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* t < ^rpres* nd 'tar »r of IS striii of 'DA'RIJVG T'RA.IjW Always Worked Alone, but Dressed Up “Dummy” Robbers with Wooden Guns and Planted Them Along the Track; Oliver Perry's Express Car Robberies; Other Remarkable Cases 'RO'B'BE'RS—Charles Boles, Who e )Ut. roacbel pulling :ed railload Q the 1 ont ^ it' pa sed ird. hed ii/rhe the brig illy left be ind ade onp s served now a T. iid, wgt lev- Out •nt doo —a d—was i filled boxes, ; one ilth jar- slid few fe< t of of the which is at v ork les we! t of ter of he hea d a though nd, fee ing the car >e noisi dm. Vt Ith int on i ith This t me he orlg nal abided, ^law the se- car the the it the top of the pile of express packages. While the train sped along the robber had managed to cut a hole in the front door large enough to admit his body. Then he had wriggled like a snake up through the heap of merchandise and crawled along the narrow space which . separated the top of the pile from the k>ot of the car. There he lay flat on his stomach—his right hand outstretched and pointing a big revolver at the messenger’s head. The messenger reached instinctively for his own revolver, which lay on the top of • w his desk. But the'robber was too quick for him. /Springing like a panther from his lofty perch, he landed squarely on top of the ex pressman and bore him to the floor. Perry’s hand tightened like a vise on the half stunned messenger's throat, and when he had choked him into insensibility he cowardly struck the helpless man several brutal blows with the butt of his revolver. Next he tied his hands and feet and bound a handful of cotton waste over his mouth for a gag. Rifling the safes was an easy matter, for the door of one stood open and the other was not locked. He took from them $5,000 in cash besides quite a quantity of jew elry. How- to get off the train was his next problem. At forty or fifty miles an hour jumping would have been surclde. But he must get off at once—he had no idea when the train would stop again, and at any minute he was liable to be discovered by some of the trainmen. He stepped out on the platform, first making sure that the baggageman in the car behind was not looking. Gripping the platform rods in his pow erful hands, he lowered himself at the risk of his life down between the moving cars. He drew a long knife and severed the hose through which the compressed air that operates the brakes is carried. 1 >ur messeqger t him As Perry knew, the cutting of this hose would at once set the brakes on every car. train slowed down with a series of grinding Jerks. Before it came to a full stop Perry jumped off unobserved and dis appeared in the darkness. This crime caused great excitement be- Express Car Robbery omach on the swaying roof of the express car— e from the engine and in danger of being hurled of the speeding train. Inch by inch he drew ntilator shaft which stuck up through the roof, g rope to this, he tied the other end around his e tightly with his left hand and began to lower ; side of the car. It was an undertaking which trhuman strength and nerve would have dared lir by one arm, he took his revolver in his free s in the door of the car. kill you!” he shouted. s meslenger reached for the bell cord, which ifore his hand reached it the robber fired twice, trough the broken pane, he drew the bolt slid fmself down .into the car. cause it was so unusual In this section of the country. The robber had left abso lutely no clue to his identity, and the ex press messenger, who hovered between life and death for several weeks as a result of the cruel begting Perry had given him, was unable to supply a very clear descrip tion. The mystery was made all the deeper by the surprising way the robber had stopped the train in order to make his escape. Although large rewards were offered for the robber's capture, Perry coolly con tinued to live in Rochester, Syracuse and other cities where he was well known. He squandered the proceeds of his crime in riotous living, and within six months was as penniless as he had been before. Then, emboldened by his previous success, he began to look about for an opportunity for another train robbery. This time he selected Syracuse instead of Albany as the starting point for his ven ture. Just east of the city was a signal tower where trains often made brief stops. .For a week Perry haunted the vicinity of this tower every night, familiarizing himself with the movements of the trains and watching for the opportunity to board one unobserved. Concealed underneath his coat he carried a long coil of stout rope which, as you will see, was quite es sential to the success of the plan he had in mind. The chance he had been waiting for came at last. One evening when an east bound train halted at the tower for an in stant he managed to climb unobserved onto the platform of the firsl car—an ex press car—just behind the engine. As soon as the train started he climbed up on the railing of the platform and, by bracing one foot against the tender of the engine, succeeded in raising himself up to the roof of the car. Perry's Daring Feat >4* How “Black Bart,” the Train Robber, Deceived His Victims With “Dummy” Riflemen "Black Bart,” the train ronber, never used vio lence. The shotgun he carried was never loaded, and he never took a life or injured a human being. He always worked alone, bbt by an ingenious de vice he deceived his victims into believing that he had with him a number of armed men. With jute bags or pieces of tent canvas he built a screen about three feet high between two trees or two piles of rocks. The outside of this ambush he carefully masked with branches of trees and chunks of sod. Behind it he stuck in the ground half a dozen sticks, and on each stick he hung a sombrero and an old coat. These hats showed above the ambush just as they would have if there had been real men under neath them. Below each hat ‘‘Black Bart” stuck a piece of broomstick painted black to give the sem blance of rifle barrels. It all looked very real and very formidable—for all the world as if six men were crouching there with rifles in hand, ready to fire at the first sign of resistance. Time and again fast express trains on the west ern roads would be stopped just at dusk in some lonely spot by the frantic waving of a red flag. When the engineer jumped down to see what the trouble was he was confronted by “Black Bart,” dressed in a long linen duster "and a tall, cone- shaped hat such as clowns in the circus wear. At the point of his shotgun the robber forced the en gineer and fireman to uncouple the engine and run it a few hundred feet down the track. By this time the passengers and trainmen were pouring out of the cars to learn the cause of the delay. "Black Bart” wasted few words on them. Nodding his head significantly in the direction of the "riflemen,” whose hats and "gun barrels” showed from the ambush at the side of the track, he said loud enough for all to hear: “Don’t fire unless I give tne word, boys!” The hint was quite sufficient. Convinced that they were at the mercy of a large band of desper ate men, passengers, trainmen and express messen gers quickly handed their valuables over to “Black Bart.” When he had secured all the plunder he uttered a threat about not looking back on penalty of being shot at by his "companions” and allowed the train to move on. By the time he reached the roof the train was going fifty miles an hour. The speed made his peroh a perilous one, par ticularly as where he lay on the smooth roof there was nothing for his hands to grip or for his feet to brace themselves against. The thick smoke from the engine almost suffocated him—the hot cinders blinded him—and the car swayed from side to side so violently that he was in constant, dan ger of being hurled off. But, by lying flat on his stomach, with his arms and legs outstretched, he man aged to keep from slipping off the rock ing car. After some little time he was gradually able to draw himself along inch by inch until one hand clutched a steel ventilator shaft which stuck up through the roof. His hold on this made his position much more secure. Soon, as he became more accustomed to the motion of the train and the dense cloud of smoke and cinders which constantly enveloped him, he was able to do more than merely hold on. He took from his pocket a black mask and tied it over the lower part of his face. From underneath his coat he pulled out the rope, fastened one end of it securely through the ventilator and tied the other end around his waist. For several minutes he waited patiently for the engine's headlight to reveal a long stretch of straight level track ahead. When at last it did, and the motion of the train became less violent, he gripped the rope tightly with his left hand, gave it two or three turns around his wrist, and began to lower himself cautiously down the slop ing roof and over the side of the car. It was a hazardous undertaking, and one that only a man of almost superhu man strength and nerve would have dared attempt. His hand was bleeding from the friction of the rope long before his feet touched the narrow moulding a third of the way down the side of the car, which gave his straining muscles their first re spite. For a moment he rested in this diffi cult position. Then he resumed his slow and painful descent until at last he could look right into the car through the glass in the upper half of the sliding door There stood the safe which he hoped to rifle. In front of it, with his back <o the door, Btood the express messenger busily engaged in checking off his list of valu able packages. With his one free hand, Perry reached into his pocket and took -out a big revol ver. Smashing a light of glass in the door with the butt of this he shouted at the top of his voice: “Open that door or I’ll kill you.” The startled messenger looked around, saw the masked robber and at once reached up to pull the emergency bell cord which would ptop the train. But Perry was ready for that very ’move. The big revolver barked twice in rapid succession before the messenger’s hand could grasp the cord and the expressman, bleeding from two wounds in the shoul der, fled to the forward end of the car As he disappeared from view, Perry put his hand through the opening where ■he had broken the glass, drew the bolt and slid the door open. In another sec ond he had swung himself into the car, and stood there, revolver in hand, facing the plucky messenger. By this time the messenger had seized his own revolver. He was game enough, but he was badly wounded and not a good shot under any conditions. He fired at Perry—the shot went wjfd and Perry re plied with one that took effect. The robber would soon have been in sole possession of the car and its valu ables had not the train just then slowed down for a stop which Perry had evidently not taken into his calculations. Aroused by the shots, the conductor, two brakemen and several passengers came hurrying to the rescue. As they entered the car Perry jumped out of the door by which he had entered and ran down the track. There was no time to take anything from the open safe where $10,000 worth of cash and jewelry lay in full view. With two shots from his revolver Perry drove the engineer and fireman from an engine which stood on a nearby Siding. Climbing up into the cab he pulled the throttle wide opqn and the loco motive leaped ahead at a 60-mile an hour clip. Luckily the steam in the engine Perry had seized was low and after running three miles its power gave out complete ly. It came to a dead stop just in time to avoid a collision with an oncoming ex press train. Perry leaped to the ground and started off across a field, reloading his revolver as he ran. His Attempts to Escape But his pursuers, who had followed him on another engine, were close behind him. Before he could gain the shelter of the wooded country towa 1 which he was Heading, they had surrounded him and succeeded in making him a prisoner—not, however, until Perry had used his last cartridge and had desperately wounded several of the railroad men. Crime seldom has a speedier or more appalling sequel than it did in Perry’s case. Popular indignation against him ran so high that his trial was hurried and he received the extreme penalty of forty- nine years and six months in State prison, which, although Perry was then only a young man, amounted practically to a life sentence. But Perry’s crimes did not end when the doors of Auburn prison closed behind him. He raged like a madman and seized every opportunity to make murderous at tacks upon his keepers and fellow prison ers. Before he had served six months of his sentence he contrived to escape by saw ing the lock off his cell door, half killing a keeper and risking his life by a leap of thirty-five feet from the top of the prison wall to a heap of rocks below. He was recaptured in less than twenty- four hours. Becoming convinced that he was really insane, the prison authorities had him removed to the asylum at Mattea- nails destroyed the sight of one eye in stantly, and Perry completed his total blindness by rubbing the other eye with fine bits of glass. The kindest thing one can think of this unhappy man is that he was tnsane from boyhood. But whether he was or not the miserable existence he is now draggihg out at Matteawan is another powerful ex ample of the fact that crime does not pay, and this is why I could not afford to neglect telling his sad story. And now I must tell you about some of the remarkable exploits of John Brady and Samuel Browning—as desperate a pair oi robbers as ever rifled an express car and shot helpless men in cold blood Late one stormy night a track walker named Kelley was speeding along a lonely stretch of railroad near Davisville, Cal., on his track tricycle. Suddenly two men leaped out of the underbrush at the side of the track and stood directly in his path. To avoid run ning them down he brought his tricycle to a sudden stop. At once they sprang upon him, dragged him to the ground and bound and gagged him so securely that he could neither move nor speak. After emptying his pockets of a little money and taking hie red lantern and a box of railroad torpe does, they demolished the tricycle by pounding it with stones and threw the broken pieces of the machine down under neath a culvert. This done they disap peared in the darkness. These two men were Browning and Brady, and their attack on the track walk er was the first step-in a long series of daring crimes which finally brought one of them to a horrible death and sent the other to prison for life. wan. Although kept constantly under the closest guard he soon succeeded in escap ing from Matteawan even more easily ■than he had from Auburn. This time he was at large four weeks. When finally arrested in the railroad yards at Weehawken, New Jersey, he was about to put into execution a plan for an ex press car robbery as daring as those in which he had already figured. Falling in these attempts at liberty he devised a fiendish way of putting out his eyes in the hope that blindness might win the Governor's sympathy and secure his pardon. The apparatus he constructed for this purpose was a weird masterpiece of me chanical skill. In two holes in a piece of board Perry inserted two long sharp nails. These were so placed that when the board lay across his forehead they were directly above the pupils of his eyes. Above these nails was suspended a heavy dumbbell, which, when let fall, would drive their steel points deep into the eyes. The release of ,the dumbbell was ingeniously arranged by attaching to it a spring on which a lighted candle was placed. When the candle burned beyond a certain point its weight decreased suf ficiently to release the spring and let the dumbbell fall. Perry put the apparatus in place one night after his keeper had left him. The Two Famous “Hold-Up” Men A few minutes later the whistle of a fast overland train sounded in the dis tance. As it drew near the spot where the helpless track walker lay the engineer was startled to see a red lantern waving across the track and to hear at the same instant the sharp report of two torpedoes— the customary signal that there was dan ger ahead. As the train responded to the air brakes and slowed down the robbers—wearing black masks and carrying revolvers— climbed up on either side of the cab. They made the astonished engineer and fireman hold their hands above their heads and walk back to the third car from the engine—a Wells-Fargo express car. "Uncouple that,” said Browning, shov ing his revolver into the fireman’s face, and pointing to the coupling between the express car and the one behind it. The fireman, with trembling hands, obeyed. Still covered by the robbers’ guns, the engineer and fireman were marched back to the engine and ordered to pull the three cars several miles down the track. When they finally came to a stop the engineer and fireman were again taken out of the engine and made to accompany the masked men back to the express car. But Paige, the express messenger, had suspected what the trouble was and had loqked the door and barricaded the win dows as well as he could with packages of freight. When the robbers pounded on the door and commanded him to open it he refused and announced that he would shoot the first man who attempted to enter. "Tell him that if he doesn’t open that door we’re going to shoot you full of holes,” said one of the bandits and he emphasized his words by firing a bullet so close to the engineer’s head that it ploughed through the visor of his cap. The engineer was in terror of his life. Shaking in every limb, he added his pleas to the profane threats of the robbers. “Think of my wife and babies, Paige,’’ he begged, "and let these men in before they kill me.” The express messenger was between two fires. If he did his duty to his employers and kept the robbers out he would be bringing death to his friend, the engineer. Was it worth sacrificing a man’s life to protect the company’s property? And, If he did not open the door, would they really carry out thetr threat? Just then the engineer cried out in ter ror as another bullet whistled by his ears. Quite evidently‘the robbers were going to be as good as their word, thought the messenger, and he reluctantly unbarred the door and slid it oq>en. The contents of the safe—$53,000 in bags of gold—were quickly emptied Into their sacks, and the robbers made the en gineer and fireman carry the plunder to the engine. The engine was uncoupled, and with a few parting threats the robbers entered the cab, pulled the throttle wide open and sped away Into the night. Their Last Crime After going about three miles they re versed the engine and jumped to the ground. The wild engine ran backward until It crashed into the cars It had left, making such a bad wreck that pursuit of the robbers-was delayed for hours. The loot taken from the express car was so heavy that it could not have been carried any great distance without attract ing attention and the detectives were convinced that It must have been burled near where the robbers abandoned the engine. A vigorous search, however, failed to reveal its hiding place until years later. But that is another story which I will give you in these pages some day soon The inevitable end of the career of this reckless pair of criminals came when they undertook the robbery of an express train near Marysville, Cal.—and all, as I will tell you, through the presence of mind of a negro sleeping car porter. The train was stopped in the usual way. Several well aimed shots frightened the messenger into letting them Into his car. But the safe was locked and the messen ger protested that he was not in 'posses sion of the combination. After bullying and threatening him for several minutes the robbers became convinced that he was telling the truth, and, having no dynamite and not being experts at solving combina tion locks, they decided there was nothing of value they could get in the express car. "Well,” said Browning, with an oath, ”we must pay expenses, and ’ if there’s nothing here for us we’ll have to see what the passengers have -to offer.” Seizing an old pair of overalls, he tore off the legs, and by fastening the ends together made two A>ugh bags. One of them he handed to the fireman, the other to the engineer. Revolver in hand, he led the way to the smoking car. "Hand over your valuables!” he shouted as he strode down the aisle. “Hand over everything you’ve got or you’re dead men.” Behind him came the engineer and fire man, unwilling -assistants in this crime, holding out their bags to receive the watches, pocket books and pieces of jew elry which the passengers produced. Brady brought up the rear, threatening with his revolver any who hesitated and making sure that no victim escaped. When one man refused to part with his wallet, Brady hit him over the head with the butt of his revolver and snatched his valuables from his pockets as he fell over senseless. After stripping every man in the smok ing car of his valuables, Browning led the way into the first of the sleeping cars. At sight of the masked men and their weapons several of the passengers started to run out of the rear door, but quickly returned when Browning fired a shot over their heads. Right here something unexpected hap pened—one of those chances which even the cleverest criminals cannot wholly guard against, and just such a one as I have often seen spoil the most carefully planned robberies. It proved the one thing necessary to bring the careers of Browning and Brady to an end. The first person they met as they en tered the sleeping car was a negro porter, his teeth chattering with fright. Browning shoved him down into a serl and took away h1s gold watch. That was what proved a fatal mistake. Hc.j Brady not taken the darkey’s watch, be and Browning might have gone on loot ing the train unmolested and made their escape just as they had so many times before But tnat watch was the negro’s dearest possession—he had been saving money for a year to get it, and this was the first time he had worn it. Frightened as he was, he began to turn over in hia bead plans for recovering his precious property. Suddenly ne remembered that J. J. Bo- gard, the Sheriff dl Tehama County, was a passenger on the train. He was a fre quent traveller on this train, and the por ter had seen him board a rear sleeper at San Francisco on this trip. If anybody could recover his watch, thought the darkey, Sheriff Bogard was the man. He had a reputation all over the Pacific Coast for bravery, and the porter had once seen him single-handed- subdue a party of cowboys who were "shooting up” a railroad station. The Price They Paid Thoughts of his lost watch made the negro bold. When the robbers reached the middle <jf the car he slipped out of the front door and ran alongside the train to the very last car, where the Sheriff lay in his berth ignorant of the trouble ahead. “Oh, Mr. Sheriff,” the excited darkey called, "the train is full of robbers, and they’ve stolen my new watch!” The Sheriff hastily dressed and, pistol in hand, rushed through the train and boldly faced the robbers. His first shot pierced Browning’s heart, killing him in stantly. The next instant Brady fired—killing the Sheriff and seriously wounding the fire man. Without stopping to gather up any of the booty he backed out of the car, emp tying his revolver promiscuously as he went, and injuring several passengers. Brady escaped on the bicycle on which he had ridden to the scene of the robbery. The wheel Browning had used was found hidden in some underbrush nearby. With this bicycle as a clue the detectives iden tified the dead bandit as Browning and finally succeeded in running Brady to earth. He is now serving a life sentence in San Quentin prison. These are only a few of the thrilling train robbing incidents I could tell you, but they are enough for my purpose—to show you that this variety of robbery is as profitless as every other crime. For every train robber the final result is Inevitably the same—death or impris onment for a long term of years. And be cause of the bloody deeds he has to do to gain his ends the remorse which eventu ally overtakes him is even keener than for other criminals. Most of the train robbers who are liv ing to day are in prison, and of those who are at liberty I know of none who has any offthe money that his crimes brought him. If they speak the truth they will add their testimony to the overwhelming weight of evidence which has proved to me beyond question that CRIME DOES NOT PAY SOBHIE LYONS. Next ’Sunday Sophie Lyons will Reveal the Secret* of the Amazing Career of Mark Shinburn, the Uncrowned “King of the Burglars,” the Most -Scientific and Expert Cracksman Who Ever Terrified Bank Official* and the Police.