Newspaper Page Text
I
of ii® "Outlaw of Cameron
How a Self-Sacrificing and Honest
Impostor Collected a M
for the Pardon of the i
Dietz, Saving Him from
Life Imprisonment—and
How Psychology Explains
His Delusion and Labors
twenty-six years old, and my sister la
Marla, now twenty-two.
"I married Kate Finnegan and had two
children. Johnny and Mary, sometimes
called Mabel. The youngsters were killed
in a fight with the sheriff's posse in 1908.
My wife died in Winter, in 1909.
"Our trouble with the lumber interests
grew out of their efforts to confiscate
our dam. When they found that my
father would not submit they did every
thing they could to force us out.
"Father, mother and I were all tried to
gether after we had been in jail about
110 days. Only father was convicted.
He is now a Federal prisoner at Waupon,
Wis., because the man he shot during the
raid on our cabin in 1910 was standing
on the Federal Indian Reservation at the
time.
"I have already sent 15 petitions from
each of the \arious States I have visited
to President Wilson. I addressed them
to Carl Schultz, a Washington lawyer.
Of course, they reached the President, be
cause they bore results.”
The startling discrepancies between
this story and the facts as ascertained
from various reliable sources may now'
be referred to.
In the first place, the warden of Wau
pon prison declares that, Illetz is not and
never has been a Federal prisoner.
Hence, President Wilson has no power to
pardon him.
Secondly, John F. Dietz, the outlaw, is
not more than fifty years old; whereas,
the New York “Leslie Dietz” says he is
seventy-six.
Thirdly, the outlaw had six children;
namely, Leslie, Clarence, Myra, Helen,
John and a baby.
Fourthly, the real I/eslle Dietz is only
twenty-four years old to-day, whereas the
man in fiew York says he is forty-nine.
Fifthly, the real Leslie D'letz was un
questionably in Mayville, Wis, when his
namesake was lying unconscious in a
New York hospital.
Sixthly, when shown a photograph of
the Dietz family, a day or two after he
had told the foregoing story, the New
York Leslie Dietz said that a child of
twelve or thereabouts who, in fact, is
Helen Dietz, daughter of the. outlaw, was
Clara Dietz, his own daughter, although
a day or two before he had said his own
daughter was named Mary or Mabel.
Seventhly, investigation in Washington
failed to reveal any Carl Schultz, a law
yer. When interrogated further as to
this, >,ne New York Leslie Dietz explained
that Schultz, whom he now referred to as
John Schultz, was in reality a Wisconsin
lawyer, having an office in Madison or
Wisconsin, but that he was frequently in
Washington. When reminded that previ
ously he had said the lawyer's name was
Carl, -whereas now- he gave it as John, be
explained that the man's name was really
John Carl Schultz.
A dozen more serious discrepancies of
this character pointed conclusively to the
fact that this .man whose efforts have al
ready resulted in the commutation of the
famous outlaw's sentence, and whose con
tinued work may bring about the man'3
earlier release, is not Leslie Dietz at all.
The fact that he actually believes him
self Leslie Dietz and that under that
personality he secured a comnratation of
sentence for the man he
may never have seen pre-
most V
fwo-rox 6v
8**1
« V. .
Helen Dietz, Eleven-Year-Old Daughter of the Outlaw, Parleying with
the Sheriff Under a Flag of Truce Just Before Her Father Surrendered
tOHN F. DIETZ, lumber jack, home
t steader and woodsman, of Winter,
I Wisconsin, became famous some ten
years ago because of the remarkable
fight he waged against powerful lumber
lnteresta, who. he claimed, were op
pressing him. Dietz is a curious survival
of the old-time pioneer.
The trouble first arose In 1904, when
Dietz's wife acquired a tract of land at
Winter, on the Thornapple River. Rest
ing on this .land and crossing the river
was Cameron Dam, which had long been
used by the lumbermen to raise the
water of the river to a sufficient height
to enable them to float their logs from
the forests to the mills below.
Dietz believed that he was entitled to
compensation for the tise of the river
flowing by his land and notified the Chip
pewa Lumber and Boom Company,
whose men v ere about to float millions
of feet of pine logs down the river that
they could not do so unless thfey paid
him for the privilege.
The company appealed to the courts.
Thev obtained an Injunction. Dietz
evaded service
Successive attempts were made to
serve Dietz, but he defeated them all.
Dietz became known throughout the
country as the "Outlaw of Cameron Dam.”
After three or four* years of deadly war-
’are the lumber Interests capitulated.
The trouble would probably have ended
:here but in 1910 Dietz got Into an al
to the Sheriff to announce ills wlllingncaa
to surrender.
Dietz, Mrs. Dietz, and ^Leslie were ar
rested, indicted and tric/l for the murder
of the Deputy, hut only Dietz was found
• guilty. He was sentenced to life im
prisonment, the dea/h penalty not pre
vailing in WlsconsiA.
Last December, Governor McGovern
commuted Dietz't /term to life imprison
ment. Under th^ parole law, Dietz may
now be released An four years. The Gov
ernor’s action was largely Influenced by
the receipt of petitions signed by hun
dreds of thourznnds of names which came
from every fxtate In the Union.
The strange origin of these petitions
has Just br,en revealed and is told here
for the first time.
John W.
Dietz,
the Outlaw,
and His
Son, the
Real Leslie
Dietz,
Photographed
After Their
Arrest in
1910, and
Below
the Cabin
in Which
They Defied
the Authorities
for Six Years.
<%»*»<***&
ercatton with a man at s primary elec- /
ion and in the scuffle which ensued a
peacemaker named Horel was shot and
ilightly wounded 1
A warrant charging him with assan’A
with intent to kill was issued and Sherffl
Mike Madden prepared to serve It.
A terrific battle ensued Over a tb/ju-
tand shots were flred. One of the deputies
sas killed and Dietz and his son I «pslle
were wounded. Realising at length* that
was found, had already resulted in the
commutation of the outlaws sentence
from life imprisonment to twenty years,
and who was continuing his arduous task
in the hope of securing his father’s im
mediate release.
These stories were read with Interest
in Wisconsin, where the adventures of
the Dietz family were part of the his
tory of the State, and word was at once
sent to New York that Leslie Dietz, son
of the outlaw, is now engaged in run
ning a grocery store at Mayville, Wis.;
that he had never made any attempt to
secure the pardon of his father by peti
tion; that. In fact, he had never been
further east than Michigan in his life,
and that the man In the Washington
Heights Hospital claiming to be Leslie
Dietz must therefore be either a delibe
rate Impostor or suffering from a mental
delusion.
When this startling information was
received the “Leslie Dietz” at the hos
pital was further interrogated, and here
is the story he told:
"So they say I am an impostor—that
I am not Leslie Dietz, son of John F.
Dietz, the outlaw, of Cameron Dam, at
all'
"If I am an impostor. I am certainly
the most unusual impostor ever dis-
The Strange/Story of the Petitions for
the Outlaw’s Pardon
covered, for no one has ever suggested
how I could possibly benefit by repre
senting myself as the son of a convicted
murderer and working for his pardon a»
I have done these past twenty-five
months.
"During those twenty-five months I
have had some pretty rough experiences.
I have gone without food for days. I
have slept in the snow when the tempera
ture was 10 degrees below zero. I have
worn out twenty-two pairs of shoes, and
for days at a time have walked bare
foot until I could earn enough by odd
jobs to buy shoe leather.
“In some cities that I have gone through
I have been arrested as a tramp and a
vagrant but, for the most part, my mis
sion has secured me against such mis
fortunes. 111160 I started on my errand
I weighed 170 pounds. To-day I weigh
only 135.
"I have been through nearly every
State in the Union.
"I was born in Green Bay, Wis,, forty-
nine years ago. I was about four years
old when my father built, his log cabin
at Cameron Dam on 160 acres which be
had acquired in the regular way.
“My father is now seventy-six years
old I have had only one brother and one
sister. My brother is Clarence Dietz, now
sents one of the
striking phenomena ever
brought to the attention
of psychologists. How they
explain It is told here.
A HALF-STARVED and rain-soaked
man fell from exhaustion in Co
lonial Park. New- York City, a
few weeks ago and fractured his skull.
He was taken unconscious to the. Wash
ington Heights Hos’/ital
The only clue to the man's identity at
that time were two stiff-covered note
books found in "ihe pockets of his tat
tered clothes Cm the inside front cover
of each of these books was pasted a slip
of paper bsarir/g the following typewrit
ten words:
“A petition for the pardon of John
F Diet*, known as the outlaw of
Cameron Dam, for defending his
family an/) property
LESLIE E. DIETZ.
’‘Cameron Dam. Wia ”
Both izooks were filled with signa
ture*. about eight to the page There
were acme 3,000 of them in each of the
books.
When the patient recovered conscious
ness he told the hospital authorities
that he was Leslie Dietz, of Winter,
Wia., sou of the famous outlaw of Cam
eron Dam. For the past twenty-five
months he had been engaged in secur
ing signatures to a petition for the par
don of his father. From State to State
he had tramped, enduring all sorts of
privations and covering over 12,000
miles on foot in the course of his pil
grimage.
So intent was the pilgrim on his mis
sion that for days he went without
proper food, and starvation, combined
with his exertions, often weakened him
to such an extent that he dropped in his
tracks. That was how he had come to
fall in Colonial Park.
The story the patient told was so
pathetic and so convincing that most of
the newspapers throughout the country
printed a sympathetic account of the ac
cident, which had befallen the pilgrim
from Wisconsin, whose filial labors, it
of Jotm E. Deitz
A petition for the Pardon
Known as the outlaw of Cameron Dam,
for defending his family and property
'tfsiMJUx . &
"Leslie Dietz” Who Believes He Is the Son ot the Famous Outlaw and
Whose Strange Story Is Told Here, and a Photograph of One
of His Petitions.
How Psychology Explains the Strange Delusion of “Leslie Dietz”
3y Dr. A. K. Vandegrift,
the Distinguished Psychologist.
r | ’ HE case of the man calling hlmselt
I Leslie Diets belongs to a w-ell-
A known group of psychological phe
nomena. and is also one of the rarest
forms of its own group There can be
no question that this man. whoever he Is.
thinks himself Leslie Dietz and actually
thinks as he would if he really were
Leslie Dietz. In other words, he has net
conscious memories of any past except
that which he has invented on the line-of
the Dietz hallucination He is in a
cream. But with this difference—dl’st
he is a conscious moving agent who,
while keeping the Illusionary framework
of his dream intact, directs It according
to his own will.
4
For the explanation of this strange case
let us go back to one of the earliest
manifestations of the ssme complex in
childhood. Many children gifted with
Imagination invite punishment for lying
when they are not consciously lying at
all A child will invert some wonder
ful invention and he will then tell his
parents that he has actually gone through
this adventure He will hear of some
thing which inflames his childish imag-
kiation and he will promptly elalm to
nave seen or to have been a part of this
tame happening The child really be
lieves what he says. Hi? visualization is
to perfect that he actually confuses real
ity with the unreal
Another manifestation is the very ex
traordinary one thn* all psychologists
and criminologists know. This is tLg
self-accusation of perfectly innocent
people whenever any crime whose ele (
ments are adapted to impress the imag
ination of these particular people, occurs
Every magistrate knows that following
any particularly atrocious murder men
and women will write letters accusing
themselves of the crime In many cases
men. and women, too. have actually ap
peared before the police and given them
selves up as the slayers. These people
go Into voluminous detail as to Just how
Hnd why they did the murder. They
actually believe that they are the crim
inals. Even when confronted with the
absolute facts that they could not pos
sibly have been at the scene of the
murder at the time it was done, they
still persist in their self-accusations and
Immediately invent plausible erplans-
Copyright, 1315, by the Stax Company.
tions. It has been noted that always in
such cases the subject Is hazy as to the
real circumstances of his life.
These people are not liars; they actu
ally believe in what they say.
This man Leslie Dietz was a lumber
jack. He may have come from the same
locality as the real Dietz He may not.
But all his experiences in life, without
doubt, ran along the actual everyday life
experiences of Dietz. He had lived in
the same kind of surroundings, he had
fought the same kind of fights, and. no
doubt, he had seen and sympathized with
the struggles of the later day pioneers
against the great lumber interests.
When he either heard, or was told, of
Dietz's fight and imprisonment it aroused
in his mind all his own sleeping griev
ances He may have started in by say-
Greai Britain Rights Reserved,
ing to himself: "What would I have done
if I had been In Dietz's place?” or he
may have said: "What would I have
done If I were Leslie Dietz?” In minds
of this character, the step from thinking
what he would have done if he had been
in Leslie Dietz's place to actually believ
ing himself in Leslie Dietz's place, is a
small one. Suddenly he found himself
saying, perhaps with surprise at first:
"Why, I AM Leslie Dietz." The obses
sion was now complete.
The actual facts of his past would begin
to fade from his life. Every day he
would feel himself more and more to be
Leslie Dietz, and his mind would busy it
self building up all kinds of details to
support its own illusion. As this new
structure of personality arose his older
one diminished in exact proportion.
This man, whoever he is, became to aC
intents and purposes the son of the out
law of Cameron Dam. wandering abou 4
the country, suffering hunger, thirst and
other privations in a pilgrimage to save
his father. And so intense was his belie!
in himself that he has Impressed it upon
everyone he has met. and has actually
through his hallucinations done the thing
that the outlaw's own son could not do-
have his father's sentence commuted
from life imprisonment to a short term
of years.
Undoubtedly here we have one of the
strangest phenomena of the human mind
It parallels in Us workings out the
gigantic efforts of the "inspired” delu-
slonlsts who have assumed other per
sonalities and changed the destinies of
the world scoreB of times. J ^
•f