Bloody Williamson (33 page)

To Martin the sentence, “I knew their father,” indicated that the boys were brothers. Presumably, the writer of the note would have foreseen such an interpretation and have avoided any wording that might give rise to it, yet even the wiliest criminals slip occasionally. At any rate, the clue was worth following.

Martin soon established the fact that the only brothers in either gang who could be called boys—and the killers of Adams were indubitably young—were Harry and Elmo Thomasson. As his next step, he arranged to have Mrs. Adams see Harry in the jail without being seen. She identified him positively as one of
the two young men whom she had met at the door the afternoon her husband was killed. Elmo, presumably dead, she identified from photographs.

In sentencing Harry after the robbery trial the judge had decreed that because of his age he should serve the first two years of his term in the Pontiac Reformatory rather than in the penitentiary. Martin gave the young convict several weeks in which to brood, and then went to Pontiac. With him he took John T. Rogers of the
Post-Dispatch
, who had an uncanny ability to make criminals talk. Between them they convinced young Thomasson that they knew he and his brother had killed Adams, and that he would fare better if he confessed and pleaded guilty than if he stood trial. By this time Thomasson had come to believe that Birger himself had fired Shady Rest, and was thus responsible for Elmo’s death; he also blamed the gang leader for failing to help him at the time of his own trial. The boy cracked, told his story, and agreed to plead guilty and testify in open court whenever called upon.

On April 30, 1927, loiterers in the circuit courtroom at Benton saw the bailiff lead in a slight young man clothed in a rough, ill-fitting, prison-made suit. State’s Attorney Martin presented him to Judge Charles H. Miller:

“This is Harry Thomasson, who is one of several Birger gangsters under indictment for the murder of Joe Adams. He wishes to plead guilty.”

The spectators—few in number, since no word of what was coming had leaked out—came to attention as the judge reminded the prisoner of the seriousness of the charge and the possible consequences of his plea. Then he asked:

“Do you wish to plead guilty?”

“I do,” Thomasson answered.

The court appointed two lawyers who happened to be present to act as counsel for the defendant, the clerk read the indictment, and Thomasson started to tell his story. After a few sentences Judge Miller interrupted.

“Why are you so insistent on pleading guilty of murder?”

Thomasson answered quietly and without any of the arrogance that had characterized his behavior when he was on trial before:

“Because Charlie Birger, Art Newman, Connie Ritter, and Freddie Wooten blew up Shady Rest cabin and killed my brother.”

He proceeded:

“On the morning of the murder, one of the Birger gang called me at my home in West Frankfort and told me to come to Shady Rest. I got in a car and went to Shady Rest where my brother Elmo had stayed the night before. Birger, Newman, Ritter and Ray Hyland were there. They gave Elmo a .38 and me a .45.”

Hyland, Thomasson continued, drove the two boys to West City. Newman and Ritter, in another car, followed them as far as Marion, and arranged to meet them after the killing.

“When we reached West City,” the prisoner related, “Elmo and I went to Adams’s house, leaving Hyland sitting in the car. We knocked on the door and then Adams came. Elmo handed him the note, and while he was reading it, I shot him twice with the revolver which I had hidden up my sleeve. Elmo then shot him once. We then ran back to the car where Hyland was waiting, and drove away. That night, Elmo went back to Shady Rest and stayed there all night, but I stayed in a hotel in Harrisburg.

“The next day,” Thomasson concluded, “I went back to Shady Rest and they paid us $150, fifty dollars for each shot fired.”

Martin, State’s Attorney, joined with the prisoner’s counsel in asking for mercy.

“I shall sentence you to life imprisonment,” the court responded.

Thomasson walked from the courtroom without faltering. Outside he asked to see Gus Adams, the dead man’s brother, and when Adams came up, offered his hand. Gus took it.

“I’m sorry I killed Joe,” Thomasson said. “I never knew him
and he never did me any wrong. I had to do it. I’m sorry for you. My own brother was killed too.”

Tears blurred his eyes as he was led away.

In the Franklin County jail Birger, who had been arrested the day before and charged with murder in anticipation of Thomasson’s confession, denied that he had had anything whatever to do with the killing of Joe Adams.

Thomasson’s testimony was not the only blow Birger had to parry. The day before the gang leader was arrested Edmund Burke, one of the lawyers for the Sheltons in their trial at Quincy, filed a motion in the United States court at Springfield asking that they be granted a new trial. To support the motion he produced an affidavit that Harvey Dungey, witness for the prosecution, had made in his office on the previous day. Dungey swore that he had perjured himself when he testified that he saw Carl and Bernie Shelton near Collinsville on the day of the mail robbery. Birger and Newman, he said, had threatened to kill him unless he testified as he did. Now, conscience-stricken, he had decided to admit his guilt.

Another blow came a few days later, when a Williamson County grand jury indicted four former members of Birger’s gang for the murder of “Casey” Jones. Word spread that the grand jury acted on evidence showing that Jones was killed at Shady Rest in Birger’s absence, that his body was allowed to lie outside the cabin all night, and that early in the following morning it was taken twenty miles away and dumped into the creek in which it was found. Named in the indictment were Rado Millich, a Montenegrin whom Birger had formerly employed as a caretaker, and two local boys not yet twenty, Clarence Rone and Ural Gowen. (The fourth person was not named.) Millich, Rone, and Gowen were already serving sentences for other offenses.

To add to Birger’s troubles the Shelton brothers were granted a new trial and released on bond.

These adversities, however, could not approach the catastrophe that struck the gang leader early in June.

Ever since the murder of Lory Price the chief of the Illinois state police and several of his men had been quietly working on the case. They had started on the presumption that Price had been abducted by Shelton gangsters, but from a former Birger follower, whom they tracked down in Ohio, they received information that led them to believe Price was killed by members of the Birger gang because he knew too much about their operations. Their problem, then, became that of finding the influential Birger gangsters still at large. Late in May 1927, they located Art Newman in Long Beach, California, where he was working as a private detective under an assumed name. Local police arrested him and charged him with murder. The governor of California honored a request for extradition, and Sheriff Pritchard of Franklin County set out to bring the prisoner back for trial.

With the sheriff went John T. Rogers of the
Post-Dispatch
, hoping to induce Newman to tell his story as he had induced Thomasson to tell his. Somehow, on the long ride from California to Illinois, he succeeded. Arriving in Benton, Rogers handed Newman’s confession to State’s Attorney Martin as the sheriff locked the prisoner in his cell. Martin turned it over to the State’s Attorney of Washington County, in which Price’s body had been found. That official called a special grand jury to meet at Nashville, the county seat, on June 11. Newman, brought into court there, swore that the confession he had made on the train was true in every respect, and was indicted—along with Birger, Connie Ritter, Ernest Blue, Leslie Simpson, and Riley Simmons—for the murder of Lory Price.

Newman began his story by saying that on the day Price and his wife disappeared Birger called him to Harrisburg and informed him that the gang intended to question “Slim” (Price) about “snitching” to the Williamson County authorities. The men started to Price’s home in midafternoon, but found no one there. They returned in the evening, saw that there were visitors,
left and returned again. It was almost midnight before they were certain that they would find the highway officer and his wife alone.

All the men, seven in number, went to the door. Price answered their knock. Birger, with loud profanity, asked who blew up Shady Rest. When Price said he didn’t know, Birger ordered him into Newman’s car, parked in front of the house. At the same time he seized the officer’s pistol.

“Are you going to hurt me, Charlie?” Price asked.

“No,” Birger promised, “I just want to talk things over with you.”

Birger pushed his captive into the back seat and sat down beside him; Wooten took the place next to Newman at the wheel. As the car started Birger called to the men in the second automobile:

“Take that woman out and do away with her!”

“Charlie, please don’t hurt Ethel,” Price pleaded.

“Never mind,” Birger snapped. “Shut up!”

Birger ordered Newman to keep driving. Then he began to berate the policeman—for trying to find out who killed Joe Adams, for being at Shady Rest the night it was destroyed, for carrying tales to Sheriff Coleman. With every mile he became more vituperative.

Newman stopped at Birger’s home in Harrisburg, but the gang leader stayed there only a minute or two. Re-entering the car, he named as their destination a part of the county where there were several abandoned mines.

“I’ve got a notion, Price,” he said, “to knock you off and throw you in one of these mines.”

Then he changed his mind and headed for the site of Shady Rest.

“I want to show this Price what has happened to my cabin on account of him,” he announced.

The party arrived at the barbecue stand about two a.m. Price, thoroughly frightened, whispered to Newman:

“Art, can you help me now?”

Birger overheard. “I’d like to see somebody try to help you now,” he blustered. “Come on in here.”

Inside the stand he faced Price in wild rage. When the officer denied, once more, that he had double-crossed the gang, Birger fired. Three shots passed through Price’s body, and he pitched to the floor.

At this moment the second car came up.

“You’ve played hell now,” Wooten told Birger. “Here’s the car with that woman.”

“Don’t worry about the woman,” one of the newcomers said. “We killed her.”

“What did you do with her?” Newman asked.

“We shot her and threw her in a mine shaft near Carterville.”

“All right,” Birger broke in. “We’ll put him with her.”

“We can’t,” came the reply. “We filled up the place with tin and timbers.”

Birger thought for a moment. “I know another old mine near Du Quoin,” he said. “Throw this man in Newman’s car.”

Newman protested. “I’ll be damned if you do. Put him in that Buick.”

Birger flew into a rage, pointed his machine gun at his worried, hesitant followers, and shouted:

“Everybody will go through this with me or I’ll wipe you all out!”

They put Price, still alive, in the back seat of Newman’s car, and Birger, machine gun in hand, sat on his body. Near Carbondale the gangster ordered a stop. Stepping to the roadside, he vomited violently.

“That’s too much for me,” he said when he was able to speak. “I can kill a man, but I can’t sit on him. I don’t know what in the hell’s the matter with me. It isn’t my nerves. Every time I kill a man it makes me sick afterwards. I guess it’s my stomach.”

Birger told Connie Ritter to take his place. After a few miles Price regained consciousness.

“Connie, I’m an innocent man,” he managed to say.

“Shut up, you bastard, or I’ll turn this machine gun on you,” Ritter responded.

A few more miles and Price spoke again. This time his voice was barely audible.

“Connie, you’ll live to regret this.”

By this time Ritter, too, had had enough, so another of the gangsters took his place astride the body of the wounded captive. Birger ordered a stop at an old coal-mine, and then saw a watchman on duty. The cars moved on to a schoolhouse. There he hoped to dump the dying policeman and burn both building and body, but rain, now falling hard, thwarted the plan. Farther on, near Dubois, he stopped by the roadside and directed the men in the first car to carry Price into the adjacent field.

“Art,” the officer moaned, “I thought you were my friend.”

“By God, I am, Lory, but I can’t help this,” Newman replied.

Shots rang out, and a moment later Birger and the others who had dragged Price away returned to the cars. On the way back to Shady Rest one of the men who had abducted Mrs. Price told Newman that they had taken her to an abandoned mine, shot her, and thrown her body to the bottom of the shaft. Then they covered it, to the depth of many feet, with timbers, stone, and debris. No one would ever find her.

Thus Newman’s confession. Was it true?

If it was, Mrs. Price’s body would be found where it had been hidden five months earlier. As soon as the gruesome story was made public, a crowd gathered at the old mine-shaft. Many were miners with picks and shovels. They worked in relays, passing the dirt to the surface by a bucket line. After dark the lamps on their caps twinkled like fireflies. Campfire Girls and Red Cross workers set up a canteen and served coffee and sandwiches.

The diggers worked the following day, and the day after that until noon. Then they came to the dead woman’s body. Art Newman had told the truth.

With public opinion inflamed by a revelation of brutality even
more savage than had been imagined, Rado Millich and Ural Gowen went on trial for the murder of “Casey” Jones. (Charges against Clarence Rone, also indicted, were dismissed when he turned state’s evidence.)

On June 24 the defendants were arraigned before Judge Hartwell in the old Williamson County courthouse. They made a strange pair—Gowen a slender, diffident boy in shirt sleeves, looking more like a young farmhand than a gangster; Millich twice Gowen’s age, dark-skinned, with glittering black eyes in a deep-lined face, an abnormally long nose, and a head that tapered toward the top like a blunt-nosed bullet. He spoke in broken and halting English, but when asked by the judge whether he could understand the language he answered: “Yes, sir, very well.” Neither defendant had counsel, so the court appointed two lawyers to defend them.