Unprecedented Pursuing
A terrific explosion sounded, far beyond the tunnel mouth and across the hills. Smoke rolled out. Poisonous gases drove passengers and train crew into the open. When rescue parties entered the tunnel an hour later they found the bodies of three trainmen, two in the engine cab, one by the tracks. And in the mail and express car the charred body of Mail Clerk Dougherty.
The robbers had taken four lives, had destroyed mail and express worth probably hundreds of thousands, and had been driven away empty-handed by the poisonous gases they themselves set off in their attempt to pierce the steel end of the car.
That was nearly four years ago. And the man hunt that was begun less than an hour after the crime has never for one minute been relaxed. Last winter one of the three killers was apprehended; some day, sooner or later, the other two will be found.
It has been and still is the greatest man hunt in the history of crime and its detection. A reward of fifteen thousand nine hundred dollars, offered by the Post Office Department, the American Express, the Southern Pacific railway, and the State of Oregon, have spurred thousands of detectives, professional and amateur, on the search.
Before daylight on the twelfth of October, 1923, while rescuers still searched the wreckage in Siskiyou tunnel, sheriffs’ posses had started into the hills. There is a large amount of wild timber country not far from the scene of the holdup, and it was guessed that the robbers had fled to its protection.
Post office inspectors and operatives of the express company, representatives of the State — government, railroad detectives, county, city and private agency officials joined the search. For days the posses tramped the mountainside and wilderness.
In one of these armed groups, made up from the countryside, a young, soft spoken, well dressed man named Hugh DeAutremont took a leading part. He led searchers up the faces of steep cliffs, pointed out distant thickets where the robbers might be hiding, charged dangerous passes.
And when it was decided that the killers had escaped and the posses came back to town, Hugh DeAutremont remained a day or two, and then disappeared. Last winter he was arrested on a rifle range at Fort McKinley, Manila, Philippine Islands, and confessed his part in the robbery. The other two bandits, his brothers Ray and Roy, still are at large, and still are the objects of a search that literally is world-wide.
Never before have such efforts been made to apprehend criminals. It was several days after the robbery that suspicion first was drawn to the brothers DeAutremont. Postal inspectors, searching for facts, came upon evidence pointing to these boys.
The Scope of the Search
What that evidence was, and where obtained, is one of the minor mysteries of the story. The investigators merely announced, “We have positive information that the men we want are these three brothers.”
Handbills were printed. At first by the hundreds, then ten thousand — a hundred thousand — then the presses rumbled day and night — five hundred thousand. Probably a million have been distributed.
That is the story of the crime, remarkable only for its daring, for its absolute cruelty, and for its failure. But the tale of the search is unparalleled in any nation. Scotland Yard, the Paris bureau, the Brigade Mobile, even the Cheka of Moscow have never carried on so relentless a campaign.
The offering of five thousand three hundred dollars reward for each of the men was only a start. Hundreds of officers, the best man hunters in America, have devoted years of skill to the search.
The history of the boys was investigated so thoroughly that practically nothing escaped the officials. Their habits, their physical peculiarities, their likes and dislikes, even their favorite songs and the tones in which they sing them were listed and broadcast.
The leaflets issued by the Post Office Department make the following request on the first of its ten pages:
All law-abiding citizens, especially peace officers, dentists, opticians, barbers, loggers, jewelers and seamen, please read carefully and retain for future reference.
And in the folder, following the descriptions, are listed various bits of information valuable to each special class of citizen who might come in contact with the men.
The Criminal’s Watch
Librarians, for example, are told to watch for Ray and Roy, twins, who are still at large. These two are now twenty-seven years old. They are in the habit of borrowing books on sociology and poetical works from public libraries. They are “forward with women,” and are “presuming,” according to the lookout. Librarians are further requested to examine their files of signatures, and compare them with the signatures of Ray and Roy printed on the folder.
And because these men are so much wanted, every librarian in the United States and Canada has been furnished with a copy of the handbill. Every barber shop, even to the remotest village, has been circularized, because Ray and Roy sometimes worked at the barber trade.
The employment office of every big industrial plant in America has received photographs and descriptions. Every logging camp has the request on file. Every jeweler and watch repairman has received an earnest request to be on the lookout for a seven-jewel Waltham, sixteen size, open face watch, gold filled case, with gold filled chain and knife attached. The number on the case is 4298547 and the movement number 22444312. The private mark on the back of the case is 11293HB.
The Post Office Department urges every man who has bought a Waltham watch since 1923, no matter what the source, no matter how reputable the firm that sold it, to examine it at once for these numbers. And every time a watchmaker receives a Waltham for repairs he too is expected to examine it at once. It may be the watch Roy DeAutremont had the day of the crime.
It is hardly likely that the men have kept these watches, but, having sold them, they may be traced back. Ray had an Excelsior, size sixteen, with the private mark 8662 on the back of case, and movement number 667501.
Roy and Ray have weak, squinty eyes, and both wear glasses. Every oculist and optician has been requested to watch for them. The prescriptions for their glasses have been forwarded to every optical establishment in America, with a request that a check-up be made on their files.
And then the dentists! Every dentist who could be found by the post office authorities received a description of the mouths of the three. Every tooth, every filling in every jaw wanted is known and described.
A Blot Wiped Away
Then, as if that were not enough, the finger-print classification of one of them, Ray, who served time in Monroe, Washington, during the war, for criminal syndicalism, has been forwarded to every criminal identification bureau in the world!
Every United States post office has the pictures of the three brothers on its lobby wall. Every United States consul has copies. Steamship offices, customs officials, coast guards men, railway ticket sellers, steamer pursers, newspaper men, radio announcers, theater doormen, and a host of other citizens in daily contact with large numbers of people have repeatedly been requested to keep a sharp eye open for the two remaining DeAutremonts, Roy and Ray.
In the meantime hundreds of post office inspectors are keeping everlastingly at it. The Postmaster General recently said: “These unusual steps have been taken not only because of the particularly heinous and cold-blooded crime, but because of the baffling manner in which they — the brothers — have dropped from sight.”