arrest and conviction of billy lowe and george ebber-
ling.—a piece of quick work.
glencoe is a small station on the missouri pacific railway, twenty-nine miles west of the city of st. louis. an east bound train which carried both mail and passengers was boarded on the night of february 21, 1910, by two men, who climbed on the front end of what is known by railroad men as the blind baggage, next to the tender of the engine. these men were unobserved until the train had passed glencoe station, when they climbed over the top of the tank to the engine and covered the engineer and fireman with drawn revolvers. they were both masked with handkerchiefs tied over the lower portion of their faces, which entirely concealed their features below the eyes. they wore slouch hats and were described by the engineer and fireman and other members of the train crew who saw them—one as a short, stout built man with very black hair; the other as a tall, square-shouldered fellow with[pg 131] light-brown hair, and apparently younger than his stout partner. the stout man was described as having handled and carried his revolver in his left hand, while his right hand was bandaged and appeared to have been injured. he also was reported as having acted as chief and to have given all orders, and to have handled the locomotive as though he was as perfectly familiar with the work as an experienced locomotive engineer. these men compelled the engineer to bring the train to a full stop. they then made the engineer and fireman accompany them back to the rear end of the last mail car, when the engineer was forced to disconnect the two mail cars from the rest of the train. then the engineer and fireman were marched back to the engine, and after all four men had again entered the cab, the short man took charge of the engine, and pulled the express and two mail cars to a point about three miles east of where the rest of the train had been left with the crew. they stopped at this point on the main track and began rifling the sealed mail pouches in one of the mail cars, continuing this for several minutes, cutting open the sealed pouches and taking therefrom all the registered mail. they finally concluded that they were consuming too much time, as trains were liable to approach from the east. they, therefore, seized a number of large mail pouches filled with registered mail, and, after instructing the engineer and fireman to back the engine to glencoe and take up the rest of the train again, the men left the railroad on foot, each of them being loaded down with the registered mail pouches, which they had taken from the car. they hid these mail bags in a stack of corn-shucks in a cornfield near the bank of the meramec river. they had previously stolen a skiff, or rowboat, which they had hidden in a clump of bushes on the bank of the river near the cornfield. they took this rowboat and made their way down the meramec river a few[pg 132] miles, where they left the boat and made their way overland back to st. louis.
on the morning of february 22, i happened to be in new york city and upon picking up a morning paper i read the account of the train robbery and the description that had been given by the train crew of the robbers. i immediately telegraphed to the manager of my office in st. louis to go and tell mr. dixon, of st. louis, postoffice inspector in charge of the district of missouri, that i knew who the train robbers were, and where they could be found, and that i would be in st. louis the following saturday and that i would get the guilty men and turn them over to him or to his assistants in case he, mr. dixon, and his force had not succeeded in locating and arresting the guilty men before i returned to st. louis.
on my return the following saturday i found mr. dixon awaiting me. i told him that i was satisfied, from the description of the robbers, that billy lowe was the leader in the glencoe train robbery. i told about having arrested lowe eleven years before for having taken part, with others, in the leads junction train robbery, which had occurred on the missouri pacific railroad just east and south of kansas city. he with the others had held up the train and had blown the express car to pieces with dynamite. i also told him that i had finally succeeded in obtaining from lowe a complete confession as to the part he had taken in the leads robbery, and also the names of his associates in the crime.
some of his other companions were also arrested at the time. lowe took the witness stand and by his testimony fully substantiated the confession that he had made to me in the presence of john hayes, who was then chief of police of kansas city, missouri, and d. f. harbaugh, one of my men at that time. lowe afterwards reiterated this confession to[pg 133] the prosecuting attorney of kansas city. the prosecutor's name i do not now remember.
lowe having taken the witness stand and having promised the chief of police and prosecuting attorney and myself that he would thereafter lead an honest life, the prosecuting attorney annulled the proceedings against him and after the trial of his associates lowe was dismissed. he was a thorough railroad man. he came to st. louis and obtained employment as a switchman in the yards of the iron mountain railroad, where he met and formed the acquaintance of one george ebberling, also a switchman. he and ebberling became fast friends and continued to work for the iron mountain for several years, when they left the company's service and went to st. paul, minnesota, where they obtained employment in the train service of the great northern railway company, and finally worked their way to spokane, washington.
in the meantime i kept track of them, believing that it would be only a question of time until lowe would become a train robber again. during the years of 1908 and 1909 a number of trains were held up and robbed in the vicinity of spokane, and i, knowing that lowe was there, wrote the officers of the great northern company that i believed that i knew who the guilty parties were and where they could be found. but these officers apparently did not deem the information i had sent them worth answering, as i did not hear from them.
i knew that both billy lowe and ebberling were in st. louis prior to the glencoe train robbery. they had returned early in january and i immediately had placed a shadow on their movements, and when i read the description of the men who had robbed the train at glencoe i at once became satisfied that lowe was the man who had handled the engine. he had visited my office the day preceding the glencoe affair, and his right hand was bandaged by reason of boils that he had on[pg 134] his wrist just above the hand; and then the description in the new york papers was almost a perfect description of lowe, and also the description of the tall man given in the paper was that of ebberling.
as soon as they arrived in st. louis, lowe had rented an office room on the upper floor of the granite building, on the southwest corner of 4th and market streets. lowe furnished his office and had a number of maps and charts of mining lands in alaska, and offered mining stocks for sale in that country. ebberling left st. louis immediately after the glencoe robbery.
a day or so after the robbery, a country merchant, who resides in a small town near kansas city, furnished the postoffice inspector with a clue which afterwards proved that i was right in suspecting lowe and ebberling of the crime. this merchant owed a st. louis wholesale house a bill in the neighborhood of $100.00. he had, on the day before the robbery, remitted the amount by registered letter, keeping a memorandum of the size, series and numbers of the bills. when he first heard of the robbery, and knowing that his package was probably a part of the loot, the merchant sent a copy of the memorandum to the postoffice inspector. the inspector had several hundred copies of the memorandum printed and forwarded to the officials of the banks within a radius of five hundred miles of st. louis. within twenty-four hours after the distribution of these circulars, one of the bills, a ten-dollar gold certificate, was presented at the receiving teller's window of a hot springs national bank, by one of its lady depositors—the keeper of a rooming house in that city. on being questioned as to where she had obtained the bill, the lady told the teller one of her roomers, mr. george ebberling, had given it to her in exchange for a week's room rent.
[pg 135]
in the meantime, i having learned that ebberling had gone to hot springs and his address there, notified inspector dixon, who immediately sent one of his assistants to ebberling's lodging place, where he secured an adjoining room to enable him to keep a closer watch on the suspected mail robber. the teller of the bank reported the finding of the bill to inspector dixon promptly, and we immediately planned the arrest of lowe.
william w. lowe george ebberling
william w. lowe. george ebberling.
train robber and thief now doing
a long sentence for robbing
a mail train near st. louis. train robber and thief who assisted
lowe in many of his robberies,
also doing time.
the following morning accompanied by two of mr. dixon's postoffice inspectors, james smith, chief of detectives of st. louis, and two of his men, and my assistant superintendent, j. s. manning, i went to lowe's office in the granite building,[pg 136] having previously been advised by mr. manning that the man under suspicion was in his office. i pointed lowe out to the city officers, who arrested him promptly. he was locked up and after his arrest, mr. dixon telegraphed his inspector at hot springs to arrest ebberling immediately and bring him to st. louis. after ebberling had been arrested at hot springs, when he was asked how he got possession of the ten-dollar note, before mentioned, he confessed that he had gotten it from billy lowe and made a further and full confession as to how he and lowe had robbed the train at glencoe.
lowe did not make a confession, nor did he make any admission as to his connection with the robbery; on the contrary, he strenuously denied everything.
in his confession, ebberling stated that jimmy lowe, a younger brother of billy's, knew all about the robbery, and would have taken part in it but for the fact that he became intoxicated on the evening the robbery was scheduled to take place and could not make the trip. ebberling also stated that james lowe had visited the cache in south st. louis where the guns and masks had been hidden, and brought them to st. louis and delivered them to billy lowe at his mother's house.
the amount of money secured from the rifled mail pouches, according to ebberling, was between six and seven hundred dollars, but the pouches which had been "stashed" in the cornfield by the robbers, and afterwards recovered by the officers, contained a great deal more than this amount.
ebberling and lowe were tried in the april term of the federal court at st. louis and were convicted—lowe being sentenced to forty-three years at leavenworth, united states penitentiary, and a fine of $3,000.00, or the equivalent of two years in prison. ebberling was sentenced to eighteen years in leavenworth prison, and fined $3,000.00. jimmy lowe, who[pg 137] had laid in jail for months and had taken the witness stand for the government, was released and is now leading an honest life, so far as i know.
after arriving at the penitentiary ebberling made a further confession in which he stated that he and w. w. lowe had held up and robbed eleven trains at different points on the great northern and the northern pacific railway lines in the vicinity of spokane, during 1908 and 1909, and in this statement he described so accurately the places at which he and lowe had hidden certain property they had secured in these robberies that the united states authorities went to the places designated and recovered the property. lowe and ebberling have since been indicted for these robberies, proving conclusively that i was right when i wrote the officers of the roads named that i believed i knew who the parties were who had been holding up and robbing their trains.
the great northern and the northern pacific had offered rewards for the arrest and conviction of the parties who had committed these depredations, which aggregate, i understand, $20,000.00; but, as i have always strictly adhered to a rule that i formed early in my career, never to work for or receive rewards that might be offered for the arrest and conviction of any person, i did not claim the rewards offered by the two railroads. my reason for not accepting rewards is fully explained in another portion of this book.
