duty and place the responsibility
upon the shoulders of the men who were responsible
for the debauchery of San Francisco, I had incurred
the ill will of those involved, together with their
friends. General Otis, the owner of the Times,
believing that the street-car strike in San Francisco
was really genuine and brought about by an honest
vote of the employees of the Street Railway Com-
pany, sympathized, naturally, with the owners of
the company, and his paper was fighting for what
he considered industrial freedom and the "open"
shop, and therefore believed the falsehoods that
were circulated by the Calhoun element. Naturally,
he opposed my selection to make this investigation,
as he had been bitterly denouncing me in his news-
paper.
The Mayor notified me that this element, repre-
sented by General Otis and the Merchants & Manu-
facturers' Association of Los Angeles, insisted that
they be represented by a Los Angeles lawyer named
Rodgers, who was one of the Calhoun attorneys at
San Francisco. The Mayor strongly objected to
the selection of Rodgers, and informed the repre-
sentatives of the Merchants & Manufacturers' As-
sociation, and also the Citizens' Committee, which
he had appointed, that he was sure I would not care
48 THE MASKED WAR
to cooperate with Rodgers. They insisted, how-
ever, and urged the Mayor to call on me again,
which he did. When he apprised me of what the
situation was, I promptly told him to turn the entire
matter over to the Merchants & Manufacturers'
Association and the Citizens' Committee, as I would
certainly not cooperate with Rodgers; that he was a
lawyer and not a detective, and what they needed at
that time was the service of the latter. The Mayor
then returned to the conference, and so notified
those interested. A scramble ensued, in which it
was charged that the Mayor did not want to appre-
hend those responsible for the blowing up of the
Times, and that he had purposely urged me not to
accept.
When he returned to me and stated these facts
he pointed out that he was placed in rather a pe-
culiar situation, and that unless I would consent to
act with Rodgers, he, the Mayor, would always be
blamed if they failed to apprehend the dynamiters,
and that this failure would be used, as the Mayor
explained, to discredit his administration. The
Mayor was visibly affected by this charge, and I
promptly assured him that I would agree to co-
operate with Rodgers in case a conference in which
I was to participate should fail to eliminate Rod-
gers. We then repaired to the office of the Chief
of Police, where the conference was taking place.
I pointed out the fact that it was not necessary to
have Mr. Rodgers in the matter. But one of the
THE MASKED WAR 49
reasons advocated by a member of the conference
as to the necessity of having Rodgers was the fact
that Rodgers was able to determine when we had
proper evidence. I assured them that I was as able,
if not more so, to determine that fact as was Mr.
Rodgers. However, the upshot of it all was that
Mr. Rodgers was brought in, and we "buried the
hatchet." Rodgers and myself then held a confer-
ence, in which I outlined the preliminary steps to be
taken, especially the fact that it should all be done
in the strictest secrecy possible, and not exploited in
the newspapers, and that I should not be known in
the investigation at all. This was perfectly agree-
able to Mr. Rodgers.
I then wired my Chicago office to dispatch, as
quickly as possible, two of the operatives who par-
ticipated in the Peoria investigation, and to bring
with them the unexploded bomb found at Peoria.
When they arrived, and we compared the unex-
ploded bomb that was found at the residence of the
secretary, with the unexploded bomb that was found
at Los Angeles at the home of the Secretary of
the Merchants and Manufacturers' Association, it
was disclosed that both were fashioned by the same
hand, which left no doubt whatever as to the iden-
tity of the persons responsible.
CHAPTER VII
TRACING UNEXPLODED BOMB
I turned over to my operatives the unexploded
bomb found by the police in Los Angeles and put
them to work tracing it to its maker. One of the re-
ports of "H. A. G." tells of their work.
H. A. G. reports:
"Accompanied by Assistant Manager C. J. S., I
called this morning on Principal W. J. B., and, by
appointment, met Mayor Alexander and Chief of
Police Galloway. The latter gentleman produced
the apparatus used by the men who left an infernal
machine found unexploded at the residence of the
secretary of the Merchants & Manufacturers' As-
sociation. It consisted of a small intermittent alarm
clock, made by the New Haven Clock Company,
and a No. 5 Columbia dry battery. These two men-
tioned articles were fastened by wire to a small
board. On the clock, soldered to the alarm key,
is a small piece of brass. A similar brass plate is
fastened by a screw and nut to the board — the two
pieces of brass forming the contact for exploding
the dynamite by means of wires attached from clock
to battery.
50
THE MASKED WAR 51
"This apparatus is identically the same as that
which was found in East Peoria, Illinois, on Sep-
tember 5, 1 9 10. The manner in which the brass
plate is grooved to fit the winding key, the simi-
larity of the soldering job, which shows skill, the
kind of brass and screw used, the manner of fasten-
ing the articles to the board, and the fact that the
battery and clock are of the same manufacture, as
those found in Peoria, would seem to indicate the
same person placing them here who placed them in
Peoria.
"The stamped letters on the bottom of the bat-
tery are rather indistinct, but a capital *L' is dis-
tinguishable. The letters on the battery found at
Peoria are 'O 24 Y.'
"His Honor, the Mayor, and Chief of Police
Galloway were informed that we have been for-
tunate enough in the East to prevent any account of
our investigations being published and that it was
highly important that similar conditions should ob-
tain here and the reporters be prevented from ob-
taining any information as to the movements made
or evidence collected by this Agency.
"A further comparison may be derived from the
following brief account of the explosions in Indian-
apolis, Indiana, and Peoria, Illinois:
"At Indianapolis, on October 25, 1909, at one
o'clock a. m., three different structures in the
course of erection, under the direction of Contractor
Von Spreckelsen, and situated at remote parts of the
52 THE MASKED WAR
city from each other, were partially destroyed by ex-
plosions which were set off at exactly the same mo-
ment. At the same time Von Spreckelsen's barn
was burned, destroying two automobiles. The fire
occurred simultaneously with the three explosions.
"Three men are known to have been implicated
and several others suspected. An automobile was
used in this instance and three men used it to leave
the city immediately after the affair. It was a gray
machine. A similar auto was used in connection
with the Peoria affair.
"At 10.30 p. m. on the night of September 4,
1 9 10, two large girders in East Peoria belonging to
the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company,
and intended for a new railroad bridge across the
Illinois River, were destroyed, and at the same in-
stant the works of Lucas & Sons, at Peoria, about
three miles distant, were almost totally wrecked by
two explosions occurring in their plant.
"On the following day searchers discovered, in
East Peoria, a can containing ten quarts of nitro-
glycerin leaning against one of the girders within a
few feet of those destroyed. Inserted in the can
were two wires, terminating in a large fulminating
cap, such as is used for the purpose of firing explo-
sives; the other ends of the wires being attached to
a battery and clock. The battery was a Columbia
dry battery, No. 5, and the clock was an intermittent
alarm clock, made by the New Haven Clock Com-
pany. These were wired to a small board upon
THE MASKED WAR 53
which was bolted a piece of brass and a similar strip
of the same material was soldered to the winding
key of the clock in such a manner that when the
alarm was released the two pieces of brass would
form a contact and explode the cap by means of
the battery. This apparatus was identically the
same as that now in possession of the Los Angeles
authorities."
We began that very day to trace the battery
found in Los Angeles, and found the man who had
sold it and others to the dynamiter. We got a good
description of the man and we learned that few of
this particular make of battery were sold. The
one in question had corroded and had become so
weak that it had failed to set off the explosive.
CHAPTER VIII
BURNS HIMSELF SHADOWED
I had good reason to believe that San Francisco
would afford me the field most productive of ma-
terial upon which to bend my efforts and I pro-
ceeded there immediately. I was somewhat ham-
pered with the endeavors of the Los Angeles local
investigators, but managed to keep in the back-
ground while the newspaper men followed them and
were given interviews.
It was through Captain Peterson, of the Oak-
land Police Department — now the chief of the force
there — that I gained much aid in unraveling the
mystery of who blew up the Los Angeles Times.
It was through him that I got a glimpse of the boat
used by the dynamiters in carrying their cargo of
explosives to Los Angeles. Chief of Police Seymour
of San Francisco, one of the ablest men in police
craft, also aided me a great deal while I was inves-
tigating there the source of supply of the dynami-
ters and their method of transporting it.
I learned without difficulty the source of the sup-
ply. The very analysis of the dynamite that did
not explode in Los Angeles would give me this in-
formation. I was near the place of manufactory
54
THE MASKED WAR 55
and knew just how the stuff was taken to Los An-
geles. I was getting nearer to the heels of the men
who had done this frightful crime and yet, all the
time, I was myself being shadowed by detectives
evidently employed by two inimical forces : one force
representing the people who opposed me in the San
Francisco exposures and the other force, the people
who had caused the blowing up of the Times in
Los Angeles. I knew that I was shadowed all the
time. I could not help but know it. After I had
finished that part of the investigation necessary for
trailing the men who had bought the dynamite and
transported it to Los Angeles and was ready to start
from San Francisco to my next point, I was com-
pelled to send my baggage out of the city by one
way and then take a train by a circuitous route, with
my operative, Mr. H. A. Greaves, in order to shake
these followers from my heels.
But before ridding myself of this annoyance I
had been able to get material evidence in San Fran-
cisco and the neighborhood of the city.
I found that the dynamite used in Los Angeles
had been made by the Giant Powder Company, and
that Mr. Bruce McCall, one of the salesmen for the
firm, had attended to the details of the sale. Two
men, giving the names of Morris and Bryson, had
bought the explosive through him. I looked up Mr.
McCall and also Manager R. H. Rennie of the
sales department and Thomas J. Branson, the secre-
tary of the company.
56 THE MASKED WAR
Mr. McCall said that about two o'clock on Sep-
tember 15, he received a call on the telephone from
a man who said that he represented the Bryce Con-
struction Company of Sacramento. The man on
the phone said that he wanted some eighty per cent,
gelatin and that he would send for it the next day.
On Friday, September 16, at about 2.30 p. m.,
a man called at the office of the Giant Powder Com-
pany, and gave the name of Bryson. When Mr.
McCall reminded him that the name given over
the telephone was Bryce, he corrected McCall, and
claimed that the name had been given as Bryson.
This man said, when asked for what purpose he de-
sired such high power dynamite, that he needed it
to blow stumps at a place near Auburn, Cal., as
they were very hard to get out and that he had
broken several stump pullers trying to get them out.
Mr. McCall stated that this strength of gelatin was
too strong and more expensive than necessary.
Bryson insisted on getting it, stating that he had a
contract with a man named Clarke who was doing
the work and that the contract specified the 80 per
cent, gelatin. He was told that they had none of
the 80 per cent, on hand, and he then asked for 90
per cent., and was told that that also was not in
stock. He then again insisted on having 80 per
cent, gelatin, and was informed that they would
have it made up and that he would then be able to
get it. He paid Mr. McCall the sum of eighty-two
dollars and ten cents ($82.10), eighty dollars of
THE MASKED WAR 57
currency in twenty-dollar bills and $2.10 in silver.
The bills were United States gold certificates.
This man had quite a large amount of currency,
which he took from the inside pocket of his coat in
a flat package, taking them from a book of some
kind. He was apparently an Eastern man, judging
from this.
Mr. McCall directed him how to find the Giant
Powder Company's works at Giant, California, on
the other side of the Bay, and cautioned him not
to get the wrong place. He replied that he knew
the Bay, and knew the right place all right.
This man was described as follows:
Age, 32, or thereabouts.
Height, 5 feet 10 or 11 inches.
Weight, 190, or thereabouts.
Face, smooth.
Complexion, sandy.
Eyes, gray or dark blue, one eye (left) had in-
dentation at outer end, might have been from blow.
Hair, sandy and wavy.
Well-built, well-developed chest and shoulders.
Carriage, erect.
Movements, quick and active.
Clothing, dark, of mixed goods, grayish color;
sack coat, laydown collar, four-in-hand tie.
Mr. Branson's description tallied with that, and
both he and McCall were quite certain they could
identify him if they saw him again. Mr. McCall
had Mr. Branson look at this man, as his suspicions
58 THE MASKED WAR
were aroused slightly, and after he had done so
Branson gave the man a receipt for the money paid.
Branson also said to McCall at the time, "Take a
good look at this man, for we may have to identify
him some time. I don't like the look in his eye."
Mr. Branson stated that this was the only case in
all his experience wherein he had been at all sus-
picious of a man, and he did not like the manner in
which the order was given.
Mr. McCall stated that judging from the man's
voice he was the same one that telephoned to him.
It was an ordinary male voice and had no peculiarity
that he noted.
On Thursday, September 22, this man called
again, accompanied by a second man, who was de-
scribed as follows :
Age, 30 years or thereabouts.
Height, 5 feet 10 inches.
Weight, 160 or 165 pounds.
Build, medium.
Face, smooth.
Features, regular.
Eyes, dark; very black.
Hair, dark.
Clothing, dark material; derby hat.
Appearance, possibly college graduate, used good
English, and talked like an educated man.
Both men used good English. No. 1 talked flu-
ently, but No. 2 was not talkative at all. No. 1
stated that he had killed a lot of jack-rabbits while
THE MASKED WAR 59
blowing stumps and seemed familiar with the
process.
After these men went out, McCall, Branson, and
Rennie discussed the matter together, and as No. 1
had stated that the stuff was to be taken to Auburn,
California, they arrived at the conclusion that per-
haps it was for the purpose of holding up a train
and it was decided to notify the special agent of the
Southern Pacific Company, and this was at once
done. Apparently no attention was paid to this. It
had been agreed that the men would call for the
stuff next day at the works, and Mr. Wines, of the
Southern Pacific Company, Special Agent Depart-
ment, was personally informed of this, and it was
suggested to him that he place men to at least
shadow the launch in which these men were to re-
ceive the stuff. This was not done as far as we
knew.
Mr. Branson went to Sacramento on the river
steamer on September 23, the day the launch was to
get the stuff, and as the man, No. 1, had stated that
he was going up the river to Sacramento with it, in
the launch, Mr. Branson was on the lookout all the
way up, hoping to see the boat, but he declared that
no such boat was to be seen on the river on that
date.
On September 22, a telephone call was received
at the office of the Giant Powder Company from a
man who said: "This is Leonard. I want to get
the powder for Bryson. Will I have to get an or-
60 THE MASKED WAR
der?" Mr. Rennle, hoping to get a look at the
boat, replied that he would take the order down to
the boat to him. This man, Leonard, replied: "The
boat is now at Sausalito, and I will send my man to
you for the order." This was at 1.30 p. m. About
2.30 p. m. a man, whom we shall call No. 3, called
at the office of the Giant Powder Company with a
letter, which McCall noted had the address, "R. F.
D. Auburn," on it. He stated that he had come for
the powder for Bryson. His description is given as
follows :
Age, 30 to 35 years.
Height, 5 feet 6 inches.
Weight, 140 pounds.
Hair, jet black, straight, smooth, parted in mid-
dle and pasted down flat.
Eyes, black and snappy.
Complexion, swarthy.
Features, sharp; deep lines from cheek-bones on
both sides, from eyes toward chin.
Shoulders, square.
Clothing, dirty colored gray suit; sack coat; black
fedora hat; winged collar; fairly well dressed.
Voice, foreign accent very pronounced.
Stated he was Spanish, and when asked for his
name said it was Morris, pronouncing it Morrice,
with accent on last syllable.
Man No. 3 was asked to describe the size and
name of the launch which the goods were to be de-
livered to, and he stated that he would have to go
THE MASKED WAR 61
to Oakland and get this description, as he would see
Leonard there. He left, but returned in a short
time, too short a time to go to Oakland, and stated
that it was a 26-foot launch with a 12-horse power
engine, and was named the Peerless. An order
was thereupon made out to the works at Giant, Cal.,
to deliver the stuff, that had been specially made, to
the launch Peerless. This was about 4.50 p. m. on
September 22.
Mr. Rennie and Mr. McCall talked with man
No. 3 until 5.30 p. m., and although he was talka-
tive he was all business, and gave no information
that appeared suspicious. He was asked why they
wanted such a high-power explosive for the purpose
of blowing stumps, and he stated that they also had
a large number of hard granite bowlders to blow,
and this was why they wanted the high-power stuff.
He said: "They are very hard, you know." He ap-
peared familiar with the country in the vicinity of
Auburn, where the stuff was supposed to be taken.
McCall telephoned the works at Auburn not to de-
liver the goods to any but the launch Peerless.
About 10.30 or 11 a. m., September 23, this
launch, with the three men described above, called
at the works at Giant, California, and the stuff was
delivered.
CHAPTER IX
AFTER TWO HIRED ANARCHISTS
We had descriptions of "Bryce," "Leonard" and
"Morris," and a description of the launch they had
used. The boat was found. The owner described
the people who had rented it for a cruise and who
had put down a deposit of $500 cash for its return
in good condition. The launch was named the
Peerless, but the dynamiters had renamed it the
Pastime.
More descriptions of the three men came along
as we looked up every one who had seen them be-
fore and after starting away with the launch. The
house rented for the storage of the explosive was
next found in San Francisco. In the front room
under a large canvas cover were ten cases of dyna-
mite. Eight were sewed up in burlap and two
were opened. They were all stamped "J. B.
Bryson," the name given by the man to the powder
company who had first said he was "Bryce." The
owner of the house said that he had rented it to a
man named William Capp. The description of
Capp fitted that of the man who gave the name of
Morris, when he called for the dynamite for Bryce
or Bryson.
62
THE MASKED WAR 63
The canvas, covering the boxes of dynamite, bore
the name of the maker and I looked him up. He
remembered selling it and delivering it to 1565
Grove street. We looked up the address and found
that a family named Caplan had occupied a flat
there just before the Times explosion and had left
immediately afterward. Capp and Caplan were the
same and the Caplan was David Caplan, notorious
as an Anarchist, his wife being a relative of Emma
Goldman. Now we had uncovered somebody. It
did not take us long to learn that the man who used
the name of Leonard was M. A. Schmidt, another
Anarchist, better known as "Schmitty." We found
where Schmidt had been rooming and where Bryce
had been rooming also. Thus we had located the
San Francisco addresses of the three men who had
bought the dynamite for the destruction of the
Times. The McGraw of the Peoria explosions did
not seem to be in on this job. We traced Bryce
through many cafes and saloons, found his acquain-
tances and realized that he was not a native of the
Coast. I left him for the men under my son, Ray-
mond, to trail and determined to go after the
Anarchists. Caplan and Schmidt were the men I
chose to hunt and I did the best I could to take with
me on this search a man, who knew Caplan in San
Francisco, but was unable to get him to go with
me. Therefore, on October 20th, 19 10, accom-
panied by Operative H. A. G. I slipped quietly out
of the city, dodging my shadows. We shut our-
64 THE MASKED WAR
selves in a stateroom and got under way for Taco-
ma without anyone knowing that we had left town.
My San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago and
Indianapolis managers all had their instructions and
practically every reliable man of my staff was at
work. My stay was to be indefinite.
We hoped to uncover Caplan and Schmidt through
watching their friends and fellow Anarchists. Cap-
lan had a wife. Both were known and had lived in
the Anarchist settlement of "Home Colony," about
twenty miles from Tacoma. While our operatives
were seeking them outside we would lie in wait for
them or for a letter from either of them inside of
the Colony.
In Tacoma I assigned operatives to explore the
Anarchist colony in the disguise of engineers and
surveyors. They secured maps of the country,
equipment for surveying and started off. There
had been labor troubles in Seattle and a building
had been blown up during the month of August. I
started an investigation there among people who
handled batteries and found J. D. Waggoner, a
teacher in the Trade School of that city who had
been called upon by "J. B. Bryce" to instruct him
in setting off explosives and sell him a coil for the
generation of the spark. Bryce applied for this
coil at the shop kept by the teacher. He showed
Waggoner a small can containing two sticks of
dynamite. On the can was marked "Portland."
Waggoner said to Bryce that he did not know that
THE MASKED WAR 65
dynamite was made at Portland. Bryce replied
that it was not Portland, Ore., but Portland, Ind.
Here, then, we had Bryce in Seattle with explo-
sives bought from the very place where "J. B. Mc-
Graw" bought the stuff for the Peoria explosions.
But McGraw and Bryce were not the same people.
Their description did not fit at all. I was then
more confident than ever that the dynamite outrages
all over the country were directed from some head-
quarters and by some master mind.
In our code we kept the wires hot as the sur-
veillance of the structural iron workers' "leaders"
was carried on in and about Indianapolis.
I returned to Tacoma and directed the search
for the two Anarchists who had assisted Bryce in
his job of blowing the Times to pieces and snuffing
out twenty-one lives.
Home Colony is the nest of Anarchy in the
United States. There are about 1,200 of them
living there without any regard for a single decent
thing in life. They exist in a state of free love, are
notoriously unfaithful to the mates thus chosen and
are so crooked that even in this class of rogues there
does not seem to be any hint of honor.
The Colony did have a post office, but when
McKinley was assassinated the people of this com-
munity gave a celebration of the event ending in a
debauch. The Government took the post office away
from them. They do share, however, in the rural
free delivery but the ordinary business of Anarch-
66 THE MASKED WAR
ists is of such a nature that before depositing or
receiving a letter, as we later found out, all kinds
of precautions were taken to prevent an outsider
getting hold of any communication.
In chapters as short as it is possible to make
them and to give the public the full picture of Home
Colony and its people I shall include the reports
of the men I sent there to investigate.
CHAPTER X
WORK IN TACOMA ANARCHIST COLONY
The first report of an operative within the Anar-
chist colony was sent to me in Tacoma. It was as
follows :
"Assistant Manager C. J. S. reports:
"Home Colony, Wash.,
"Friday, November 4th, 19 10.
"To-day at 7 130 a. m., in company with Investi-
gator H. J. L., we proceeded to acquaint ourselves
with conditions surrounding Home Colony and its
residents.
"Our pretext as surveyors permitted us to move
around without attracting attention. We found
that a number of the community occupy residences
in places isolated in the timber and not easy of
access. We located the residence of Jay Fox, who
is supposed to be connecting with Caplan; also se-
cured a look at Fox and his wife. The home he
occupies is so situated that it will be hard to cover
without attracting attention. We covered the coun-
try thoroughly in the vicinity of Home Colony and
found numerous places where Caplan could remain
in safe hiding.
67
68 THE MASKED WAR
"We also noted at what time the rural free de-
livery at Jay Fox's residence is made by the carrier,
so that we can act when the proper time comes.
"I discontinued at 9 :oo p. m. without seeing
anyone who could answer Caplan's description."
I was then trailing the Fox family in the hope of
getting Caplan. I had received information that
Caplan had been employed on a paper run by Olaf
Tveitmoe. I had reason to believe that Caplan had
been employed to assist in the destruction of the
Times in Los Angeles. I knew that he was an
Anarchist and also knew that he was a friend of
Fox. My hope was to get him and get from him
a confession.
My operatives in the Anarchist colony continued
to report to me day by day and I include their
reports here:
"Assistant Manager C. J. S. reports:
"Home Colony, via Tacoma, Wash.,
"November 5th, 1910.
"To-day at 7 130 a. m., in company with Investi-
gator H. J. L., I took up a surveillance on the
residence of Jay Fox. At 7 :45 a. m. he departed,
carrying in his hand two letters in large envelopes,
proceeding to the boat dock. He gave them to a
girl 14 years of age who in turn gave them to a
woman evidently her mother who placed them in-
side of a small hand satchel. As it was evident the
THE MASKED WAR 69
letters had been given to mail in Tacoma, I decided
to keep them under surveillance, as it was evident
that Fox is sending mail outside of the Lake Bay
post office. On arrival in Tacoma, the woman and
girl deposited the letters in a mail box near the
Olympus Hotel.
"Both bore the return address, 'The Agitator,
Lake Bay, Wash.'
"After discussing matters with the informant
relative to future matters of this kind, at 2 130 p. m.
I departed by boat and returned to Home Colony.
On arrival at 6 :oo p. m. I consulted with Investiga-
tor H. J. L. relative to the information developed
during the day, the results of which will be found
embodied in his report for this day.
"I then discontinued."
"Assistant Manager C. J. S. reports:
"Home Colony, via Tacoma, Wash.,
"Monday, November 7th, 1910.
"To-day at 7 a. m., in company with Investiga-
tor H. J. L., I took up a surveillance on the resi-
dence of Jay Fox. At 7 145 a. m. his son, about
nine years of age, went to the boat-landing with a
bundle of mail and handed it to a woman, who was,
evidently, to mail it in Tacoma. I noticed that
'Blank,' who resides near Jay Fox, and who I had
been informed is not in accord with the socialistic
and anarchistic tendencies of the colony, was also
going to Tacoma on the boat. I decided to leave
70 THE MASKED WAR
with him and also watch the mail carried by the
woman, which she had placed in a small bag she
carried.
"En route, I discussed matters with 'Blank' and
found out that he was bitterly opposed to Jay Fox
and his associates. 'Blank' can evidently be used
to advantage and is a smart, intelligent man. He
intimated that he knew a great deal relative to their
movements, which would have a direct bearing on
the Los Angeles outrage.-
"En route, the woman who was carrying the mail
got in touch with an Anarchist named Heyman, a
resident of the colony. When they alighted from
the boat, I followed the woman, who proceeded to
the Tacoma Gas Company's office. Here she
opened her hand bag and I noticed that she no
longer had this mail, evidently having given it over
to Heyman. The latter went to Seattle on the in-
terurban railway. The transfer must have been
made on the boat.
"At 2 :30 p. m. I returned to Home Colony on
the boat, and on arrival at 6 p. m., in company
with Investigator H. J. L., I proceeded to Lake
Bay, where we consulted with Principal W. J. B.
and formulated plans for watching a decoy letter
that is to be handled by Jay Fox. During my stay
in Tacoma I was in company with 'Blank' who
informed me that Jay Fox's wife frequently went
to Seattle and frequented a house at 17 Jackson
Street, where Anarchists hang out.
THE MASKED WAR 71
"I paved the way for a further interview with
'Blank.' "
"Assistant Manager C. J. S. reports:
"Home Colony, Wash.,
"Thursday, November 10th, 19 10.
"To-day at 8 :oo a. m., after discussing matters
with H. J. L. relative to Jay Fox having mailed
four letters through the Lake Bay P. O. that might
have some bearing on the Los Angeles case, I de-
parted on the boat and proceeded to Tacoma. On
arrival, I called at the Federal Building and con-
sulted with Principal W. J. B.
"At 2 rjo p. m., we departed on the boat. I
accompanied Principal W. J. B. to Lake Bay. En
route, we discussed matters relative to the delivery
of a decoy letter to Jay Fox, which had been ar-
ranged for by Principal W. J. B. and plans were
formulated to keep this letter under surveillance
after it was delivered to Fox.
"On arrival in Home Colony, I consulted with
Investigator H. J. L., and at 9:00 p. m. discon-
tinued."
CHAPTER XI
BURNS SHADOWS THE ANARCHISTS
The reader may or may not understand that the
object of our long and tedious work here was not
to uncover Anarchy in the United States, but was
to get Caplan. We had located his wife and had
her under shadow. We knew that he had been
in touch with Fox and we expected him to get in
touch with him again. I looked for him to show
up by letter or in person in Home Colony, and
while we covered this end of the case we uncovered
the interesting history of the settlement.
Here was my next report from within the lines
of the Anarchists:
"Assistant Manager C. J. S. reports:
"Tacoma, Wash., Friday, Nov. nth, 1910.
"To-day at 7 :oo a. m., having learned that the
Anarchists were to hold a meeting in Tacoma to-
night to commemorate the Haymarket Riot in
Chicago, in company with Operative H. J. L., I
watched the departure of the Home Colony con-
tingent on the 8 :oo a. m. boat. A number of the
Anarchists departed but we did not observe Jay
Fox among them. His wife, Esther, boarded the
72
THE MASKED WAR 73
boat. As it was probable that Fox might have
proceeded by launch to Steilacoom and had taken
the interurban car from there, which would permit
him to get in touch with , through whom
the decoy letter mentioned in yesterday's report is
being sent, we proceeded to Lake Bay where we
consulted with Principal W. J. B. It was decided
that I proceed to Steilacoom by launch and from
there go to Tacoma and take up a surveillance
of at his place of business in the Fidelity
Building. Proceeded to Tacoma. On arrival, I
called at the Fidelity Building, where I secured a
look af . He remained in the room all of
the afternoon, neither Fox nor his wife putting
in an appearance. At 5:45 p. m. he departed and
boarded a car, proceeded to his residence, No. 817
East nth St. I remained until 9:00 p. m., and as
it was evident he intended to remain at home, I
then proceeded to the vicinity of the Socialists' hall
where the Anarchists' meeting was being held.
When the meeting broke up, I saw Mrs. Jay Fox
depart in the company of two other women and
proceed to the Bodega Hotel. I did not see Fox.
Neither did I see anyone answering the description
of Caplan depart from the hall.
"At 1 1 :45 p. m. I discontinued."
"Assistant Manager C. J. S. reports:
"Tacoma, Wash., Wednesday, Nov. 16th, 1910.
"To-day at 7 :oo a. m., in company with Inves-
74 THE MASKED WAR
tigator H. J. L., I resumed watch on Jay Fox's
residence and our information was that Mrs. M.,
who visited him on yesterday, would go on the
boat to Tacoma this morning and might possibly
carry the decoy letter. Fox met Mrs. M. and ac-
companied her to the boat. She departed on same.
I followed her. On the boat she met Heyman,
the barber, who is a close friend of Fox's. En route,
the boat was boarded at Lake Bay by Principal
W. J. B. I discussed matters with him and it was
decided to keep Heyman also under surveillance.
"On arrival in Tacoma, Heyman and Mrs. M.
departed from the boat together and proceeded to
Heyman's rooms, 15th and Yakima Ave. They
entered at 1 1 125 a. m. and departed at 12 140 p. m.
and proceeded to the corner of 15th and Pacific
Ave., where they parted. Mrs. M. was followed
by Principal W. J. B. and I kept Heyman under
surveillance. He entered the Del Monte Barber
Shop, where he is employed, at 15th and Pacific
Ave.
"At 1 :45 p. m. he departed, proceeding to
Andrew's jewelry store, 10th and Pacific Ave., went
to the repair department, conversed with the clerk
a few minutes and then returned to the Del Monte
Barber Shop, remaining until 7 :oo p. m.
"He then proceeded to his rooms, 15th and
Yakima Ave.
"At 5 :45 p. m. I was joined by Principal W. J.
B., who assisted me in keeping Heyman under sur-
THE MASKED WAR 75
veillance. At no time did Heyman visit any mail
boxes.
"As it was evident that he had received no letters
from Jay Fox to mail, I discontinued at 9 :oo p. m."
"Investigator H. J. L. reports:
"Home Colony, Wash., Nov. 5th, 19 10.
"This morning at 7 145 a. m., while standing on
the porch of Mrs. 's home, Assistant Mana-
ger C. J. S. and I noticed Jay Fox going toward
the boat landing with several letters. We followed
him, and upon his arrival he handed them to a young
girl about 14 years of age. Fox then left and a few
minutes later, and prior to the arrival of the boat,
this girl handed them to a lady evidently her
mother, and she in turn put them in a small valise
she carried. The mother and girl, upon arrival
of the boat, boarded same. Assistant Manager C.
J. S. accompanied them for the purpose of covering
the mail. After the departure of the boat, I re-
turned into the Hills and succeeded in getting
acquainted with Mr. Blank, whose home is not far
from the Fox home (an excellent place to cover
from). I also met Mr. A., who has about the
best place here. I ascertained from my landlady
that A. is the same class of a man as Fox —
an Anarchist. Fox is a free lover; the woman with
him is a Jewess. They have two children — a girl
about 14 and a boy about 12 years. The children
I became acquainted with at my boarding house.
76 THE MASKED WAR
They were soliciting subscriptions for the paper
edited by their father.
"I purchased a copy. Fox took part in the Hay-
market Riot in Chicago. I have also received in-
formation that this paper is printed in the town
here, in what is known as the Old Colony Hall.
This is a large two story frame building about a
half mile from the Fox house. The windows are
all boarded up. I understand they have four rooms
there. They are using an old style Washington
hand press and three or four men are working in
there. We are getting acquainted very nicely, going
along very slowly and feeling our way and the cover
is first class. We have created no suspicion. To-
morrow we will see what we can learn as to condi-
tions around the building where the print shop is.
I have become acquainted with the three store
keepers, all friendly and will talk."
CHAPTER XII
DETECTIVES IN THE RED COLONY
So far none of my operatives had aroused any
suspicion. They had made good in "covering"
themselves in their work. I, myself, was able to
go in and out of the colony at times without creating
suspicion. My operatives reported to me daily and
I show their reports.
"H. J. L. reports:
"Home Colony, via Tacoma, November 7th, 19 10.
"I resumed investigation here this morning at 7 :oo
a. m. At 8 :oo a. m. Mr. 'Blank' departed on the
steamer for Tacoma. I introduced Assistant Man-
ager C. J. S. to him and C. J. S. accompanied him
to Tacoma. The latter lives near the Jay Fox
residence and should be in possession of some infor-
mation. The rest of the morning up to 12 :oo noon,
I walked through the Colony getting acquainted
with the inhabitants. I ascertained that Emma
Goldman was here, but how lately I could not learn,
I believe, however, very recently. She is a great
friend of the mother of 'my landlady.' Her par-
ents and grandfather, so she states, are Anarchists,
77
78 THE MASKED WAR
Socialists, free lovers and all that goes with it.
Elbert Hubbard was also here.
"This evening, there arrived on the boat, a Mr.
D., who was decorated with a Western Federation
of Miners' button, an Industrial Worker of the
World button, also a Socialist button. He an-
nounced himself as an Anarchist and all that goes
with it. He claims to be from Siskiyou County,
California, and is lecturing around the country on
Socialism, the down-trodden workingman, — 'God's
patient poor,' etc. He is very inquisitive. He
brought his trunk with him; states that he may
stay a day, or maybe a month. He is one of the
Emma Goldman type.
"Between 12:00 and 1:00 to-day, I covered the
Fox printing shop from the brush; saw him leave
there and go to his home for dinner and also re-
turn. His print shop is in the same building as the
public school. The two school teachers are Mr.
Allen and his wife; Allen is an Anarchist and, as
I mentioned in a previous report, is a great friend
of Fox.
"This afternoon, I went into the hills and fol-
lowed a course that led me into several abandoned
houses or cabins. Upon my return, I remained
about the stores, as this seems to be trading day.
At 5 :oo p. m. I received word to come to Lake
Bay to see Principal W. J. B. Assistant Manager
C. J. S. returned from Tacoma and after supper
we walked to Lake Bay, met Principal W. J. B.,
THE MASKED WAR 79
received additional instructions, returned to Home
Colony and discontinued at 9 130 p. m.
"Our actions are creating no suspicion here; we
have seen most of the residents here and know them
by sight."
My visits to the Colony of Anarchists became
more frequent. I was always hopeful of getting
Caplan. Dressed in hunting costume, I tramped
in and around the Colony, conferred with my oper-
atives and kept after the man I wanted most. It
was while engaged in this work that I got from my
son, Raymond J. Burns, manager of my Chicago
office, that Mayor Alexander at Los Angeles had
been stopped from paying me any more money
until I had obtained results. I had no intention of
giving away my case to anyone and Mayor Alex-
ander understood that thoroughly. He had prom-
ised me that he would not give any reports of mine
to anyone.
The Mayor was asked to submit my reports, and
when he refused a Grand Jury was called. Mr.
Rodgers was appointed an Assistant District Attor-
ney. The Mayor was subpoenaed before the Grand
Jury and was there urged to submit my reports.
On the failure to secure them from him, the mana-
ger of my Los Angeles office was called before the
Grand Jury, and he too was unable to produce
them; and that night my Los Angeles office was
broken into, and the filing-cases and desks rifled.
80 THE MASKED WAR
But their search was fruitless, as all the reports in
this case were forwarded to my son, Raymond J.
Burns, at Chicago, and he, in turn, placed them in
a safe deposit vault in the First National Bank.
CHAPTER XIII
BURNS IN ANARCHISTS' NEST
These annoyances were big annoyances and they
hampered me somewhat in my work, but as long as
there was a chance to get Caplan in Home Colony
or break out a trail to him there I was going to
stick. I financed myself — and borrowed money to
pull through with the job. We kept at the job as
the following reports in the files of my agency will
show.
"H. J. L. reports:
"Home Colony, via Tacoma, Wash.,
"Tuesday, November 5th, 19 10.
"I resumed investigation here to-day at 7 :oo a.
m. covering the outgoing boat to Tacoma to ascer-
tain whether Fox sent out any mail. Assistant
Manager C. J. S. left for Tacoma on the boat. My
informant has given me the following information:
"Fox worked in San Francisco for some time up
to within two months ago, when he returned here
and made arrangements to start up his paper, The
Agitator. For a long time past, Fox has had the
residents here subscribing money for this paper and
81
82 THE MASKED WAR
has given them nothing in return. The money so
subscribed, so the residents here claim, has gone
to 'Esther.'
"This woman has lived with him ten years. She
was formerly the wife of a wealthy New York
dentist. The boy and girl who are here now are
the children of her husband in New York.
"Fox has a wife and children living. Whether
Fox followed the printing trade in San Francisco,
I was unable to ascertain. He did have a job as
watchman at the Seattle fair, a year ago.
" 'D,' the party who arrived last night, visited
Fox to-day; also Mrs. V., the mother of our land-
lady. D. is a 'faker.' He came here looking for
the 'free love' end of it. I am satisfied of that.
He spent but little time with Fox, remaining all day
and evening at the home of Mrs. V. He is going
to leave in the morning, and Assistant Manager C.
J. S. will take him into Tacoma.
"I am going to try and ascertain where Fox lived
in San Francisco. In a previous report, I mentioned
that Fox was in the Haymarket Riots in Chicago.
"The lady who handled the letters for Fox on
the steamer Monday was Mrs. B., an English-
woman, who lives on a remittance and also writes
for the magazines. She has a husband here. They
are divorced. She rents a house here, and stays
two or three days out of the week here, and while
here, she and others of the 'free love' faith hold a
drunken carnival.
THE MASKED WAR 83
"The Jewish tailor, F., is pretty sore at the Fox
family and might have some information."
"H. J. L. reports:
"Home Colony, via Tacoma, Wash.,
"Saturday, November 12th, 19 10.
"I resumed operations here at 6:30 a. m. and
joined Principal W. J. B. at 7 130 a. m. at Lake
Bay, remained with him until 9 :oo a. m. and re-
joined him at 10:15 a - m - at tne home of his in-
formant at Home Colony. Principal W. J. B.,
informant and I then went to an abandoned cabin
a short distance from the house. Informant told
Principal W. J. B. that in the latter part of either
July or August, 19 10, he had a conversation with
one E., the manager of the Home Grocery Com-
pany here. E. is a great friend of Jay Fox. E.
told informant that he had something on his mind
and was going to tell him his secret. Informant
showed no anxiety in the matter and consequently
E. only told part of the secret which in effect was
as follows:
"That he (E.) feared for the safety of Fox;
that Fox was going in with some fellows on a dan-
gerous job, and the consequence would be that Fox
would get caught and be made to suffer, while the
others would go free. Fox, at this time, was in a
bad way financially, being so hard pressed for cash
that he had to have E. extend credit to him for a
sack of flour. In the latter part of August a Jew
84 THE MASKED WAR
came to visit Fox. He stayed several days and
was with Fox constantly. He stayed so close to
him that E. had no chance at all to talk with him.
He told informant he wanted to talk with Fox and
see if he could not persuade him to keep out of
anything that would lead him into trouble. About
September ist, the Jew and Fox left for San Fran-
cisco. Fox's wife left shortly before this. Was
supposed to go to Portland. On October the 6th,
Fox returned alone from San Francisco. He was
met on the steamer by informant. Informant re-
ports the condition of Fox as follows : Very much
worried; eyes blood-shot; looked as though he had
been under a great strain. About two weeks after
he returned, his wife appeared at Home Colony.
"From that part of the 'secret' that E. told in-
formant, E. is in possession of valuable information.
No doubt Fox made a confidant of him and looked
to him for advice. E. states he advised him to
keep out of it. Possibly, Fox heeded that advice
for the time being, but when the mysterious Jew
appeared, Fox, three or four days after, accom-
panied him to San Francisco. He had money shortly
after he bought the flour on credit. He paid his
bill and Mrs. Fox had money to go to Portland on.
On last Saturday, the first issue of his paper, The
Agitator, came out. He has one man working for
him.
"Since the dynamiting at Los Angeles, informant
at different times has attempted to draw E. out on
THE MASKED WAR 85
the matter and to learn the secret that he at one
time wanted to tell him. E. has 'shut up com-
pletely' and informant can learn nothing from him.
Principal W. J. B. advised informant how to
handle E. in the future. E. has always been a rank
Anarchist until lately. He is not as strong as
formerly. Principal W. J. B. gave informant and
myself instructions as to how to handle the situation
in the future. He left us at 1 1 145 a. m.
"I then had a further conference with informant,
went to dinner and then met him at E.'s store. In-
formant and I discussed the surveying of some land
in order to throw off any suspicions on the part of E.
"Mrs. Fox is supposed to go to Seattle this trip
to have an operation performed upon her daughter's
throat.
"As stated before, there is no question but what
E. has the confidence of Fox and knows the details
of the Los Angeles crime. He tried to keep Fox
from mixing in it, but when Fox did get mixed into
it, he used every precaution to shield him.
"This evening at 7 :oo p. m. I went to Lake Bay
and joined Principal W. J. B. and Assistant Mana-
ger C. J. S. We discussed matters fully and dis-
continued at 1 1 130 p. m."
CHAPTER XIV
WITH NO LAW AND NO MORALS
"H. J. L. reports:
"Home Colony, via Tacoma, Washington,
"Sunday, November 15th, 19 10.
"I left Lake Bay at 9:00 a. m. with Assistant
Manager C. J. S., consulting with Principal W. J.
B. before leaving. Fox returned from Tacoma last
night alone. Did not get to see him at all to-day,
but am satisfied from investigation made by Assist-
ant Manager C. J. S. and myself he was at his
home. We covered outgoing Tacoma-bound
steamer, but he sent no mail out. The following
are the fixed and definite dates as regards the move-
ments of Fox prior to his departure for San Fran-
cisco, September 2nd, 19 10.
"Fox at E.'s house all day, September 3rd, 1910.
E. sent for informant. This is the time he stated
he had a secret he wanted to tell (see my report
of November 12th, 1910) ; September 4th, the Jew
(see report of November 12th, 19 10) and Fox
left for San Francisco; October 6th, 19 10, Fox re-
turned from San Francisco; seen on steamer plying
between Tacoma and Home Colony by informant.
Description of one Joe Edelson, who came to the
86
THE MASKED WAR 87
'Home' in the spring of 19 10, and occupied a cabin
near the home of Fox.
"Five feet 8 inches, 35 or 36 years, very dark
complexion, black hair, black eyes, eyes beady; 130
to 135 pounds, Jewish nationality.
"Left 'Home' in the early part of June, 19 10,
and went to Portland; remained there during the
Rose Carnival, then returned here, remained a short
time and left for Los Angeles, where he is now,
living with some woman. Edelson is a great friend
of Fox and is an Anarchist.
"To-day being Sunday, we loitered around the
stores, as here it is where most of the residents
congregate."
«i
'H. J. L. reports:
"Home Colony, via Tacoma, Washington,
"Monday, November 14th, 1910.
"I resumed investigation here at 7 :oo a. m. As-
sistant Manager C. J. S. went to Lake Bay, and I
remained here to cover the 8 :oo a. m. Tacoma-
bound steamer to see if Fox sent out any mail by
any of the passengers. He did not, and I rode
the steamer as far as Lake Bay. Upon reaching
there, I met Assistant Manager C. J. S. and he
stated that he was going to Tacoma with Principal
W. J. B.
"I then returned to Home Colony, located Jay
Fox in his home and then saw informant and re-
mained with him until 1 1 145 a. m.
88 THE MASKED WAR
"At i :oo p. m. I returned to the vicinity of the
Fox home and remained in the timber until 4:00 p.
m. when I left for Lake Bay.
"There is a woman living in San Francisco, Cal.,
who formerly lived here. Her name is ,
and her address . Her age is about 30,
dark, small in build; a Jewess. She is living with
an Anarchist named . Both are rank An-
archists and very friendly to the Fox family. Pos-
sibly M., a cousin of the woman, is living with them.
These people left here the latter part of July, 19 10,
for San Francisco. If Fox was in San Francisco he
most likely visited them."
Here my operative gave a complete list of the
most violent of the Anarchists in the Colony. It is
necessary for me to keep this information secret.
Some of the immoralities of these people, recounted
in the reports of my men, are not printed for
decency's sake.
But here is one fact in this operative's report
that may be worth while printing:
"John B. is the butcher here. He has very strong
Anarchistic views. At the time President McKinley
was shot, B. was a resident of a small town near
Seattle. When the news of the assassination
reached the town, B. was very much elated and de-
clared himself. The consequences were that a rope
was put around his neck and he escaped lynching
THE MASKED WAR 89
by a very narrow margin. He says: 'That was
the way I was treated in what they call a "free
country." ' "
How close we were in the heart of this Colony
of law-hating people will be shown in this report,
the last I will include in this Dhase of my chronicles.
"H. J. L. reports:
"Home Colony, via Tacoma, Wash.,
"Tuesday, November 15th, 19 10.
"I resumed investigation at 6 :3c) a. m. At 7 130
a. m. I went to informant's house and concealed
myself in the loft of the stable where I had an
excellent opportunity to observe the Fox home and
the movements of Fox. Informant remained with
me all day and until I discontinued for supper.
After supper we took up separate watches in the
timber surrounding the Fox home. Fox is building
a small addition to his home and is putting in a new
floor. He did not leave the house at all except to
go to the mail box for his mail.
"7 =30 a. m. — I took up watch in stable loft.
"9 :oo a. m. — Mail carrier arrived — left mail in
box.
"9:15 a.m. — A. arrived at Fox's home.
"9:50 a.m. — Mrs. arrived at Fox's
home.
"10:05 a. m. — Mrs. left Fox's home.
"10:40 a. m. — Fox came to mail box, then started
90 THE MASKED WAR
in a hurry toward the home. Informant
trailed him and reported that Fox walked around
the block, hurriedly opened one of the letters,
looked at it for a few seconds and then returned to
his home.
"10:45 a - m - — Mrs. arrived at Fox's
home.
"11 :05 a. m. — Mrs. left Fox's home.
"11:45 a. m. , a neighbor, arrived at
Fox's home.
"1 :oo p. m. — Mrs. arrived at Fox's
home.
"1 :oo p. m. — A. came out of Fox's home to road,
returned to house immediately.
"1 :io p. m. — A. left Fox home with small pack-
age under his arm; started on road toward Lake
Bay.
"1 :i2 p. m. — Mrs. left Fox home.
"1:35 p. m. — B. left Fox home.
'4:30 p. m. — Mrs. arrived at Fox home.
'4:35 p. m. — Mrs. left Fox home.
"5:30 p. m. — Man, 5 feet 8 inches, 155 pounds,
arrived with two packages. It was getting dark
and neither informant nor I could identify him as
being anyone living in the Colony. At 5 130 p. m.
this party left.
"At 6:30 p. m. I joined informant again, re-
mained with him in timber until 7 :30 p. m. Assist-
ant Manager C. J. S. joined me and we watched
Fox's home until 1 1 130 p. m. I discontinued at
11
4
u
THE MASKED WAR 91
midnight. Fox remained in house; no one called.
"After arrival of mail, Fox did not deposit any
outgoing mail in letter box; neither did he give any
to carrier who passed his house at 1 1 130 a. m. As
will be noted, Mrs. called four times. I
understand she is going to Tacoma in the morning.
Mrs. has a home here. Her husband is
not here, but sends her a check every month to the
amount of $50.00.
'After A. left at 1 :io p. m. Fox practically dis-
continued his carpenter work and all was quiet
around the house. I understand that within the last
week the two Fox children changed a twenty dollar
gold piece (that is, each child had one) at the
Colony store. Regarding E. mentioned in former
reports, he and the tailor of Tacoma were very
friendly. The tailor visited him here. E. was a
peddler of notions, women's goods, etc. He was a
loud-mouthed Jew and a strong Anarchist. My
informant tells me, he answers the description of
Caplan, as to height, color and age."
We trailed Anarchist E., but he was not the man
I wanted.
CHAPTER XV
A $350 TAXICAB RIDE
Despite these interesting adventures in the An-
archist City we did not get close enough to Caplan
or Schmidt to either rope them or arrest them. To
rope a man is to gain his full confidence and that
is even better than an arrest, as will appear later
in the reports of the operatives who closed in on
Bryce and McGraw in another part of the country.
We found Mrs. Caplan and, up to the very mo-
ment of the McNamara trial, when the two defen-
dants pleaded guilty, we had strong hopes of
getting her husband. My operatives relieved me of
this puzzling end of the case as my attention was
needed in a general direction of the investigation as
clues were dug out and the trail to the guilty men
became wider and straighter.
Even after the close of the trial two investigators
followed two men answering the descriptions of
Caplan and Schmidt through barren and remote
parts of the west, followed them on foot, on horse-
back and raced after them in automobiles finally to
round them up and to find that they were not the
right men.
As for Mrs. Caplan, that lady was destined to
92
THE MASKED WAR 93
enjoy a taxicab ride the like of which few Anarchist
ladies have ever dreamed of enjoying, but the
ride was not at the expense of my agency. Mr.
Olaf Tveitmore, secretary of the California State
Building Trades Council, sometimes known among
labor people on the Coast as "The Old Man," later
indicted and convicted for conspiracy, had a hand
in providing this record taxi trip. The bill for
Mrs. Caplan's trip was $350, as much as a laborer
makes in a year, and the misguided union working-
man who paid his dues regularly footed the bill, of
course.
Mrs. Caplan was under subpoena in San Fran-
cisco. The service of the subpoena on the woman
made agents for the McNamara defense believe that
the best thing that could happen would be her dis-
appearance. Elaborate plans were laid and one
day in August, 191 1, she stepped into a machine
and was gone. She was taken to San Jose first and
then on to Reno, where she was piled aboard a
Chicago express without bag or baggage. The
machine turned about and crossed the country again
to San Francisco and its garage. It had required
two days goin^ to Reno and three days returning.
A good part of a thousand dollars went for this little
joy ride of an Anarchist lady if the railroad fare
from Reno to Chicago and incidentals are included.
She was not really needed by the prosecution. Her
husband was the one we were after. It was money
thrown away.
94 THE MASKED WAR
Of course our investigators learned every detail
of this spiriting away of the witness and, incident-
ally, we got hold of the chauffeur and secured a
statement from him. We learned a lot about taxi
bills, money provided by honest union men who
were being bled by the conspirators. We learned
that "The Old Man," Tveitmore, who was charged
with directing the explosions on the Pacific Coast,
seldom walked. He always used a taxi and a cer-
tain special taxi and a certain chauffeur. This same
chauffeur also saved Mr. Sam Gompers from ever
stretching his legs and was at the beck and call of
Clarence Darrow, Job Harriman, Harrington,
Rappaport and the rest of the crowd that assembled
around Tveitmore in San Francisco prior to the
trial. Everybody used a taxi except the man on
the job with a dinner pail. Yet the man on the
job paid the bills.
Chicago, to which city Mrs. Caplan made her
flight, seems to be a good hiding place for An-
archists when they stir about the country from their
home places. Schmidt used it as a good point for
receiving information that would guide him in
dodging us and, perhaps, for receiving necessary
funds. We uncovered his mail agent, a young man
we shadowed for many days. We had our best
shadow assigned to this young man, Malcolm Mc-
Laren, an operative who figures largely later in this
chronicle. How cautious Anarchists are will be
shown by the manner in which Schmidt's mail was
THE MASKED WAR 95
handled. Schmidt's agent asked at the Chicago
general delivery office every night for mail for
M. A. Schmidt. The round-about course he would
take in doing this service for the Anarchist would
have done credit to a fox. To obey my standing
instructions in shadowing, McLaren must have had
his patience tried sorely at times, for one of the big
reasons for the successful work of my agency is that
the moment a subject shows that he knows that he
is being followed the shadow must draw off. Never
mind how promising may be the outlook, my men
are ordered to sacrifice all the good chances rather
than let the subject know that a shadow is behind
him. Later the subject will be taken up again by
another man and the work started all over.
McLaren was watching this subject's house on
the afternoon of December 28, 19 10, when the sub-
ject came out at four o'clock. His report says that
Schmidt's agent proceeded east on Eastwood Ave-
nue, Chicago, to the Robey Street elevated station.
He boarded an express train for downtown and got
off at State and Van Buren Streets. He entered
Rothschild's department store and bought a key
ring. Then he popped out of the store and for
three minutes stood on the corner looking in every
direction. Suddenly he turned and ascended the
elevated stairs to the sub-platform. He passed
from the north side to the south side and stood there
about two minutes, watching. He then returned to
the street and hurried to Clark Street and to the
96 THE MASKED WAR
post office. He went to the employees' entrance but
did not inquire at the general delivery window for
Schmidt's mail that day. This young man, inter-
ested in Anarchists, seldom left his home by the
front door but used a rear entrance and gained the
main highways of the city by alleys. It would re-
quire a stretch of the imagination to believe that his
life was a pleasant one or one offering him much
promise in manhood.
During this unsuccessful work among the An-
archists, my operatives were exceedingly busy in
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Indianapolis
and Salt Lake City. In the last named city there
was a gentleman named Munsey — Jack Munsey —
who needed attention. He was the business agent
or walking delegate for the International Bridge and
Structural Iron Workers' Union. We had reason
to believe that "J. B. Bryce" would get in touch
with him. Munsey had been known by another
name and had a none too pretty reputation. Our
operative reported that his wife had divorced him
and that he was loafing about Salt Lake City with
plenty of money all the time while the union work-
ers in the craft were kept on strike and were so
reduced in funds that they got down to borrowing
small change from each other to tide over each
day. He was among those to be convicted later at
Indianapolis.
We had reason to believe that Munsey would
provide a cover for Bryce, the man who had actually
THE MASKED WAR 97
set off the dynamite in the Los Angeles Times
Building. Our operative stuck with him and re-
ported among other things a hold-up proposition
from him in the matter of getting work; if there was
work to be had the iron-worker would have to pay
over a tidy lump sum to Munsey before swinging
a sledge or picking up a piece of iron on the job.
We got some helpful information there and then
things began to center closely around headquarters
in Indianapolis. I learned that a man fitting the
description of McGraw had been seen talking with
J. J. McNamara. I finally spotted McGraw and
from the time he came within our vision he was
never without a shadow day or night. He it was
who led us to the men higher up — the two
McNamaras and all the crew back of them.
McGraw had had nothing to do with the Los
Angeles Times explosion, but he had done the work
in Peoria and how many other places we did not
know at that time. Our shadows followed him
and finally he went to his home, No. 414 South
Sangamon Street, Chicago. There we got his true
identity. He was Ortie McManigal. In the subse-
quent account of the trailing, or "tailing" of Mc-
Manigal as we call it, he is referred to as Subject
No. 1.
CHAPTER XVI
TRACKED TO WILDS OF WISCONSIN
On the morning of November 5th, 19 10, an ex-
pressman stopped in front of this subject's house,
entered the alley adjoining and, a few moments
later, returned with a small trunk. Later the sub-
ject appeared, wearing corduroy trousers, a long
black ulster and a soft black felt hat. He carried
three shotguns in cases. He took a train to Keno-
sha, Wis., and in that city went to the house of G.
M. Sharp, a carpenter, at No. 620 Exchange Street.
He left his guns there and reappeared with Sharp.
They went to the station and waited for the 3:55
train from Chicago. They were suspicious of every
one, but did not uncover the shadows. On the
arrival of the train a passenger alighted and greeted
them. This passenger went under the name of
Sullivan. He is referred too hereafter as Subject
No. 2.
Hunting licenses were secured for Subjects 1 and
2 and several others making up a party of six.
Trunks were sent to the station and one of our
operatives took the job of following them in the
event that the shadow following the subjects became
uncovered.
98
THE MASKED WAR 99
The hunters boarded a train for Conover, Wis.,
our men following on the next train after being sure
that Conover was the destination of the party. This
was only a month and nine days after the destruc-
tion of the Los Angeles Times and the papers were
still filled with the aftermath of the horror. The
dynamiters were going into seclusion until things
simmered down. It would be harder to find
more seclusion than in the wilds of Wisconsin in
winter.
In Conover Operatives B. F. D. and R. J. K.
found that the refugee hunters had landed there
and had gone into camp near Pioneer Lake, two
and one half miles east of the road leading into
Conover. They sought a distant telegraph station
and wired Chicago, making a report. They then
bought the equipment necessary for a hunting trip,
fur caps, snowshoes, guns, etc., and arranged a story
between them to the effect that they were purchasers
of mining machinery, waiting for its arrival and
killing time until it was delivered. They had a
hunting license, bought provisions and rented a cabin
which they put in repair so that they could stand
the weather with a reasonable degree of comfort.
The cabin of the two operatives was near the
Conover station, so chosen because here was the
general store to which hunters would make their
way for provisions and ammunition and to mail and
receive letters. My men could also watch all arriv-
ing and departing trains, keep track of all people
ioo THE MASKED WAR
leaving or coming to Conover and also watch the
delivery of express packages and mail.
On the morning of November 12th, 19 10, Sub-
jects 1 and 2 came into Conover from their camp.
Subject 1 — McManigal — told of having killed a
two hundred and fifty pound buck, bringing him
down with one shot. Subject 2 — known as Sullivan
— was dressed in a dark corduroy suit, high-laced
hunting boots and light corduroy cap. Both were
armed with high power rifles and 44 caliber Colts.
The two men bought some bottled beer and provi-
sions and then hired the section foreman to take
them on a hand car to a point near the camp. The
assistant of the foreman, a man named Tony, went
with the party on the hand car and on the return of
Tony our operatives made friends with him. Our
operatives took their meals at a house near the sta-
tion where Tony ate. The arrangement was that
pending closer contact with the men they were tail-
ing in the wilds of Wisconsin, Tony could keep our
operatives posted.
The arrival of some baggage at the station put
our men on edge a week later. It looked as if the
subjects under surveillance were preparing to de-
part. The Chicago office was informed and men
were in readiness to pick up the subjects wherever
they went. The office received a telegram, however,
from B. F. D. reading:
"Tell B. not to ship machinery to-day."
THE MASKED WAR 101
This was to inform us that the subjects were not
leaving.
The task of shadowing men in camp in the woods
was no easy one. Our operatives scouted the roads
about the camp and one of them got so far as to
aid a farmer named Reed in carting McManigal's
deer to the station and unloading it. He and Reed
made friends and what Reed knew of the life in
the camp of the dynamiters my men got out of him.
Then, again, like most women, Mrs. Steinmetz, who
took table boarders at Conover, generally knew
what was happening for miles around. Her daugh-
ter, Mrs. Nicholson, also generally heard what was
being talked about. They informed my men that
the camp of the subjects would be broken in about
a week from November 24th and that all would
depart save Sullivan, who was to board with her
until the close of the hunting season.
On November 26th, Sullivan reached a high
point in a spree that had been gradually developing.
He came into Conover with a rifle and a pail in
either hand and went to the Steinmetz house. He
was pretty drunk and my men did not hang about
too close for fear that they might meet him and he
might get suspicious of them. Operative B. re-
mained about our cabin to watch Sullivan and also
the trains so that none of the party would get away
without it being known to them. Sullivan's de-
bauch continued at the Steinmetz house and he spent
twenty dollars in drinks for everyone and divided
102 THE MASKED WAR
five dollars among the children. The drunk wound
up with a free fight between Steinmetz, Mrs.
Steinmetz, a man named Sam Smiley, several of the
children and such friends of the family who cared
to join in. Sullivan was so far gone in drink that
he rolled over on the kitchen floor in the midst of
battle and slept peacefully. Later he was put to
bed. The next morning our men went to the Stein-
metz house for breakfast and found Sullivan still
drunk and asleep in a chair in the front room. The
operatives were working with the greatest of cau-
tion. They decided that some of the others from
the camp would come for the drunken man and so
they withdrew to the woods, spending the forenoon
of November 27th in watching the roads leading
from the station. At noon they returned to the
house but Sullivan was still there. Operative B.
was in charge of our cabin while the other two men
watched the roads. In the afternoon Subject 1 —
McManigal — came into Conover from the camp to
get Sullivan. Sullivan brought McManigal to our
cabin and knocked on the door, demanding to see
"Billy," Operative B.
The roping of the two subjects was now well
under way. Instead of seeking acquaintance with
them they were hunting us up. The acquaintance-
ship with our party was made. Operatives and
subject had dinner together at the Steinmetz house
and the subjects talked of their camp life and the
game they had killed. They said they would break
THE MASKED WAR 103
camp the next Friday night, come to Conover, spend
the night there and leave for Chicago in the morn-
ing. This was most important information for us
for we then had time to prepare to pick them up
when they left the train on the way back to civiliza-
tion.
One detail of their task which was important and
which might have been overlooked by less careful
detectives was efficiently attended to by the opera-
tives at Conover. The hunting laws there provide
that when deer is shipped the hunter must accom-
pany it to its destination. The killed deer were
watched almost as closely as the hunters themselves
for the delivery of the game would mean another
name and address, a friend of the men under sur-
veillance and a new avenue for investigation.
The intended breaking up of the camp was post-
poned and Manager Raymond J. Burns was so
notified by wire in his Chicago office. This gave
our operatives greater opportunity for roping the
subjects. Subject No. 2 was by no means through
with his debauch. He would get totally drunk, try
to taper off and then find himself drunk again.
Everything to drink in the Steinmetz house was
used up and Mrs. Steinmetz on a trip to Eagle
River, a nearby station, bought a bottle of whiskey
for Sullivan which she agreed to drop him when
the train passed Scott station. Sullivan was waiting
for it and Mrs. Steinmetz dropped it from the train.
Somebody's hand was unsteady and the bottle hit
104 THE MASKED WAR
the ground and the much coveted liquor was wasted.
Sullivan, while in the Steinmetz house, played
the part of a ladies' man when he was sober enough
to do so. He scolded Tessie Steinmetz for only
baking two loaves of bread and the girl was resent-
ful and called him a brute. But he had plenty of
money, more money than the people around Con-
over were used to seeing, and Mrs. Steinmetz tried
to keep peace in the family.
It was soon after the spat with the girl that the
general ruction came off in the Steinmetz family.
The report of Operative B. on this social affair may
prove interesting. It is very brief and is as follows :
"Operative B. reports:
"Conover, Wis., Nov. 26th, 19 10.
"At nine in the morning Sullivan came to Con-
over alone, carrying a .203 Savage carbine and a
small pail. He went to the post office and store
where he ordered some provisions. He then went
to the Steinmetz residence and ordered a round of
drinks and by ten o'clock was very drunk. Rem-
pert, the section foreman, had promised to take him
back to his camp. At 2 130 p. m. one of the parties
from the house and I returned home and when
within one hundred yards Alice and Marguerite
Steinmetz, 15 and 16 years of age, came running
out of the house crying at the tops of their voices.
Everyone in the store and post office ran out to see
what was the matter. The girls ran for me and
THE MASKED WAR 105
told me that everybody in the house was fighting
and that Sullivan had drawn his revolver. I ran
into the house, entering through the sitting-room,
as I knew they were in the kitchen. I remained in
the dining-room and looked through the window into
the kitchen and saw Mrs. Steinmetz receive a blow
in the jaw from Sullivan as she was holding her
husband. Sullivan also punched him in the jaw
and ear, cutting both places. Sullivan was very
drunk. He then rolled over on the floor for a nap.
At 4:30 the section foreman pulled out the hand
car to take Sullivan back to his camp. He got
him to the station but he fell forward on his face,
making his nose bleed. He went back to the Stein-
metz house. He was taken upstairs and put to
bed."
Operative B., who was now called "Billy" by the
man he was shadowing, showed up early the next
morning and found Sullivan starting a new spree.
He was buying drinks for the people he had been
fighting the day before.
Two of the Steinmetz lodgers and Sullivan then
went over to the cabin of my operatives to finish up
the spree. They brought along beer and made
themselves comfortable. Operative B. suggested to
Sullivan that it was a good thing that his partners
were not in Conover during the fight the day before.
"If Mac was here," replied Sullivan, "there
would have been something doing because he
106 THE MASKED WAR
always carries his Colt automatic just as I do.
Most of the time, even in the city, he carries two
guns with him, and if he only has one with him he
carries a large dagger. He runs no chances and
whenever he pulls the trigger his man falls. He is
a conservative fellow, can scent trouble, is always
prepared and has never lost out yet. He can put
a piece of paper as large as your hand on a tree
and at twenty-five paces can put nine out of ten
bullets in the center."
Charlie Lawrence, another member of the party,
was described by Sullivan as being "nobody's bud"
and the "gamest kid in the country." He also car-
ried two Colt revolvers and was a quick shot. He
said that wherever they were they carried an extra
clip of eight cartridges.
This was not all drunken talk by any means.
The bunch of men my operatives were tailing could
stand off in the road and roll a tomato can along
with the bullets from their guns. Had there been
any suspicion that the operatives were Burns men
and not hunters and mining men, had there been
the slightest careless work on the part of my inves-
tigators they would have had to battle with their
own weapons for their lives. The two subjects were
wanted for murder in connection with the Los
Angeles Times explosion and they would not have
hesitated to put up a battle with rifles and pistols.
Operative B. wanted a photograph of Sullivan.
The Chicago office would have given almost any-
THE MASKED WAR 107
thing for one so that they might check up on the
subject and definitely prove his identity. In one of
B.'s reports there is a good description of how he
went about getting or trying to get a picture of
Sullivan. Along with this description of the at-
tempt to get the picture are more details of the life
in the little railway station where two men wanted
for murder and two men shadowing them spent the
heart of the winter of 19 10. In this report "Sub-
ject" refers to McManigal.
From report of Operator B.:
"Sullivan is a great ladies' man and is trying hard
to win two of the girls here. He invited me to his
camp several times, and were it not for the house
running out of beer and whiskey, he would have
told me a lot more. He seems worried and told
me he has lost about ten pounds in the last month
but passed it off by saying he guessed he wasn't
drinking enough out here.
"Several of the girls from the town here were
talking to me from about 200 feet away and he
asked me to invite them over, which I did and I
told them I wanted to take their pictures, and hav-
ing a plate camera which I had borrowed in the
morning, I lined up the girls and several children
and Park and Sullivan, but Sullivan refused to get
in the picture and insisted on operating the camera
himself telling me he had one of the finest cameras
made at his camp and it cost him $60.00 and that
108 THE MASKED WAR
when I came to his camp, we would have some good
photos taken.
"It was raining all day and very dark, but Sulli-
van insisted that I could take a good 'time' photo.
One of the girls wanted a photo of a little two-
year-old girl and while Sullivan held her in his
arms I took the picture and will send the three
plates in to be developed to-morrow, although I
doubt if any will turn out O. K.
"At 5 p. m. the subject came to Conover carrying
a .303 Savage rifle, and also carried a .38 Colt
automatic revolver and one eight-inch blade dagger
at his side and carried two pockets of cartridges.
He first went to the post office and then returned to
the Steinmetz house where he met Sullivan and
they talked about fifteen minutes in the front room,
then both went into the kitchen where they had
several drinks of the last pint of whiskey in the
house, while Mrs. Steinmetz and others told the
subject of the fight of yesterday. The subject
joked about it and said he would have to keep
Sullivan in camp for the rest of the week.
"Sullivan and the subject went over to the store
and purchased a lot of groceries, etc., and then went
over to my cabin looking for me, and one half hour
later I heard Operative R. J. K. talking and not
knowing the subject and Sullivan were in my cabin
I walked in on them, and they were sitting on the
beds talking to Operatives B. F. D. and R. J. K.
and a fellow named Tony, who was out hunting
f THE MASKED WAR 109
with them. They had several bottles of beer that
they managed to get somewhere. T. took sides
with Sullivan, explaining the fight of yesterday and
the subject seeing that Sullivan and I were very
friendly, the subject changed from general conver-
sations to stones and finally we were all called over
to dinner. The subject, Sullivan, Operatives R. J.
K. and B. F. D., Tony from Eagle River and I
dined together, and after dinner returned to the
sitting room. Sullivan was still drunk and would
not take Mrs. Steinmetz's word that there was no
more booze in the house, but went into the cellar
to see for himself, then brought the jug of rootbeer
and treated the house with it.
"Operative R. J. K. told the subject he was from
Milwaukee and they talked together for about half
an hour. While the subject, Sullivan and all the
rest of us were in the sitting-room after dinner, the
subject told us he used to spend about six months
out of every year hunting and trapping; that he
would go and hunt for a month or so then return to
the city and work for a month and keep that up
month after month.
"The subject and Sullivan both asked Operatives
B. F. D. and R. J. K. and I to their camp next
Wednesday night and we told them we would be
there."
The next morning the operatives made a definite
engagement for a visit to the camp of the dyna-
no THE MASKED WAR
miters and they ordered a case of beer shipped
ahead of them. It was not, by any means, a per-
fectly safe venture, for one of the dynamiters car-
ried a Maxim silencer on the barrel of his rifle and
took pains to suggest that he could shoot and it
would be almost impossible to hear the report a
hundred feet away.
A blizzard on the day appointed for the visit to
the camp brought about a postponement and gave
us an opportunity to send another operator to Con-
over with instructions to the men already on the
spot. We also sent a kodak to replace the camera
of Operative B., in the hope that he would get a
chance for a snapshot. The additional operative
was introduced at the Steinmetz house as a sales-
man for the Allis-Chalmers Company. Operatives
R. J. K., B. F. D. and B. then arranged a tele-
graphic code with him and hustled him out of Con-
over to Monica Junction, some distance away.
The bad weather kept up and on December 2nd,
the camp of the subjects was broken, all parties
coming into Conover. No. I — McManigal —
bossed them all and several times called Sullivan
and others from the Steinmetz house and gave them
a talking to for drinking. McManigal could drink
and carry it but Sullivan got very drunk again.
Sullivan wanted to sleep in our shack with B., but
McManigal would not let him.
In Chicago we were ready for the tailing of the
members of the camp as they left the woods of
THE MASKED WAR in
Wisconsin. Spotters were ready to point out each
subject and shadows ready to tail them.
On the morning of December 3rd McManigal
tried to get Sullivan to leave Conover with him, but
Sullivan was still drunk and insisted on remaining.
He was very much worried and advised Sullivan,
who is to be referred to in reports following as
"Subject 2," to keep away from people and not to
talk. He seemed to be afraid that No. 2 would
tell things. McManigal went away with others of
the party, one of our shadows tailing them and
sending information ahead.
Not knowing when Subject 2 would pick up and
leave, B. had a telegram sent him which would
serve as an excuse and head off suspicion that he
was following his man. This telegram read: "For
over thousand dollar purchase you must arrange
with our Mr. Hayden for special discount. He
leaves for East Monday. (Signed) Harris."
After the departure of Subjects 1 and 3, Opera-
tive B. wired Operative R. J. K. at Milwaukee:
"Order size one and three Eye Steam pumps of
Allis-Chalmers Co., in Chicago to-day and place on
my bill and I will arrange special discount. Leave
here Monday to see Hayden, Chicago." That tele-
gram informed the operatives in Milwaukee that one
and three had left for that city. B. also wired the
operative at Monica Junction a similar message so
that he could board the train and pick up the
shadowing.
CHAPTER XVII
DETECTIVE GETS SUSPECT'S PICTURE
Operative B. had succeeded in making two snap-
shots of Sullivan. The subject was extremely cau-
tious and insisted on having a time exposure picture
made when the women of the Steinmetz house in-
sisted on his coming into the group. He protested
at first against having any picture made, but he was
a "ladies' " man and was susceptible to their plead-
ings. He thought to satisfy them and also avoid
having his features show in the finished group. He
fixed the camera of the operative so that it would
take a time exposure. By moving his head the
fraction of an inch he would blur the picture and
hide his features in the negative.
This was a clever enough scheme to fool an
amateur, but Operative B. was no amateur. He
took the camera from Sullivan and slipped the little
lever back to "Instantaneous" and then pretended
to be making a time exposure while, in reality, he
made two good snapshots.
The operatives had reported daily out of the
wilderness and had sent specimens of Sullivan's
handwriting. These with the picture and with in-
112
THE MASKED WAR 113
formation we secured at Indianapolis proved to us
that we had our man — J. B. Bryce !
Here was the actual murderer of the twenty-one
newspaper workers who were sent to their death
in the destruction of the Los Angeles Times. We
had him but he was better at large than in jail. The
time had not come for slipping the handcuffs on him.
He would lead us to the man above him, John J.
McNamara. He would lead us to the whole crew of
"leaders" who engaged in the conspiracy against
society and who had turned a big and once powerful
labor organization into a band of Anarchists work-
ing with notoriously confessed Anarchists of the
rankest type.
Our operatives picked up McManigal and the
rest of the hunting party as they left the train; to
tail them until the final round-up. But each shadow
had the instructions to sacrifice anything rather than
have the man he was following realize that he was
being shadowed.
Sullivan or Bryce was left alone at Conover by
the others and the sense of security he had enjoyed
because of the presence of friends and fellow crim-
inals began to desert him. He became suspicious
of his friend "Billy," Operative B., and suddenly
announced that he would leave that very morning,
December 5. B. hurried into his traveling clothes
and produced his telegram which would warrant
him in starting away with the subject. Then Bryce
changed his mind and remained in his room at the
ii 4 THE MASKED WAR
Steinmetz house until the train departed. B. might
have made a bluff at leaving but he knew that
Bryce was friendly with the ticket agent and so he
bought a ticket through to Chicago, took the train
and hopped off at Milwaukee where he connected
with Operative R. J. K. He was fearful that
Bryce might take a freight train from Conover and
so he waited until the freight pulled into Milwaukee
at 2 :20 a. m. and assured himself that his man was
not on it.
The record of the last day spent by Operative B.
and Bryce together in the woods of Wisconsin,
when fear began to creep into the heart of the dyna-
miter, is told graphically by my investigator as
follows :
"Operative B. reports:
"Conover, Wis., Mon., Dec. 5th, 1910.
"At 7 :20 a. m. No. 2 came over to my shack
and remained with me talking about getting a party
together to go fishing to-day at Scott Lake, six
miles south of Conover. After breakfast he told
me he was not feeling well from his jag and wanted
to go away from where he could get any booze.
Within a half hour, No. 2, Frank Rempert and his
assistant Tony, Mary Thomas, Alice and Tillie
Steinmetz and I left the town in a hand car for
Scott Lake, and just as we were about to start, I
got the crowd to pose for a picture, and while I was
getting the distance, etc., No. 2 tried several times
THE MASKED WAR 115
to hide himself behind the others, and after that
while at the Lake whenever anyone suggested taking
a picture, I asked No. 2 to take it, which he will-
ingly agreed to do. One time while he and Mary
Thomas were several hundred feet out on the lake,
he knelt down and let Mary Thomas sit on his knee
and I dared him to let me take a picture of him in
that attitude; he agreed, providing I would get in
the picture, which I did and let Tony, the section
hand, take the snap shot. Another time, one of the
girls wanted her picture taken and asked No. 2 and
the others to get in it and No. 2 hung behind in a
suspicious way and insisted that I take a time pic-
ture, which I did, but I think he suggested that so
as to give him a chance to move and blur his pic-
ture.
"While at the lake No. 2 spent most of his time
with the girls, but while with me one time said he
could have left here with No. 1, that he is working
for No. 1, and that he guessed No. 1 had little confi-
dence in him after this last jag. I asked him what
was the good of worrying, and he said: 'I'm not
worrying now over that; that's all I have done for
a month is worry, and I am going to cut it out; it
does not get anyone anything; what is done cannot
be undone.' He also said that he was very easily
worried, and half the time he did not know what he
worried about. Several times he remarked that he
was sorry he did not go to Chicago with the others
yesterday.
u6 THE MASKED WAR
"No. 2 was very quiet all day, and only had one
drink all day up to four o'clock this afternoon, and
was sober and seemed to be giving something much
thought. When he would sit with his chin resting
on his hands, I remarked for him to come out of
the trance he was in, and he said, 'I am sorry that
1 did not return with No. i, but I will see him to-
morrow night.'
"During the evening he told Henry Steinmetz
that No. i lived at 414 S. Sangamon Street, Chi-
cago. After our return from the lake, No. 2 or-
dered several rounds of drinks for the family, and
2 then shaved himself with a safety razor, which
he had in his suit case, and put on his brown suit.
No. 2 is letting his blond mustache grow, and also
side whiskers, and when one of the Steinmetz girls
asked why he let them grow he said it was because
he had his jaw dislocated. Later, in answer to a
similar question from Mrs. Steinmetz, he said the
bones showed too plainly. On one corner of his
mouth, on the left, is a white mole about this size
'O' and about half inch below his side burner on
the left side are two smaller white moles, and on
the right of his large Roman nose he has a light
brown mole. The upper right eye tooth has a gold
crown, and all the rest of his teeth are white and
even, especially the lower teeth.
"He is wearing a cheap ready-made light brown
suit and light-brown fedora hat, wears no rings, but
has a heavy gold watch chain with a locket. His
THE MASKED WAR 117
whole make-up is that of a refined farmer. He has
no overcoat with him. Has two suit cases; one is
a very good leather one (new), while the other is
old, and a dark imitation alligator skin."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MEETING OF THE DYNAMITERS
After his false start for Chicago and the short
stay in Milwaukee, Operative B. took a train back
for Conover on the afternoon of December 7.
Changing cars at Monica Junction he was informed
that Sullivan had left Conover for Watersmeat sta-
tion, where he had taken a through train with Pull-
man berth for Chicago. Operative B. picked up
Operative W. H. C. at Monica Junction and in-
structed him to wire him in the business code ar-
ranged so that he could turn back at Conover and
leave for Chicago. He was still covering himself
thoroughly, although his man was many miles away.
It was good detective work, for he had roped the
subject, and it would be his business perhaps to run
into him again and maintain that friendship he had
created.
B. went on to Conover and the Steinmetz girls
told him that after his departure Sullivan had
looked over some letters and had said that he had
overlooked an important matter, and would have to
hurry to Chicago. This was merely an excuse for
getting away alone. The girls said that Sullivan
118
THE MASKED WAR 119
cried when he left the house and that he promised
to write to the family and send the children Christ-
mas presents.
All this time my son Raymond, from his Chicago
office, was having McManigal shadowed day and
night, and his home in Sangamon Street watched by
the pick of his men.
Sullivan, after leaving the train from Conover,
went directly to the home of McManigal with Op-
erative B. F. D. following him. This operative had
known him while he was refugeeing in the woods
and so dared not take the same trolley car he took
from the depot. He jumped into a taxi and had
the chauffeur follow the car.
Sullivan remained only twenty minutes in the
home of McManigal, and then left the house with
him. My son Raymond and Operative A. V. were
also in the vicinity of McManigal's house when the
two subjects connected. It was an important mo-
ment in the hunt for the perpetrators of the Los
Angeles crime and the scores of other crimes that
had made the reign of terror in the United States.
Two dynamiters, both murderous, desperate men,
were walking the streets of the second largest city
in the country, passing policemen, courts of justice
and perfectly free of any hindrance from the ordi-
nary machinery of law.
The two men boarded an eastbound Van Buren
street car, and our shadows followed in a taxi to
the Dearborn Street station. They boarded a
120 THE MASKED WAR
Monon train which left at 12.10 p. m., and sat in
a forward coach, talking earnestly and in whispers.
As the train was about to start McManigal jumped
off and one of our shadows took him up again. Sul-
livan remained on the train and went to Indian-
apolis. He was going to report to headquarters.
Two operatives followed him. He would never
again be without a shadow until he was safe in
prison.
Operative B. F. D. left the train with him, saw
him check one of his grips and take the other with
him. Sullivan went one block up Illinois Street and
boarded a Pennsylvania Avenue car. Endeavoring
to throw off any shadow that might be after him,
Sullivan alighted at Market Street and entered the
Dennison Hotel. He passed through the hotel and
slipped out of a side entrance, and then hurried to
the Plaza Hotel. He registered as F. Sullivan,
City, and was given Room 179. B. F. D. covered
the hotel until one in the morning, when Operative
A. V. relieved him for the remainder of the night.
In all probability Sullivan got in touch with head-
quarters by telephone. He left Indianapolis the
next morning for Cincinnati, and on arrival there
checked his grip and left the station to seek shelter
in a nearby drug store. He was waiting for some
one, and would leave the drug store occasionally to
cross to the station and look at the train schedule.
He bought a ticket for Northside, a suburb of the
city, and at 1.35 p. m. a tall, clean-shaven stranger
THE MASKED WAR 121
alighted from a train from Indianapolis. The
stranger also purchased a ticket for Northside and
greeted Sullivan. They took a train for the sub-
urban settlement at 2.45 p. m. The stranger car-
ried two packages wrapped in paper and Sullivan
two grips.
Arriving at Northside the two subjects separated,
the stranger taking a trolley, one of our operatives
following him. Sullivan walked to Chase Street to
Virginia Street, through an unlighted street and up
a hill with a few small houses on it. The neighbor-
hood was very tough, unlighted and without side-
walks. The operatives following Sullivan came to
the end of this street, and there was danger of get-
ting too close to the subject. Because of the topog-
raphy they had no way of covering themselves.
They decided to drop their man and return to the
station. At the station they found Operative P. J.
B., who had tailed the stranger. Comparing notes
they found that the two men had gone the same way
and to the same place. Our men had to wait until
daylight to locate their subjects. They took a car
to Cincinnati, and there got a few hours' rest.
We now had three men fully covered, namely;
McManigal, known in the reports as Subject 1 ;
Sullivan, known in the reports as Subject 2, and the
stranger who connected with Sullivan and who will
be referred to as Subject 3.
The reader might think that good luck played a
part in the appearance of the stranger, Subject 3,
122 THE MASKED WAR
when he met Sullivan in the Cincinnati station while
Sullivan was under surveillance. But luck had noth-
ing to do with it. Subject 3 brought his own shadow
with him to that meeting, and the shadow had fol-
lowed him from the headquarters of the Interna-
tional Union of Bridge and Structural Iron Work-
ers in Indianapolis.
In a detective operation as large as the one in-
volving the structural iron workers' strike and the
resulting crimes perpetrated by the men at the head
of the union so many men are used, and there are
so many different ends to the case that frequently
operatives will be working in the same city on the
same case without knowing the nature of each
others task.
When I undertook the work of finding the men
guilty of the Los Angeles crime and putting an end
to the reign of terror my agency had attained such
excellent growth that I was able to direct the work
through my managers in the various parts of the
country, keeping each district separate so that there
would be no waste of energy and effort by one force
running into the field of another. Wherever I
might be, whether among the Anarchists at Home
Colony or in my New York offices or in a hotel
room, I always kept communication established with
my son Raymond in Chicago and with those opera-
tives who were immediately available for quick
work that circumstances might demand.
In frequent journeys across the continent I could
THE MASKED WAR 123
be reached by telegraph wherever the train might
pause and my managers could tell in a moment just
what part of the country my train was speeding
through. Every operative reported every day by
wire, and then more fully by letter, and through
thousands of these reports we studied the progress
of the case and marked off clues and trails that had
been run out to the end.
As I have said in public addresses, private detec-
tive agencies are too frequently the means for black-
mailing, and the private detective has all the op-
portunity in the world to develop into a black-
mailer. In assembling my force, which now num-
bers over 1,200 men, including men of every pro-
fession from the college professor to the day la-
borer, we strove to employ only men we could trust
implicitly. I believe that we succeeded in getting
as clean a corps of intelligent operatives as has ever
been assembled by one man engaged in the profes-
sion of detection. Many of them could have sold
out on me during the McNamara case, but not one
of them yielded to the offers of bribes made them.
This digression is merely to show the reader how
far we could and did trust our operatives and how
wide was the net we spread for the dynamiters.
As the net was woven stronger with each fresh
discovery of our investigators we drew it closer and
closer about the big fish in the gigantic conspiracy
of wreck and murder and ruin. The expense of
maintaining the number of men I did in a nation-
124 THE MASKED WAR
wide search was extremely heavy, and at one time I
found myself without enough funds from Los An-
geles to go on with the investigation. The detective
in fiction never has to bother about money, but my
men had to be paid, heavy telegraph tolls had to be
met with cash payments, thousands of dollars had to
be paid in railroad fares and hotel bills and bills for
subsistence. I had gone too far to stop, for I was
certain of the men who had committed all these
crimes, and it was a matter of public safety that
these criminals be put where they could not imperil
not only the property of the people they were fight-
ing but also the lives of thousands of innocent peo-
ple who were not at all concerned in the outcome of
the strike.
I financed the investigation myself for the time
being, and kept my men busy in many parts of the
country.
CHAPTER XIX
SHADOWING THE MCNAMARAS AT HOME
When the operatives trailing Sullivan and the tall,
clean-shaven stranger came upon the suburb of
Northside it was new territory for them. The two
men they had under surveillance had passed through
Northside to where the country became ragged and
broken, and where a clump of houses was known as
Cumminsville before that area was taken into the
city limits of Cincinnati.
Over a month before their arrival we had sent
Operative H. B. M. to Cincinnati with instructions
to locate James B. McNamara, brother of J. J. Mc-
Namara, secretary-treasurer of the International
Union of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers.
This operator first looked up a city directory and
found James B. McNamara set forth there as a
printer, and his residence put down as 4306 Quarry
Street. He started out to find this address, and
finally located Quarry Street in the old Cummins-
ville section and the house in the extreme northwest
corner of the settlement. It was a hilly section and
the street difficult to find. It was short and boasted
only four houses, the last house to the north being
125
126 THE MASKED WAR
No. 4306. It was the most pretentious of the four,
being a two-story frame house surrounded by an
iron fence set in concrete.
The operative might have a long wait for the
return home of James B. McNamara, and so he
sought to get a room in the neighborhood. He was
unable to get one, and so had to content himself
with headquarters in the nearest saloon kept by a
man named Fred Haus. He learned that the house
was occupied by Mrs. Mary T. McNamara, and
that her son James B. spent a good part of his time
away from Cincinnati. None of the people in the
neighborhood knew what he did for a living. The
gossip was that he had a wife in Chicago.
The reader will now see how the net was being
drawn in around the principals in the wholesale Los
Angeles murder. Three sets of operatives came to-
gether at this point in the progress of the case.
Sullivan had two shadows escort him to the home
of Mrs. McNamara. The clean-shaven stranger
had another shadow see him over the threshold and
there was still another shadow awaiting their ar-
rival.
The two visitors to the little house in the little
street among the hills of Cumminsville were the two
sons of Mrs. McNamara, J. J. and James B.
Subject No. 1, first known as J. W. McGraw, was
Ortie McManigal, and we had him well in hand.
Subject No. 2, first known in San Francisco as
J. B. Bryce, and then in the woods of Wisconsin as
THE MASKED WAR 127
Frank Sullivan, was James B. McNamara. We had
him where we could put the nippers on him at any
moment.
Subject No. 3, the clean-shaven man who had
connected with James B. McNamara after his re-
turn from refugeeing in the Wisconsin woods, was
J. J. McNamara. We could always find him when
we needed him, and we kept him shadowed con-
stantly.
We had witnesses to identify McGraw as the
man who bought the nitroglycerin at Portland, Ind.,
from Morehart, and we had his sawdust trail to
East Peoria, where the McClintic-Marshall girders
were blown up.
We had witnesses to identify James B. McNa-
mara as the man who bought the dynamite for the
Los Angeles explosion, and we had his signatures
as Bryce, as Sullivan and his own signature to con-
nect him up by means of expert testimony in hand-
writing.
We had no real convincing evidence against J. J.
McNamara, who was the directing mind of all the
explosions and assaults. Nor had we enough evi-
dence to warrant successful prosecution against
Tveitmoe, Hockin, Ryan and the 45 other labor
"leaders" who were subsequently indicted by the
Federal grand jury in Indianapolis for conspiracy.
We were far from the end of the case.
On December 12, 19 10, our operatives started
the surveillance of the McNamara home wherein
128 THE MASKED WAR
were the two men who were to be sent to prison
later on their own pleas of guilty to the charge of
murder.
For any one in the cottages on Quarry Street to
make his way to the station at Northside or the
trolley going into Cincinnati it would be necessary
to pass the junction of two highways known as
Colerain and Virginia Avenues. This was the point
where real streets with sidewalks began, where
there were more houses, a saloon or two and a shop
or two. Between this point and Quarry Street
there was no cover for a shadow and our men had
a hard time of it watching the McNamara house.
A man was always on duty at Colerain and Virginia
Avenues.
On the first morning of the surveillance J. J. Mc-
Namara left his mother's home and boarded a
street car for Cincinnati proper. Operatives A. V.
and P. J. B. followed him. The subject alighted at
one of the principal corners in the city, Walnut and
Sixth Streets. He walked the length of a block
twice on the same side of the street, stopping every
twenty-five or thirty feet and looking about and
scanning the faces of the people near him. It was
evident that he wanted to find out whether he was
being followed, and my operatives, following the
standing instruction never to let a subject uncover
a shadow, dropped him and went back to Cummins-
ville.
The surveillance was kept up night and day. Dur-
THE MASKED WAR 129
ing the daytime the operatives managed to get to
the top of a steep hill which overlooked the cot-
tages on Quarry Street. They had a bird's-eye view
from there, and soon found cross-country paths they
could utilize for quick trips back to the car line.
One operative lying in the bushes on this hill had
a close call from death. He wore a brown felt hat,
just about the color of a rabbit. It was all that
showed over the tops of the bushes. He was
startled when a hunting dog ran through the brush
to him. He turned in time to see a hunter with a
shotgun leveled at his head. The operative yelled
in time to show the hunter his peril and then rolled
over and pretended to sleep.
In the nighttime the operatives could approach
the cottages on Quarry Street without risk of being
uncovered. But the movements of the subjects after
night gave them little chance of discovering any-
thing. They remained indoors and the blinds of the
house were generally drawn.
Finally J. J. McNamara was compelled to return
to his office in Indianapolis. He did so, and his ar-
rival there was duly reported from an operative who
had engaged a room which gave him a good view
of the offices of the International Union in the
American Central Life Building. This operative
wired the Chicago office: "Have three machine."
This was to inform Manager Raymond Burns that
he had picked up Subject No. 3.
All during the early spring of 1.911, J. J. McNa-
1 3 o THE MASKED WAR
mara moved always with a shadow, and his frequent
attempts to catch some one following him failed.
He felt secure, and in that feeling of security went
on with this work of directing his destructive forces.
About Easter time he left Indianapolis headquar-
ters and started for the station. To cover himself,
as he thought, he slipped into a large building and
out by another entrance. The operative shadowing
him knew that in a few minutes a train was due to
leave the Union depot for Cincinnati so he went
there instead of trying to hunt his man in the build-
ing. Two operatives were already there watching
all incoming and outgoing trains. He picked up his
man again and followed him to Cincinnati and then
to Cumminsville and his mother's home. The fol-
lowing day the operatives followed J. J. to church
with his mother. That night J. J. eluded our
watchers, but was picked up by the operative at In-
dianapolis headquarters the next morning, and we
called our Cumminsville men from a cold trail.
From the time of the return of James B. McNa-
mara from hiding in the Wisconsin woods to April
22d, 191 1, we followed every step made by the three
subjects, J. J., J. B., and McManigal. We knew
where their explosives were stowed, we knew their
system of planting their bombs and setting them off,
we knew every time F. M. Ryan, the president of
the International Union, and E. A. Clancy and
other labor "leaders" met with J. J. McNamara,
the directing mind of the acts of violence. We had
THE MASKED WAR 131
uncovered the personal and private sides of their
lives, and on April 22d we were ready to act.
We had used six months and twenty-two days in
the investigation.
Before giving the details of the arrests I shall
give an account of the detective work done from the
McManigal end of the problem, leading to the ar-
rests of McManigal and James B. McNamara as
they went forth at the direction of J. J. McNamara
to blow up a number of nonunion plants.
CHAPTER XX
burns' meeting with hockin
We were waiting to catch J. J. McNamara in
the act of participating in some of the dynamiting
schemes. My idea, in order to make this complete,
was to catch either Caplan or "Schmidtie," and get
a confession from them, and implicate the "higher-
ups."
In the meantime, I learned from my son that a
Mr. Jewell, connected with the McClintic-Marshall
Construction Company, had given us information to
the effect that the man who Mr. McClintic had pre-
viously informed me was furnishing them with in-
formation was Herbert S. Hockin, and that they
had arranged to have him communicate with us. I
then returned to Chicago, and my son arranged with
me for a meeting with Hockin. I met Hockin, and
he was extremely nervous, and very reticent. He
told me, however, that when he learned from J. J.
McNamara that his (McNamara's) purpose was
to sacrifice human life for the purpose of bringing
about the results he hoped to obtain — whatever they
were — that he then made up his mind that he would
have nothing whatever to do with that. He feared
132
THE MASKED WAR 133
that his course would result in disaster to organized
labor, and feared that to complain within the ranks
of organized labor might not have the desired ef-
fect. He thereupon called on McClintic-Marshall.
After the destruction of the Los Angeles Times,
Hockin endeavored to reach me entirely outside
of McClintic-Marshall, without consulting with
them at all, through another detective agency in
Chicago. This, however, was at a time when we
had in the hands of McClintic-Marshall, our clients,
a report showing that our operative, in his investi-
gation of the Peoria matter, was in Indianapolis,
and his investigation further showed that J. J. Mc-
Namara and Hockin were the two men upon whom
we had placed the responsibility for the Peoria mat-
ter. They had been there before the explosion; so
my son told me that he had met Hockin and that
Hockin had made this statement to him that I have
just related.
Hockin insisted, from the very start, that the only
man that he knew who was connected with this and
also connected with organized labor was J. J. Mc-
Namara; that while he suspected Tveitmoe's con-
nection with it, he had no evidence. Now I said to
Hockin: "Do you know that we have in the hands
of McClintic-Marshall now a report showing that
we have carried the Peoria investigation right up to
the headquarters of the International Bridge and
Structural Iron Workers?" He said "no." He
did not know that. And I said to him: "You are
134 THE MASKED WAR
coming late in the day, when we are about to grab
you and J. J. McNamara." He replied that he did
not know that I had that report in the hands of Mc-
Clintic-Marshall. I then asked him who J. W. Mc-
Graw was, and I gave him a description. He stated
that it was Ortie McManigal; that he lived in Chi-
cago; that the other man being used was a brother
to J. J. McNamara by the name of J. B. McNa-
mara. And, firmly believing that Hockin's purpose
was to eliminate the radical element from organized
labor, and that he would work honestly and sin-
cerely with us, because he seemed to be thoroughly
honest in his convictions, I then suggested to him
that we would pay him for his work and for his
trouble. He stated that he wouldn't accept any-
thing; that we couldn't pay him money enough, and
that no matter how much money we offered him, it
wouldn't tempt him, but what he would accept would
be for whatever expenses might be incurred in com-
ing to see me from time to time. I urged him very
strongly to make a fuller explanation as to what
connection the International had with the matter,
and he insisted that they appropriated one thousand
dollars a month to J. J. McNamara, and they didn't
know what he did with that money. They naturally
supposed he was using it for "organization" pur-
poses.
It was after talking with Hockin that I put "long
shadows" on McManigal and J. B. McNamara.
I was satisfied that J. J. McNamara, sooner or
THE MASKED WAR 135
later, would personally participate in these dynamit-
ings, and I had in mind all the while that it would
take evidence of the very strongest and most con-
clusive character to convict him, because of the fact
that he was a lawyer and he occupied an important
position — that of secretary and treasurer of the In-
ternational Union.
In the meantime our men covering McManigal's
house, owing to the great precaution they had to
take, frequently missed McManigal going in and
out, but, on one occasion, found McManigal and
Jim McNamara coming out of the house carrying
two large bundles. They carried them downtown,
and then began a series of tests, which compelled
our men to drop them. The following morning we
read where this dynamite was exploded in South
Chicago, without doing any damage whatever.
Finding that I was having a serious time about
my money at Los Angeles, and by this time having
something over $14,000 invested in the matter, and
knowing that unless I succeeded in actually captur-
ing the men responsible for the blowing up of the
Times I would lose that amount of money, I
made up my mind that I would have to take a
chance on rounding them up, and felt that I might
possibly be able to secure a confession from Ortie
McManigal which would serve in lieu of a confes-
sion from "Schmidtie" or Caplan. Being hard
pressed for money at this time, I was compelled to
go to friends and borrow $10,000.
136 THE MASKED WAR
We then began to draw the lines tightly about the
McNamaras. We established a closer espionage
on J. J. in Indianapolis by securing a place directly
opposite the building where the office of the Mc-
Namaras was located, and we also secured a place
across the street from the building in which Qrtie
McManigal's apartment was located.
CHAPTER XXI
BRIBES OFFERED AT TIME OF ARRESTS
We were all ready for the arrests when McMani-
gal packed his grip in the Sangamon Street flat and
kissed his wife and children good-by. We were
waiting for him to join J. B. McNamara and start
with him on their next round of destruction.
Operative McL. was to keep on the heels of Sub-
ject No. i, McManigal. Subject No. 2, J. B. Mc-
Namara, was already well shadowed, and I was
waiting for the right moment to walk into the head-
quarters of the International Union and make a
prisoner of J. J. McNamara.
On the morning of April 11 McManigal made
his start to join Jim McNamara. Here is the run-
ning report of Operative McL. from seven o'clock
in the morning of that date until 7.30 in the evening
of April 15th.
Operative McL. reports:
"At 7 a. m. I arrived at place of cover oppo-
site Subject No. i's home. During the morning
nothing was seen of Subject No. 1. At 12.30 p. m.
I left for lunch, leaving A. V. to cover the house.
137
138 THE MASKED WAR
I returned at 1.20 p. m. and found A. V. gone. I
immediately telephoned the agency and learned that
A. V. and B. F. D. were at the La Salle depot with
No. 1, who was about to leave on Lake Shore train.
I proceeded to the depot and boarded Lake Shore
train as it was pulling out at 1.40 p. m. and joined
A. V. and B. F. D. in the second coach from rear.
1 saw Subject No. 1 in the coach. He sat on the left
side of car, about the seventh seat from the rear.
He had a suit case on the floor at his feet, which
he guarded very closely and did not leave his seat
once until the train arrived in Toledo, O., at 7.40
p. m. Leaving the train with the suit case, he en-
tered the waiting room of the depot, where he was
met by Subject No. 2, who, apparently, was waiting
for him. They shook hands and stood talking for
a moment, then Subject No. 1 sat down on a bench
and unfolded a map which they looked at. Subject
No. 1, with a lead pencil, was designating places on
the map to No. 2, who was standing in front of him.
About ten minutes later, No. 1 and No. 2 left the
depot and walked up the street to the Meyerhof
Hotel, where they registered and were assigned to
room No. n. Subject registered as G. Foster,
Cleveland. I did not have time to observe how No.
2 had registered. Leaving A. V. and B. F. D. to
cover the hotel, I went to the Union Depot, and
telephoned Manager R. J. B. at Chicago, and told
him we had Subjects No. 1 and No. 2 under surveil-
lance. R. J. B. instructed me to keep them under
THE MASKED WAR 139
surveillance; that he would get officers and leave on
the first train for Toledo. During the evening, the
subjects went to a show and returned to the Meyer-
hof Hotel at 11. 10 p. m.
"On the morning of April 12 at 4.45 a. m. I met
Manager R. J. B. with the detectives, as they ar-
rived at the Union Depot, Toledo. We proceeded
to a hotel just this side of the Meyerhof and from a
room on the third floor covered the entrance to the
Meyerhof Hotel. A. V. and B. F. D. were in a
room farther up the street. All exits from the
Meyerhof were covered, and there was no chance
for them to leave unobserved. About 8.45 a. m.
we observed subjects in the lobby of the Meyerhof.
They sat in rockers at the window, apparently en-
gaged in earnest conversation. About 10 a. m.
they left the hotel and started toward the Union
Depot. No. 1 carried suit case. Arriving at the
Union Depot, Subject No. 1 got in line at the ticket
window and purchased two tickets to Detroit.
While No. 1 was buying the tickets, No. 2 was get-
ting a grip at the news stand, which evidently he
had checked there the day before. Subjects boarded
train which left Toledo at 10.30 a. m., arriving in
Detroit at 12.25 p. m. Subjects carried their re-
spective grips, walked up the street, and finally en-
tered the Oxford Hotel, and registered, No. 1 as
G. Foster, Cleveland, and No. 2 as F. Caldwell,
Cleveland.
"While subjects were still in this hotel, it was de-
140 THE MASKED WAR
cided not to wait any longer in making the arrest.
Possibly ten minutes after subjects had entered the
Oxford Hotel, registered and checked their grips
and were about to leave, we made the arrest, Man-
ager R. J. B. and Detective Sergeant Biddinger,
No. i, and Detective Sergeant Reed and I taking
No. 2 into custody. Subjects were taken to the
depot, our intentions being to bring them on to Chi-
cago. Subject No. 2 objected, and demanded that
he be taken to Police Headquarters, which was
done. No. I was willing to return, and he finally
prevailed on No. 2 to sign a waiver and come to
Chicago. Subjects had given us the checks to their
grips at the Oxford Hotel. The grips were taken
to the Cadillac Hotel, Room 275, and there opened
in the presence of the Detroit police officers, and
the contents examined. The grips contained clocks
attached to batteries, fuses, wire, two magazine
guns, one rifle with sound muffler, small kit of tools,
camera and numerous other articles. About 11. 15
p. m. we left Detroit with the subjects. Subjects
wanted to know what they were arrested for. We
told them they were wanted for safe blowing.
"En route Detroit to Chicago, Subject No. 2 be-
came very talkative. He said: 'You fellows don't
want me for safe blowing. Why, I never cracked a
safe in my life. You men are making a mistake. I
have got the American Federation of Labor behind
me with hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am
another Vincent Altman. They didn't convict him,
THE MASKED WAR 141
did they? Well, they will never convict me if they
take me back to that scabby town in Cali-
fornia.' At one time, with his hands clenched and
trembling from head to foot, he said: 'I know you
have got the goods on me. I am going to die ; yes,
I am going to die, but I will die a martyr to Union-
ism and Socialism.' He kept repeating: 'They
didn't convict Altman, and you can never get 12
men to convict me.' Finally he said: 'You men have
a price. How much do you want?' He offered us
$10,000, then $20,000, then $30,000 if we would
take him and his partner off the train before we got
into Chicago and give him 36 hours to reach his
friends. He called them 'The men upstairs' or
'The men higher up.' All this, and we had never
said one word to them as to the real cause of their
arrest.
"At one time he said with great emotion: 'If you
take me to Chicago it will be too late (meaning to
give us the bribe money to let them go). There is
only one man in Chicago I am afraid of, and that is
W. J. Burns.'
» »»
The two men were arrested under their aliases,
and they were given to understand that they were
wanted as yeggmen. We had not yet shown our
hand, and were not ready to put it on the table in
the game until we had Subjects I, 2 and 3 safely in
prison in Los Angeles.
In arresting McManigal, Operative McL. used
142 THE MASKED WAR
his knowledge of events gained in shadowing him to
good advantage. McManigal turned on him and
said: "You don't know anything about me."
"Why, I even know where you bought the shoes
you've got on," was the quiet reply of the operative.
McManigal laughed and asked him where he had
bought them.
"At No. 117 State Street, Chicago," said the op-
erative. "They are Walkover shoes, and you
bought them on the evening of April 8."
McManigal was astonished as he realized that he
had been under the closest kind of surveillance and
some of his confidence was shaken.
"I can even tell you what your wife dreamed the
night before you left home," added McL.
McManigal looked at him as if to challenge the
assertion.
"She dreamed that the police were after you, and
that you had drawn your pistol, and that you had
shot yourself," McL. told him.
Mrs. McManigal had told her husband this just
before he left home, and, although it may puzzle
the reader to figure out just how McL. learned of
this, it was simply enough done. Mrs. McManigal
had been in the habit of consulting a fortune teller.
The shadow had consulted her also. The fortune
teller had known of the mysterious way of McMani-
gal's livelihood, and had taken a chance on the story
of the police and McManigal. Mrs. McManigal,
not wanting her husband to know that she con-
THE MASKED WAR 143
suited fortune tellers, told him that she had dreamed
this thing.
McManigal was quick to realize that he was ter-
ribly tight in the grip of the law. He was not slow
to appreciate the fact that Jim McNamara would
have behind him all the influence his brother could
command from the union forces, and he saw himself
in a position where the blame for the whole five
years of crime would be put his way. His only
chance of saving his life was to turn State's evi-
dence. McManigal is nobody's fool. He thought
of the chances of saving his own neck, and he
thought at the same time of his wife and children.
He had been the tool of J. J. McNamara and the
men who conspired with him in the masked war,
just as Schmidt and Caplan, the two Anarchists, had
been used as tools.
From the daily reports of the operatives shadow-
ing McManigal I had a pretty good idea of the
make-up of the man both as a dynamiter and as hus-
band and father. As long as I had him safely away
from the influence of J. J. McNamara and the law-
yers of the union I could hope to exert upon him an
influence that would show him the advantage of tell-
ing the truth and the whole truth. A confession
from McManigal would mean conviction of the Mc-
Namaras and the drawing into the net, for trial on
conspiracy charges, Ryan, the president of the Inter-
national, Hockin, Tveitmoe, Munsey, and the forty
and more others who were J. J. McNamara's aides
144 THE MASKED WAR
in the waging of the war with torch and dynamite
and nitroglycerin.
My son Raymond, who directed the arrests of
Jim McNamara and McManigal, had taken the two
men prisoner at exactly the right moment. The
plans they had studied together on meeting in To-
ledo were plans showing nonunion jobs in Detroit
which they had been sent out to cripple or destroy.
Their grips were filled with the paraphernalia of
their mode of warfare. Here is the short report of
my son Raymond in which he gives the list of things
found in the bags of the two prisoners.
Manager Raymond J. Burns reports:
At 8 p. m. on the night of April nth, 191 1, Op-
erative McLaren called me on long-distance phone
from Toledo, O., and stated that McManigal had
connected with J. B. McNamara at Toledo. I im-
mediately got in touch with Sergeants Reed and Bid-
dinger of the Chicago Police Department, and at
11.30 p. m. we left for Toledo, O., via Lake Shore
Railroad. I was met at the depot in Toledo by
Operative McLaren. We proceeded to the Park
Hotel, which is opposite the Meyerhof Hotel, where
the two subjects were stopping, and watched the en-
trance of the Meyerhof from a room on the third
floor in the Park Hotel. The next morning we ob-
served the subjects sitting in the lobby of the Meyer-
hof, where they remained until 10 a. m., then going
to the depot and boarding a train for Detroit, which
THE MASKED WAR 145
train Sergeants Reed and Biddinger, Operatives Mc-
Laren and Velton and I also boarded. On arrival
in Detroit, the subjects proceeded to the Oxford
Hotel, where they registered, McNamara register-
ing as F. Caldwell, Cleveland, and McManigal as
G. Foster, Cleveland. They then checked their suit
case and valise. Just as they were leaving the hotel,
they were arrested by Sergeants Reed and Bid-
dinger, assisted by Operative McLaren and myself.
We went to the Union Station, but owing to Mc-
Namara's protestations, he claiming we were kid-
napping them, we took the prisoners to the police
station, where they were searched by Lieutenant
John J. Downey and Sergeant Edward Fox of the
Detroit Police Department. We then proceeded to
the Cadillac Hotel, secured the grips of the pris-
oners in the meantime, and at the aforesaid hotel,
Downey and Fox opened the suit case and valise of
the prisoners with keys which had been taken from
them when they were searched at the police station.
In the suit case were found :
i Winchester rifle, .22 caliber, No. 125,957,
with Maxim silencer attached.
1 automatic .38-caliber magazine gun, No.
32,998.
1 Eastman Kodak, size 3.
1 camera tripod.
1 ammeter, No. 1002.
1 small size intermittent alarm clock.
1 ball of twine.
146 THE MASKED WAR
i kit of small tools.
i box of .38 caliber cartridges.
1 roll of battery wire.
1 roll of bandage.
1 part box of .38 caliber cartridges.
Shirts, collars, ties, stockings, handkerchiefs
and pair of shoes.
In the valise were found two dry batteries at-
tached to two small-sized intermittent alarm clocks,
also
3 small size intermittent alarm clocks.
i magazine .32 caliber automatic gun, No.
30,760.
1 roll copper wire.
4 fuse cups.
4 rolls of insulated copper wire, with caps at-
tached.
1 plain board, to which was attached small in-
termittent alarm clock.
1 roll of fuse.
A number of the above articles were marked
for identification at the time they were first
examined by Downey as follows: "J. B. D.
2-14-1911."
After getting the two prisoners to sign waivers
to return to Chicago, Raymond, McLaren, Velton
and Detective Sergeants Reed and Biddinger of
Chicago took their men to the Michigan Central
train and left with them at 11.24 P- m «
THE MASKED WAR 147
Arriving in Chicago, we arranged so that we
would not have to waste time in fighting habeas
corpus proceedings and other obstacles that might
be thrown in our way by representatives of the dy-
namiters. We took the prisoners to the home of
Sergeant Reed and kept them there pending the ar-
rival of extradition papers. This hiding away of
the two men resulted in a long and bitter howl of
protest from thousands of labor people who may
have believed that the McNamaras were innocent.
The indictment for kidnapping brought against me
later came to nothing, of course, for there was no
kidnapping. We had warrants for the arrest of the
men, and all the time they were in custody of Chi-
cago detectives in the home of one of them.
Having Jim McNamara and McManigal safely
tucked away in a corner of Chicago's suburbs we
then began to arrange for quick extradition to Los
Angeles. We wanted extradition papers for three
men, for we were ready to walk into the office of
the International Union in Indianapolis and take the
secretary-treasurer from his desk that he might face
the law and answer for his big share in the years of
ruthless murder and destruction.
CHAPTER XXII
MCMANIGAL DECIDES TO CONFESS
With the two prisoners hidden away in Reed's
house in Chicago, and with every man in the captur-
ing party bound to secrecy, there remained three
vastly important things to be accomplished. One
was the securing of the confession of McManigal.
Another matter of big importance was the task of
keeping secret in Los Angeles the fact of the ar-
rests until we had our prisoners safely in jail there.
The third matter was the arrest of J. J. McNamara
and his speedy extradition so that we could begin
the journey to the Coast with the three men and
without fear of being tied up by legal proceedings in
any of the States we would pass through.
I devised a plan for bringing this about, and laid
out such a devious journey from Indianapolis and
Chicago to the Coast that I felt sure the foxiest of
lawyers would not be able to catch up with us.
To get things started quickly in Los Angeles we
wired from our Chicago office on the day of our ar-
rival from Detroit with the two prisoners this
message :
148
THE MASKED WAR 149
"We have under arrest and hidden away here
Bryce and John Doe, who did Llewellyn job. Have
police department proceed immediately to Sacra-
mento, get requisition papers on Illinois, and come
here quick as possible. We won't let arrest be
known here until officers arrive with papers or they
would spend hundred thousand dollars on habeas
corpus proceedings, and all sorts of trouble; they
offered us $30,000 to release them. We want to
send back two of our men and two Chicago depart-
ment men with the two men you will send. It is of
utmost importance you carry out this exactly as I
suggest. Keep me posted."
The Chicago office followed this with another
telegram to the Los Angeles office, telling the man-
ager to get his chief aides about him to receive
further details in our code, the same to be held in
strictest confidence. In the translation of this mes-
sage "B." stands for Bryce, one of Jim McNa-
mara's aliases, and "M." represents McManigal.
The message follows:
"Captured with B. and M. twelve clock devices
exactly as that found at Los Angeles, all complete
with fuse attached. M. states he has been working
with B. under direction of secretary named above;
was present in June, 19 10, when secretary gave final
instructions to B., when he left for Coast. M. ac-
companied him far as Chicago from Indianapolis.
150 THE MASKED WAR
B. told M. they were going make big clean-up at
Los Angeles, that there was plenty of money put up.
After B. reached Coast secretary told M. he re-
ceived letter from B. from Frisco in which B. said:
'It now reads Times for News; it will read news
for the Times.' When M. read of Los Angeles
matter he went to Indianapolis to see secretary.
Latter said: ' , see what those fel-
lows are doing out there!' M. said: 'I wonder if
that is our fellow.' Secretary replied: 'It was the
Times they wanted and got; by God! that ought to
make them come across.' Secretary then directed
M. not to come to his office too much, was badly
frightened and was very nervous. He directed M.
to return to Chicago and keep under cover. When
B. returned to Chicago from Coast secretary had M.
take B. hunting in Wisconsin. There B. told M. all
details of Los Angeles matter, also told M. he re-
ported at Frisco to Tveitmoe and he introduced B.
to other two fugitives. Later T. attended conven-
tion at St. Louis, met secretary, and told him send
wreckers back to get Times auxiliary plant, Baker
and Llewellyn iron works for Christmas present.
Secretary then directed M. to proceed to Los An-
geles. He carried with him twelve quarts of stuff,
ten-quart can and two quarts in valise. This was
furnished him by secretary, also money for trip.
On arrival he investigated places, but was afraid to
carry out program, and only did what you know of,
then went to Frisco, met Clancy of Frisco Iron
THE MASKED WAR 151
Workers Union, and told him to tell T. Christmas
present had been delivered. If this is sufficient in-
formation wire, and, for God's sake, don't let a
word leak out until officers land here with papers.
It looks good."
This was sufficient information to get the war-
rants and requisition papers for the two men ar-
rested and for J. J. McNamara, whom I was soon
to arrest in his office in Indianapolis.
Then came the long wait for the arrival of the
sheriff, police officers and a representative of the
Los Angeles District Attorney. For a little over a
week we kept our two prisoners in Detective Ser-
geant Reed's house, and the Detroit explosions that
the crowd at Indianapolis headquarters were wait-
ing and listening for never came off.
The right moment to arrest J. J. McNamara
would be when the Los Angeles officers and the
requisition papers were at hand. I waited, and, in
the meanwhile, talked with McManigal, whose con-
fession was to put in our hands a mass of informa-
tion of the most astounding sort, every bit of which
could be and was amply verified.
McManigal is a man of medium height, rather
dark complexioned, powerfully built and a type of
citizen most men would hesitate to anger. His fore-
head is deeply indented, and carries a heavy, ragged
scar made by a fall he had when a boy. He is pleas-
ant in his address, and his English is good, although
152 THE MASKED WAR
he never got beyond the public schools and always
traveled with uneducated people.
Preying on his mind all the time was the thought
of his wife and children and their fate. He was
genuinely disturbed about them, and had he been a
single man I doubt whether he would have made the
confession.
I repaired to the home of Sergeant William Reed,
and when I entered the room where J. B. McNa-
mara was sitting, I said to him, as I have always
said to every man who has ever been taken into
custody and with whom I have had anything to do,
that I wanted to notify him of his rights. I had
previously notified our men not to discuss the case
with J. B. McNamara or McManigal until my ar-
rival. I notified J. B. McNamara of his rights, and
stated: "I am not an officer of any kind — merely a
private detective; I suppose you know who I am?"
I then told him my name. He promptly stated that
he knew all about me, and knew I was on the level,
and that I had that reputation; that he appreciated
the warning I had given him. I further added:
"We expect to put you on trial for murder in the
first degree, and try you for that, and it would not
be fair to attempt to get a confession or any in-
criminating statements from you, and I have issued
positive instructions that the men here present with
you, and who have you under guard, shall not dis-
cuss your case with you, or discuss any phase of it."
I then entered the room where Ortie McManigal
THE MASKED WAR 153
was confined, and warned him of his rights in the
same way, but I immediately laid before McMani-
gal all the facts in our possession and detailed his
movements from time to time, and McManigal was
utterly astounded and dumfounded, and especially
when I told him that the men he met in the Wiscon-
sin woods on his hunting expedition were Burns de-
tectives. Not only that, he was greatly disturbed
when I informed him that we had his house under
surveillance for a number of months. I also de-
tailed his movements on the occasion when he and
J. B. McNamara carried the two bundles of dyna-
mite to a place in Chicago, and which was subse-
quently exploded at that point. I also detailed a
number of features at Indianapolis which indicated
to him that there was not a move made by him that
we were not thoroughly conversant with. I was
able to conjecture perfectly his movements which
we had not covered, but which I was enabled to de-
termine from a study of the case.
Finally, as a last and telling stroke, I said to him :
"Perhaps you feel that because you did not accom-
pany J. B. McNamara to Los Angeles on the occa-
sion of his blowing up the Times that you are in no
way responsible for his act? On the other hand,
when I explain the law of conspiracy you will find
that you were equally as responsible, though you
were not there at the time." I then explained that
he, J. J. McNamara and J. B. McNamara and
others were engaged in a conspiracy to destroy life
154 THE MASKED WAR
and property, with a view of bringing about certain
results; that, in furtherance of that project, he and
J. B. McNamara had many, many times caused ex-
plosions which resulted in the destruction of prop-
erty. I then closed by stating that if, after listening
to the evidence which we proposed to submit against
him, he felt that he wanted to right the wrong he
had committed, in so far as he was then able, and if
he desired to show a disposition to lead a different
life, that I would be glad to hear his statement, but
that I wanted it distinctly understood he must do so
without any promises of reward or immunity; that
even if I were so disposed, I had no power what-
ever to make any such promises, and that he must
take his chances.
I was greatly impressed with the attitude of Mc-
Manigal, as there was indicated in his every act a
thorough earnestness in wanting to aid the prosecu-
tion and right the wrong he had done so far as he
was able. He said that he would be perfectly will-
ing to make a full confession, and aid us in every
way he possibly could. And be it said, to the ever-
lasting credit of Ortie McManigal, that he more
than made good, for if ever a human being was
crucified, and if ever an effort was made, through
the most audacious and murderous methods, it was
made by those who were concerned in this whole-
sale murder, and who are willing to take every
chance to turn McManigal back or else still his
voice forever!
THE MASKED WAR 155
After making these statements to McManigal, I
then said to him: "Now, don't answer me offhand,
but think it over. It's a serious matter and will be
a serious matter to you. So think it over carefully
from every viewpoint, and if you have an attorney
who is a friend of yours, and who would advise you
wholly in your own interest, I would be glad to send
for him. In the meantime, if you care to see me
let me know." I then left him and returned to my
office in Chicago. On my reaching the office I was
notified that word had been telephoned in that Mc-
Manigal was asking for me. I sent out word to tell
him that I would be there. Within an hour another
telephone message came, saying: "McManigal
wants to see you, and it is very urgent."
"Tell him I will be there," I replied. Within an-
other hour another message came, until about four
of those messages were received, and then I repaired
to the home of Detective Sergeant Reed, and I
found McManigal in an extremely receptive mood.
My purpose in delaying my visit was to permit
him to reach that frame of mind where he would not
halt when he reached the high places of his confes-
sion, but would tell it all, which he did. I had my
stenographer take it and write it out, and I then
sent for a notary public, and he signed it and swore
to it.
CHAPTER XXIII
mcmanigal's start as a dynamiter
After saying that he was thirty-seven years old
and that he was born in Bloomville, O., near the
town of Tiffin, McManigal swore that he served in
the Spanish War with an Ohio regiment. After
being mustered out he worked in stone quarries and
there got his experience in handling explosives. He
finally joined the Structural Iron Workers, and
work being slack left his family in Chicago while he
hunted a job in Detroit.
McManigal's confession follows:
"While I was at Detroit, I was first spoken to
relative to the wrecking matters. I had a talk with
the local executive board at Detroit, the members
of which were two men whose names I don't know,
and H. S. Hockin. Hockin seemed to be the spokes-
man. He asked me to blow up a job at Detroit —
an office building — being erected by a local firm in
Detroit — a nonunion job. They agreed at this
time to give me $75. Arrangements for this job
were all made in the local hall, and dynamite was
the explosive used. Hockin told me to go to a stone
156
THE MASKED WAR 157
quarry along the river in Detroit, but we were un-
able to secure the dynamite there. I knew of a
quarry at Bloomville, Ohio, went down there alone,
and bought the dynamite of the man in charge of
the stone quarry, which was the E. H. France & Son
quarry. I purchased thirty pounds; the man did not
ask me what I wanted it for nor did I volunteer to
tell him. I returned to Detroit and exploded it with
a fuse one night. During this time I continued
working on the Oscar Daniels job in Detroit. I
never went back to see the results of this explosion.
All the members of the local executive board were
present and participated in the arrangements for
these explosions.
"I next went to Clinton, Iowa, where I did a job.
Hockin got me to do this. He was then a member
of the Executive Board of the International Bridge
and Structural Iron Workers' Union. He was
known as 'The Organizer.' On this job I was
given the double cross by Hockin, as I afterward
learned. It appears that there was a certain amount
set aside to do this work by the Executive Board of
the International Bridge and Structural Iron Work-
ers. I blew up the derrick car, using dynamite
which I procured at Ohio. I did this job alone. I
exploded it with a fuse. I found out that Hockin
held back part of the money due me for this job.
Just prior to this, I was acting as foreman of the
J. T. Ryerson plant, in the employment of Charles
Volkman & Co. Hockin came and took me off this
158 THE MASKED WAR
job. Volkman's office was at 122 Dearborn Street,
room 22. This was about the spring of 1907.
"There was quite a lapse between this job at Clin-
ton, and the next one I did, which was at Buffalo,
N. Y., a railroad bridge which spanned some other
railroad tracks. This also was engineered by
Hockin. I was supposed to get $200 and expenses,
but was only paid $125 and expenses. I demurred
to doing this for such a small sum. I did this job
alone.
"On my second trip to Bloomville, Ohio, I pur-
chased 100 pounds of dynamite, taking it to Chi-
cago and hiding it in a lot near where I now live.
"Hockin met me in Buffalo the day before the
job was pulled off there, and we looked same over,
and he suggested how I should do it. In the mean-
time, it must be understood that while I was doing
this work, I continued at my legitimate work.
"I first met J. J. McNamara when I went from
Detroit to Indianapolis to go to work on the Pa-
vilion there at the State Fair Grounds. I was still
under instructions of Hockin and carried on these
jobs leading up to the Buffalo job. I worked for a
while at North Evanston on a job putting in foun-
dations for the National Construction Co., under the
subcontract of Charles Volkman & Co. During that
time Hockin paid me a visit. He said: 'If I send
you a man up here with some soup (meaning dyna-
mite) could you use it?' I said: 'I don't know.' I
continued: 'But I would throw it into the concrete
THE MASKED WAR 159
and let become of it what would.' However,
Hockin never sent it.
"About this time I got connected up with a couple
of fellows named Jim Hill and Warneke. I think
the latter was a teamster. He wore a teamster's
button on his coat. I had known Hill for some
time previous to this. I was arrested, charged with
participating in the theft of some tools which Hill
and Warneke stole. After serving 1 1 days of a
30-day sentence, I was turned loose again in
June, 19 10.
"I then started to work for J. P. Costello of Chi-
cago, steel erectors, and while working for this firm
Hockin paid several visits to my house. He sent
J. B. McNamara to my house on a job I was work-
ing on at Madison near Western Avenue. I had
met this fellow previously at Muncie, Indiana. I
was introduced to him by Hockin.
"While here, Hockin purchased some nitro-
glycerin — 180 quarts — out in the country, of some
fellow who drove up and met him there with a
wagon, and the stuff was changed in boxes from the
seller's wagon to one Hockin had. This exchange
was made in the country near Muncie, Indiana, it
being delivered in a regular nitroglycerin wagon.
Hockin made all arrangements for this purchase.
We met this wagon five or six miles from Muncie,
in a northeast direction. Hockin paid for this. I
took it to Muncie and stored it in a house there on
an off street, which Hockin had sent me to rent for
160 THE MASKED WAR
this purpose. I paid the rent to the proprietor of
this house, but don't know his name. He had a real
estate office there, and is a prominent real estate
man. The rent was paid up until March, 1909, $7
per month, for a period of five months. This all
happened before I went to jail in Chicago. While
in jail awaiting trial, I was told by J. B. McNamara
that he carried 64 quarts of the stuff to Rochester,
Pa. (I am not sure this is the name of the place
the nitroglycerin was taken.) It was buried there
under an old building and cooper shop.
"In the meantime I was released on bond and
started to work for Costello again. While working
for him at Madison and near Western Avenue,
Hockin came to me and said he was sending a man
to me with a new invention and he would show me
how to use it. J. B. McNamara called on me while
I was working at Madison and near Western Ave-
nue, and told me he would call at my house that
evening and explain things to me. He called alone
and showed me the machine. This was a clock and
battery arranged apparatus on a board, connected
together so that it would form a circuit by soldering
the piece of copper on the key to the alarm of the
clock. He told me to set it at any hour and raise
the lever and then connect the wires, he having in-
dicated places by marks, and that by putting the cap
in this way it would, at the proper hour, when the
alarm would go off, come down, make a connection,
form a circuit, make a spark, and cause the explo-
THE MASKED WAR 161
sion. Hockin told me this was a new invention, and
J. B. McNamara said he invented it himself.
"I received a telegram from Hockin instructing
me to meet him at Indianapolis on a Saturday at
3.00 p. m., but being delayed, I did not arrive until
12 midnight. I met him at the Lorraine Hotel,
and also met J. J. McNamara there. We went to
McNamara's office, and when we sat down, Hockin
said: 'We have a job we want you to do at Mt.
Vernon, 111. It is a hoisting car belonging to Mc-
Clintic-Marshall Co.' He said he wanted that
blown up, also another hoisting engine in the yard.
At this time, McClintic-Marshall was constructing
something there (I don't remember what it was) ;
it was a new building of some sort. Nothing was
said about what I was to be paid, except that Hockin
advanced me $25 for expenses. Hockin arranged a
train schedule for me, same being to go from In-
dianapolis to St. Louis, then back to Mt. Vernon,
111., then by way of Evanston into Chicago. He
had the stuff in a suit case in Indianapolis. There
were two four-quart cans, two clocks and everything
arranged and made up. The cans were packed in
sawdust, and there was some paper put in the suit
case to keep the sawdust from coming out."
CHAPTER XXIV
MCMANIGAL CHEATED ON PAY ROLL
All this time J. J. McNamara was drawing $200
checks in payment for each explosion, and Hockin
was holding back $75 on each, grafting both on the
union and the hired dynamiter. McManigal tells
how he found out that he was being double-crossed.
His confession continues :
"I went to Mt. Vernon as per the arranged
schedule and found there was a watchman on the
job. I tried for two nights to coax him away, but
he did not seem anxious to come away. I decided
that by causing some excitement in the lower yards,
he would get off the cars to investigate, and while
he was gone, the other one would go off there.
Hockin suggested that I carry this second charge,
so as to set it off at some distance from the car,
which would attract the watchman's attention. He
knew the watchman was there. He instructed me
first to endeavor to get the watchman to go away,
and if I could not do that to set the first one off at
some distance. I set off the first charge in the lower
part of the railroad yard under a hoisting engine
162
THE MASKED WAR 163
belonging to the McClintic-Marshall Co., I think.
I then set the second charge in a suit case under the
other car. I set the clocks for the hoisting engine
to go off first. As I expected, the watchman left
the car, went to investigate, and while he was gone,
the second explosion occurred. I arranged it so that
they would go off about five minutes apart. I then
returned to Chicago, Hockin subsequently met me
at my home in Chicago and paid me $125. J. B.
McNamara was at my house and present at the time
Hockin called and paid me, but McNamara did not
see Hockin pay me, as the latter took me out in the
kitchen and there gave me the money. No one was
at home but we three.
"I then served my jail sentence, and immediately
after reaching home on my release, I received a
wire from Hockin instructing me to meet him at
Cincinnati, calling at the post office, where I would
receive a letter at the general delivery, which would
say just where to meet him. I called as directed,
received the letter, and it said for me to meet him at
the corner of the post office there at such and such
a time, which I did. I also met J. B. McNamara
with him. They boarded a street car and rode
somewhere in the suburbs, where we lay under some
shade trees and discussed the work to be done.
Hockin directed us both to go to Indianapolis, and
get some nitroglycerin and clocks which J. B. Mc-
Namara had already prepared. I remained over
night in Cincinnati at the McAvoy Hotel (I think
164 THE MASKED WAR
that was the name of the hotel). It is in the busi-
ness section of the town. McNamara went home.
I may have registered there under my own name.
I met J. B. McNamara the next morning at the
Grand Central station, and we took the Big Four
train to Indianapolis. En route, the conversation
drifted from one thing to another — the work we
were engaged upon, and so forth. We had instruc-
tions to go to Cleveland, Ohio, which instructions
we had received from Hockin at Cincinnati. His
instructions were as follows: 'Go back to Indian-
apolis and from there to Cleveland, Ohio, taking
with you the nitroglycerin and clocks,' which J. B.
McNamara had already prepared.
"During the conversation en route, J. B. McNa-
mara said, 'That will be two apiece.' I said, 'What
do you mean?' He said, 'Two hundred.' I said,
'No.' He said, 'Why isn't it? Two for you and
two for me.' 'On the same job?' I asked. He an-
swered, 'Yes, certainly.' I said, 'Do you mean to
tell me that you get $200 for every job you do?'
'Why, certainly,' he said, 'and expenses.' I later
ascertained that he was getting his money from J.
J. McNamara because he (J. B. McNamara) was
on the inside and knew what was being set aside for
that purpose. It was being set aside by the Execu-
tive Board. J. B. McNamara then said, 'Don't you
get that?' I said, 'No; I only get $125 and ex-
penses.' He said, 'You got $200 for the Mt.
Vernon job, didn't you?' I said, 'No; I did not.'
THE MASKED WAR 165
We argued about this a moment, and he said, 'Yes,
because I seen the stub, and it called for $235/ I
said, 'No; you were up at the house when that fel-
low paid me, and he gave me $125 there and my
expenses were $25, which made $150.' He said, 'I
thought there was something wrong when he called
you in the kitchen and handed you the money. You
have been double-crossed.' I said to him, Tm not
going any further; I'm done.' This was en route
from Cincinnati to Indianapolis. On arrival in In-
dianapolis, we went to the office of J. J. McNamara,
where we had two valises which had been packed.
We arrived there during the afternoon about 3
o'clock, and found J. J. McNamara in his office.
J. B. McNamara said to me on the train, 'You leave
it to me — I will tell that fellow' (meaning of course
his brother) . When we arrived at the office, he took
up the matter with J. J. McNamara, saying, 'This
fellow has been double-crossed (meaning me) and
is pretty damn sore about it. He claims he has
$475 due him.' J. J. McNamara asked for an ex-
planation, which I gave him. I explained I only got
$125 for the Mt. Vernon job. He looked it up
and found a stub for $235, the check being made
out in his own name for $235. He then showed me
the stubs for each of the cases, all running from
$200 up. He said, 'By God! This thing will never
be carried on like this.' I said, 'I got to have just
as much money as the next man, or there will be
nothing stirring.' He told me to go ahead, and he
1 66 THE MASKED WAR
would take care of my affairs. With this assurance
from J. J. McNamara, I concluded to go ahead
with the work. J. B. McNamara and I proceeded
to Cleveland via Big Four R. R. We arrived in
Cleveland about midnight or one o'clock in the
morning, and went to some hotel, about two blocks
from the depot, right across the street from a fire
department house. We both registered there; I
don't remember the names; remained that night and
the next day we located the job 'way up along the
valley; some viaduct job of the McClintic-Marshall
Co. We arrived there during the forenoon and
found it was pretty well guarded. We noticed a
number of shanties which were probably used by
watchmen, and that night returned with our valises
and located nine or ten watchmen. I told J. B. Mc-
Namara it looked like suicide to me. The follow-
ing night we carried the stuff out there, taking four
cans wrapped up in paper, and he arranged the set-
ting of the clocks, putting all the stuff together un-
der one pile, and the clocks together. In order to
get to the place where he wished to set it, we had
to pass by buildings where there were watchmen,
but we succeeded in getting by and in getting to the
place where J. B. McNamara concluded to set the
explosive. He put them all together, so that if one
missed, the other would hit. We then got away,
and the explosion took place a couple of hours later.
I went to the depot and boarded a train for Toledo,
stopping at the Park Hotel, where I registered un-
THE MASKED WAR 167
der my correct name. I read of the explosion the
next morning in the papers.
"When leaving Cincinnati, Hockin told me he
would be in Toledo at the St. Claire Hotel and said
for me to come there and call for him, which I did.
I had been instructed by J. J. McNamara not to
mention anything to Hockin about this double-
crossing business until he took the matter up with
him. I went to the hotel, and he made arrange-
ments to meet me at the Terminal Station at a cer-
tain time. He gave me $100 there, and told me
we (meaning J. B. McNamara and myself) should
go to Detroit and look over the new depot and tun-
nels. We did as directed, and looked over the
work, but I did not like it, because I was afraid we
could not accomplish what Hockin wanted us to do,
viz. : put a load of dynamite under any of the der-
rick cars. I was satisfied that this could not be
done, because there would be too many watchmen
there. J. B. McNamara went to the post office and
received a letter instructing him to send the Chicago
man back to Chicago and wait further orders, and
he should return to Indianapolis. It must have been
that J. J. McNamara had taken the matter of the
double-crossing up with Hockin. When he finished
reading the letter, I went to Indianapolis, and sub-
sequently J. B. McNamara told me he left the fol-
lowing day. The explosion at Cleveland took place
on June 21st, 1910. On June 27th, 1910, I received
$100 from Hockin at Toledo, Ohio.
1 68 THE MASKED WAR
"On July 8, 1 910, I blew the Phoenix Bridge Co.
work of Jersey City, N. J. I did this work alone.
J. J. McNamara sent me there. On this occasion
I received my first money from J. J. McNamara —
$200, and my expenses. He paid me at his office
in Indianapolis, and said: 'There'll be no double-
crossing or holding out by me. What you are en-
titled to you will get.'
"Between June 27th and July 8th, 19 10, I re-
ceived a telegram at Chicago from J. J. McNamara
(I don't think it was signed by that name, but I
knew it was from him, as I had an understanding
with him, previously arranged at Indianapolis, that
any time I received a telegram from Indianapolis I
should know it was from him and should destroy it
at once to leave no evidence). I received instruc-
tions to go to New York, at which time he gave
me the nitroglycerin in a suit case all ready to be set
off except connecting the clock. J. J. McNamara in-
structed me to stop off at Pittsburg and make an
investigation as to what was doing there in the way
of building.
"I want to make a correction at this time, viz. : I
did not go to Chicago from Detroit, but instead I
went to Pittsburg and there met Hockin again.
This visit comes in between June 27th and July 28th,
previous to my trip to New York. While there he
received a telegram from J. J. McNamara, stating,
'Call all bets off; nothing doing,' meaning by that
they should not go ahead with any further work,
THE MASKED WAR 169
and directed Hockin to send me back to Chicago
and for him to return to headquarters. We left to-
gether, and on the way back, stopped at Beaver.
Hockin took me over to Rochester, Pa. (I think
that's the place), showed me where this stuff was
buried, and we got three four-quart cans, put them
in a suit case and took them to Cleveland. We were
met at the depot there by two men, whom I had
never seen before, but Hockin knew one and had a
conversation with him, and the other came to me
and said, 'I will relieve you of your load.' He
picked up the suit case and walked away with it. I
do not know what he did with it. I subsequently
learned that it was Nipper Anderson who took this
suit case from me, either through Hockin at the
time or later. I learned the other was Smith or
Schmitty, and he was connected with Local No. 17,
Cleveland. He is a man of about 35 years, 5 feet
8 or 8^2 inches, sandy mustache (not sure about
the mustache). I met him since at Cleveland.
Nipper Anderson also belongs there. We were re-
lieved of the suit cases by Schmitty and Anderson. I
then returned to Chicago. I subsequently learned
that it was taken to Akron or Canton, the former I
think, and exploded there under some shops. I saw
an account of it later in the paper.
"On my next trip to Indianapolis, I discussed it
with J. J. McNamara. He asked me whether I
had brought any stuff to Cleveland, and how much.
I then told him about it. McNamara then ar-
170 THE MASKED WAR
ranged for me to go to Jersey City, N. J., which
has already been explained, and pull off the Phoenix
Company job. He furnished me with the suit case,
containing the nitroglycerin and two clocks. As
already stated, I went there and succeeded in getting
it off as desired, for which I received $200 and ex-
penses. On my way back I stopped off at Pittsburg
and found McNamara working on some viaduct
there. On my trip to Jersey City I had three clocks
so that in case one went wrong, I would have an-
other. Since I had no trouble in Jersey City, I had
an extra clock on getting to Pittsburg. I went down
to Rochester and got one four-quart can and took it
up. The first night I did not succeed in getting any
of the work.
"In Pittsburg I stopped at a hotel near the post
office, one block off of Smithfield Street, McGraw.
(This is what gave me the idea of using the name
of McGraw at the places I will subsequently ex-
plain.) I went down the next night and got in on
the work and set it off. I had no trouble getting in,
and it exploded about 12 o'clock midnight. I then
returned to Indianapolis and reported to J. J. Mc-
Namara at his office, and he paid me $400 and ex-
penses, $200 and expenses for the Jersey City job
and $200 and expenses for the Pittsburg job.
"He then sent me to Omaha, Nebraska, and fur-
nished me with a suit case. I was furnished with
the nitroglycerin by J. J. McNamara, together with
the two clock arrangements."
CHAPTER XXV
PAID $200 AND EXPENSES PER EXPLOSION
As McManigal continued with his confession we
realized that it would be only a matter of patient
work to verify everything he was telling us. Men
would be sent to every hotel where he and Jim Mc-
Namara had stopped, registers would be looked up
and tracings made of the signatures of the two men.
Hockin would be checked up in his movements also,
and from the government weather bureau records
would be found to verify the descriptions of
weather conditions obtaining on the nights of the
various explosions. If it snowed in this city the
weather records would show whether McManigal
was telling the truth. If it rained the records would
say rain or show that McManigal had either made
a mistake or was lying.
We lost no time in preparing for this work. It
would require a big staff of careful, patient men.
Registered letters and money orders could be
traced through the post office department and the
cashing of checks could be traced through the banks
and their books. The caches for dynamite and
nitroglycerin would be uncovered and were subse-
171
172 THE MASKED WAR
quently uncovered. The purchase of materials for
the infernal machines would be and were verified.
McManigal told where he bought twelve alarm
clocks, a large purchase for a man not in the busi-
ness, and we looked up this place and verified his
statement. We take up his confession now at the
point where he laid in a supply of the little clocks
in Pittsburg.
The prisoner hidden away in Detective Reed's
comfortable little home continued:
"At the time I was in Pittsburg, I purchased
twelve of these clocks from a wholesale jewelry
house on Eighth and Pennsylvania Avenue, I think.
I purchased them from a lady clerk, paying, I think,
$18 for them, which was 50 cents cheaper than
what J. B. McNamara paid. I then proceeded to
Omaha, Neb., and got the power house, down along
the river. One charge was set off there. This was
supposed to be the property of the Wisconsin Bridge
Company, but it did not go by that name out there.
I think it was called the Western Bridge Company.
I was instructed by J. J. McNamara as to just
where the job was, and where the stuff should be
put. I immediately returned to Indianapolis, and
received $200 and expenses from J. J. McNamara
for this job. This was July 21st that the Omaha
job came off.
"I came home, stopped off a day or two, and then
went to Duluth, Minn., as per instructions given me
THE MASKED WAR 173
when J. J. McNamara again furnished me with
two cans of nitroglycerin, and two clocks. This
stuff was in the cans when I got there. I went to
Duluth and was told to get the coal hoist, a job
being done by Heyl & Patterson. This was at
Superior, across the river from Duluth. There
were two charges here. The job was a success and
I had no trouble in setting it off except that I had to
watch the watchman. I was afraid of the dog.
"I returned to Indianapolis from Duluth, re-
ceived my $200 and expenses, and was then directed
by J. J. McNamara to proceed to Kansas City, Mo.,
and I would find some McClintic-Marshall work
across the river. He then furnished me with a suit-
case and three cans, making twelve quarts of nitro-
glycerin, and three clock arrangements. I pro-
ceeded there on August 23rd and stopped at a small
lodging house, and then changed the next day, going
to the Jefferson, registering there under the name
of McGraw.
"While in Omaha, I registered at a hotel, the
name of which I do not now remember, registering
under the name of McGraw; also used the same
name at Duluth, and also at Kansas City. I set
one charge off in Kansas City. I carried this stuff
down with me; there were high weeks around there.
I made arrangements for three charges in the
girders. The night I carried it down I expected to
get in and make the three charges. After I had
one can and two clocks carried in and placed in the
174 THE MASKED WAR
high grass, I went back to the hotel, got the two
cans and the other clock, and took them down there
and carried them into the place with me. I saw
something in the brush which I thought was a watch-
man and that he had seen me. I later learned it
was a couple of negroes. I did not set it but left it
there near the tree, but later on my way across the
field discovered the watchman sitting right along-
side the girders, and it would have been impossible
for me to do anything. I then went back up to
town, and the next day returned and tried to locate
all this stuff where I had hidden it, but could not
find the two clocks and one can of it, and I con-
cluded that someone had picked it up, but I did
locate two cans and one clock I had under the tree.
That evening, I set these two cans and one clock
between two big girders there, expecting them to go
off about 9:30 or 10:00 o'clock p. m. that night
when I was up in town. It failed to go off, however,
for some cause or other. I heard no report. The
next day I went down there and upon investigation
saw that the stuff was still there. I went in there
in broad daylight, took the clock arrangement from
the cans and found that the batteries were not
strong enough to make the spark. I detached the
clock from it and went up to town, got a new bat-
tery at some electrical concern, and put a new
battery in it, tested it, in the daytime, leaving the
nitroglycerin between the girders. I rearranged it
about 5 o'clock that evening. I saw nothing of the
THE MASKED WAR 175
watchman around. It went off that evening about
9:30 or 10:00 o'clock. This was August 23rd,
1 9 10. I returned to Indianapolis, collected my $200
and expenses from J. J. McNamara, and we then
found we were out of nitroglycerin. J. J. McNa-
mara told me I should look up somebody to buy
it from; that I should look up the fellow Hockin
had purchased it from. I went around to the towns
J. J. McNamara said I would find him at, one of
them New Albany, Ind. I went over to Albany
on the street car and returned to Indianapolis the
same day. I was instructed to look up a well-shooter
at Albany or Portland, Ind., named Kiser, but I
found that he had moved. A man at a livery barn
in Albany stated that he knew a man at Portland;
that I could probably find a well-shooter there. I
went to Portland and inquired. I saw a man on
the street who looked like a well-shooter and asked
him if he was a shooter. He directed me to a cafe
where I eventually met one. I made arrangements
to purchase nitroglycerin from him, discussed prices,
etc. He said he would sell it for $1.30 a quart. I
added another dollar to that myself, making it $2.30
a quart. I arranged with this man to buy 200 quarts
to be delivered whenever I called on him; he was
to meet me any place I designated.
"I then went to Muncie, Ind., and called at the
Muncie Transfer Company, and arranged to hire
a horse and wagon. In the meantime — I neglected
to state — J. J. McNamara had given me $500 to
176 THE MASKED WAR
buy the nitroglycerin. After hiring the horse and
buggy from the Muncie Transfer Company, I pro-
ceeded to Albany, six miles away, and in the mean-
time telephoned this man and told him to meet
me in Albany with this amount of nitroglycerin,
which he did, delivering to me 200 quarts for which
I paid him. After leaving him I drove back to
Muncie and buried the stuff alongside the road in
a cinder bed near Muncie on the road between Al-
bany and Muncie, near the tracks of the Big Four.
I then returned the horse and wagon to the barn
and paid the man. I had a case that had been made
out of pasteboard to hold one big can containing
ten quarts. I don't know who made this. It was
given to me by J. J. McNamara at Indianapolis,
empty, and I was to transfer in this some of the
stuff. He also had a box arranged to carry with a
shawl strap and large enough to hold one of the
ten-quart cans. These big cans hold ten quarts.
After returning the horse and wagon, I took two
cans with me back to Indianapolis, arriving there
in the afternoon. I put it in the 5th floor of the
same building as McNamara's office. McNamara's
office is located in the American Central Life Build-
ing on Monument Square, and on the 5th floor of
this building there is a vault that is controlled by
J. J. McNamara, and he furnished me with the
combination, which is as follows:
"20—40—60—35.
"I carried this stuff to the vault and placed it
THE MASKED WAR 177
in there. This was between August 24th and Sep-
tember 1st. My time for this transaction was $50,
which was paid me by J. J. McNamara, together
with my expenses."
CHAPTER XXVI
HOBOES BUILT FIRE OVER NITRO.
The reader may recall that it was this trip by
McManigal to Portland, Ind., which gave us the
first open path to the dynamiters. You may re-
member that my agency was called in immediately
following the explosions in Peoria and East Peoria
and that we found a can of nitroglycerin with clock-
work attachment and an empty packing case with
some loose sawdust. You may also remember how
Operative H. A. Graves took a sample of the saw-
dust and how it proved the same sort of sawdust
that was spilled in the road when Morehart trans-
ferred the nitroglycerin from his wagon to the rig
hired by the purchaser who gave his name as "Mc-
Graw."
When McManigal reached this part of his con-
fession he was telling us things that we had already
uncovered and we were certain that he was sticking
to the truth and that he was telling the whole truth.
The fact, even, that it had rained on the night of
the Peoria explosions he did not neglect to tell us.
In that part of the confession to follow he did
not tell us of an incident concerning the nitroglycerin
178
THE MASKED WAR 179
cache in the woods near Muncie. Our men sought
it out and found it. The leaves covering the explo-
sive were charred as by a fire. A number of tramps
had picked out this spot to build a fire. The logs
were lit over the explosive. An inch or two more
of charring and it would have rained hobo frag-
ments for a week in Indiana.
We now take McManigal to the Muncie cache.
His confession goes on in these words:
"I have neglected to state I had transferred all
of these 200 quarts of this stuff except four cans,
which would, of course, make 40 quarts. On my
way to the cinder pile, I overtook a man walking
along the railroad track and passed him. I looked
for the nitroglycerin in the cinders but was unable
to find all of it. I saw this party stop for a minute
or two and I quit searching. This man jumped
down on the road from the bridge and walked
underneath same and went away. It started to rain.
I had the two empty cases, already described, to
transport the two cans, and returned to Muncie,
Ind., to the Terminal Station, and telephoned J. J.
McNamara, knowing he would be in his office. The
next morning, I returned to the cinder pile, with a
shovel, but was unable to find anything there. I
thought perhaps some of the men employed at the
stone quarry directly across might have stolen it.
I returned to Indianapolis and discussed the matter
with J. J. McNamara.
180 THE MASKED WAR
"On my way from Kansas City, I stopped at
Peoria, where I looked over work that J. J. Mc-
Namara had instructed me to examine, same being
material of the McClintic-Marshall Company. He
directed me to see what shape they were in and
what could be done to them. After getting this
second lot of nitroglycerin, he told me to return
to Peoria. (I had to make two trips to carry the
thirty quarts.) There were three ten-quart cans.
I took two quarts out of one ten-quart can and set
it off in the yard of the Lucas Brothers foundry.
After arranging the nitroglycerin in the McClintic-
Marshall job, I returned to my hotel and was there
when it exploded. I left the same night at mid-
night and went to Chicago. I stopped in Chicago
a couple of days, and returned to Indianapolis, re-
ceiving $200 and my expenses.
"On October 9th, J. J. McNamara directed me
to go to Worcester, Mass., and gave me two four-
quart cans, which he had all prepared and directed
me to set it under the Phoenix Bridge Company job
at that point. I did this job and then went to
Boston, and got the train to Springfield, Mass., as
I was instructed to look over the Court House and
Tower there, which I did.
"I then went to Philadelphia, having instructions
to look over some work the McClintic-Marshall
people were doing there, some elevated railroad
work for the Philadelphia and Reading railroad.
I looked it over and I concluded it would be a very
THE MASKED WAR 181
serious matter to blow this up as there were too
many tenement houses in the vicinity, which un-
questionably would be affected by the explosion.
"Returning to Indianapolis, I received my $200
and expenses from J. J. McNamara for the
Worcester job. He asked me about the Spring-
field job. I said I was afraid of it as it was next
door to a police station. He said, 'We'll have to
get that — that's all there is to it.' "
CHAPTER XXVII
THE LOS ANGELES MASSACRE ORDERED
The dynamiters had met with such success that
they were now ready to attempt the elimination of
General Harrison Gray Otis, his home, his family,
his business and his employees in Los Angeles. If
this intended massacre did not bring victory for the
conspirators the conspirators were ready to follow
it with the complete destruction of the city of Los
Angeles and the destruction of the Panama Canal
with it. They had enough dynamite and nitro-
glycerin to blow up half the cities of the country
and enough men to lay the mines.
McManigal now tells of the preliminaries for the
Los Angeles job as follows:
"Along in June, J. B. McNamara and I went to
Indianapolis together. Had a conversation with
J. J. McNamara and J. B. McNamara; I can't fix
the exact date, but I think it was immediately after
my return from Pittsburg, July 14th or 21st. J.
B. McNamara said he was going to the Coast; and
he was going to get in touch with a fellow called
'The Old Man' (who I afterwards found out was
182
THE MASKED WAR 183
a man called Tveitmoe), and Clancy. He told me
that he had been instructed by J. J. McNamara.
When he was ready to go to the Coast, he and I
went to Chicago on the same train. He was then
on his way. I asked him what was coming off out
there. He said that the whole damn thing was no
good out there; that they were going to make a
big clean-up; that there was plenty of money put
up. He said it was planned that he go to the Coast
and I stay here. This was decided in a conference
J. J. McNamara and J. B. McNamara and I had
at the office in Indianapolis.
U J. B. McNamara put up a proposition to the
parties in California that they buy the stuff here
instead of out there. When he was leaving he had
two suitcases. He had clocks in one, I think a
dozen, and clothes in the other. He told me that
he used the stuff they bought out there on the
Times. This statement came out in a discussion
as to what quantity he used. He said he used eight
sticks on the Times. The clocks referred to may
have been clocks I purchased in Pittsburg. (Mc-
Manigal could not remember all the conversation
between J. B. McNamara and J. J. McNamara at
Indianapolis, just previous to the departure of the
former for California.)
"While J. B. McNamara was in California, I
saw an account of something that happened at
Spokane; then there was one around Oakland. I
asked J. J. McNamara if he had received any word
1 84 THE MASKED WAR
from the 'fellow on the Coast,' meaning, of course,
his brother, and he knew who I meant. He said,
'No, I have not.' I said I saw a couple of accounts.
He said, 'Yes, I did too, but I don't know whether
it was him or who it was.' It ran along a while
and I asked him again if he had heard anything.
He said he had a letter. In the meantime I had
gotten in touch with Hockin, and he asked me where
J. B. McNamara was. I told him I did not know.
The next time J. J. McNamara and I talked about
J. B. was when I later asked him if he had received
any word. He said, yes, he received a letter from
'Frisco, in which J. B. McNamara said, 'It now
reads "Times for News." It will read "News for
the Times." ' This was about two or three weeks
before the explosion.
"The next time I talked with J. J. McNamara
about J. B. McNamara on the Coast was when I
saw an account of the Times explosion. I was in
Chicago at the time. I bought a paper and read
same. The next time I went to Indianapolis, he
said, ' ! See what those fellows are
doing out there!' I said, 'I wonder if that is that
fellow.' He said, 'I don't know; I guess it must
be. It was the Times they wanted and got.' I
expressed the opinion that it was too bad so many
people being killed. He said, 'By God! That
ought to make them come across.' I said, 'I sup-
pose he is on his way back. If that's the case he
must be well on his way with such a thing like that
THE MASKED WAR 185
happening.' He said, 'I suppose so. If he isn't
he is well under cover.'
"J. J. McNamara instructed me not to come to
their office too damn often. He said, 'I don't know
who the hell is around here.' He was quite nervous
at that time. He said he thought then there would
be somebody looking around and he suspected a
fellow over in another office building. I saw there
had been changes made in the office — a general
cleaning up of cuts, etc. I then returned to Chicago
and kept under cover.
"I first heard of J. B. returning about the third
or fourth of November, when there was a telephone
call at my house, but I was not at home. My wife
answered the phone and the party said, 'Is Mac
home?' 'No.' The party then said, 'Tell Mac his
friend Mr. Clark wants to see him at 1 1 o'clock
at the Briggs Hotel.' I went down there and looked
over the register and there was no such name on
same. (I knew who it was I was to meet as I
heard him use that name before.) He was talking
to a stranger to me. After the latter left him, we
walked down the street somewhere. The moment
I met him he told me that he had seen him (mean-
ing J. B.) and he (J. J. McNamara) said, '
! Things are red hot. There's a hell of
a smear around there.' I said, 'Is he clear? Is he
out of the way?' He said, 'He is away, but he is
not clear yet.' I tried to get out of him where
he was, but he would not tell me. He wanted to
1 86 THE MASKED WAR
know if I had anything around the house. I told
him no, I did not. He said if I had I should get
rid of it. We entered an office building down the
street. I stood inside the lobby while he went up-
stairs. This office building, I think, is on Dearborn
Street, near Van Buren. He remained upstairs a
few minutes, then we went toward Madison Street,
had lunch and J. J. McNamara told me he knew
where the fellow was that he had seen (meaning
J. B.). I asked him how he looked and he said,
'Pretty good.'
"He asked me if I was going hunting, and I said,
'Yes.' I had talked hunting with him for some time
previous. 'Everything is all arranged to go hunt-
ing. There are five of us going and there is room
for another fellow if one wants to go.' He said the
fellow had no gun, and I said the fellow could use
my gun. I also told him I thought it would be the
best thing for him; a trip in the woods would be
a good thing for him. He said he would put the
proposition up to him and let me know. I left J.
J. McNamara at Van Buren and Dearborn Streets,
with the understanding that I was to hear from him.
I then went home. That evening, I understood he
was to go somewhere on 55th Street, saying he
wanted to see a party there.
"That evening Hockin telephoned me at my home
and wanted to know when I had seen the 'big fel-
low.' I told him I had seen him about noon and
he said he was going to 55th Street. He said, 'I
THE MASKED WAR 187
had an appointment with him and have been wait-
ing for him and was wondering what became of
him.' He wanted to know what I was doing. I
was going hunting, I told him. That was about the
2nd or 3rd of November. He asked me who was
going along. I said, some fellows from Kenosha
and a fellow from Chicago. He wanted to know
if I had seen anything of the 'queer guy,' meaning
J. B. McNamara. I said, 'No, I have not seen him,
but I have heard.' He said he wished he could see
me or have a talk with me; that he could give me
some good pointers or something to that effect. He
wanted to know when I was leaving home. I said,
Saturday, when I went to Kenosha for my license,
and was going to leave Monday for the woods.
In a way that I knew this fellow was coming, J. J.
McNamara sent me a telegram worded in such a
way I knew what was meant. This telegram was
from Indianapolis. I endeavored to arrange for a
gun for him, but could not obtain it. I then went
to Kenosha and met the parties I was to meet there,
and made application for license. J. B. McNamara
met us on Sunday morning, having come up on Sat-
urday night, calling me over the 'phone, as he had
the number of the house I was stopping at. I met
him at the hotel. J. J. McNamara had told me
that J. B.'s name would be Frank Sullivan and I
must get into the habit of calling him 'Sully'; he
told me this in Chicago. We entered the bar at a
hotel in Kenosha and had a few drinks."
CHAPTER XXVIII
JIM mcmamara's story of the crime
Just how much humanity there was in the breast
of either of the McNamara brothers is pretty well
shown in their cold-blooded handling of affairs im-
mediately following the wholesale murder in Los
Angeles. There was never a suggestion of remorse
on the part of either, no ghost of any one of the
twenty-one murdered men and boys ever haunted
either of them.
Jim McNamara told McManigal of his Los
Angeles job with the same casual account of detail
he might have used in relating the story of one of
his many sprees.
McManigal's confession thus describes Jim Mc-
Namara's tale of his dreadful deed:
"I first had a talk with J. B. McNamara when
we arrived. He said, 'When we get into the woods,
I can tell you all.'
"When we did get to the woods, he told me that
when he got out there he got in touch with Clancy
at San Francisco. J. B. seemed to be very sore
about the layout on the Coast. He did not like the
188
THE MASKED WAR 189
fellows he was working with. He said he was
working with a fellow named Schmitty and a fellow
named Caplan. He said Clancy introduced him to
Tveitmoe; that the latter introduced him to
Schmitty and Caplan, and that Schmitty and Caplan
had been doing the work around that part of the
country, that Tveitmoe wanted him to take the light
end of it, and instead of that Schmitty gave him
orders.
"J. B. McNamara told me what a time they had
getting the stuff, at the Giant Powder Mills. He
wanted to drop the proceedings. Schmitty, it seems,
was the main man. He said they rented a launch,
but none of them knew how to run it, although
Schmitty and Caplan thought they did. In loading
the launch, they put all the boxes in burlap in the
front end of the launch, and the rudder on the
other end was clear out of water. Schmitty was
engineer and instead of making headway, they made
'backway.'
"Schmitty started the launch into the shore near
the Giant Powder Company, and while Schmitty and
Caplan got out of the boat into the skiff, a wave
came up and started the boat out.
"They got a room after landing on the Frisco
side and rented a house in which they stored the
stuff. When they got the stuff they had to make
a deposit, and they covered the name on the boat
with red tape. The stuff was signed for in J. B.
Bryce's name. They placed part of the stuff in
190 THE MASKED WAR
the house they rented and took a part of it to Oak-
land. There were taxicabs, high living, wine, etc.
He said that he was down there and looked over
the situation at Los Angeles. He returned again to
see Schmitty and Schmitty gave him the address of
some woman down there who runs a rooming house.
Anyway, Schmitty wanted to go to Los Angeles
also. He did not want Schmitty to go down, so he
called on 'The Old Man' (meaning Tveitmoe) and
said, 'I want you to call that fellow off (meaning
Schmitty). I don't think he ought to go down
there, and if he goes down there I am not going
down.' 'The Old Man' told him to go on about his
business and he would see that Schmitty and Caplan
stayed there, because just as soon as anything hap-
pened, Schmitty would run right up to Tveitmoe's
office and out would come the cash. Schmitty told
J. B. McNamara, 'You are to get $200 with your
expenses; that is the arrangement made.' I don't
recall whether he said he himself made the arrange-
ments with Caplan and Caplan with Schmitty, but
the names of Caplan and Schmitty were mentioned.
The men were always paid by Tveitmoe. He said
he stopped at the Roslin Hotel in Los Angeles. He
tried to get in the building two or three times but
was unsuccessful; that is, the Times Building. He
told me that he had three places picked: 'Otis's
house, Zeehandelaar's house, and the Times. He
said that he had a hell of a time passing the
watchman in front of the Times. He said the
THE MASKED WAR 191
watchman was stationed at the entrance or back
end of the alley. Some kid came to the door as he
came in and he asked him about the publication
room or something. He made a plant, and got out
of there right away, going back to Frisco, laying
over for four days in Frisco, stopping at the Argo-
naut Hotel. He told me about the time he was
having with the fast women and others in San Fran-
cisco all the time, and also about the woman who
kept the rooming house where he hung out. This
was prior to the Los Angeles explosion. He came
back and stopped at the Argonaut Hotel when he
came back from Los Angeles. He told me about
the money Tveitmoe still owes him, there never
having been a settlement. When he returned to
Frisco he got in touch with Schmitty and Caplan,
and he had to wait four days to get his money, and
then Schmitty gave it to him; or either Schmitty or
Tveitmoe gave it to him, amounts unknown. He
immediately started back. I don't know where he
stopped on his way. There was some fellow who
came part way here, but J. B. McNamara did not
mention his name.
"I then returned to Chicago and wrote J. J.
McNamara a letter.
"A couple of days later I received a telegram
from J. B. McNamara, signing 'Frank,' stating,
'Leave on 2 :45 Monon train.' I went to India-
napolis, and J. J. stated that I would have to go to
Los Angeles. I said, 'That's a hell of a trip.' He
192 THE MASKED WAR
said, 'It will be three days and three nights' ride.*
He wanted me to go out there and see if we could
get any more of the Times Building (the auxiliary
plant), and also the Llewellyn plant (Llewellyn
Iron Works) and the Baker Iron Works. J. B.
McNamara said, 'I wish I were going along with
you. I would go back there in a minute. But this
fellow don't seem to think that I ought to go back
there.' This was said in J. J. McNamara's office
and in J. J. McNamara's presence. I said, 'If you
want to go, go ahead.' I told him I would not go
unless I had my transportation and expense and
everything on the train. He said, 'That will be all
right; that will be attended to.' I went out alone.
On arrival there, I did not connect with any one.
J. J. McNamara had given me the information as
to where everything was and what was wanted. I
carried 12 quarts with me. One was a ten-quart
can in the pasteboard arrangement and two quarts
in my valise. I gave it to the porter on the train
and he put it in a closet in the end of the car.
"I left about the nth or 12th via the Overland
Limited, at 10:16 in the evening. No one was with
me when I left. I got the dope from J. J. Mc-
Namara as had been previously arranged. I had
two or three clocks, all arranged for use, with me.
I went to a hotel, and then looked over the Llewel-
lyn Iron Works, and visited the auxiliary plant
of the Times. J. B. McNamara was able to tell
me definitely where these places were located and
THE MASKED WAR 193
conditions about the same. I found the Times
place was well watched. I then visited the Llewellyn
plant and tried to get into the yards, and set the
12 quarts along the outside of the building, being
unable to get inside. I then went to my hotel and
checked out. I looked the Baker Brothers place
over, but decided not to bother it. I stopped at
the Rosslyn Hotel under the name of J. M. McKee,
LaCrosse, Wis.
"When I left Los Angeles, I went to San Fran-
cisco, and got in touch with Clancy at the Labor
Temple. I stopped at the Argonaut Hotel.
"J. B. McNamara said to me that by going out
there and setting off this stuff, if the detectives were
still on their trail, they would think the dynamiters
were still out there.
"In conversation with Clancy, whom I had never
seen before, but whom I talked to when I was in
Frisco, I said, 'When you see The Old Man, you
can tell him that "Christmas present" was delivered'
(meaning by 'The Old Man,' Tveitmoe).
"On arrival in Chicago, I remained here until
after New Year's. Then I saw J. J. McNamara at
Indianapolis. J. B. McNamara was present at our
interview. He expressed his disappointment at my
failure to carry out his instructions, saying, 'You
should have gotten a bunch of that soup in the
Times and given them a shaking up.' I said, 'My
God I It did not look good to me. It looked like
suicide.' They said if I had carried out the thing
194 THE MASKED WAR
the way they told me to it would have averted sus-
picion from them and myself. He paid me my time
and expenses, amounting to $400.
"J. J. McNamara stated, 'We will keep on one
job and work on that one (meaning by that, not
jumping from coast to coast and job to job), but
take one town and see what we can do with that,
and if anything can be done it will be done, and if
nothing can be done, we will take another job.'
J. B. McNamara was present at this meeting. This
remark was made in the evening at J. J.'s office.
The only time he would see us at his office was at
night.
"J. J. McNamara said to me, 'I want you to go
up there and clean up that Milwaukee job. It is
a coal hoist at the Milwaukee Fuel Company, the
Heyl-Patterson Company erecting it.' McNamara
had everything arranged, gave me a suitcase, and I
went to Milwaukee, stopping at the Acme Hotel,
under the name of Foster or Fisher (I forget
which). I had no trouble in setting it off. It went
off all right and I had no trouble in getting away.
I reported to J. J. McNamara and received $200
and expenses. He then said, 'I want you to go to
Omaha and get that Court House there.' In the
meantime J. B. McNamara had gone to Columbus,
Ind. I did not go with him. It had been arranged
that when things were ready with me at Omaha I
should telegraph J. J. McNamara, 'Please forward
one hundred to Lincoln, Nebraska.' That meant
THE MASKED WAR 195
the other fellow was to go ahead and set his off
the same night. I sent it from the Northwestern
Railroad depot in Omaha; then set it off. I was
stopping at the Murray House under the name of
G. Fisher.
"Returning from Omaha, I reported to J. J. Mc-
Namara, got my money, seeing him at night, and he
told me I should go to Boston and then come back
through Springfield, Mass., and see what I could
do on the tower there. He said he wanted me to
do this right away. I asked him where J. B. Mc-
Namara was. He said he was in Chicago the other
day. He had telephoned my wife. At Indianapolis
that night I got in touch with Hockin. He had seen
an account of the Columbus and Omaha affairs. I
asked him how things looked. He said everything
looked all right.
"Arrangements were made for me to go to Bos-
ton, and J. J. McNamara had the stuff ready for
me. I took 40 pounds of dynamite. I don't know
where it came from. I carried it all in one suit-
case. We discussed the matter. I had no trouble
in setting the stuff off there. I stopped under the
name of G. Fisher or G. Foster (I have forgotten
which) at the Hinkley Hotel.
"I returned from Springfield to Detroit where
McNamara wanted me to look at several places
for him:
"Detroit Breech & Steel Company.
"South Dearborn & Michigan Central Railway
i 9 6 THE MASKED WAR
of Detroit (South Dearborn is a suburb of Detroit
on the M. C. R. R.).
"Whitehead & Kahel.
"Breecher & Michigan Central Shops.
"American Bridge Company.
"Russel Wheel & Foundry Company, Campau
Avenue, Detroit.
"I reported the above O. K. to J. J. McNamara
— that these could be gotten if wanted. He located
J. B. McNamara, and said to me, 'You had better
get ready and go right back there now.' I said, 'I
don't want to go back there. I am going to run
into Chicago.' I said to J. B., 'What have you got
on?' 'I haven't got anything on,' he said. J. J.
McNamara said, Are you going down to see that
fellow?' 'Yes, I thought I would.' (I don't know
who he meant.) He said, 'You go down and see
about that and make up some of those clocks.'
"I was to meet J. B. McNamara at Toledo Tues-
day evening, which I did. We met at Toledo, and
intended going over to Detroit.
"Relative to the explosion at West Baden, J. B.
McNamara told me he did the job and it was
unionized the next morning before the explosion
was reported at Indianapolis.
"I neglected to state about the explosion at South
Chicago. I was called to Indianapolis by J. J.
McNamara and he said that Chicago had a job
up there, and that Hockin was going up to investi-
gate it and would be back in a day or two. Hockin
THE MASKED WAR 197
had been up there and got in touch with somebody
and inspected the job. J. B. McNamara came to
my house and told me where to go, he following
instructions issued by J. J. McNamara. We went
out one Sunday evening, looked it over and decided
to blow up. We took, the 2 145 train for Indianap-
olis and got the stuff and returned Monday night
with it. We got back about 8 o'clock that evening,
stopping at the 'Best' Hotel, No. 78-80 Van Buren
Street. We left the stuff in the basement at my
house. The next day I came over to my place in
the forenoon, and made up the clock in my house.
We used dynamite for this job. J. J. McNamara
wanted the smokestack hit. We found the place
better guarded, however, than on our first visit and
after debating it between ourselves, returned the
next evening and found conditions the same. On
Friday night we took the stuff out and after con-
sideration put it on the outside of the fence, where
it went off.
"There is some soup planted on the far west
side of Indianapolis in a barn owned by a fellow
named Jones, from whom McNamara rented it.
Go west on Washington Street to end of street car
line, go on walking same direction, pass concrete
bridge, follow road, continue until you reach Big
Four tracks. Just beyond tracks on the right hand
side is a barn. The dynamite is in the barn in a
piano box. This was placed here by J. B. McNa-
mara and myself in January, 191 1. This was pro-
198 THE MASKED WAR
cured down in Ohio in Bloomville. The fellow
from whom I secured the dynamite is described:
"Forty-five to 48 years, full sandy beard, 5 feet
10 inches, shabbily dressed.
"M. J. Young, No. 386 Harrison Avenue, Bos-
ton, is business agent of local No. 7, Structural Iron
Workers. He is the man who arranged to have the
Springfield stuff set off. I told him that J. J. Mc-
Namara had sent me down there to meet him and
he was to tell me what he wanted done. I met
him at headquarters, No. 368 Harrison Avenue.
He wanted a fellow slugged. I told him I did not
do that kind of business.
"Dynamite planted on the 5th floor of building
where J. J. McNamara has an office in the vault,
combination of which is: 20 — 40 — 80 — 35. There
might be some in the basement of the building.
There is some stuff stored in Tiffin, Ohio, in a
shanty off of Perry Street, back of wagon works on
my father's place, at a stone quarry. It is stored in
a shanty. There is considerable of it there."
CHAPTER XXIX
BURNS LANDS THE MAN HIGHER UP
We kept J. B. McNamara and Ortie McManigal
under close guard. We knew that J. J. McNamara
would be anxious to hear from his brother and
McManigal, that an article had appeared in the
Associated Press stating that James Sullivan and
Ortie McManigal had been arrested as safe blowers
at Detroit and taken to Chicago, and that this would
probably be seen by him. I called up McManigal's
wife, and introduced the following piece of subter-
fuge:
Calling up Harrison , a woman's voice
replied. I said, "Is this Harrison ?"
"Yes," was the answer. "Well," I said, "you don't
know me, but I have just received a letter from a
friend of mine at Detroit, and I will read it to you."
She said, "Who are you?" I said, "You don't
know me, nor do I care to give my name, but I will
read you this letter, and perhaps that will enlighten
you. I'm sure it's Greek to me, and I don't know
anything about it." She said, "Very well." Then
I began: "Dear Jack: Immediately on receipt of
this letter, call up Harrison and tell the
woman there" — and I said, "are you the woman?"
199
200 THE MASKED WAR
— she said, "Yes, yes, I'm the woman." "Tell the
woman there that her husband and his friends were
arrested in Detroit for safe blowing, and as nothing
could be proved against them they were discharged,
and they are now in Windsor, Canada."
"Good! Good!" shouted Mrs. McManigal over
the 'phone. "My God, but I'm glad to hear that.
That's splendid news. Oh, I'm so glad they have
gotten away."
"Now," I said, "listen to the rest of it. Tell
her to go to a friend of theirs. Now it doesn't say
who the friend is."
"Oh, that's all right; I know who it is. Go
ahead; go ahead," she said. I continued, "Go to
a friend of theirs and tell him to give her $500,
and for her then to return home and await a further
message from her husband." I said, "Do you
understand that?"
"Yes, perfectly; I understand what they mean,
and I will leave to-night."
I said, "Is there any word that you want to send
back to them?"
"Yes, tell them I will leave to-night and that I
will get back about to-morrow night."
I said, "All right. Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
We put a shadow on Mrs. McManigal, and she
immediately left, as she stated she would, for In-
dianapolis. When she reached there she saw J. J.
McNamara and told him the story, as we subse-
THE MASKED WAR 201
quently learned. While it relieved him to some ex-
tent, he was not altogether reassured. Why he was
not developed later on, and was an important
feature that McManigal had entirely overlooked in
the first part of his confession. J. J. McNamara
had an understanding with his brother and McMan-
igal that if at any time they got into trouble they
were to write or wire a certain post office box, No.
1, in Indianapolis, which had been obtained under
another name. Therefore, McNamara thought, if
all this were true that Mrs. McManigal had stated,
why did not the two men comply with his direction to
notify him through the post office box. Our "shad-
ows" at Indianapolis constantly reported that J.
J. McNamara was extremely nervous, constantly
testing himself, and looking about in an effort to
uncover them.
After the Los Angeles explosion, J. J. McNamara
showed a picture of me, cut from a magazine, to
Ortie McManigal and J. B. McNamara, and said
to them: "Look out for this fellow. If ever any-
body gets you at all, it will be this guy."
Finally, the officers, accompanied by Assistant
District Attorney Robert Ford, arrived in Chicago,
and we promptly arranged for requisition papers
for James B. McNamara and Ortie McManigal
from the State of Illinois. I then arranged that
when the signal was given they should leave Reed's
house in an automobile and drive to Joliet, 111., and
there board the fast train for Los Angeles.
202 THE MASKED WAR
We proceeded to Indianapolis, and Assistant Dis-
trict Attorney Robert Ford, Detective Sergeant
Hoosick, and myself promptly got in touch with the
Superintendent of Police at the Indianapolis Police
Department, and the Chief of Detectives.
Both of them we knew as honest, conscientious,
capable officials, and had no hesitation in promptly
laying the whole matter before them. The Super-
intendent said that he would aid in every possible
way he could, after being assured that we had the
evidence. Assistant District Attorney Ford then
called on Governor Marshall — now Vice-President
Marshall. He inquired into the situation, and as-
suring himself as to the legal questions involved,
promptly performed his duty and issued a warrant
for J. J. McNamara, which was promptly placed in
the hands of the Superintendent of Police Martin
and Chief of Detectives.
He then detailed two detectives to go to the
office of the Iron Workers, and requested me to go
along and designate the man. I did so, and when
we reached the offices of the Structural Iron
Workers, we found them in counsel. It was appar-
ent to any person that something ominous had hap-
pened that caused a depression of the spirits of
every man about that table. When one of us
rapped on the door it was opened by J. J. McNa-
mara. The officer said: "I am a Detective Sergeant
from Headquarters, and I want to see J. J. Mc-
Namara and Herbert S. Hockin."
THE MASKED WAR 203
McNamara said, "I'm the man."
"Well," said the Sergeant, "the Chief would like
to see you."
McNamara said, "Very well." He walked over
and had a talk with President Ryan, of the Iron
Workers, and said to him: "They're after me.
What had I better do about it?" Ryan advised
him to go ahead. McNamara put on his coat and
hat. He then made an excuse that he wanted to
leave the keys to his desk there, and this was the
only slip that occurred in the entire arrangement,
for in that time J. J. McNamara was permitted to
divest himself of the keys of the lower vault found
in the cellar.
We then walked to Police Headquarters, where
the officer delivered Hockin and J. J. McNamara
to the Superintendent and Chief of Detectives
Holtz. Holtz read the requisition papers and the
warrant to J. J. McNamara, and then conducted
him before the Desk Sergeant, where they booked
him just as they would any other prisoner and then
locked him up. Later we took him before Judge
Collins, the Judge before whom all requisitions were
taken. The Judge examined the papers carefully,
and finding they were regular and all right so
stated, and then said that the next requisite was the
identification of J. J. McNamara as the man named
in the warrant. McNamara promptly spoke up:
"I admit that I'm the man named in that warrant."
"Very well, then," said the Judge, "the only thing
204 THE MASKED WAR
left for me to do is to turn you over to the State
of California."
Detective Sergeant Hoosick then conducted J.
J. McNamara to an automobile that was in waiting,
as it was feared that the hidden dynamite at In-
dianapolis might possibly be resorted to if there
was any delay in removing McNamara.
He was accompanied on his trip by Detective
Sergeant Hoosick of Los Angeles, Detective Ser-
geants Guy Biddinger and William Reed, and
Charles J. Smith of our Chicago office.
I would like to say here, in passing, that when I
finally made up my mind to round up the McNa-
maras and McManigal, I called on Captain Steve
Woods, who was then in charge of Detective Head-
quarters at Chicago, and who, by the way, was one
of the best and most efficient men they ever had in
that position. I explained to him that I was about
to round up the dynamiters of the Los Angeles
Times and that I wanted to have detailed to me
Detective Sergeants Guy Biddinger and William
Reed. He promptly stated that he would detail
them, and would notify them to respond when called
upon, and that he would aid in any way he possibly
could in their apprehension. I then instructed my
son, Raymond, that when the arrest took place the
men should not be taken to the station-house, but
should be taken to a private house — Reed's.
After J. J. McNamara left in the automobile, I
then, in company with Mayor Schrank, Superinten-
THE MASKED WAR 205
dent of Police Highland, Chief of Detectives Holtz,
and Harry M. Friend, of the Chicago American,
led them to the Jones barn, which was in the out-
skirts of Indianapolis. On reaching there we found
Jones, who conducted us to the barn. On opening
the door we found the piano box described by Ortie
McManigal, and with the keys taken from the
pocket of J. B. McNamara, I unlocked the box in
their presence. In the piano box was found a
second box, and on opening that it was found half-
filled with sawdust and a large quantity of sticks
of dynamite and a can of nitroglycerin. The orig-
inal brand on the wrappers of the dynamite had
been destroyed.
Before this, we went to the offices of the Struc-
tural Iron Workers and made a search of them.
We opened the office vault, but found nothing in-
criminating.
While searching there, the janitor of the building
came to me and said, "Mr. Burns, do you want to
search the vault in the cellar?" I replied that we
did, and he promptly conducted us to a specially
constructed vault in the cellar of the building, but
for this he did not have the keys. Superintendent
Highland was about to wrench the lock, when a
person calling himself a lawyer showed up on the
scene, and remonstrated and denied the right of
the Superintendent to open that vault under the
search warrant the Superintendent then had. Mr.
Highland, wanting to be perfectly fair, left an
206 THE MASKED WAR
officer in charge of the vault, returned to the Police
Station and secured a special search warrant for
that vault. When he returned, the lock was
wrenched from the door, and on entering, accom-
panied by the janitor, we found two large packages
of dynamite, weighing 92 pounds, with the corners
conveniently torn for the purpose of inserting the
wire from clock bombs. They were wrapped ex-
actly like those described by our operatives at Chi-
cago as having been carried by J. B. McNamara
and Ortie McManigal.
In addition, we found 14 alarm clocks exactly
like those used on the bombs at Peoria and Los
Angeles, together with a large amount of fulminat-
ing caps and all the paraphernalia that went to
make up the bombs, as well as a large quantity of
fuse. We also found a great mass of correspond-
ence which, on investigation, was found to be letters
from various business agents throughout the coun-
try to J. J. McNamara requesting that the wrecking
crew be sent them to carry on certain work, indicat-
ing, of course, dynamiting jobs.
McNamara, in his methodical way, and for some
unknown reason, replied to these letters, stating
they would arrive there at a certain time, and then
transcribed the answers on the back of the letters
and filed them away. Many persons, since the trial
at Indianapolis, have expressed the greatest surprise
that a man engaged in such nefarious work should
have been guilty of such an asinine trick. The reply
THE MASKED WAR 207
to this is, that McNamara had no idea that the
persons engaged in running down the dynamiters
of the Los Angeles Times would dare to intrude
into the sanctum of the Structural Iron Workers'
Union.
A tremendous effort was then made by the union's
lawyer to prevent the correspondence from being
carried away. He had evidently received a "hunch"
from some person other than J. J. McNamara as
to how important it was, but thanks to Superinten-
dent Highland and his assistants, nothing was over-
looked and it was all carried to the Police Station.
The following day we carried the dynamite and the
nitroglycerin into the country, on a second visit, and
buried the nitroglycerin and cached the dynamite,
care being taken to mark everything for identifica-
tion.
Superintendent Highland demanded admission to
the safe in the office of the Structural Iron Workers,
which was denied him, and he then sent for an ex-
pert safeman, who drilled the safe and opened it.
In the meantime, the partisans of J. J. McNa-
mara held a counsel and decided that they ought
to get busy and put up a defense. They expressed,
in the loudest way they could, and with as much
noise as possible, the conviction that J. J. Mc-
Namara had been kidnapped and the offices of the
Union had been unlawfully invaded. President
Ryan also made the charge that a sum of money
that was in a drawer in the office had disappeared,
208 THE MASKED WAR
and intimated that some of the officers must have
taken it.
I then proceeded to Tiffin, Ohio, called on the
Chief of Police, and together we went to the barn
of Ortie McManigal's father, in the outskirts of
Tiffin, and here we found a box of dynamite.
I then proceeded to Toledo, Ohio, and at the
railroad station, in company with Chief of Police
Harry Knapp, found J. B. McNamara's suitcase,
which had been used for carrying explosives, and
which was thoroughly soaked with nitroglycerin.
We returned to Indianapolis and sent for More-
hart, who hurried from Muncie, and identified the
nitroglycerin that had been found in the Jones barn
as part of that sold by him to Ortie McManigal.
He also identified the can. Our operatives and
the Police at Indianapolis made a search of the room
of J. J. McNamara, and there found one of the
time clocks such as they used on the bomb, and
several other incriminating articles.
The newspaper men, immediately after the arrest
at Indianapolis, strongly urged me to give them
some details of the incriminating evidence found,
which I declined to do, on the ground that it was
not fair to the prosecuting attorney nor fair to the
defendant that we discuss that previous to his trial,
but within a short time they came to me with a
statement made by Samuel Gompers, President of
the American Federation of Labor, who was inter-
viewed at Pittsburgh, and who intimated that it was
THE MASKED WAR 209
a "frame-up," by myself, and that the dynamite had
been planted where it was found.
Offended by the slander that had been uttered
by Gompers, and knowing that it was calculated to
inflame the minds of some irresponsible persons
who might seek to revenge themselves on me per-
sonally, I went into details and pointed out that if
it was a frame-up, J. J. McNamara, his brother,
J. B. McNamara, and Ortie McManigal had
framed it up, as the keys which opened the box at
the Jones barn — Jones being a member of the
Structural Iron Workers' Union — were taken from
the pocket of J. B. McNamara. We found where
the keys had been purchased at Indianapolis. The
keys which unlocked the box in the McManigal
barn at Tiffin had also been taken from the pocket
of J. B. McNamara. Therefore, all the plans had
been shown, conclusively, to have been arranged by
J. J. McNamara, J. B. McNamara and Ortie Mc-
Manigal.
Gompers subsequently came to Indianapolis, and
again denounced me in the strongest terms, and
subsequently many of the labor organizations
throughout the country passed resolutions condemn-
ing me, and the same was taken up by Socialists
throughout the country, who, on the street corners,
uttered the same denunciations and the same
charges. The following Labor Day, throughout the
country, was dedicated to the McNamara Brothers,
and collections taken up all over the country. In
210 THE MASKED WAR
the parades American flags were carried through
the streets, and the coins and contributions solicited
were tossed into the American flags. I was the re-
cipient of hundreds of anonymous letters denounc-
ing me and threatening my life.
CHAPTER XXX
PETER CURRAN'S CLASSIC LETTER
The detective story of fiction would end with the
arrests of the guilty men in the case, but in real life
the detective who keeps a clear head on his shoul-
ders knows that before him is one of the hardest
stretches of his task. He is morally certain of
the guilt of the men he has placed in jail, but he
must have enough evidence to make twelve jurors
be certain of their guilt also or his work will go
for nothing. Moreover, he will have to watch with
the eye of a hawk to see that his witnesses are not
bribed or spirited away from him. He must see
to it that his assistants are not tempted with large
sums of money to "throw" the case and in the
dynamiting trials we had the further job of pre-
venting the bribery of jurors.
We did not slow up for a moment in this work,
for in this masked war against society there were,
besides the McNamaras, the 38 union "leaders"
afterward found guilty of conspiracy in the Federal
trials at Indianapolis. It was no one-man con-
spiracy but was nation-wide.
While the McNamaras and McManigal were
being hurried to Los Angeles I sent a careful opera-
211
212 THE MASKED WAR
tive post haste to Cincinnati and to the little home
of the McNamaras in Quarry Street in the Cum-
minsville section. A search warrant was secured
and in the McNamara home he found more elec-
trical apparatus and letters referring to various dy-
namiting jobs done at the order of J. J.
I and my operatives uncovered the various depots
for explosives established by the dynamiters besides
the one I told of in the Jones barn. We traced the
piano box found in this cache back to its maker and
connected its purchase with the union officials.
In Muncie, Ind., we found a house rented by the
dynamiters for the storage of nitroglycerin and
here was required patient work by my operatives.
The last of the explosive had been used from this
depot, but the floor of the room, where the cans
of nitro had been placed, showed the greasy
stains from the sweating of the tins. That floor
would make an exhibit in court. The owner of the
house was about to rent it and the tenant was
anxious to get into the place. That meant scrub-
bing the greasy floor, of course. Scrubbing the
floor would have meant the wiping out of the evi-
dence. There was one way to preserve it. We
were rather shy of money, having spent a great
deal in the investigation, and I could not afford to
buy the house. We made a dicker with the owner
and agreed to give him a new floor for the room if
he gave us the old. This agreed to, my operatives
numbered each board of the floor, after making
THE MASKED WAR 213
photographs of it, and took it up and carried it to
a place of safety.
Occasionally an operative at work on the case
would develop material that would raise a smile.
We did not have any time to spare for a good
laugh, however absurd a thing might be, but funny
things occasionally do happen even in the business
of detecting crime and criminals. Investigator No.
31 was sent to an open lot at the corner of Morgan
and Van Buren Streets, Chicago, to dig for a box
McManigal had buried as a handy cache for explo-
sives. Digging for dynamite is a ticklish business.
The tip of a pick or the edge of a shovel might
strike hard enough to rip a hole in the ground and
send the investigator into the air. No. 31 gingerly
went at his task and finally found a box at about
the depth described by McManigal. Elated, he
rushed to the nearest telephone and informed our
Chicago office of the find. My son, Raymond, the
manager of the ofiice, hurried to the scene to wit-
ness the uncovering of the box of dynamite. The
broken earth was removed and the box drawn from
the hole. The lid was lifted and instead of dyna-
mite was found the body of a dog. Some youngster,
perhaps, had given his dead pet a decent burial.
The dog was reinterred, No. 31 looked sheepish,
Raymond returned to his office and a day's work
went for a laugh.
From a collection of many letters in the corre-
spondence of the dynamiters and their friends there
214 THE MASKED WAR
was none that equalled the friendly epistle written
by one Peter Curran to Jim McNamara. This
letter was found in the McNamara home. The
envelope showed that it had been mailed in Chicago,
June 7, 8 a. m., 1909.
Here is the classic:
"Chicago, 111. June 6, 1909.
"Dear friend Mc:
"I received your postal and was glad to hear
from you. I am still at the Rosena Hotel. The
night cleark that was thur wen you were ther got
into a sirkes girl's room and Miss Horton found
it out and fired him. Jim and Eral is working at
bumpers. They can get pleanty orders if they can
do them cheap anough. Everything is about the
same around hear. Old Casper is moping around
with the rat trap as usual. Mrs. Anderson have a
very sore foot with roontisen. Mrs. Wright moved.
I sean Willie and he gave me his address and said
to send it to you wen I rote. 6817 So. Chicago
Ave. It was very cold hear all spring. Have not
much new to tell you lot of building gowing up.
You must excuse me for not writing sooner. Let
me now how you are getting along and how is
your mother is and if you are tire of Cincinatia
yet? "Your truly
"Peter Curran
"Rosena Hotel
"corner 18th St. and Wabaush,"
THE MASKED WAR 215
While my operatives were in the Cumminsville
section of Cincinnati, securing correspondence and
information for the preparation of the case for the
people, they hunted up the records, church and civil,
of the McNamara family. My purpose was to
leave nothing of their lives covered. For the
mother of these two prisoners we had nothing but
sympathy. She had ever been a hard working,
religious, good woman and in her old age she was
to suffer the sorrow of having two of her sons
bring her head down in disgrace.
But the mother of the McNamaras had had sor-
row and bitter sorrow before. Her husband was
a drunken and quarrelsome man and sank into
viciousness. He was arrested charged with a crime
of such a nature that it can only be referred to as
moral turpitude. He was convicted and sentenced
to prison for life. Through the efforts of J. J.
McNamara he was released from prison about
1909. He never returned to his home and is said
to be living in Columbus, Ohio. Before J. J. Mc-
Namara and J. B. McNamara were arrested they
are said to have supplied him with funds sufficient
to keep him going.
In the records of St. Patrick's Church, Cummins-
ville, we found that John Joseph McNamara was
born December 23rd, 1876, and that James Barna-
bas McNamara was born June 2nd, 1882. There
were two other boys, Robert A. and Daniel F.
There were two girls also, Alice and Marie.
216 THE MASKED WAR
We found that J. B. McNamara had been sent
to a House of Refuge as an incorrigible when he
was a boy. Another interesting discovery was made
in the search for incidents of his childhood days.
His great boyhood friend was named Bryce. J.
B.'s mother did the washing for the Bryce family.
It was from familiarity with the name Bryce that
he chose the alias "J. B. Bryce," when he went to
the Coast to destroy the Los Angeles Times. As
a boy he had a reputation for evil. He was always
in deviltry and was considered a tough one. When
the name "J. B. Bryce" began to appear in the
papers in connection with the crime at Los Angeles
some of his mother's neighbors declared that the
Bryce was not the real James Bryce but was Jim
McNamara. In time we found the real James
Bryce and had him for a witness to show why J. B.
McNamara would use this name. Of course we
had signatures on hotel registers showing the "J.
B. Bryce" we had been seeking and we also had
signatures of J. B. McNamara which showed that
the same hand wrote both names. We followed the
careers of J. J. and J. B. from their birth to the
day of their arrest and at no time was there a
single chance under the sun of their getting, fairly,
any other verdict than guilty from twelve men.
Their only hope was bribery and corruption and
the intimidation and kidnapping of witnesses. How
I fought the crooked plans operated for them
while they waited trial will take several subsequent
THE MASKED WAR 217
chapters. At present I shall continue with the dis-
closures of the personal side of the lives of these
two prisoners, following, step by step, the down-
ward career of each.
CHAPTER XXXI
JIM MCNAMARA LOSES HIS NERVE
The career of J. B. McNamara, the younger of
the two brothers, was just the sort of career any
of his friends might have predicted for him. In-
corrigible in youth, he grew up to be regardless of
all decency and law. Physically he was weak and
of the tubercular type. He could not stand dissipa-
tion and went down under it, lower and lower.
The younger man became a printer and got a
smattering of learning, but not enough to help him
out of the dregs into which he had quickly dropped.
Although a great deal of money was paid to him
from the union treasury by his brother he never
saved a cent of it or put a cent of it to any other
use than buying liquor or the favors of the lowest
type of women. Immediately following the destruc-
tion of the Times Building and the killing of the
twenty-one people who perished through his act,
he left Los Angeles for San Francisco and celebrated
his terrible act by scattering money about in the
lowest of drinking dives, spending it on women of
the streets, negro singers and cafe musicians. He
had no conscience, no trace of it. He did have
218
THE MASKED WAR 219
fear at times when he would sober up and the list
of his crimes would come before his mind's eye.
He had this fear in the woods of Wisconsin after
his pals left him. Once again he had it and he had
it so greatly that he went to pieces. He knew that
the Burns agency had been employed to investigate
the destruction of the Times, but months had gone
by and he had never uncovered a shadow and there
had been no hint that he or his brother was sus-
pected. Still, at times, he would ask himself if it
was not possible that some one was watching him
and that among his drunken friends there was a
spy.
The occasion when J. B.'s nerve gave way com-
pletely was when he was in Ballagh, Neb., soon
after the Times disaster. He was met there on a
special trip by a friend from Cumminsville, named
Frank Eckhoff. J. B. was keeping under cover by
order of J. J. until he could connect with McMani-
gal for the trip to the wilds of Wisconsin.
The first day the two were in Ballagh together,
J. B. caved in and asked Eckhoff to kill him. He
was seated in the kitchen of the boarding place, a
Savage automatic gun hanging on his breast from a
strap. He could have slipped the weapon from its
holster and ended his life in a second, but he did
not have the nerve to do it.
"I want you to go out hunting with me and kill
me," he told Eckhoff. "You can say it was acci-
dental and it will be getting me out of this trouble
220 THE MASKED WAR
easily. I KNOW THEY ARE GOING TO GET
ME!"
Eckhoff declined to kill him.
J. B. had already told Eckhoff that he and an
Anarchist had blown up the Times and had related
to him how he had wrenched off the gas pipes so
that the smell would give the impression that the
explosion was caused by escaping gas.
The days they spent in Nebraska gave J. B. much
time for reflection and he saw where he had made
many mistakes that should not have been made. He
recalled that he had left some laundry in Los An-
geles and that it had the initials "J. McN." on it.
"They will get me on that damned laundry," he
blurted out one day. "I'll bet there are detectives
going around to every laundry shop in the United
States to see who that stuff belonged to."
He was not very far off on that conjecture for
we did catch up with his laundry with the telltale
initials.
The fear of the gallows had crept into the heart
of this wholesale murderer. He and Eckhoff were
driving in a buggy near Ballagh when an automo-
bile came up behind them. J. B. jumped from the
rig and ran and hid under a bridge, trembling. One
time he saw Eckhoff smiling and he turned on him
savagely and demanded to know if he was going
to give him away. Just before reaching Omaha on
their way to Cumminsville and the McNamara
home, a man came through the coach asking the
THE MASKED WAR 221
names of the passengers as he took a straw vote on
the coming election. This terrified J. B. for a mo-
ment as he thought the man was a detective looking
for "J. B. Bryce."
Eckhoff took the dynamiter home and there J. B.
met his brother, J. J., and told him about the for-
gotten laundry. J. J. found J. B.'s remaining hand-
kerchiefs and other linen with initials and turned
them over to Eckhoff along with some batteries and
bits of fuse, telling him to burn them up so that no
one could trace Jim by them. He also gave Eck-
hoff five alarm clocks to hide. Eckhoff sold them
for the price of a few drinks.
Fear was now striking at the heart of J. J. Mc-
Namara also. When he was ready to start back
to headquarters at Indianapolis he hired Eckhoff
to trail him to the Cumminsville station so that he
would know whether he was being shadowed. He
was being shadowed all right but so skillfully that
Eckhoff was unable to uncover the men having him
under surveillance. We were using what we call
a "long shadow" on J. J.
At the station Eckhoff was paid two dollars by
J. J. for this feeble attempt at uncovering our ex-
pert shadows.
Eckhoff, who lived near the McNamara home,
had known the family for years. He was frequently
used both by J. J. and J. B. as an assistant in vari-
ous jobs and it was Eckhoff to whom J. J. Mc-
Namara made the proposition that he place a dress
222 THE MASKED WAR
suitcase filled with dynamite and a clock under the
seat of a train and blow up his secretary, Miss Dye.
This was during Christmas week of 1 910. J. J.
McNamara had tired of the woman and Miss Dye
knew enough about his affairs to have hanged him.
That it was a time of peace on earth and good will
to men did not lessen the degree of murder in the
heart of J. J. McNamara. He wanted the woman
blown up in the train and explained to Eckhoff how
he could set the clock and leave the train at a sta-
tion before the explosion. The dynamite would
have killed her, wrecked the train and killed many
innocent people besides. He was willing to pay
Eckhoff $200 for carrying out his orders and was
sorry when Eckhoff backed out.
This brings us to the point where we can take
up J. J. McNamara's private life as our operatives
uncovered it.
CHAPTER XXXII
J. J. MCNAMARA AND HIS WOMEN
J. J. McNamara, sometimes described as the
brains of the dynamiting crew, the man who was
given an annual allowance of $12,000 to be ex-
pended as he saw fit for the iron workers during
their strike, had more capacity for self-education
than his weakling brother. He might have led a
useful life and could have advanced from a trade
to a profession, for he did pass an examination for
admittance to practice law. But he never practiced.
When he was made Secretary-Treasurer of the
International Bridge and Structural Iron Workers'
Union he found himself in practical control of the
money that flowed in from the various locals. The
executive board allowed him one thousand dollars
a month to pay the expenses attendant on handling
the strike from headquarters. He could draw this
money in almost any manner he chose, making out
checks to cash or to himself.
While Hockin was trimming McManigal and
while Eckhoff was selling the little clocks for the
price of drinks, and while petty graft and petty
theft were in progress on all sides, J. J. McNamara
223
224 THE MASKED WAR
managed to fatten on the hard-earned money of
those structural iron workers who did actually
work.
Let us look over the list of women on whom he
spent good money of the union. While the actual
workingman on the job was denying his own wife
a new hat or skirt and himself the necessities of
life, so that he would keep his union dues paid up,
J. J. McNamara was passing along the money to
Katherine Kent in Indianapolis. This woman lived
in a house kept by a woman known as Minnie Gray-
son. Katherine Kent was not only a courtesan, but
she also turned out to be crooked in other ways,
and left Indianapolis after being charged with rob-
bing one of her male admirers. McNamara was
Katherine Kent's favorite until she departed the city
suddenly in order to avoid a trip to police head-
quarters.
Then came a very interesting creature of the
gentle sex. Her name was Katherine also, and Mc-
Namara was devoted to her. She was bright and
knowing, and she became deeply interested in labor
affairs. She traveled constantly from one coast to
the other, visiting many cities where open-shop
firms were building. McNamara was putting her
to good use in the masked warfare, for she could
get information at times without creating any sus-
picion where a man would have had no chance at
all. We had reason to believe that she was on Mc-
Namara's pay roll. McNamara was devoted to
THE MASKED WAR 225
her, as was another union man, who came to meet
her in the course of those affairs which brought the
two men together preceding explosions.
Katherine II. had a big wardrobe for the aver-
age woman, changing her dress daily, and she al-
ways had plenty of money. But as far as outsiders
knew she was a woman of no visible means of sup-
port. She was full of life and vim, and went on
hunting and fishing trips with male friends. She
made a number of trips about the country with Mc-
Namara. Finally the other union man asked her to
marry him. He evidently gave her time to think it
over, for she went to a close friend, who afterward
became our informant, and sought advice.
"I don't love this man or care for him enough
to marry him," she told this friend. "What shall
I do?"
"Marry him," advised the friend. "You will
have a home, and this will prevent you from be-
coming a tramp."
The mysterious lady of many country-wide jour-
neyings took the advice. They were married in the
summer of 191 1, and so she passed from the life of
McNamara. She has a home, but at this writing
her husband is in a Federal prison, while McNa-
mara is in San Quentin with fourteen years' impris-
onment before him.
This woman was not only bright, but she was an
exceedingly well versed woman, and with signs of
cultivation. In the light of what our operatives
226 THE MASKED WAR
learned about her past we had reason to believe
that her services came in handy for the McNamara
defense just before the trial of the McNamaras was
called.
Sometimes detectives for opposing sides in a big
case will strike against each other and then there
generally comes a real tug of war. Is it possible
that it was the vivacious and shrewd Miss Kath-
erine II that caused one of our operatives a great
deal of worry in Sonoma, Cal., during November of
191 1 ? Operative No. 25 wrote to Manager O. H.
K. at Portland, Ore., for whom he was working,
informing him about a strange woman who seemed
to be getting in touch with some witnesses he had in
his care for us. In his letter he said:
"Now, about this woman, F. B. W., I am puz-
zled, between you and me. I was to her room to-
night for two hours, and I have won her over and
jollied her along, but she will not commit herself as
to what she is doing or who she is, but she made
this remark to me. I said to her, 'I will meet you
later perhaps,' and she said with a little laugh, 'But
you will get yours before then.' I asked her to ex-
plain, but she just laughed. She then said later to
me: 'I wish we could be friends; I like you very
much,' and I said, 'We can, can't we?' She said,
'I wish it might be so.'
"So you can see that there is something in the
wind somewhere. Then she also said, 'Oh, I knew
you were coming here; I was looking for you.' Can
THE MASKED WAR 227
you beat that? Oh, it is a nice puzzle, and with
N. W. being sick and and his woman, and
then have something like this turn up. It certainly
has got me jumping. But if she gets anything on
me she certainly will have to see me first, as I am
watching her every move.
"I settled our bill for the week last night as I
did not want it to run on. I do not think we will
stay here over a week longer, as it is pretty expen-
sive, but I will have to have more money before
next week. With kind regards and best wishes, I
remain,
"Faithfully yours,
"J. M. F.
"Cash balance on hand to date, $35.75.
"No Time:
"No expense:
"Reported
"Portland, 11-10-11."
Incidentally, we had a bright little lady working
for us also on the Coast during the summer before
the trial. How simple and yet how disarming are
the methods of capable women detectives may be
shown in one task she performed for us. She was
known as Operative C. M., and her "subject" was
stopping in the Hotel Manx, San Francisco. Her
duty was to find out just who this man was. He
was going under the name of Kelly. She was also
to find out the number of his room and report to
the San Francisco manager.
228 THE MASKED WAR
Here is the way she performed the task:
"Investigator C. M. reports as follows:
"Acting under instructions of Manager W. A.
M., at 6 p. m., I telephoned to the Hotel Manx,
and asked for Mr. Kelly. I was immediately con-
nected with a room, and a male voice answered.
I said, 'What room is this?' and the voice answered,
'532.' Then I said, 'That is the wrong number,'
and hung up.
"I then proceeded to the Hotel Manx, accom-
panied by investigator H. M. I left him on Powell
Street, in front of the hotel, went into the hotel,
and took the elevator to the fifth floor. I proceeded
to room 532, and knocked on the door. While I
stood there waiting for an answer a man who I
know to be 'Larry Sullivan' walked up behind me,
and said, 'Who are you looking for?' I replied
that I was looking for a young lady who had sent
word that she would be at the Hotel Manx this aft-
ernoon. He said, 'Well, you have the wrong room.
This is my room,' and attempted to become quite
friendly with me. I assumed the part of an embar-
rassed girl, and said I would go to the office, and
see if I had made a mistake in the hotel. 'Sullivan'
accompanied me to the office, and assisted me in at-
tempting to locate my friend.
"At the desk I asked for Miss Genevieve Van
Hulfen, and, of course, was told that she was not
there.
"I then left the hotel, walked north on Powell
THE MASKED WAR 229
Street to Geary, east on Geary to Stockton, south
on Stockton to O'Farrell, west on O'Farrell to
Powell, where I met Investigator H. M.
"I gave Investigator H. M. the number of Sulli-
van's room, and returned to the office at 7 p. m.,
at which time I discontinued.
"No expense.
"Time: one-half day.
it
"Reported S. F.,
"July 29th, 191 1.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE TRAGEDY OF MARY DYE
When Katherine II was disposed of, J. J. Mc-
Namara turned his charms toward a young woman
he employed as a stenographer. Her name was
Mary Dye, and she was from an Ohio town.
Miss Dye was a quick and efficient worker, and
employer and employee got along famously to-
gether. As they became more intimate the formali-
ties faded away, and the secretary-treasurer of the
International Union and the stenographer called
each other by their first names. Miss Dye finally
got to know just about as much as anyone in the
labor councils knew as to what was going on. J. J.
McNamara first realized the danger of this when
she opened his mail one day and found in one of
his letters a clipping telling about a dynamiting.
"Oh, Joe!" exclaimed Miss Dye from her desk,
"what do you think? They have blown up that
scab job." She held up the clipping and shook it.
It was then that McNamara got frightened. He
had gone too far with the girl to drop her suddenly
and she knew everything. He had paid her various
and considerable sums of money. There was only
one safe way, and that was to kill her. The
230
THE MASKED WAR 231
Christmas week following this incident of the clip-
ping she was to visit her parents in Ohio. McNa-
mara gave her the Christmas-week holiday and then
tried to get J. B., his brother, or Eckhoff, to put
a bomb under her seat in the train and blow her
to fragments. There might have been more brutal
crimes contemplated by other fiends in history, but
this proposition struck me as being about as fiendish
as any I had ever read or heard of.
Miss Dye started out with a reputation as a good
and hard-working girl.
In 1909 Miss Dye lived with modesty and strict
economy in the Bertha Ballard Home for Working
Girls, No. 411 North Delaware Street, Indian-
apolis. One of the aims of the people back of the
Home is to protect the working girl from influences
that would be harmful for her. A girl enjoying the
privileges of the Home would have to bear a good
reputation.
Miss Dye was bright and made friends. Her
conduct seemed all that it should be, and she set
forth to get employment in Indianapolis. She was
both stenographer and bookkeeper, and knew her
business thoroughly. She had little trouble find-
ing a position, but her whole life might have been
changed for the better had she landed in any other
office than the one she did. J. J. McNamara em-
ployed her, and she took up her duties in the office
of the International Union.
It is not any sport to hit a man when he is down
232 THE MASKED WAR
— if you consider J. J. McNamara worthy of any
sympathetic consideration; but the man who was
really knocked down and out in this masked war
was not the head dynamiter, but the honest working-
man in the craft of iron worker, the man with a
wife and children, a job and a decent method of
living. The honest iron worker was robbed of his
money for years by the spenders and murderers he
trusted as officers of his union, and his organiza-
tion was set back a good twenty-five years by the
exposures that followed their arrests and convic-
tion. No honest worker will enjoy reading the story
of Mary Dye.
We learned from the lady in charge of the
Home for Working Girls that Miss Dye lived there
for about eighteen months during 1909 and 19 10.
After she secured employment at union headquar-
ters McNamara called on her at the Home and was
received by her just as other girls received their
men friends. So far everything was fair and open
and above board. Soon the other girls heard from
Miss Dye that she was engaged to McNamara.
She called him "Mac," and it looked as if another
romance was shaping in the Home.
The matron, a Miss Hyatt, informed us in our
investigation that McNamara's intentions seemed
to be of the best. She and the girls in the Home
had every reason to believe them so, especially after
McNamara sent his mother, one of his sisters and
a brother to visit the girl in the Home.
THE MASKED WAR 233
If J. J. McNamara was really in love with this
girl it seems inconceivable that the affair should end
as it did. If this manner of approach to her was
designed to bring about her betrayal then the man's
heart was about as black as it is possible for a hu-
man to carry in his breast. McNamara's people
visited Miss Dye more than once, and this served
to wipe out any possibility of suspicion on the part
of the matron and the girl's chums.
Miss Dye could be trusted, under the circum-
stances, and so when she absented herself from the
Home for days at a time nothing was thought of it.
She did really visit Mrs. McNamara in Cummins-
ville, but at other times she was away on trips with
the secretary-treasurer of the International. She
explained that her duties compelled her to visit dif-
ferent cities and she told Miss Hyatt at various
times incidents that happened when she was away.
These incidents showed how faithful the girl was to
her lover. She told Miss Hyatt on one occasion
that when she was in Cleveland McNamara met
President Ryan at the depot by telegraphic appoint-
ment. Miss Dye went with him to meet Ryan and
stood off at a distance. The two labor men got in
conversation and she noticed two men who managed
to get close to them. Her suspicions were aroused
and she watched them until she felt certain that
they were detectives. Then she went to McNamara
and told him that he was being watched.
On another occasion Miss Dye told Miss Hyatt
234 THE MASKED WAR
that she had received a note asking her to come to
police headquarters in Indianapolis. This was in
January or February, 19 10. It is probable that
at this time McNamara was getting a little tired
of the girl, but the girl was still staunch and faith-
ful. The Indianapolis detectives, she told Miss
Hyatt, made her an offer of $5,000 cash for a cer-
tain letter in McNamara's files. They offered to
give her this money if she got the letter to head-
quarters for only a half hour. They promised its
safe return to her and she could replace it in the
files of the union's secretary-treasurer. She refused
the offer.
Employer and employee were now living a life
which required frequent explanations on the part
of the girl if she was to remain in the Home and
pass as an unmarried woman. To some of her
friends she said that she was married to the labor
man, and she showed some of them the picture of
a baby boy which she said was her son. To Miss
Hyatt she said that the picture was that of her little
brother. Finally she withdrew from the Home and
took a room at No. 207 North Street, where Mc-
Namara had a room. During this time McNamara
had been pretty lavish with the union's funds and
had given Miss Dye $300 in a lump sum at one
time, quite a cash gift for a working girl.
In the North Street house just the sort of com-
plication that would be caused by a man of McNa-
mara's caliber came about. He had exerted his
THE MASKED WAR 235
charms to win the landlady, and he won her. She
was in love with him, very much in love with him,
we learned from other lodgers. So when Miss Dye
came to the house this "heart-breaking" dynamiter
had two ladies hanging at his heels. Hockin, Jim
McNamara and other men visited J. J. in this house,
and they would remain there for days at a time
when there was anything important afoot. When
McNamara was out of town, on one of his trips,
he would send letters and postcards to the lovesick
landlady daily.
J. J. managed to keep the two women apart for
some time, but his room connected with that occu-
pied by Miss Dye, and the landlady became jealous.
There was a scene between the women, and Miss
Dye was ordered from the house. She went away,
but returned later and showed the landlady what
she said was a marriage certificate, telling her that
she and J. J. had been married in Cincinnati.
McNamara now wanted to get rid of Miss Dye,
but she hung on. He had plenty of the union's
money to pay her, but she wanted something other
than money. She had given him everything a
woman could give a man and was now being cast
into the discard. McNamara finally froze out the
girl. To get rid of her he kept his office closed for
a month, only using it in the night time.
Miss Dye was without a job and without her
lover. She became acquainted with a man named
Meyers, and McNamara heard of this. This
27,6 THE MASKED WAR
knowledge promised him a means of getting rid of
the girl for all time. He sent word to Cummins-
ville for Frank Eckhoff, his odd-jobs man, to come
to Indianapolis. We secured an affidavit backed by
evidence from Eckhoff which gave us the story of
how McNamara, by the most heartless means,
finally got rid of the girl.
"J. J. told me when I reached headquarters,"
swore Eckhoff, "that he wanted me to shadow Miss
Dye and a man named Meyers. He described her
to me and told me what kind of clothes she wore so
that I could pick her out. He said that she seemed
to be able to spot every other man he sent to
shadow her, and explained to me that as I was
short she would not find it so easy to spot me. I
had seen Miss Dye a number of times, as he had
brought her to his mother's home in Quarry Street,
Cumminsville.
"After receiving J. J.'s instruction I went out, and
at 1 1 o'clock at night I picked up Miss Dye stand-
ing on a street corner with the man named Meyers.
They went to the Hotel Morton, and I followed
them. They registered under their right names and
took separate rooms. Then I went over to J. J.'s
office and told him where the two were stopping.
Hockin then went over to the hotel and found out
what floor they had their rooms on. He got a
room for me on the same floor.
"I went to the room under the name of 'Willis'
and took a position where I could watch them that
THE MASKED WAR 237
night. I remained the next day and night, watching
them.
"Miss Dye and Meyers went to a show the sec-
ond night, and when they returned they both went
to Miss Dye's room. I called up J. J., who was
waiting in his office at union headquarters, and told
him. He said for me to stay there and watch,
which I did. Then I called him up again. He told
me to come over to his office and I went. Hockin,
J. J. and I then went over to the hotel together.
Hockin got a boy to take a fake telegram to Miss
Dye's room, and when she opened the door J. J.
pushed his way in.
"Meyers was not there. She was alone.
"J. J. remained in her room talking, and then
came to my room, where Hockin and I were wait-
ing. He did not tell us what Miss Dye had said,
but he said practically that she would not bother
him any more. He told me that he wanted to get
her on a charge of blackmail. He said he had
given her $300 on account of one child, and that
she wanted $300 more, claiming that he was the fa-
ther of another child. He said that it was for this
reason that he wanted to catch her with Meyers.
J. J. and Hockin left, and I remained in the hotel.
I heard Miss Dye making a complaint that there
was a man in room 60 who was spotting her, and
so I got out and found a room elsewhere. J. J.
gave me five dollars cash for this work and paid
my expenses."
238 THE MASKED WAR
That ends the romance of Miss Dye of Marietta,
Ohio.
J. J. McNamara having failed to bring about her
murder, murdered what reputation she had left
after he had finished with her.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE STORY OF THE ODD-JOBS MAN
The most careful of criminals will leave an open-
ing for their detection at some time or other. For
five years of the masked war the McNamaras and
their fellow conspirators covered their work very
well. But their success became their undoing. They
became brazen and careless. In the handling of
Frank Eckhoff, the odd-jobs man, both the McNa-
maras were so disregardful of their own interests
that in the end they gave him to us as one of our
most important witnesses.
Eckhoff was a weak brother, content with small
jobs and small pay, and not used to large sums. He
was no two-hundred-dollar man, as was J. B. Mc-
Namara or McManigal. Fifty dollars was a large
sum to him.
After the arrests of the McNamaras and Mc-
Manigal we heard of the intimate friendship be-
tween J. B. McNamara and a Cumminsville man.
All that we knew was that the man's name was
Frank, and that he lived in Cincinnati somewhere.
I sent operatives to that city to find this one
"Frank" from the many other "Franks" there.
239
240 THE MASKED WAR
Of course, by elimination, we got down to only
those men having Frank for a first name and who
were known to the McNamara family. We finally
got Frank Eckhoff. Agents for the McNamaras
had reached him ahead of us, but they had done the
work of boys. They got him to sign a statement
that he had never helped the McNamaras blow up
any places or was paid money by them to do any
work of that sort.
Such a statement was useless to the defense. We
went after him and finally prevailed on him to tell
everything that he knew. We got a sworn affidavit
from him, and we had a witness who would fully
back up the McManigal confession and drive home
the charges against the prisoners. But Eckhoff had
already given a statement to the effect that he knew
nothing against the two men, and we could not tell
when he would turn around and repudiate his af-
fidavit. To avoid any influences that the defense
would start to bring about such a change we pro-
ceeded to isolate Mr. Eckhoff. He disappeared.
Two of our operatives also disappeared. Only the
two operatives, myself and Raymond Burns, knew
where he was. The defense searched high and low
for him, but there was to be no capture of this
prisoner by them. We were running no chance of
having him rushed away as Mrs. Caplan was
rushed away. Our operatives kept moving about
the country with Eckhoff, all the time getting from
him everything that he could recall in addition to
THE MASKED WAR 241
what he had put in his affidavit. They went from
town to town, leaving no tracks behind them, but
always keeping in touch with me. And as they did
this we had operatives going over all the ground
opened up by Eckhoff's affidavit and verifying every
word of his sworn statement just as we had verified
the confession of McManigal.
Eliminating the information given us by him con-
cerning J. J. McNamara and Miss Dye, already re-
lated, Eckhoff's sworn statement of his share in the
masked war was as follows:
"Frank Eckhoff, being duly sworn, deposes and
says:
"That I resided on Kentucky Avenue in Cummins-
ville, Ohio, with my parents for eight years previ-
ous to February 28th, 191 1, on which date I was
married and moved to my present address, 4168
Hamilton Avenue, Cumminsville, Ohio.
"That I have been acquainted with J. J. McNa-
mara, J. B. McNamara and Robert McNamara
and their family for the past eight years. I am par-
ticularly well acquainted with J. B. who is fa-
miliarly known to me as Jim. We loafed together
a great deal about the corners in the vicinity al-
ready described and some time in the year 1908,
J. B. McNamara asked me if I wanted to make
$50. I told him I did, and asked him what he
wanted me to do. He replied evasively by saying
that it was a matter in the interest of the unions,
242 THE MASKED WAR
and that he wanted me to blow up some iron work
that was being erected by a non-union firm, the
Riter-Conley Company, the particular job that he
wanted me to blow up being on Sargent Street, Cin-
cinnati. I accompanied him to the place and looked
over the situation. He told me that it would be an
easy matter to carry the dynamite down there and
set it off, and if anybody was in the neighborhood
I needn't lay it down, but could bring it back. I
told him that I was afraid to do this. A day or
two later I saw in the newspapers that this place
had been dynamited, and while J. B. did not tell me
so, I was sure in my own mind that he had done
the trick.
"Some time subsequent to this, in the winter of
1 910, he asked me to take a trip with him to Pitts-
burg, which I did. We registered at the St. Charles
Hotel in Pittsburg. I do not know what name he
put down, but I registered under my own name.
The next day, after lunch, we took a train to Beaver
Falls, got off and walked out and looked over the
Beaver Falls bridge, which J. B. told me was being
erected by the McClintic-Marshall Company. He
pointed out the place and said, 'That is the job we
want to blow up.'
"Then we walked to Rochester, and he conducted
me to an old vacant building on the outskirts of the
town, near the river. We went in the basement of
this place, and he got a shovel which he had hidden
in under the rafters and dug up some earth, then
THE MASKED WAR 243
lifted a board and showed me three cans of stuff,
which he said was nitroglycerin. Then he went to
another corner of the building where he dug an-
other can up. He took, the stopper out of this can,
smelled it, and said that it was still frozen. Then
he replaced all four cans where he had found them.
He told me he was going to use this stuff on the
Beaver Falls bridge.
"At the time he wanted me to carry the stuff down
and blow up the Cincinnati job, he explained that
there was a clockwork attachment, and I would
have plenty of time to set it down and get away as
it wouldn't go off; if I did not set it down there
would be time for me to get back to him and he
could disconnect it.
"We walked from Rochester back to Beaver, got
the train, and returned to Pittsburg. That night he
left me at Pittsburg, and said he was going down to
look over the job. He returned later and said that
the place was so well guarded that it was impossible
to get by the watchmen. We kept our room at the
St. Charles Hotel two days and a night while we
were making the trip down to Rochester. Then he
sent me back home and stayed there himself.
"When he came back from Pittsburg he didn't
say anything about the Beaver Falls job or any
other jobs for a long time. He came to me and
asked me if I wanted to do some work for him
around his house, grading and moving stone, and I
went to work for him."
244 THE MASKED WAR
Eckhoff here swore to the share he played in the
freezing out of Mary Dye by J. J. McNamara and
Hockin. He went to Cincinnati after finishing the
job of shadowing Miss Dye. His affidavit then
goes on as follows :
"I loafed around for a time. J. B. was also there
in Cincinnati, and one day he told me that J. J.
might want me to go to Pittsburg for him in a few
days, and I said I would. In the meantime Jim
went out of town — I don't know where he went.
A couple of days later I got a letter from J. J.,
which I burned, containing a money order in my
name, payable at Cincinnati for $25. I think this
was in April or May, 19 10. In the letter he stated
that he wanted me to go to Pittsburg and look up
Miss Dye at her address, 509 Holland Avenue, out
in the suburbs. I shadowed the house long enough
to find out that Meyers and Miss Dye were living
together at the address given, and then wrote J. J.
from Pittsburg to this effect. His instructions had
been to stay only a few days, so when I had written
him I went back to Cincinnati.
"I saw J. J. the following Sunday in Cincinnati,
and he asked me how much money I had left. I
told him only $7, and he said he would give Jim
some money for me. When I saw Jim he gave me
$3, which made $10 and my expenses for this work.
While I was in Pittsburg on this trip I stopped
at a boarding house in Williamsburg, but don't re-
THE MASKED WAR 245
member the name. Think I could tell the house if
I saw it.
"I knocked around Cincinnati without any regu-
lar job during the summer and fall. I think it was
a few weeks after I saw the accounts of the Los An-
geles explosion in the papers, when J. J. called me
up one day on the long distance 'phone at the saloon
on the corner near where I lived, Fred Haus' saloon,
at Colerain and Lieber Avenues. He, J. J., called
up three or four times during the day and as I was
away each time, finally left word with either Haus
or my sister that I should come to Indianapolis. I
went to Indianapolis that night on a late train about
eleven o'clock. Got to Indianapolis early the next
morning and called J. J. up about eleven o'clock.
He told me to come to the office, which I did. He
then asked me if I wanted to make a trip to Nebras-
ka for him. He never told me what had happened
but told me he wanted me to go out there and tell
Jim to get away from there. He said he didn't think
Jim was there yet and that I would probably get
there about a day later than Jim. He told me to
tell Jim to go to work somewhere; that it didn't
make a damn bit of difference how much he got for
the work. He gave me $75 in cash for the trip.
I went with him to a bank near his office where he
got the money, which he handed me in the bank.
"I took the Monon from Indianapolis to Chicago,
the Northwestern to Omaha, changed trains there,
and bought a ticket for O'Neil, Neb. Had to stay
246 THE MASKED WAR
at O'Neil that night and stopped at a little place
near the station where I registered under my right
name, I think from Omaha. I went to a livery
stable that night and tried to get a team but had
to wait until the next morning for one. The next
morning, about 6 130 or 7 o'clock, a man drove me
to Chambers, about 22 miles; and from there I had
to hire another team to take me down to Ballagh,
about 14 miles more. I arrived there around 4 or
5 o'clock that afternoon. Jim and Jim's mother
and his brother-in-law and his sister, Alice, were
there. The family saw the rig coming and came
out to meet me. Jim did not come out. I found
him sitting on a bed in the house, cleaning a shotgun.
He was surprised to see me and said he thought it
was Joe. We took a walk outside and he asked
me what was the matter. He said, 'I guess Joe sent
you out,' and asked me if he was coming. I told
him no, and told him that Joe wanted him to leave
there as soon as possible and go to Sioux City, Iowa,
or any other little town and go to work; that J. J.
said to suit himself about where he wanted to go
and that he didn't have to worry about the money
as J. J. would send some to him when he needed it.
He looked kind of down-hearted and said to his
mother, 'I'm in trouble, Mum.' She asked him what
the matter was and he replied, 'Oh, just a little
trouble; I have got to leave to-morrow.' His
mother seemed to be worried about it, and when
she got me away from the others asked me quietly
THE MASKED WAR 247
what the trouble was. I told her I didn't know, but
that J. J. had sent me out. I stayed there that night.
We, J. B. and I, got up early the next morning,
about 4 o'clock, and Howard Knabb hitched up and
drove us to O'Neil, about 40 miles. We got there
about half past two in the afternoon, and had lunch
at a restaurant there. Got a train from there at
about 4 o'clock for Omaha, and from there came on
back to Chicago, where we checked our suitcases
at the depot and waited until nighttime to get a
train for Indianapolis.
"When we left Ballagh, J. B. was wearing a
brown slouch felt hat, a brown suit that looked new
but was badly wrinkled and hadn't been pressed,
and, I think, black shoes. He told me that he had
bought this suit on a jump and asked me how I liked
it. After we got on the train he put on a pair of
spectacles and wore them all the way back to In-
dianapolis. I had never seen him wear glasses
before,
"We reached Indianapolis the next morning. I
called up J. J. at his office and told him I was back
and that J. B. came back with me. Then while
J. B. waited at the depot, I went up to J. J.'s office.
I told him where J. B. was and how he was dressed
— he asked me about that. J. J. told me to have
J. B. meet him on the corner of some street, up
near the Court House and Washington and that he,
J. J., would drive by there with a horse and buggy
and take J. B. for a drive. J. J. got the rig at
248 THE MASKED WAR
Wood's Livery Stable and met J. B. at the place
designated. They said they were going for a drive
out in the country and expected to be back about 1 1
o'clock that morning. I was to call him up when
they got back, but I called up about 1 1 o'clock and
as they were not there I took the train for Cincin-
nati about 12 o'clock. I had already been given
$17 (the amount I had left after taking out my
expenses) which J. J. told me I could keep for my
trouble.
"While we were at Ballagh, J. B. told me that
he had come back from the west to Chicago and
then had gone from Chicago out to Ballagh. He
did not tell me anything he had done, but from
everything I knew, I was under the impression that
he was keeping under cover on account of the Los
Angeles matter. That was one reason why I left
Indianapolis and got back to Cincinnati as soon as
I could.
"Some time after my trip out West, I wrote a
letter to J. J. asking him to loan me $20 and re-
ceived a reply stating that he didn't have it. Sub-
sequent to this, Bob McNamara called at my house
and said that Jim was in town again and wanted
me to meet him at 5th Street and Central Avenue,
Cincinnati. I was kind of 'leary' about it as I didn't
know what he wanted; but I went down and met him
and we had supper together. He asked me if I
had ever asked J. J. for work and I told him no,
but that I had asked him to lend me $20. He said
THE MASKED WAR 249
that J. J. had told him about that, and that J. J.
didn't have the money or he would have given it
to me. J. B. asked me if I had any money and he
gave me $5. Then he asked me to pay for the
supper, which I did. He came back to Cummins-
ville with me and went to his own home and I went
to mine. J. B. only stayed a few days and then
left but didn't say where he was going.
"About three weeks after that I wrote again to
J. J. and asked him to lend me $25. He wrote me
a letter, refusing again.
"Just before his arrest, I wrote to J. J. again
and said that if he didn't send me the money that I
asked for that I would turn over to the other side
and get it and said I wanted $50. He sent me
a telegram (Postal) signing his own name, I think,
which read: 'I am sending you a letter in to-day's
mail.' This was addressed to me at my house. On
the following Thursday, I got a letter with a money
order for $50 in it. The letter said, 'I am lend-
ing you $50 and will talk matters over with you
when I see you again in Cincinnati.' The Saturday
night after that, he was arrested.
"After his arrest, about four weeks later, I think,
I wrote to Hockin and asked for $125. He never
answered my letter and I didn't hear anything from
him until Bob McNamara came to me and said
Hockin told him I wanted $125 and asked him
what I wanted it for. I told Bob that I had it com-
ing to me — that they owed it to me (which they
250 THE MASKED WAR
didn't). And Bob said the lawyers up there said
that they could do what they wanted to me on a
charge of blackmail; and that Hockin had said if
I was starving to death he would give me a few
dollars out of his own pocket. I told Bob to tell
Hockin that I wasn't starving to death.
"Then, after that, I wrote Mr. Burns anony-
mously, telling him to reply to George Williams,
General Delivery, but I never went to the General
Delivery to ask for a letter.
"I neglected to state that previous to asking for
the $125, Bob McNamara came to me and said that
two lawyers wanted to see me down town. I went
down with Bob — he told me not to let anybody know
about it — and he introduced me to Keegan and Har-
rington at the Hotel Haviland. They got my state-
ment and asked me whether I had ever seen Mc-
Namara with any dynamite, whether I ever carried
any for him or saw him making any bombs and
whether I had any letters from him. I told them
'no' to every question, but every statement I made
to them was false. I signed the statement but did
not swear to it.
"Right after I made this statement, Detectives
Shafer, Ball and McDevitt of the Cincinnati Police
Department called at my house. I told them I
didn't know anything. I lied to them for the pur-
pose of shielding McNamara and also omitted to
tell them anything about the statement to Har-
rington.
THE MASKED WAR 251
"Then Detective Shafer and Charles F. Trotter
of the Burns Agency called on me and took me down
to headquarters, where they asked me about my
employers. I voluntarily made a statement to them
of my own free will, without any urging on the part
of the police officials. I told them the whole story
from beginning to end, and they asked me to come
to Indianapolis and I volunteered to accompany
them.
"Shortly after his trip to Rochester, J. B. Mc-
Namara sent me to Cincinnati to purchase ^2
dozen dry cell batteries No. 5. I purchased these
at some electrical supply store on 4th Street near
Plum, and I think they had red wrappings. Some
young man waited on me. They cost 15 or 25 or
30 cents apiece.
"At different times I also bought for him about
Yz dozen gallon cans like painters have. I bought
them at Ira D. Washburn's place on Central Ave-
nue near Court Street, Cincinnati. He always
wanted corks with them. He didn't tell me what
he wanted them for.
"Just before the Cincinnati explosion, I was at
the home of J. B. one day and he took me up on
the hill near his home and said he had some nitro-
glycerin hidden there and wanted to look at it. He
found three quart bottles filled with nitroglycerin
hidden alongside of a log. He smelled of it and
said it wasn't very strong and then poured it out
on the ground and broke the bottles. He thought
252 THE MASKED WAR
there were four quarts there but he could only find
three.
"J. B. always told me in a joking way that he
wanted the batteries for the door bells up at the
house. In speaking of nitroglycerin, J. B. referred
to it at least once as 'soup.' He said that was what
the cracksmen called it.
"Just after the explosion in October and before
I went to Ballagh, J. J. gave me four clocks one
night in Cincinnati and told me to keep them for
him. They were small repeating alarm clocks with
the name 'Junior Tattoo' on the front of them and
were made by the New Haven Clock Company.
J. J. said that he wanted these clocks again, but I
was broke, and with a young man named McEvoy,
who lives on Whittier Street, we sold the four clocks
to the following parties :
I to Robert Eckel, locksmith, at 4464 ( ?)
Hamilton Avenue, near Chase, for 60c.
1 to a saloon keeper at the Keller House,
Colerain and Hoffman Streets, for 50c.
2 at Elmore and Spring Grove Avenues; one
to a saloon keeper and one to a man in the
place; got about $1 for these two.
"At the same time that J. J. McNamara gave me
the clocks he also gave me a couple of handkerchiefs
and several pairs of cuffs and told me to burn them
up, which I did. He also gave me a piece of fuse
THE MASKED WAR 253
with powder in it, about half a roll, which I cut in
pieces and burned.
"(Signed) Frank Eckhoff.
"Subscribed and sworn to before me this 7th day
of November, 191 1.
"William S. Garber, Notary Public."
CHAPTER XXXV
DEATH THREATS TO WITNESSES
From the time of the arrests of the McNamaras
and McManigal until December ist, 191 1, when
the two brothers confessed their guilt in court in
Los Angeles, my agency never for a second relaxed
its efforts to make good their case and also get in
readiness the material that would aid the United
States Government in prosecuting the labor men
who had joined in the dynamite conspiracy.
Every possible effort to beat us out was made by
the agents for the defense. Threats of murder
were openly made to witnesses, evidence was manu-
factured or destroyed, plans were laid to kill me,
as I have told before, my offices were broken into
and searched, bribes were offered my men and the
veniremen drawn for the jury. One man, employed
by counsel for the defense, was caught red-handed
bribing a juror the day before the McNamaras
pleaded guilty. Detective Biddinger, traveling
from Chicago to Los Angeles with important docu-
mentary evidence, was offered a large sum of money
if he would permit himself to be hit over the head
and the evidence taken from him.
254
THE MASKED WAR 255
All the while there was one long and bitter roar
against me. I was accused of planting the dyna-
mite, General Otis was accused of engaging in a
frame-up and mass meetings were held all over the
country where money was raised for the defense
and where the flame of hate against Capital was
fanned.
As early as June, 191 1, we learned that Tveit-
moe, the "Old Man" of the Pacific Coast, was
planning to get a spy from the defense within our
own ranks. We provided him with one, Investiga-
tor E. W. McK. On the 9th of June a representa-
tive of Tveitmoe approached our man. He ex-
plained that the "Old Man" was very anxious to be
put wise to the inside methods of Burns. He also
wanted to get information as to how I had success-
fully landed the guilty men in the land fraud cases
in Oregon. He said that Tveitmoe was out of the
city but that he (our man) would hear from him
on his return. Tveitmoe's agent gave our man the
information that efforts were being made to have
a general strike of all the unions in the country so
that on the day the trial started not a wheel would
turn or a hammer be heard in the whole land.
My operative took in everything that was said
to him. Tveitmoe's man explained that gas had
caused the Times explosion and that the defense
would prove it. The defense would prove that the
men employed on the paper had been complaining
of escaping gas for two weeks and that the very
256 THE MASKED WAR
families that had been bereft of their wage-earners
would swear to this. The widows and children of
the murdered men would testify, he said, that the
men who were killed had complained of the escap-
ing gas. He said also that there were union men
employed by the Times and that they would aid in
the defense by giving testimony to prove that gas
had caused the destruction of the plant and the
loss of twenty-one lives.
But the first and most desperate move, declared
the informant who thought that he was getting next
to one of my men to betray our plans, was to bring
a halt to all industry and thus frighten the jury and
the judge and all concerned. Money was pouring
in for the defense and Darrow and his aides had
all that they could ask for.
Besides threatening to murder our witnesses if
they persisted in telling the truth, the agents for the
accused men hired two assassins and paid them in
advance to kill District Attorney Fredericks and
General Otis, the owner of the Times, if a verdict
was brought in against the McNamaras. The plan
or idea was, perhaps, that this double killing would
frighten the successor to the district attorney and
that a half-hearted fight would be made against an
appeal.
The man who gave us the information about the
hiring of the gunmen was John Love, a prosperous
business man, mine owner and courageous citizen
of Denver. Mr. Love said that while on a trip to
THE MASKED WAR 257
Colorado Springs, October 16th, he sat behind two
men in a coach. From their conversation he made
out that they had met in Denver and were on their
way to attend the McNamara trial in Los Angeles.
They had a bottle of whiskey, which they used fre-
quently and their voices rose in conversation. One
of them had come over the Rock Island and the
other over the Burlington to Denver. He could
not help but hear all of their talk. When one of
the men turned he saw a button of the Workmen
of the World on his lapel.
One of the men told the other that he had been
given $1,000 while the other said he had been
given $500. For this money they were to kill
Fredericks and Otis if the case went against the
McNamaras. An old Englishwoman on her way to
the Coast was sitting opposite Mr. Love. She heard
the talk of the two gunmen and leaned over to Mr.
Love and asked him if he thought that the men
would murder two people in cold blood for money.
Mr. Love was exceedingly anxious to avoid any
notoriety but his sense of duty was such that he
gave the information. He described both men to
our operatives. The man who got the $1,000 wore
his hair long, his neck was unshaven and his brow
was receding. The other man pulled out his
wallet to prove that he had received his five hundred
dollars and counted it on his knee. Mr. Love saw
this done and saw that some of the bills were fifty
dollar certificates.
258 THE MASKED WAR
This will sound as pretty desperate business and
some people who are comfortably remote from the
underworld may even question it or say it is too
much like a dime novel. But we had every reason
to believe that assassins were easily hired in this
case.
Desperadoes do not belong to any one section of
the country or to any one period of time. These
two gunmen were of the same stamp as J. J., who
was a product of existence to-day. It is easy to be-
lieve that J. J. would have stopped at nothing after
his endeavor to have Miss Dye, his cast-off sweet-
heart, killed with dynamite. We learned from Mc-
Manigal in Los Angeles jail that he was even more
desperate as an outlaw than his known crimes gave
him discredit for being. McManigal informed us
that McNamara had become so bold with his power
of ambush that he was planning to become a high-
way robber on a great scale so that he could supply
himself with more money for keeping up his fight.
"It's a good thing you've got J. J. in here," said
McManigal to Operative McLaren, soon after they
were locked up, "for he told me that he was keeping
tabs on an Indianapolis bank messenger who car-
ried large sums of money daily. He was planning
to hold him up and had already picked out a man
to assist him. He also planned to hold up the box
office on the day of the big automobile races. He
figured that there would be close to $100,000 in
cash in the box office. He had planned to have J.
THE MASKED WAR 259
B. assist him in this hold-up. He said, 'We need
the money.' "
And now we come to one of the most brazen of
the attempts to save the McNamaras by intimidat-
ing my witnesses. That business was meant when a
murder threat was passed this particular witness I
had every reason to believe. The witness was a
very important one and so I handled this detail my-
self in person.
CHAPTER XXXVI
EFFORTS TO BUY OFF WITNESSES
In the first half of August prior to the trial of
the McNamaras I was engaged in going over with
District Attorney Fredericks the matters under in-
vestigation as I received the reports of my mana-
gers and operatives. There were many important
things to watch and always the crooked work that
was going on in behalf of the prisoners. We had
many special investigations in progress besides the
regular work of my force and one of these inves-
tigations took me away from Los Angeles to San
Francisco. In the latter city I learned that Tveit-
rape and his associates were so violent in their de-
nunciations of me that a most vicious feeling
obtained against me. I was advised to be extremely
careful and to take every means to protect myself
from attack. I took what precautions I considered
sensible and when my operative reported to me the
sinister statement of a certain distinguished member
of the California bar that the only thing that could
save the McNamaras was my withdrawal from the
case I returned that gentleman my compliments with
the information that he would be killed immediately
260
THE MASKED WAR 261
the news was given out that I had been assas-
sinated. This brought immediate relief. Then I
went to the office of Fremont Older, editor of the
San Francisco Evening Bulletin. This paper had
done a great deal to create hate against me person-
ally. I talked with Mr. Older about that and all
I could get from him was that he was taking the
side of the "under dog." I made a special, confi-
dential report to District Attorney Fredericks which
might have become matters of court record had I
been killed during the trial.
After a week-end at the ranch of Mr. Rudolph
Spreckles, in Sonoma County, I returned to San
Francisco and was informed that our witness, G. H.
Phillips, of Oakland, who would positively identify
J. B. McNamara as "Bryce," the man who pur-
chased the dynamite for the Times explosion, had
been approached and that his life had been threat-
ened. It was night when I got this information, but
I hurried to Oakland and the home of Mr. Phillips.
I was unable to get any answer at the door, and
thinking that the family might be away paying social
calls, I kept the place under surveillance. We
watched until 12:30, when it was evident that the
family was within but was afraid to answer any
summons at the door. I remained in Oakland the
rest of the night and resumed my personal investi-
gation the next morning, August 24th.
At 9 a. m. I again called at Mr. Phillips' resi-
dence and found Mrs. Phillips, who informed me
262 THE MASKED WAR
that her husband was being threatened by the de-
fense; that he was at the Giant Powder Works and
only came home on Saturday nights. She stated that
while she felt a little nervous over the matter, she
was proud of the stand her husband was taking,
viz., that he would not permit anybody to frighten
him out of doing what he considered his duty as a
good citizen. I then left, secured an automobile,
and went to the Giant Powder Works where I met
Mr. Phillips. He stated that he proposed to stand
pat and no amount of threats would frighten him
out of doing his duty, but admitted that he felt a
little nervous over the situation; he said, however,
that he would be firm in his stand to do what was
right.
He further stated that about a month ago two
men called on a Mrs. Hyde, a friend of Mrs.
Phillips, who lives on Myrtle Street, between 12th
and 14th, Oakland. They asked her in regard to
Mr. Phillips and wanted to know what kind of a
man he was; whether he did not have a deaf and
dumb child; whether she had ever heard Phillips
discuss the McNamara case with Mr. Hyde. They
stated they were detectives and represented the de-
fense. Mr. Phillips further stated that on Wednes-
day, August 9th, a friend of his called on him (Mr.
Phillips) and said he would like to talk to him
in confidence. At this point I desire to state that
Mr. Phillips declined to furnish the name or ad-
dress of this person, but in discussing the details of
THE MASKED WAR 263
the case he inadvertently mentioned the name of
"Patsy" and also inadvertently disclosed that he
was at the Mare Island Navy Yard. When his
attention was called to this and he was shown how
easily Patsy could be located, he gave me the name
of Patrick Gilmore. He stated that Patsy (as he
called him) called upon him and stated that he had
been approached by a couple of parties who re-
quested him to go and see him (Phillips) and get
him to change his testimony, or rather, his identifi-
cation of James B. McNamara by saying that the
man he saw he remembered distinctly had a scar
on his neck, or something of that sort; and told
him that he could name his own price. Phillips
declined to do as they requested and said he would
have nothing whatever to do with them.
Patsy also informed Mr. Phillips that a Mr.
Hitchcock called, and that later a man and woman,
whom Patsy did not know, called at the Mare
Island Navy Yard and wanted to see him concern-
ing this same matter. Mr. Phillips stated that this
detective who called on Patsy had also called on
Mr. William Flynn, the packing foreman at the
Giant Powder Works, while Flynn was at the Win-
chester Hotel in San Francisco. On Saturday, Au-
gust 19th, Mr. Finkleday, of the Giant Powder
Company, called Mr. Phillips to the 'phone and
told him the San Francisco office of the Giant
Powder Company was on the 'phone. Mr. Phillips
went to the 'phone and found the party at the other
264 THE MASKED WAR
end was Michael Gilmore, a clerk in the office of
the Giant Powder Company. Gilmore said, "I want
to come over and see you to-night," meaning to his
home at 13 12 Market Street, Oakland.
Gilmore called that night and said, "I came to
warn you that a man named Kelly called on me witK
a letter from a priest who is an old friend of mine,
and Kelly stated he was a relative of the McNa-
maras and wanted him (Phillips) to meet Gilmore;
he asked if Gilmore could come over and see him
(Phillips) ; Kelly asked him to change his testimony
as to the identification of McNamara and to say
that the man he saw at the Powder Works had a
finger off. Phillips asked Gilmore who this man
was and Gilmore replied that he had asked Kelly
what his business was and Kelly stated he was a
mining man and banker. He also asked Kelly if he
had sent anyone else to see Phillips and he said yes,
that he had sent word to Phillips through William
Flynn. Gilmore informed Phillips that Kelly stated
this was the last time he would send for him and
that if Phillips went to Los Angeles and testified he
(Phillips) would suffer an awful death.
Gilmore said he was to meet this fellow at Solari's
restaurant that night and take dinner with him. He
also told Gilmore to tell Phillips he could name his
own price. Phillips told Gilmore to tell those men
to go plumb to hell, that no amount of money would
purchase his testimony and that he could not be
frightened. Phillips also stated that there were
THE MASKED WAR 265
two men who had called at a saloon up near the
Powder Works, and from the descriptions I am
satisfied who they were. They were inquiring about
Mr. Phillips and his habits and associations.
Mr. Phillips also reminded me that at the time
I called upon him at the Powder Works in October
last he had informed me that he heard Schmitty
call one of the men (the little fellow) Dave —
meaning Dave Caplan — and that J. B. McNamara
was smooth-faced at that time, while he now has
a mustache.
Mr. Phillips then introduced me to William
Flynn, the packing foreman at the Giant Powder
Works, who stated that on July 23rd, while he was
at the Winchester Hotel, 76 Third Street, San Fran-
cisco, about 6:30 or 7 p. m., two men called and
gave the names of Sullivan and Harrington. Sulli-
van asked Flynn to go to his room, and on reaching
there he told Flynn that they were friends of Mc-
Namara and asked if he was a good friend of
George Phillips. Also asked Flynn if he knew a
man named Gilmore who worked up there. Flynn
told him Gilmore formerly worked at Giant, Cal.,
but that he was now at the Mare Island Navy Yard.
They then asked him if he ever heard Phillips talk
about his identification of McNamara; he replied
that he had not. They asked a number of questions
about Phillips and his habits, and when leaving they
said, "Now, if you can't do us any good don't do
us any harm," and, shaking his finger at Flynn,
266 THE MASKED WAR
asked him not to say anything about their visit.
Harrington informed Flynn he was from Chicago
and Sullivan said he was from Los Angeles. He
described them as follows:
Harrington — Age 50, height about 5 feet 7^2
inches, weight 170 to 180, short, wears glasses,
glasses in two pieces.
Sullivan — 50 years, 5 feet 1 1 inches or 6 feet,
born in London, Canada, weight about 200 pounds
or more, smooth face, black derby hat, dark suit.
Flynn says a man shadowed him around San
Francisco for two days. Flynn remembered that
when they were leaving Sullivan said, "Remember,
everything said to-night dies here; if not, look out."
Harrington said to Flynn, "They have no evidence
against the McNamaras; they are just trying to
job them." They wanted to know from Flynn if
Phillips was a church member, and if he did not
have a child, and then tried to show an intimate
knowledge by asking if he did not have a deaf and
dumb child, a girl. He said that he had been at
the works looking for Flynn and was informed he
was at the Winchester Hotel in San Francisco. The
man giving the name of Harrington showed Flynn
an envelope of a telegram on which was written the
name Harrington.
After leaving Phillips I returned to San Fran-
cisco and immediately called at the office of the
Giant Powder Company in the Mills Building and
found Michael Gilmore, who is apparently a very
THE MASKED WAR 267
fine young fellow. He is bright and intelligent and
has been connected with this concern for a number
of years; occupies a very responsible clerical posi-
tion.
At first Gilmore declined to discuss the matter
with me or to have anything to say about it, and it
took the very hardest kind of pounding to get him
to discuss the matter at all, as he stated he didn't
want to be drawn into it or connected with it in
any way, and that he would have had nothing what-
ever to do with the case had it not been for the
fact that the man named Kelly, who called upon
him, had threatened the life of Mr. Phillips. That
was his only reason for going over there. This I
do not believe; I think he was persuaded to go over
by the parties who called on him. Finally, Mr.
Gilmore admitted that on Saturday, the 19th of
August, a man called on him with a letter from a
Catholic priest and after showing him the letter
stated that he was a friend of the McNamaras and
that he wanted to get Mr. Gilmore to see Phillips
and urge him (Phillips) to change his identification
of J. B. McNamara by stating that the man he saw
at the Powder Works in October had the index fin-
ger missing from one hand, or something of that
sort; that Phillips could name his own price and
that Kelly would give the money to Gilmore to pay
it to Phillips. His exact language was "Phillips
can name his own price and the money will be
handed him by you." Kelly further stated that he
268 THE MASKED WAR
(Gilmore) was the last man who would be sent to
Phillips and that if he did not comply with their
request, but persisted in testifying against the Mc-
Namaras at Los Angeles, he (Phillips) would not
die a natural death. He further stated that the
testimony of Phillips would hang the two Mc-
Namaras.
After considerable persuasion I induced Gilmore
to let me see the letter written by the priest, which
he had in his pocket, and it read as follows:
"My dear Michael:
"I wish you would assist this man in the informa-
tion which he will need. Help him in every way you
can. Mr. L. M. Kelly will explain when he sees
you."
After another long wrangle Gilmore permitted
me to see the name signed to the letter and I com-
municated this to Fredericks in person, as I prom-
ised Gilmore I would not put it in the report, and
it is only because of that promise that I am not
putting it in here. I felt that every man connected
with this case — priest or no priest — should be called
before the Grand Jury and made to tell all he knew
about it.
Gilmore was very badly scared and trembled all
during our conversation ; he was very much agitated.
He then informed me that he had an appointment
with this same man to take dinner with him that
THE MASKED WAR 269
night. I then had Gilmore come down to the door
of the Mills Building, where I had two of our men
take a look at him so as to be able to identify him
when he met Kelly. I was satisfied from the descrip-
tion given by Gilmore that L. M. Kelly is L. M.
Sullivan.
I then sent operatives Reed and Spaulding to
cover the Hotel Manx, where Gilmore was to meet
Kelly. Gilmore, as agreed upon, went to the Manx
Hotel at 5 :45 p. m. and met Larry Sullivan in the
lobby of the hotel. They then proceeded to the
Heidelberg Inn at Ellis Street near Market, enter-
ing there at 5:55 p. m. Sullivan returned to his
hotel at 7:45 and at 7:55 talked with the telephone
operator and did some telephoning, then went up-
stairs in the elevator.
As the reader will recall we later positively
identified "Kelly" as "Larry" Sullivan with the aid
of the woman detective.
CHAPTER XXXVII
HOW EVIDENCE WAS DESTROYED
In these days of constant exposure of corruption
it was a highly encouraging and satisfying feeling
we experienced when I had finished the investiga-
tion of the Phillips incident and could report to
District Attorney Fredericks that our witness was
neither to be bought nor to be frightened. If he
was to meet a "horrible death," as he was told he
would by the McNamara agents, he would not
flicker before the possibility of it being meted out
to him. His splendid wife was with him in his
stand and I was indeed grateful to them both dur-
ing these trying moments of intrigue, trickery and
threatened assassination just prior to the trial.
Mr. Phillips could positively identify J. B. Mc-
Namara as "J. B. Bryce" and he would so identify
him if he lived to reach the witness stand.
There was never an end to the efforts to cheat
justice until we finally cornered the defense with the
bribery of a juror and Clarence Darrow threw up
his hands, his two clients pleading guilty.
In Peoria, 111., our investigators sought to get
the hotel register with the signature of "McGraw"
270
THE MASKED WAR 271
— McManigal — and we found that some one had
reached the register first and had cut out the pages
which we wanted. Our men did not give up, how-
ever, for in this Peoria hotel McManigal had left
his wallet with over $400 under his pillow and an
honest woman employee had found it and had
turned it into the proprietor. The woman had gone
away and had married, but we traced her and
showed her a picture of McManigal and she identi-
fied it as a picture of the man who had left the
money in his room. She fixed the date approxi-
mately. By her we could prove that he was in the
hotel at the time he said he was and we had the
mutilated register to offer in evidence.
A woman witness we had in Indianapolis in the
triple explosion and fire which destroyed construc-
tion work, stable and garage of the contractor, Von
Spreckelsen, in 1909, was approached by a union
printer who offered to run away with her, give her
a deed to his house and lot in Indianapolis and
provide her with all the money she wanted to spend.
We had an operative living in the same flat with
this woman and he managed to keep her steady and
she did not succumb to the bribes. Moreover, she
became interested in the effort to bring the dyna-
miters to justice and did some excellent detective
work for us.
The defense was eminently successful with Mrs.
McManigal, however, and she sold out after trim-
ming us and trimming her husband.
272 THE MASKED WAR
After going over to the defense, Mrs. McMani-
gal got fifty dollars from our Chicago office to take
her to Los Angeles and when she reached Los An-
geles calmly turned us down and worked so hard to
influence her husband in prison to go back on his
confession that at times we were fearful that she
would succeed.
McManigal was half crazy to see his wife and
to hear from his children. She had tortured him
with messages of her illness and with a long period
in which she did not write him a line to let him
know whether she and the children were with food
and shelter. McManigal wrote her imploring let-
ters. He knew that his only chance to save himself
was in making good with evidence for the State and
she could have made good for him by telling the
truth. She knew J. B. McNamara and J. J. They
had both been to her house in Chicago. She knew
J. B. both as "Bryce" and "Sullivan" and she knew
every detail of the business her husband was en-
gaged in. In her flat J. B. had made up a number
of infernal machines with batteries and clocks and
on one winter's evening she had seen him and her
husband thaw out frozen dynamite on the radiator
while the children played about them!
As black as was the record of McManigal, he
was turning State's evidence as much for the sake
of his wife and children, whom he sincerely loved,
as he was in the hope of saving his own neck. When
he learned that his wife had gone back on him he
THE MASKED WAR 273
was first puzzled, then frightened and then hor-
rified.
The man was crazy to see her and the children
and when she arrived in Los Angeles we took steps
to bring this about. On June 27th, 191 1, we ar-
ranged with Assistant District Attorney Ford to
have Mrs. McManigal taken before the Grand
Jury at 10:30 a. m. We were to take her husband
into a small room adjoining the grand jury room
and have the two meet there. When McManigal
was told of this plan he cried, "My God, yes, take
me to her right now. Let me talk with her." Oper-
ative McLaren, who was his body guard in prison,
told him that he would have to wait until the ar-
rangements were completed. McManigal became
hysterical and would laugh one moment and cry
the next. He kept crying, "Oh, my darling wife,
you will not go back on me."
"She has got to help me," he told McLaren.
"She knows all. She knew that Hockin cheated me
out of $75 on every explosion I pulled off for him
until he owed me $450. She knew every time I went
away on a job and many a time I told her I did not
know whether I would come back as I might be
killed by a watchman or blown up with my own
dynamite. She knows everything and she has got
to help me."
As we were soon to learn, Mrs. McManigal's
task was to whip her husband around for the de-
fense and she kept at it to the very end. She was
274 THE MASKED WAR
aided by George Behm, McManigal's uncle, of
whom he had been very fond as a boy and a young
man. The defense had secured the aid of these
two.
The meeting between husband and wife in the
room adjoining the grand jury room occurred that
day. After they had talked for a while McManigal
called in Operative McLaren and urged his wife to
talk with him for his sake and for her own. She
turned on McManigal with a curt, "You shut up!"
and when McLaren tried to induce her to aid her
husband she stuck her fingers in her ears. She
doubled her fist in her husband's face and finally
fell in a faint. She was unconscious for an hour
and a half and a physician was summoned. When
she came to she asked for Darrow. Darrow and
the other lawyers for the defense were outside.
McLaren opened the door and told Darrow that
Mrs. McManigal wanted to be taken home. The
lawyers were furious and Darrow shouted, "How
long are you going to keep up this outrage?"
"You had better get an automobile for the lady,"
was McLaren's reply.
The long fainting spell did not seem to have
any lasting ill effect on Mrs. McManigal. Under
the direction of the lawyers for the defense she
began her campaign to take her husband away from
the prosecution. One would think that ordinarily
a witness would be safe in jail, but McManigal was
not. He was reached more than once and the story
THE MASKED WAR 275
of how the defense worked to break him down will
make a series of chapters perhaps unequalled in any
story of fact concerning the administration of jus-
tice in this or any other country.
A less alert man than McLaren would have seen
his charge taken from him and McManigal would
have turned from his first resolution to tell the truth
and the whole truth and our chief witness would
have been stolen from us.
Mrs. McManigal managed to inform herself, or
be informed, when McLaren left the prison to at-
tend to certain work that required his attention. Al-
though orders had been given to allow the prisoner
to see no one without McLaren being present there
were certain outside political influences at work and
Mrs. McManigal managed to get into her husband's
cell with him alone and begin her task of winning
him away from us. McLaren heard about it from
an informant in the jail and hurried there. He
found Mrs. McManigal gay and cheerful as she
left her husband's cell and met Attorney Job Harri-
man in the corridor. She had made a good start.
McManigal was weakening. McLaren hurried
into the cell and McManigal told him that they had
not discussed the case. McLaren knew that he was
lying and finally got out of him that Mrs. McMani-
gal had gotten him to sign a request asking Darrow
and his associates to call to see him as his attorneys.
After talking with Mr. Harriman, Mrs. McMan-
igal asked to see her husband again and she was
276 THE MASKED WAR
permitted to talk with him in the visitors' room for
ten minutes. Things looked very bad. McManigal
had weakened terribly. His wife, it seemed, had
done the work she was sent to do.
We had to start all over with McManigal to
convince him that he had everything to lose and
nothing to gain if he gave in to the urgings of the
defense. Now, although McManigal was tight in
the hands of the law, a prisoner and a confessed
dynamiter and the most important witness for the
State, counsel for the defense managed to have him
reached time and again by means so subtle that even
J. J. McNamara, himself a prisoner in a distant
part of the jail, managed to get messages to him.
We were compelled to double our own guard on
McManigal and to equip a dictagraph in his cell
unbeknown to him.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
MCMANIGAL NEARLY DRIVEN CRAZY
Mrs. McManigal proved a veritable thorn in the
side of the prosecution. We had her constantly
under shadow and found that she was frequently
being coached in her campaign to get her husband
to go back on his confession and aid in the acquittal
of the two McNamaras.
Despite our efforts to have a witness present
when Mrs. McManigal talked with her husband in
his cell, the influence of her attorneys was such that
she was given all the leeway possible to swing her
husband the way they wanted him swung. The dic-
tagraph, however, aided us and with it and the
constant questioning of McManigal by McLaren
we found out all that transpired during these visits.
The prisoner's wife coaxed and urged. She told
him that the McNamara attorneys had told her that
if he would call them in as his counsel they would
see that he was freed and that he got a good job.
They could even give him an appointment in the
very jail where he was incarcerated. She told him
that the lawyers promised to provide for them for
life — for the whole family — and that she would be
given several thousand dollars in cash besides.
277
278 THE MASKED WAR
The offering was a tempting one, especially when
the children were included and Mrs. McManigal
assured him that the agreement would include pro-
vision for them as long as they lived. McManigal,
loving his wife and loving his children, thought seri-
ously of the proposition and did, as I have related
heretofore, sign a request for the calling in of Dar-
row and his associates as his counsel. But after we
had convinced him that this was not the thing to do
and he had recalled the request he was never again
tempted to sign another. When he got his nerve,
finally, he realized that he was in a most precarious
position, that his confession had been carefully
checked up and that it would be a simple matter for
the defense to throw the whole mass of crime on
his shoulders and send him to death.
McLaren found his prison charge very much
excited after one of these visits of Mrs. McManigal.
It was then that he was realizing that he might be
offered as the human sacrifice to save the Mc-
Namaras.
"Go ahead, Mac," advised McLaren, "and tell
me all about it."
McManigal then told him of the tempting offers
and exclaimed: "I'm next to the whole business!
I told her that they did not want to get me free and
provide for me and my family, but that they wanted
to hang me. I told her that they would do it if
she did not come over to my side and back me up
in my stand."
THE MASKED WAR 279
McManigal then said that his wife had told him
that his uncle, George Behm, was on his way from
Portage, Wis., to see him. We knew what this
meant. McManigal was fond of this uncle and the
uncle was to be added to the force that would try
to win McManigal away from the prosecution.
There were many days of genuine agony for Mc-
Manigal as he sat in his cell, his heart hungry for
the sight of his little boy and girl and the love of
his wife, who was drifting farther and farther away
from him and working with those who meant him
no good. He, a big, strong man, who had thought
nothing of putting his life in peril time and again
as he dodged armed watchmen to set off infernal
machines, would sit and sob like a child at times.
"I was happy with my wife and children and con-
tented with the money I was making in my trade,"
he told McLaren one day. "Then the two Mc-
Namaras and Hockin got hold of me and gradually
forced me into the dynamiting business. I could
look my wife and children in the face after a day of
honest work. I had no trouble on my mind until
they got me to go in with them to dynamite the non-
union shops. After that my life was a hell on earth.
Now my wife and innocent children are disgraced."
He was moaning and sobbing bitterly as he talked
with my operative. He said that once he had done
a job the McNamaras had him where he had to
take orders.
At times McManigal would rage against the Mc-
280 THE MASKED WAR
Namara brothers as the cause of all his trouble. He
told McLaren that he would be satisfied if he were
given a club and turned loose on the two of them.
With his heavy frame and the big scar on his fore-
head, he looked as if he could carry out his wish
to kill the two of them and end the whole business
in that way.
The confessed dynamiter was constantly tortured
despite the care we took to hold him steady and
keep his mind in a reasonable state of calm. His
wife, for a long time before her arrival in Los
Angeles, had not answered his letters and when she
had answered them it was to tell him that she was
very ill and that the children of neighbors had
jeered at his little boy and girl, stories that worked
him into a frenzy. From the very first, even when
she calmly collected fifty dollars from my Chicago
office to proceed to Los Angeles, she was working
for the McNamaras and their lawyers. McManigal
had been double-crossed all along the line and would
have been sent to the gallows if he had given in to
the pleadings of his wife. He had been robbed of
a part of the money paid for his work as a dyna-
miter, he had been relieved of what he had left by
his wife — down to his stickpin — and after being put
in jail he was in a fair way of being made the goat
for the whole business.
There were influences inside of the Los Angeles
jail that we had to watch. For a time McManigal
had a cellmate whose attorney was also one of the
THE MASKED WAR 281
lawyers for the McNamara defense. We feared
that this prisoner might try to pump McManigal
and serve as a spy for the McNamara camp. Mc-
Manigal was also reached by J. J. McNamara
through a prisoner known as "Happy," who was a
trusty and could communicate between cells. Fin-
ally our man was changed to another cell, but it
was a dark basement cell, and McManigal was ten
times more miserable there. His health became
poor and McLaren worried greatly about him.
The McNamaras were allowed pillows, cushions
and other things for comfort, and finally McLaren
made a fight for his charge and got him back to a
cell where he could get some sunshine. Daily we
had McLaren talk with him in an effort to keep his
mind relieved of the things that were worrying
him so greatly. McLaren brought him papers,
fruit and cigars and saw him morning, afternoon,
and night. Of course the purpose was as much
to keep him under surveillance in his cell as to hold
him steady to the prosecution's side.
The wife having failed to turn McManigal to
the defense, the uncle, George Behm, was then
brought to Los Angeles and thrown into the breach.
As a boy McManigal had just grown up by himself.
Among the few people that had been kind to him
was this uncle and he remembered him with genuine
affection. His own father, in whose barn at Tiffin,
Ohio, Ortie had made a dynamite cache, had done
nothing to aid him in his plight. His own wife had
282 THE MASKED WAR
turned against him. The man wanted some blood
tie to turn to and when he learned that this friendly
uncle was on his way he cheered up. He would
have some one he could talk to, some one he could
hope to find encouragement in.
There was nothing promising to us, however, in
the coming of this uncle, for the lawyers for the
defense had roped him and Uncle George was being
brought to Los Angeles to help the McNamaras
and not his nephew.
CHAPTER XXXIX
WORSE THAN ANY THIRD DEGREE
How McManigal's uncle was used against him is
best told in the report written by McLaren and
turned in to Manager Mills of the Los Angeles
headquarters of our agency on Thursday, June 29th,
191 1. His report is as follows :
"Inv. M. McL. reports:
"At 8.00 a. m., I arrived at the Agency when
Manager E. R. M. and I discussed the many differ-
ent angles the case has assumed in the last few days.
Plans were made to meet the situation fully.
"Leaving the office at 10:30 a. m. with Manager
E. R. M., we went to the County Jail to see Mc-
Manigal. Before going up to see Mac, I talked
with Jailer Gallagher. He told me that Ortie had
acted something awful this morning. It seems that
Ortie's uncle, George Behm, passed on the opposite
side of the street from the jail and Ortie saw him
from the jail window. Ortie pounded on the wire
screen, and called at the top of his voice, 'Oh, Uncle
George, here I am. Oh, come up, and see me, Uncle
George.' In a hysterical way, Ortie kept this up
283
284 THE MASKED WAR
until quite a crowd had gathered in front of the
jail.
"Gallagher had to go up and lock Mac in a cell
away from the window. Gallagher said that Mac
acted like a crazy man. He also said that Uncle
George did not come to the jail to see Mac. I will
here state that Ortie's uncle arrived in Los Angeles
yesterday and was with Mrs. Manigal at the Job
Harriman apartments last night.
"Ortie is in a very nervous condition bordering
on a collapse. The tactics the attorneys for the
defense are using, look to me as if they were trying
to unbalance Mac's mind. First, they have turned
his wife against him; second, they have refused to
bring his children to see him; third, they have
paraded his uncle past the jail where they knew
Mac would see him, and up to this writing, twelve
o'clock midnight, his uncle has not called upon him.
This last was a bitter blow to Ortie. This uncle
had practically been a father to him, he having lived
with him a great deal in his younger days.
"The last few days Mac has been telling me how
much he thought of Uncle George, and many times
he said, 'He will not go back on me.'
"After Gallagher had told me of the Uncle
George affair, I went up and saw Ortie. I advised
him and pleaded with him to try and control himself,
I told him that every move and action of his was
watched by 'trusties' in the jail and everything he
did or said was being carried to J. J. I told him
THE MASKED WAR 285
how his actions of this morning would be grabbed
by the defense attorneys. They would say he was
insane or anything else to discredit him. He said,
'I know it, I know it, but my God, they are torturing
me.' Mac told me that he had not slept for five
nights, and before leaving I saw Jailer Gallagher,
and requested him to have the doctor give Mac
something to make him sleep."
This third degree work from the sidewalk was
kept up for some time, the trips of the uncle being
timed carefully so that McManigal would be at
the window. McLaren had a task on his hands
convincing his charge that these trips were designed
to break him down and that he could expect nothing
from his relative.
When we got McLaren's report of how this
scheme worked we lost no time in getting ready for
any charge by the defense that McManigal was irre-
sponsible. He had acted like a crazy man at the
window and we knew that the lawyers for the de-
fense had been fully informed of this. We looked
into the future and laid plans to offset any contention
that McManigal was mentally defective. We sent
operatives to his home town and among relatives
and friends who could give accounts as witnesses of
his actions since childhood. We looked up his com-
pany officers when he was in the army and through
them we could prove that he was not mentally de-
fective but was sound in mind and body when he
286 THE MASKED WAR
was enlisted in the Ohio regiment during the Spanish
War.
We were always ready for emergencies, always
looking into the future and at no time did we leave
a single man engaged in the defense of the Mc-
Namaras unshadowed. We had an operative wait-
ing on the restaurant table where these gentlemen
gathered for lunch, we had operatives always keep-
ing Tveitmoe and his associates under surveillance,
we had operatives watching Mrs. McManigal and
Uncle George all the time and then we had the
quiet but efficient dictagraph working at cell win-
dows in the jail.
We had trouble making Uncle George answer
questions before the Grand Jury after he did finally
visit his nephew, McManigal, but we made him
answer after charging him with contempt. When
he was finally brought around the relative from
Portage, Wis., was amazed and stunned when he
found the District Attorney asking him about things
only he and McManigal had spoken of in the latter' s
cell. He had not heard of the dictagraph.
It will probably give E. A. Clancy, one of "Old
Man" Tveitmoe's chief labor allies on the Coast,
a feeling otherwise than that of gratification to
know how well he was watched during those days
preceding the trial, for it was Clancy who shouted
approval to a toast to the McNamaras offered by
one of my men.
Operative No. 36 had the job of keeping tabs
THE MASKED WAR 287
on the San Francisco Labor Council. His report
of July 9th, 191 1, will undoubtedly interest Mr.
Clancy and his friends. It is as follows:
"Continuing on operation this morning at 8 130
a. m., I took the 9 :oo a. m. boat for Sausalito.
Arriving at Sausalito I took the train to Fairfax
Park, Marine County. This park was selected by
the International Association of Bridge and Struc-
tural Iron Workers comprising the following locals:
No. 31, No. 77, No. 78, of San Francisco, and No.
117 of Oakland. All of the most prominent mem-
bers of the locals were present.
"P. H. McCarthy, with President Joe Sullivan,
of the Police Commission, were conspicuous figures.
McCarthy asked the gatekeeper how many tickets
had been sold at the gate, and he said about five
hundred and about twelve hundred more had been
taken in, making about seventeen hundred. Johan-
son and E. B. Morton got on the train when we got
to Corte Madera, and when we arrived at the
park, we met E. A. Clancy of No. 78 and Dan
Cameron of No. 77, Paul Reiner of No. 117 Oak-
land and R. W. Smith of No. 31.
"We were at the bar drinking when P. H. Mc-
Carthy and Sullivan arrived, and after a few mo-
ments, Clancy said to P. H. McCarthy: 'Well, if
J. J. McNamara had have been here to-day, these
grounds would not have held the crowd.' P. H.
McCarthy replied, 'No, but if you people think I
288 THE MASKED WAR
would stand for anything like that, why you must
be crazy. Why, in the first place, the Sheriff of
Los Angeles would not take any such chances, and
I certainly would not ask the Governor to inter-
cede.'
"Clancy replied, 'His presence here would have
shown the people here in San Francisco though
that we had some manhood left in our organization
yet.'
"Dan Cameron of No. 77 replied, 'Oh, we don't
care what the people think, it is what we think.'
"Johanson said, 'Well, they are only trying Mc-
Namara for murder. Who are they going to arrest
for the destruction of the Times Building?'
"P. H. McCarthy said, 'Oh, just wait, the watch
dogs are in hiding just now, but you will hear them
barking again soon.'
"Morton said, 'Well, they hounded Mrs. Caplan
all over Frisco and came out to my house, but I
don't think they will come again in a hurry. I don't
think that she has either had a letter or heard from
him. She has always been a lady in my house and
I will always stand by her.'
"I proposed a toast to the McNamara brothers,
and Clancy replied, 'Good for you, old horse; you
are right.' P. H. McCarthy said he would go over
and see the ladies. Dan Cameron said, 'Well, if
it was a carpenter that was in trouble, he would be
different, but Mac has always given us the worst of
it on every deal.'
THE MASKED WAR 289
"At this time, E. B. Morton asked me to come
and have a little lunch. We went down to a table
occupied by Mrs. Anton Johanson, where we had
a bottle of beer and sandwiches. Mrs. Johanson
said, it seemed good to have Anton home during the
day as he had to be in Brother O. A. Tveitmoe's
office so much since he was away.
"Morton said, 'Well, he is working for a good
cause. There will come a time when Anton will be
recognized by the union men more than he is now.'
"At this time, 6:00 p. m., Johanson and Morton
decided to go home, so I rode down with them to
Corte Madero, where they left the train and I re-
turned to the city.
"I discontinued at 7:30 p. m.
"Reported L. A.
"July 10, 191 1."
CHAPTER XL
THE ORGANIZATION EXPOSED
During the summer of 191 1 all the resources of
my agency were used in making a case for the prose-
cution that would stand any test that the money
and brains of the defense might give it. I gave my
entire attention to running down every bit of infor-
mation secured by my operatives and daily made
out lists of assignments for the men working on
the case. As they investigated and sent in their
reports by wire and by mail we would sift the wheat
from the chaff and add new witnesses, new affidavits
and new exhibits to our gradually growing mass of
evidence.
It was reasonable to believe that the biggest ef-
fort of the defense would be to save J. J. McNa-
mara, the secretary-treasurer of the union. We had
his weakling brother, J. B., tight in the grip of the
law and it must have been conceded that there was
no hope for him whatever. As matters turned out,
finally, the defense was perfectly willing to let J. B.
plead guilty and go to the gallows if by doing this
J. J. could be saved. It was far from our intention
to have any such finale to the case, for J. J. Mc-
290
THE MASKED WAR 291
Namara was the more dangerous man of the two
and had been the brains and directing force of the
union in its war against society. It was by his word
that the business agents of the union gathered An-
archists and others to send them on their way of
destruction of life and property and it was through
him that the money was paid for the committing
of crimes which made this warfare assume the pro-
portions of a revolution.
Not a day passed from the time of the arrests of
the McNamaras and McManigal that Operative
McLaren did not work with the prisoner who had
turned informer. We had McManigal's confession,
but I knew that gradually he would recall things in
his career as a dynamiter which might help us in
securing new evidence. Each day McLaren would
turn the conversation gradually to dynamiting and
McManigal would begin to talk about some phase
or incident of the war he had participated in. Every
word of information thus received from the prisoner
was embodied in a report at the end of the day and,
regardless of time, distance, or expense, operatives
were made to go back over the trail of the dyna-
miters to get evidence verifying McManigal's state-
ments.
In this way we learned that J. J. McNamara had
not been above lugging nitroglycerin around the
country himself. Just prior to starting for the con-
vention of the International Union held at Roches-
ter, N. Y., in September, 19 10, J. J. packed a
292 THE MASKED WAR
ten-quart can of the explosive in a box made for
carrying purposes and another ten-quart can in a
telescope valise at headquarters in Indianapolis.
He called in McManigal and the two took the "Big
Four" train for Cleveland. In the Ohio city they
went to the Forest City Hotel, taking the nitro-
glycerin as part of their hand baggage. They
registered and later in the day, by appointment, J.
J. met Business Agent Smith of the union on the
street and passed him the twenty quarts of explosive.
McManigal saw the transfer. J. J. then went East
to the convention and McManigal returned to In-
dianapolis where he cashed a check for $250 given
him by his chief. We ran this out quickly, finding
the hotel register in Cleveland and tracing the
record of the check transaction. Afterward we got
Smith along with the other conspirators who were
tried in the United States court at Indianapolis.
The convention was in progress in Rochester
when the Los Angeles horror was perpetrated and
the atrocities of the masked war reached the climax
with the murder of twenty-one innocent men.
Among the union leaders there was Clancy of San
Francisco. Of course, Clancy knew of the plot to
destroy the building of the Times, but, it seems, he
had not expected such a terrific result. It was
during one of the conversations between McLaren
and McManigal in the Los Angeles prison that the
latter recalled a conversation with J. B. McNamara
concerning Mr. Clancy.
THE MASKED WAR 293
"In talking with Ortie McManigal to-day," re-
ported McLaren, "he recalled a conversation with
J. B. McNamara while they were hiding in the
Wisconsin woods after the Times explosion. J. B.
said that when he blew up the Times Clancy was
attending the convention at Rochester. He read of
the explosion in the newspapers and immediately
sent word to an ironworker known as 'Shorty,' who
lives in San Francisco, to go to his (Clancy's) house
and clean up, meaning by this to destroy everything
that would show his connection with the dynamiting
that was being done throughout the country.
"McManigal said that J. B. laughed heartily
when he told of the scramble by 'Shorty' and
Clancy's wife to get rid of everything incriminating
in the house."
It is probable that J. J. McNamara and his fel-
low conspirators felt that their presence in conven-
tion in Rochester, N. Y., at the time of the Los
Angeles explosion would serve as a sign and good
evidence to the world that the Structural Iron Work-
ers' representatives had nothing to do with this
dreadful crime. They were all assembled in orderly
and parliamentary meeting in a city thousands of
miles away. The convention had paid a tribute to
J. J. McNamara. His work as the secretary-
treasurer was lauded and the progress of the strike
was considered satisfactory. The fact that the
great majority of the executive council of the union
knew of and participated in the war against the
294 THE MASKED WAR
employers was not suspected by the public generally.
The alarm clock scheme of setting off explosions
always permitted the agents of the union to estab-
lish alibis for each explosion and in this instance the
men directing the wholesale murder in Los Angeles
had arranged all the plans before starting East.
One would think that with a spark of humanity
left in the hearts of these men they would have given
pause when it became known that the destruction
of the Times had entailed the sacrifice of the lives
of so many innocent people, all working men and
all heads of families. The accounts of the anguish
of the widows and children as they flocked to the
smouldering ruins of the building in Los Angeles
to claim the burned and battered bodies of husbands
and fathers might have stirred them uneasily, any
normal being might believe. No pity, regret or
horror moved them.
J. J. McNamara returned to Indianapolis. Olaf
Tveitmoe, the "Old Man" of the Pacific Coast, to
whom J. B. had reported for his murderous assign-
ment and who supplied the two Anarchists, Caplan
and Schmidt, to him as assistants, immediately went
into the conference with J. J. He urged that other
dynamiting follow the Los Angeles horror. He
told J. J. that it would never do to let them stop
on the Pacific Coast. "We must keep up the big
noise," he told J. J., "so that the authorities will
think that the explosions are local and are not di-
rected from headquarters. If there are more ex-
THE MASKED WAR 295
plosions on the Pacific Coast they will never think
of looking in the East for those responsible."
It was this argument that induced J. J. to sum-
mon McManigal to Indianapolis as soon as he
reached headquarters and order him to go to Los
Angeles and try to blow up the auxiliary plant of
the Times and the Llewellyn Iron Works.
McManigal told us that he protested against
going at that time, for the whole country was
alarmed and horror stricken.
"Well," replied J. J., "you have got to go out
there and make a big noise. Look at the chances
J. B. ran. Now if you go out there and get these
two places it will throw suspicion from him."
J. J., Tveitmoe and the rest of the conspirators
had long used the scheme of setting off explosions
at the same time in widely distant parts of the
country so as to puzzle the authorities and make
them confine their investigations to different locali-
ties and they thought that the plan would continue
to work successfully. They did not know that we
had the telltale clockwork bombs that had failed to
explode, the one found at East Peoria and the other
that we picked up in Los Angeles. We had un-
covered their plans of warfare and while the au-
thorities of different cities were busy with futile in-
vestigations, each in his own jurisdiction, we were
headed for Indianapolis and gradually closing in on
the main camp.
CHAPTER XLI
EXPECTED "GREAT AND BLOODY WAR"
Pending the trial in Los Angeles, we continued
weaving the net about J. J. McNamara stronger
and stronger as the summer of 191 1 wore on. Mc-
Laren practically lived in prison with McManigal,
guarding him and protecting him from those in-
fluences powerful enough to reach within the jail.
He proved a never ending well of information and
McLaren's reports kept many of our staff busy all
the time.
Circumstantial evidence, when backed by exhibits,
always proves powerful before a jury. An exhibit,
an inanimate thing, does not offer the defense a
chance to exert its power in cross-examination. In-
animate things can't lie or get flustered. There is
no color for or against the accused in the evidence
given by a mute thing. It stands as cold, bare fact.
Thus we built up the case against J. J.
McManigal told McLaren that about June 22nd,
19 10, while he was in Detroit with J. B. Mc-
Namara, the latter received a general delivery
letter from his brother. J. J. had enclosed a receipt
for an express package. The package was in the
296
THE MASKED WAR 297
office of the Adams Express Company and it con-
tained three clocks and batteries all made up for
the job they had been sent on. This information
received, a telegram to an operative in Detroit was
all that was necessary to start the work of digging
into the records of the express company and cor-
roborating the sending and receiving of this pack-
age. We found J. B.'s receipt and the record of
the whole transaction from the time the package
was given in the care of the company until it was
delivered and taken away.
Again, McManigal recalled that on December
7th, 1910, he received a postal money order from J.
J. for seventy dollars. McManigal was then at his
home in Chicago. He cashed the money order at
Graham's Bank on West Madison Street. We
traced this documentary evidence easily. On the
same day McManigal received a telegram from
J. J. telling him to come to Indianapolis and bring
his suitcases. There was work for him. The
money was for expenses. The message telling him
to bring his suitcases plainly meant that he would
take a journey with a good supply of ammunition.
There was easily-traced sequence in these facts and
the directing hand of J. J. McNamara showed all
through them in a way that could convince any jury.
We thoroughly uncovered the complicity of the
majority of the members of the executive body of
the union in the dynamiting war, getting positive
evidence that they approved the expenditure of one
298 THE MASKED WAR
thousand dollars a month through the hands of
J. J. McNamara to those who did the actual work
of destruction. The bills were duly audited by a
committee and the reports of the dynamiters were
made by sending newspaper clippings giving accounts
of the various explosions for which the union's of-
ficials in Indianapolis had supplied nitroglycerin,
dynamite and men to set it off.
We uncovered the trail of J. J. McNamara to
Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the man named Kiser, who
sold him large quantities of explosive before Mc-
Manigal was brought into the circle of conspirators
to help J. B. with the major part of the work. J. J.
was then going under the name of Clark, an alias
he used at different times. Kiser picked his photo-
graph out of a collection of pictures and identified
it as the man he had sold the explosive to. Mc-
Manigal also had used the name of Clark in ship-
ping empty carrying cases for explosives to him in
Indianapolis and we were able to trace these ex-
press packages.
The trails of the two McNamaras were from one
dynamite and nitroglycerin cache to another and
although I had but little time in which to indulge
in an attempt at a sociological study of what was
unfolding before me, as my men made their reports,
it was palpable that the conspirators had brought
their activities to a point where at any moment the
country might have been plunged into bloody revo-
lution and anarchy.
THE MASKED WAR 299
After his arrest, J. B. McNamara boldly declared
to one of the Chicago detectives having him in
charge, that it was unfortunate that he had been
caught when he was. "If I had not been arrested
so soon," he told Detective William S. O'Callaghan,
"the working people would have had a chance to
live. There will be a great and bloody war be-
tween capital and labor."
Certainly it seemed that such a war was shaping,
for enough explosives had been cached at different
times by the McNamaras and their fellow conspira-
tors to have equipped an army for operations against
a warring nation. Again, J. B. declared that the
destruction of the Los Angeles Times was not such
a great matter and that the plan was to destroy the
whole city of Los Angeles if the attacks on the
union emanating from that city did not cease. The
plan of the conspirators was to blow up the water
works, lighting plants and public buildings, wreck-
ing the entire community regardless of cost to hu-
man life and regardless of the suffering that would
come to perfectly innocent, law-abiding people.
The McClintic-Marshall Company, especially
hated by the union conspirators, had a contract for
the steel work in one of the lock sections of the
Panama Canal and McManigal was sounded by J.
B. to see whether he would go to the Canal and
throw enough dynamite in this particular lock to
wreck the great work of national defense. At no
time was there the faintest trace of consideration
3 oo THE MASKED WAR
for the rest of the eighty or ninety millions of peo-
ple making up the citizenship of the United States.
From ambush these men, drunk with the power they
had acquired through years of successful violence
and defiance of the law, were ready to utterly wreck
the Republic.
In coping with these hidden enemies of society
and the laws of the Republic, the police of the vari-
ous cities, where the outrages were committed,
proved themselves utterly hopeless. Their investi-
gations ended with formal reports detailing a few
obvious facts. No trails were opened up and no
clues developed. Then, too, the regular police
forces of American cities are generally a part of the
political machine of the party in office and hereto-
fore the unions have played in politics extensively.
The work my agency undertook was a work
which another and one-time famous private detec-
tive agency had tried to accomplish and had failed
to do anything with. The police had given up try-
ing. During the many years in which I served the
United States in the Secret Service I had been for-
tunate in bringing every problem put before me to a
successful conclusion. I had not failed in a single
instance. My father had been the police commis-
sioner of Columbus, Ohio, when I was a boy. He
had not been appointed by a political boss or by
a mayor who owed his election to a machine, but
had been elected by the people of the city. I sup-
pose it was through the fact that my father was at
THE MASKED WAR 301
the head of a police force and could direct that
force intelligently and without political interference
that I became interested in the art of detecting crim-
inals. Certain it was that when I began to uncover
the conspiracy that brought the Los Angeles climax
I realized how tremendous was the task before me
and how important it was that the criminals be
brought to justice. It was more a duty to the law-
abiding people of my country that I should bring
these criminals to bay than it was a duty to the
authorities of one city or county.
When the trails to the real center of the con-
spiracy were opened wide and the arrests followed
there was poured out for me a wide and bitter
stream of hatred and opprobrium. I was pictured
as a vicious enemy of the workingman and the arch-
conspirator employed in breaking up their organiza-
tion. And yet at no time was I opposed to organ-
ized labor. I have always believed that the organi-
zation of labor meant good for the workingman
and that through it he was benefited and would be
further benefited in the future. I am still of that
faith despite the wild attacks that were and are
still made against me by men of the type of the Mc-
Namaras and others who have things hidden they
are afraid of.
CHAPTER XLII
"down with detective burns!"
On the eve of the trial of the McNamaras, Mr.
Gompers addressed and inflamed the passions of a
great crowd of people in Philadelphia in the Labor
Lyceum. The date was October ioth, 191 1. I had
been plentifully attacked before that and even mov-
ing-picture shows had been put on to show the work-
ing people how I had "kidnapped" the innocent
McNamaras.
In Philadelphia a McNamara parade was held
and 15,000 people participated in it. Red fire, red
flags and transparencies were carried in the parade
and a union of Jewish Garment Makers displayed
a big sign reading:
"Down with Detective Burns, the Kidnapper."
At this meeting Gompers raged against the man-
ner of the arrest of the McNamaras, declaring that
I had entered a meeting of the executive council of
the ironworkers and had lured J. J. to the sidewalk
and had then kidnapped him and rushed him across
the country to a hostile city for trial. He told pa-
thetically of talking with the two accused men just
before coming to Philadelphia and painted them as
302
THE MASKED WAR 303
pure and spotless when, even at that time, there was
consideration of the question of trying to save J. J.
McNamara by sending his younger brother and his
weakling tool to the gallows.
Gompers pictured the two McNamaras as mar-
tyrs and declared that the two men were being
placed on trial "on charges that we know to be abso-
lutely false."
Now there were plenty of Jionest workingmen
who did believe the McNamaras were innocent,
men who did not know how their money had been
spent and who did not know of the black characters
of the officials they trusted. But if ever there was
cheap hypocrisy indulged in it was indulged in by
Gompers in these public speeches, made for no other
purpose than to aid in the cheating of justice and the
foiling of the laws which are intended for the pro-
tection of the citizens of the country.
How strangely like a squeak sounds the impas-
sioned outburst of Gompers after the two McNa-
maras have stood up in court and confessed their
crimes in order to escape the gallows.
Here is one of the most widely spread appeals
issued by Mr. Gompers during the trial, when
money was being raised, so that there would be no
dearth of it on the Pacific Coast during those days
when witnesses were first offered any sums of
money to change their evidence and then threatened
with death in horrible forms when they refused to
be bribed:
3 04 THE MASKED WAR
"To All Workers."
"For right is right, since God is God,
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin.
"From Los Angeles last October came the news
that a terrible catastrophe had occurred in that city
— that the Los Angeles Times Building had been
destroyed, with thejoss of a number of lives. The
first word spoken, even before the flames had com-
pleted their destruction, by the emissaries of the
Los Angeles Times contained positive accusations
that organized labor was responsible for the dis-
aster. Qualifying statements were conspicuous by
their absence. Wide publicity was given, warped
and unsupported allegations against the organized
workmen of the entire country were featured, vast
sums of money were dangled in the faces of un-
scrupulous men to fasten the crime upon some mem-
ber or members of the trades unions. The Na-
tional Manufacturers' Association, flanked by the
Erectors' Association, Citizens' Alliances, detective
agencies, and a hostile press brought their every
influence to bear and appropriated every available
circumstance to bulwark and fix in the public mind
a mental attitude that the charges made against
oganized labor had been proven beyond the per-
adventure of a doubt.
"The authors of the charge, after months of in-
trigue and searching investigations, utterly failed to
THE MASKED WAR 305
substantiate the flamboyant and positive accusations
that had been made. The public mind was slowly
emerging from the hypnotic spell in which it had
been enveloped and mutterings of suspicion began
to be heard against the originators of the indict-
ments against labor men. The position of the hos-
tile employers' associations became exceedingly des-
perate. The Times management, with its years of
relentless warfare against humanity, fearing that its
Belshazzar feast of organized labor's blood was
about to be denied, redoubled its efforts and de-
manded a sacrifice that its unholy appetite might be
appeased, and that some union workmen must be
supplied to assuage its unnatural and abnormal hun-
ger.
"The record of events is too well known to make
it necessary to recount them in detail. That 'the
end justifies the means' became the slogan is patent.
With all the forces of greed compactly joined, there
began a campaign of vandalism the like of which
has never before found lodgment on the pages of
our American Republic's history. A prominent
member of union labor was selected, J. J. McNa-
mara, and one at whom the finger of suspicion had
never before pointed, whose life had been charac-
terized by an uprightness of purpose and loyalty to
the cause of labor, and whose activities in every
walk had drawn to him the commendation of his
fellows.
"To give the stage the proper setting, J. B. Mr-
3 o6 THE MASKED WAR
Namara, the brother, was selected as an associate
for sacrifice.
"With intrigue, falsehood, and an utter disregard
for all guarantees of law, applying physical force,
conniving with faithless officials, the two McNa-
maras were rushed in feverish haste to the scene of
the alleged crime. The rights of these two men
had been trampled upon — wilfully, flagrantly, wan-
tonly.
"Every man, even the meanest, under the consti-
tutional guarantees of our country, is entitled to a
trial by a jury of his peers, and every man is pre-
sumed to be innocent until proven guilty. This far
the proceedings had been in violent disregard of
those guarantees. The charge had been hurled
against organized labor, and two of its members
are now before the bar to answer these charges.
What is the duty of the men and the women of the
organized labor movement? What shall be our
course? What effort shall we put forth to see to
it that justice shall fairly obtain when methods such
as these are used against us?
"Funds must be provided to insure a proper de-
fense, a fair and impartial trial. Eminent counsel
have been engaged. Arrangements are proceeding
that a proper defense may be made. The great
need of the hour is money with which to meet the
heavy drains incident to the collection of evidence
and other expense, made necessary to cope with the
THE MASKED WAR 307
corporate wealth and unlimited means behind the
persecutors.
"Every man who is connected with the kidnap-
ping of the McNamaras will be prosecuted to the
full limit of the law, and a recurrence of the out-
rage prevented for all time to come. It is proposed
that the interests of organized labor shall be fully
protected and punishment meted out to detective
agencies that assume to be superior to the law. The
rights of the men of labor must and shall be pre-
served.
"The men of labor, unlike the hostile corpora-
tions arrayed against us, have not vast resources of
wealth and power, but they are imbued with the
spirit of justice and humanity, and are ever ready
when necessary to make sacrifice for principle.
"The trial of the McNamaras is set for an early
date. In the name of justice and humanity all
members of our organization and all friends of jus-
tice are urgently requested to contribute as liberally
as their abilities will permit. All contributions
toward the legal defense of the McNamara cases
and for the prosecution of the kidnappers should
be transmitted as soon as collected to Frank Morri-
son, No. 801-809 G street, N. W., Washington,
D. C, who will forward a receipt for every contri-
bution received and when the cases have been fi-
nally determined a report of the amounts received
and by whom donated and the amounts paid out of
3 o8 THE MASKED WAR
this fund will be printed and a copy of same sent to
every contributor.
"Yours fraternally,
"Samuel Gompers,
"President A. F. of L.
"Frank Morrison, Secretary.
"By order of the McNamara Ways and Means
Committee."
CHAPTER XLIII
THE UNION WAS GANG-RIDDEN
There are plenty of high-minded, clean and hon-
est labor leaders and under such men organized
labor has flourished and the workingmen have met
with full and fair consideration of their demands
to employers. I do not believe that the rank and
file of labor are willing to stand for such atrocities
as are shown in the record I have put down in this
book. I do not believe that a man with a job, a
craft and a family would put up money to hire
wholesale murderers. How many men with wives
and children would have stood for the proposition
to blow up a heavily loaded passenger train as it
crossed a high trestle just to show the people of the
United States that the railroads could not use rails
made in non-union shops? How many men with a
spark of faith in God or with a jot of love for hu-
mankind would have contributed the murderer's
hire to J. B. McNamara when he crept into that
little alley filled with ink and paper under the Los
Angeles Times Building; when he wrenched the gas
jets from their fixture and when his hand did not
hesitate as he laid the bomb and a boy passed him
309
3 io THE MASKED WAR
going upstairs to his job in the composing room?
Did this drunken and degenerate weakling tool of
J. J. McNamara, the elder brother, think that that
boy's mother was waiting for him after the night's
work and that his wages meant her support and her
life, and did the cries of the women and children
about the ruins of the building touch his heart for
one moment? Not much. Jim McNamara spent
his blood money among the lowest type of women
in the lowest sections of San Francisco, laughed
about his work and his brother, whom Gompers
lauded as spotless and noble, fished about for an as-
sassin to slay Mary Dye, to blow her up in a rail-
road coach even though many innocent people were
killed with her.
With the cause of labor in the hands of such men
only wreck and ruin is ahead of it for the law pre-
vails in this country and it is going to continue to
prevail despite the efforts of men of the Gompers
type who have made the unions gang-ridden and
lawless. With such men the honest and capable
union workingman does not stand a chance even in
his own organization. If he rises and tries to elect
a delegate to a convention whom he may think will
be clean from graft, honest and standing for lawful
and decent procedure in getting labor's rights, a
wrecking crew will beat him down and throw him
out.
As I have said before, there are splendid men at
the heads of some of the unions and their names
THE MASKED WAR 311
are without stain and their unions have flourished.
The head of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engi-
neers is such a man, and Carter, the head of the
Locomotive Firemen, is another. I have never
heard that John Mitchell ever countenanced acts
such as the McNamaras were guilty of.
In our investigations into the affairs of the In-
ternational Association of Bridge and Structural
Iron Workers, the organization betrayed to the An-
archists by the forty men afterward convicted in
the courts, two for murder and thirty-eight for con-
spiracy, we found how gang-ridden it had become
when we talked with a highly intelligent member of
the union in New York. This man is the head of a
family, the provider for a wife and six children, a
man of unusual intelligence and force, a skilled
workman and one who has held almost every office
of trust in his union. His name is not used because
of our promise to him.
For the purposes of this chronicle and to show
how gang-ridden his union had become we will call
him Johnson. He had been an ironworker for
twenty years, a member of the union for fifteen
years and for ten years of that time had held vari-
ous offices in the union.
Johnson's honesty was a proverbial matter with
the members of his craft. He was useful to the
union therefore, for any amount of money could be
safely entrusted to him. But as he was honest in
money matters he was honest otherwise and would
312 THE MASKED WAR
not handle money for crooks who infested the union.
From his account of what happened to him in the
union the general public will get a pretty good idea
of what the honest workingman goes up against
when crookedness prevails in his councils.
"I have never had any use for a crook," he told
me, "and there are lots of them in my organization.
They put me in charge of moneys, etc., depending
on my honesty and loyalty, if I do say it myself, to
pass it on without having any of it stick to my fin-
gers even though I knew of its rotten purpose.
They elected me to office knowing that I wouldn't
squeal and afterward they jobbed me because I
came out flat-footed and declared that I wouldn't
have anything more to do with the crooks who were
sucking the money from the poor devils who could
not afford it and making a royal living by their
tricks and grafting instincts.
"If this dynamiting business had not come up I
would be out of a job to-day, because I knew too
much, but since it has been brought out they have
sent on from Indianapolis to see what kind of a job
I would like. I don't want their jobs. I am work-
ing here in New York and am getting five dollars
a day. I have a home and a family and I want to
be left alone by everybody."
Johnson lived up to his reputation of being no
squealer. Try as hard as we could we could get
nothing from him save his general and temperate
protest against the blood-sucking methods of those
THE MASKED WAR 313
men of his union who made "royal livings" by bleed-
ing the poor devils who could not afford to pay.
Johnson was a fine specimen of American workman,
a man of pride and integrity. He hated a liar, a
thief and a grafter.
"They knew that I was getting ready to make a
holler about the rotten conditions and the rotten
jobs and they tried to get me in a dozen different
ways," he said, relating his union experiences.
"During the time of Sam Parks they blackjacked me
right in the meeting hall as I was leaving after I
had expressed myself and I carry the scar to this
day. I would be willing to tell all that I know, but
if I did my family would suffer and in the end I
would be hounded from pillar to post and I would
not be able to get another job. I would like to see
some of the crooks in the union go to the scaffold —
no, I don't mean that, for I do not believe in cap-
ital punishment, but I would like to see them sent
to some island where they could not practice their
rotten methods any more. I could not stand for
anything underhanded or mean and that is why I
did not stand better with that crew, you may be-
lieve me or not. When the wrecking crew did me
I told them that some time I would get even and
then, when this dynamiting business began to come
out, they fell over themselves trying to get to me,
fearing that I would carry out the old threat."
Here was one honest and clean workingman who
got the blackjack from the grafting element in the
3H THE MASKED WAR
union. There are plenty of them in every local
organization where men of the type of the McNa-
maras and the rest gain control and misrepresent
the cause of labor.
I honestly believe that in the end sincere friends
of labor organization will find that the work I did
in the uncovering of the masked warfare, with all
of its horrors and depths of iniquity, will prove of
lasting benefit to their cause. No cause can flour-
ish when grafters lead it and it is my honest belief
that the good sense of the American people will al-
ways exert itself in dealing with big industrial prob-
lems. I believe that the law will never be over-
ridden in this country, for the people themselves
make the law and they elect the lawmakers. I be-
lieve that the people of the United States will solve
their problems with intelligence and that the once
threatened savage warfare with torch and dynamite
has been proved futile. Anarchy cannot reign in
the United States.
CHAPTER XLIV
BURNS REFUSES $1,000 A NIGHT
Despite threats to kill and maim and efforts to
bribe, I kept on with the preparation of the case.
In the meantime an indictment was found against
me at Indianapolis by the Grand Jury, charging me
with having kidnapped J. J. McNamara. About
this time, I went to Europe on a very important
matter, and while there was advised by cable by my
son that an effort was being made to rush my case
at Indianapolis and forfeit my bond of $10,000. I
was compelled to hurry back and go to Indianapolis.
Immediately after the indictment was found I in-
sisted strongly that I be immediately placed on trial
at Indianapolis, as I knew there was not a particle
of evidence to sustain the charge. But my attor-
neys pointed out that a long-drawn-out trial might
prevent my presence at Los Angeles, where I would
be badly needed.
Strange as it may seem, it required vigorous
action on my part to collect a portion of the money
due me at Los Angeles for the work I had per-
formed, and of all the rewards aggregating over
$20,000, which melted like snow before a summer's
315
3 i6 THE MASKED WAR
sun, I have thus far collected only $5,000 from the
County of Los Angeles.
In the month of November, 191 1, while attend-
ing the National Convention of the American
Bankers' Association at New Orleans, the American
Federation of Labor was holding its Annual Con-
vention at Atlanta, Ga., and a resolution was passed
denouncing the Bankers for having passed a resolu-
tion of confidence in me.
Just before the confession of guilt by the McNa-
maras I was informed by my son Raymond J. Burns
that an effort was being made to reach Detective
Sergeant Guy Biddinger by the defense. A man
by the name of Turner, employed in the
Detective Agency of Thomas McGuire, in Chicago,
had approached Biddinger and told him there was
a chance to get rich, and so on. While Gompers
was at Indianapolis, Clarence Darrow was called to
Indianapolis, and when interviewed by the news-
paper men stated that he knew me and that I had
not planted the dynamite, and that I had not framed
that case. Notwithstanding this statement from
their own counsel, Gompers and others continued to
denounce me and charge me with framing up the
case.
Then followed a warfare to stifle our witnesses,
and an effort was made everywhere, first, to bribe
them, then to coerce them and then to murder them.
J. B. McNamara was constantly advising his law-
yers to get rid of Frank Eckhoff, of Cincinnati, as
THE MASKED WAR 317
he was a dangerous witness should I happen to find
him.
From the very beginning I contended that the
rank and file of organized labor were not cognizant
of the action of the McNamaras nor did they en-
dorse their methods, but, like many honest men of
organized labor, insisted that such men as McNa-
mara, Tveitmoe, and others were a menace to or-
ganized labor and ultimately would destroy it if
permitted to carry on their atrocious and reckless
lawlessness.
Immediately after the confession of the McNa-
maras I was approached by a prominent theatrical
manager, of New York, who called on me with a
contract written up and signed by a prominent bank-
ing firm, to insure its being carried out, and offering
to pay me Ten Thousand Dollars down and One
Thousand a night to deliver lectures, beginning at
Boston and ending at San Francisco. When I
promptly refused this, the theater manager was
astounded, and asked me if I realized what I was
doing. My reply was that notwithstanding the fact
that I needed the money, and it was the greatest op-
portunity ever presented me to make that amount
of money legitimately, I stated that I did not pro-
pose to commercialize my connection with this
great case, which had been carried on in the
interest and protection of Society, and that what
he proposed to pay me a thousand a night for tell-
ing I would tell the people of this country, in
318 THE MASKED WAR
speeches and otherwise, for nothing. This I have
endeavored to carry out to the best of my ability.
In doing this I have denounced Samuel Gompers
for having denounced me, but never charged that
Gompers was part of the dynamite conspiracy. His
partisans and jealous detectives and others endeav-
ored to construe what I said to mean that I was
charging Gompers with being a part of that con-
spiracy. All I ever charged was that he was dere-
lict in his duty as head of organized labor in this
country. He must have heard of these explosions
and of the lawless manner in which many of these
efforts for the "closed" shop were being carried out,
as the Structural Iron Workers were a part of the
American Federation of Labor. He was negligent
in his duty in not taking some steps to rid the honest
members of organized labor and the great organi-
zation of labor from the stigma that must naturally
attach to them through the action of the violent
members participating in this warfare.
During my long official career as an Officer, I
had been called upon to investigate important crim-
inal cases, that ultimately involved men in very high
places, and as I had never been a respecter of per-
sons in the investigation of these crimes, I did not
hesitate to perform my duty as I saw it.
Therefore, I kept gathering, as enemies, as con-
victions followed, one after the other, my various
investigations, an important group of evil doers,
who lost no opportunity to attack me and attempt
THE MASKED WAR 319
to destroy my character and reputation. When some
leaders of organized labor sought to do this, in an
effort to defend the McNamaras, they were joined
by this group and all sorts of libelous and malicious
articles were written in various publications through-
out the country, including such disreputable sheets as
the "Seattle Times."
Immediately after the arrest of the McNamaras,
General Otis then realized that all of the calumnies
uttered against me were baseless, and so stated.
From a long experience in prosecuting crime, and
especially since organizing the William J. Burns
National Detective Agency, I have been cognizant
of the outrageous blackmailing methods pursued by
private detectives, and I made up my mind that I
would do everything possible to expose this class of
lawbreakers and parasites on society. I have openly
stated, in many of my public utterances from the
platform, that private detectives, as a class, are the
greatest lot of crooks that ever went unpunished. I
have always insisted that the man who wants to fol-
low this business should first fortify himself with a
reputation for honesty and integrity, and then he
need not care what the people say about private
detectives. There are many of them who cloak
themselves with this calling solely for the purpose
of "blackmailing" and robbing their clients.
The honest private detectives applaud this state-
ment, and are with me in my effort to give to the
business an air of respectability, if that is possible.
CHAPTER XLV
WHAT DARROW HAD TO SAY
The last and completely unsuccessful attempt to
save the two McNamaras with the money that had
been raised for the defense was made when Bert
Franklin, employed in the capacity of investigator
by the defense, endeavored to "get to" the jury.
Bribery had been attempted almost every day
with witnesses, but we had amply protected our
lines from such encroachments. Our most impor-
tant witnesses were never left alone and in the case
of Frank Eckhoff we saw to it that not even his wife
and mother could reach him. Those witnesses who
had been threatened with death after they had re-
fused bribes were provided with guards.
District Attorney Fredericks and his force kept
their eyes keen for an attempt to get jurors and
when George N. Lockwood, a talesman, was ap-
proached by Franklin and given $500 in advance
with a guarantee of $3,500 after the trial, the plot
to fix this talesman was nipped in the bud. The
second attempt was made with Robert Bain, an
actual member of the McNamara jury. Bain swore
that Franklin gave him $500 and promised $3,600
320
THE MASKED WAR 321
after the trial if he stood out for not guilty. Frank-
lin was arrested for the Bain bribery and that was
the final blow. The McNamaras would have to
face twelve unbribed men for trial and the McNa-
maras and their counsel knew what witnesses we
had and had a good idea of the testimony we would
present. Both men would be found guilty of mur-
der in the first degree and both would go to the
gallows.
Panic hit the hearts of everyone connected with
the effort to save these two murderers and the mur-
derers themselves felt the rope tightening about
their necks. Negotiations to save them from death
on the gallows were opened. The first proposition
made to Captain Fredericks was that J. B. McNa-
mara plead guilty to murder in the first degree and
be given any sentence save that of death and that
J. J. McNamara be allowed to go free.
The district attorney was not content to see the
weakling tool suffer for the man higher up and he
declined the offer. Next came the same offer in
writing only with the words, "save the sentence of
death" scratched out with a pencil. The defense
was willing to swing Jim if by conceding this mis-
erable life to the law J. J. might be saved. The
district attorney declined.
Finally the defense made the proposition that
J. B. would plead guilty to the Los Angeles Times
job and its twenty-one murders and J. J. would
plead guilty to the Llewellyn Iron Works job.
322 THE MASKED WAR
Judge Boardwell accepted these pleas and sentenced
J. B. to San Quentin for life and J. J. for fifteen
years.
Judge Boardwell, in sentencing the two men, de-
clared that they were murderers at heart and de-
served the extreme penalty of the law. To J. B.
McNamara the judge said:
"There is very little or no ray of comfort in the
assertion that you did not intend to destroy life.
The widows and orphans and the bereaved parents
will look upon that statement at this time as a mock-
ery. The circumstances are against you in making
any such claim. A man who would put sixteen
sticks of dynamite in a building full of combustible
material, and I have in mind the paper which you
must have known was scattered in enormous quan-
tities throughout the building — I say that a man
who under such circumstances could place a dyna-
mite charge of that quantity in such a building, in
which you as a printer knew that gas was burning
in many places, and in which you knew there were
scores of human beings toiling, must have had no
regard whatever for the loss of his fellow human
beings. He must have been a murderer at heart."
Now what did Clarence Darrow have to say in
his statement to the public after the sentencing of
his two clients, the two men who were held up to
the people of the United States as two spotlessly
,THE MASKED WAR 323
innocent men who were being sacrificed by Capital
through the agency of William J. Burns?
The two men were sentenced on December 5th,
191 1. On that day Darrow said for publication in
the Los Angeles Times, the paper which had risen
from the wreck into which it had been cast by the
dynamite of his clients:
"I have been here six months and spent many
troubled days and sleepless nights trying to run
down every clue and make every possible investiga-
tion; trying to do the best I could for my clients
and the cause that I served. I had able associates
who gave me their best effort and their best serv-
ices through it all.
"From the first THERE WAS NEVER THE
SLIGHTEST CHANCE TO WIN. To those
who say it would have been better to have gone to
trial and suffer complete defeat, I would call atten-
tion to the fact that there were thirty or forty hotel
registers, three in Los Angeles, many in San Fran-
cisco and others in different parts of the country.
There were scores of witnesses to identify J. B. Mc-
Namara as being present practically on the very
day, and one, at least, in the building. There was
overwhelming evidence of all kinds which no one
could have surmounted if they would.
"If the State had put on its case we could not
even put the defendant on the stand to deny the
facts. We could not prove an alibi. We could not
3 2 4 THE MASKED WAR
prove he was not here. The failure to do so would
have been as much of an admission as it was to-day.
We were confronted with the situation of dragging
our case, perhaps for years, with NOTHING BUT
THE GALLOWS AT THE END and no chance
to raise any doubt in a thinking mind, and in the
meantime collecting money from thousands of peo-
ple who could not know the facts.
"To go on under such circumstances would have
been madness and only postpone an evil until it
would have been a still greater evil and the conse-
quences graver than they are now. All of this was
thoroughly understood by my associates and no one
hesitated about accepting it. We acted as we
thought right and best and will take the conse-
quences of the act."
Near $200,000 were spent for the lawyers in
Los Angeles to find out that "there wasn't a chance
from the first" for the two men we had brought to
trial. A great deal more money was collected, the
poor, sweating, gullible workingman and working-
woman giving up with each call from their false
leaders and putting their money in his hands to dis-
pose of for them in the belief that what he was tell-
ing them was true. Even Darrow admitted that it
was not right to keep up the gouge.
CHAPTER XLVI
THE MYSTERY OF TWO LOST MEN
With the McNamaras disposed of, I immedi-
ately started the roundup of those gentlemen who
had gathered with J. J. McNamara in the head-
quarters of the union in Indianapolis to await the
reports from J. B. and McManigal as they made
their tour with dynamite — that last tour when they
started out with my operatives thick as bees at their
heels.
We had a great mass of evidence to show that
President F. M. Ryan and the rest of the officers
of the International had shared in the masked war.
This evidence we turned over to United States Dis-
trict Attorney Miller in Indianapolis and we
brought along McManigal from Los Angeles as a
witness against the conspirators. Nearly the entire
executive body of the International was guilty of
participating in the conspiracy of destruction and
when we made the roundup the net brought forty-
five ironworkers to the bar of justice. Thirty-eight
were found guilty and sentenced to the Federal
prison for terms of from one to seven years.
Tveitmoe and Clancy and Jack Munsey and the
325
326 THE MASKED WAR
other fattened parasites of the union were sent to
Leavenworth prison to work for their keep behind
bars. They no longer draw fat salaries and emer-
gency sums from the union's deflated treasury.
With the beginning of the year 19 13 we left the
field of investigation for the many other tasks ahead
of us. The structural ironworkers were rid of their
grafters, crooks and murderers. They had a new
slate before them.
In all this record which I have put down for the
lasting chronicle of a serious warfare against Soci-
ety and its laws there stands out to my eyes a most
gratifying thing. My organization worked su-
perbly and although private detective agencies are
too frequently used for harboring crooks and pro-
fessional blackmailers my men worked with clean
hands as well as remarkably quick wits. Some of
them sacrificed all of the comforts of life at times
in order to do their work well, none of them suc-
cumbed to offers of big bribes and it is with genuine
pride that I say that without their efficient aid and
their fine integrity the success of my agency would
never have been achieved.
Of the two Anarchists, Schmidt and Caplan, sup-
plied to help J. B. McNamara in the destruction of
the Times Building, all that can be said is that they
are yet to be captured and to be made to answer to
the charge of murder.
Among the many letters received by me to the
effect that I would pay with my life for my share
THE MASKED WAR 327
in the investigation one was signed by a man who
declared himself to be Schmidt. He promises to
come back to this country after his period of hid-
ing abroad. He declared that he would return in
order to murder me. If he is really living he may
not be surprised if at any moment a hand closes on
his shoulder and he finds himself a prisoner.
Caplan's wife was smuggled out of San Francisco
by Tveitmoe and his assistants. But we had no
charge against her. It is her husband who may yet
look up at the gallows tree. It has been suggested
that these two Anarchists were put away for fear
that they would weaken and testify against the real
conspirators in order to save their lives. We know
nothing that would give us reason to believe that
such a double murder was committed but in closing
I shall quote from a letter written by a woman, evi-
dently an Anarchist, in which she graphically sug-
gests this solution of the disappearance of the two
men.
Here it is:
"I went to Carmel Mission and a fruit ranch near
there about the middle of October after the dyna-
miting of the Times Building.
"Followed the Carmel River up in the Flats and
went to a house where lived a woman of stout build
and a small-sized man.
"Was sent there by an old German priest of Car-
mel.
328 THE MASKED WAR
"Had some conversation with the woman and
the man left.
"Was joined afterward by Schmidt and the boy
of the Huber family. All were lodged in a camp
up in Carmel mountain. About November 19th,
there was war in the camp — a tragedy had taken
place.
"The camp had been dynamited, how or by whom
I do not know. A man on horseback went there
hunting. While he was there, it is my belief, two
persons were dynamited, their bodies rolled in tar-
paulin with stone sinkers, and thrown into Carmel
River to pass along the coast in the undertow north
above Santa Cruz.
"On the eighth of February I had a very strong
feeling that these bodies in tarpaulin were passing
Point of Pines. I went out there and at the spot in-
dicated there was an unusually large number of gulls
incessantly brooding over the drift and they did not
leave until the tide turned."
Whether that was the last of Caplan or not I do
not know.
FINIS
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