12. THE HOG-THIEF.
In the coal mines, as before stated, the convicts are permitted to
converse with each other. I improved this opportunity of acquiring the
histories of the five hundred criminals with whom I daily worked, eight
hundred feet below the surface. I would talk with a fellow prisoner, and
get the details of his crime as we sat together in the darkness.
Understanding "short-hand," I would go to my cell in the evening and jot
down what I had learned during the day. I had no fears of any one
reading my notes, as I was the only short-hand writer about the
institution. Day after day I kept this up,
until I had material sufficient of this nature to fill a book of more
than two thousand pages. My readers should also know, that a convict
will tell a fellow-prisoner the details of his crime, when he would not
think of saying a word about it to others. As a rule they deny their
crimes to those who are not, like themselves, criminals, pleading
innocence. It is not difficult for a prisoner to get the confidence of a
fellow-prisoner. In fact, criminals love to unburden their minds to
those who possess their confidence. The truth is, convicts have related
their crimes so often to me that it became tiresome. They say it
relieves them to communicate their troubles. Pinkerton, of Chicago, the
prince of detectives stated at one time that a criminal could not keep
his secret. It is true. I know it to be a fact. It has been
demonstrated a hundred times in my association with these convicts in
the Kansas penitentiary. Securing their confidence, these men have not
only told me of the crimes for which they have been sent to prison, but
also of crimes that they have committed, and, in the commission of
which, they had not been detected, which, if I should make them known,
would cause a number of them to remain in the penitentiary the rest of
their lives. I am not in the detective business, and will therefore keep
what was confided to me. I have met but few criminals in the mines that
would not admit their guilt. I have thought in many cases, convicts
received sentences too severe, and not at all commensurate with the
crime committed. I have met a few men, however, who would stubbornly
deny their guilt and stoutly affirm their innocence. I have worked upon
these men day after day, and never got anything out of them but that
they were innocent. At times, in tears, they would talk of their
sufferings, and wonder if there was a just God silently permitting the
innocent to suffer for the guilty. I am satisfied these men are
innocent, and they have my sympathy. They are exceptions. Others, while
admitting their guilt on general principles, and assenting to the
justice of imprisonment, yet maintain that they were innocent of the
particular crime for which they stand convicted. I trust the reader will
not get his sympathies wrought too high, as comparatively few angels
find their way into modern prisons. I will give you a few illustrations.
These are just samples of scores of histories in my possession.
A hog-thief worked in the mines with me for a few days. His dose
was five years at hard labor. He had stolen an old sandy female swine
with six pigs. I asked him if he was really guilty of carrying on the
pork business. "Yes," said he, with a low chuckle, "I have stolen pigs
all my life, and my daddy and mammy before me were in the same business.
I got caught. They never did." He then related the details of many
thefts. He made a considerable amount of money in his wicked traffic,
which he had squandered, and was now penniless. Money secured in a
criminal manner never does the possessor any good. I asked him if he had
enough of the hog business, and if it was his intention to quit it, and
when he got out of the pen to earn an honest living. "No," he replied,
"as long as there is a hog to steal and I am a free man, I propose to
steal him." Imprisonment failed to reform this convict. Although a
hog-thief he was an excellent singer and a prominent member of the
prison choir.
There are many murderers in the mines. In fact, nearly all the
life men are there. Some of them speak of their crimes with a bravado
simply astonishing, showing their utter depravity.
Others, admitting their guilt, say but little of details. The following
will give the reader some idea of the stories that greeted my ears
almost daily, and led me to conclude that the coal mines of the
penitentiary are not inhabited exclusively by Sunday-school scholars.
This cruel and heartless wretch had murdered an old man and his wife.
The old people lived on a farm adjoining the one where this criminal,
who was then a hired man, worked, It was the talk of the neighborhood
that they had money. This human fiend undertook to secure their "loose
change," as he called it. He procured a shotgun and an axe, and, in the
dead hour of night, went to the house of the old people. He forced open
the kitchen door and went in. He had also brought with him a lantern.
He quietly stole to the bedside of the innocent and aged sleepers. He
had no use for his lantern as the moonlight shone through the window
opposite and fell upon the faces of the unconscious victims. Setting his
gun down by the side of the bed, so that he could have it handy for use,
if necessary, he took the axe and struck each of his victims a blow upon
the head. He said, with a demoniac chuckle, that
it was more difficult to kill a woman than a man, as it required two
blows from the axe to kill the woman, while one was sufficient for the
man. He then ransacked the house, and, between some blankets underneath
the straw-bed upon which the old folks were sleeping, he found a small
bag, which contained some gold, silver and paper money, amounting to
over one thousand dollars. In a cold-blooded manner he further stated
(and as I pen his words my blood nearly freezes in my veins), in order
to search the bed upon which his victims were lying, it became necessary
for him to remove the bodies; so he lifted them up one at a time, and
placed them upon the floor, face downward, for the reason, as he said,
that their eyes bulged out and seemed to stare at him.
After securing the money he fled and returned to the farm where
he worked. He slept in the barn, as is very often the case with farm
laborers during the summer season. Entering the barn he procured an old
bucket, places his money in it, covers the top with a piece of board,
and buries it in the earth east of the barn. He also buried the axe near
the bucket. He said there were clots of blood and
hair on the axe, and he thought best to put it out of sight. He then
returned to the barn, and, strange to say, soon fell asleep and slept
sweetly until morning. He went to work the next day as usual, and his
mind was taken up more by thinking of what a good time he would have
after a little, spending that money, than in worrying over the terrible
crime he had committed. He reasoned that the money would do the old
people no good, but that he could use it to advantage.
The discovery of the murder was made the next day about noon. The
alarm was given. The whole country was aroused and excited over the
commission of such a horrible crime two innocent, helpless and
highly-respected old people murdered for their money. A couple of tramps
had passed through the neighborhood the day before, and, of course,
everybody thought it must have been the tramps that committed the
murder. The object now was to find them. They were overtaken the next
day and brought back to the scene of the murder. They both stoutly
denied any knowledge of the crime. They were separated, and each was
told that the other had confessed. This was done that a confession
might be forced
from them. They continued in their affirmation of innocence. They were
then taken to the woods near by and each hung up until life was almost
extinct, but they still denied the commission of the crime. They were at
length taken to the county seat, not far distant, and, on a preliminary
examination, were bound over to appear at the next term of the District
Court, and put in the county jail. The majority of the people believed
that the perpetrators of this crime had been arrested and were now in
durance vile; the excitement soon passed away, and very little was said
about it.
"It was at this time," said my informant, that I made the mistake
of my life. I had worked hard on the farm for several months, and
thought I would take a lay off. I felt it was due me. I now made up my
mind to have a time. I went to town and soon fell in with a harlot. I
got to drinking. I am very fond of strong drink; it has been my ruin. I
became intoxicated, and during this time I must have betrayed my secret
to this wicked woman. A large reward had been offered for the murderer
of these old people. This woman who kept me company having thus obtained
my secret, went to the city marshal and made an arrangement
that for half of the reward offered she would show him the man who had
committed the crime. This was agreed to. While I was drinking and having
a good time with my `fast woman' three men were on the road to the farm
where I had been working. They found and dug up the old bucket
containing what money I had left in it, and the axe. All this I learned
at the trial. I was arrested and bound over to the District Court on a
charge of murder in the first degree. The officers had to keep me
secreted for some time, as there was strong talk of lynching. In due
time I had my trial and got a life sentence."
I asked him if he had any hope of pardon.
"Oh yes," said he, "in the course of eight or ten years I will be
able to get out once more."
"What became of the tramps that came so near being compelled to
suffer the penalty of your crime?"
" They were released as soon as I was arrested, a snug little sum
of money was raised for them, a new suit of clothes purchased, and they
went on their way rejoicing, thinking themselves creatures of luck."
As we sat together in a secluded place in the
mines, with the faint light of my miner's lamp falling on his hideous
face, the cool, deliberate manner in which he related his atrocious
doings, the fiendish spirit he displayed, led me to regard him as one
among the most debased and hardened criminals I had met in the mines—a
human being utterly devoid of moral nature —a very devil in the form of
man!
