Chapter 2

So great was the public interest in the crime and the mystery
surrounding it that three separate, well-organized investigations of
it were undertaken. The Rock Island Railroad officials, with their
detectives, conducted one; a Chicago newspaper, the "Daily News," with
its detectives, another; and the Pinkertons, in the interest of the
United States Express Company, a third.

Mr. Pinkerton, as we have seen, concluded that the crime had been
committed by railway men. The railway officials were naturally
disinclined to believe ill of their employees, and an incident
occurred about this time which turned the investigation in an entirely
new direction and made them the more disposed to discredit Mr.
Pinkerton's theory. This was the receipt of a letter from a convict in
the Michigan City penitentiary, named Plunkett, who wrote the Rock
Island Railroad officials, saying that he could furnish them with
important information.

Mr. St. John, the general manager of the road, went in person to the
penitentiary to take Plunkett's statement, which was in effect that he
knew the men who had committed the robbery and killed Nichols, and was
willing to sell this information in exchange for a full pardon, which
the railroad people could secure by using their influence. This they
promised to do if his story proved true, and Plunkett then told them
of a plot that had been worked out a year or so before, when he had
been "grafting" with a "mob" of pickpockets at county fairs. There
were with him at that time "Butch" McCoy, James Connors (known as
"Yellowhammer"), and a man named "Jeff," whose surname he did not
know. These three men, Plunkett said, had planned an express robbery
on the Rock Island road, to be executed in precisely the same way,
and at precisely the same point on the road, as in the case in
question.

The story was plausible, and won Mr. St. John's belief. It won the
belief, also, of Mr. Melville E. Stone of the "Daily News"; and
forthwith the railway detectives, working with the newspaper
detectives, were instructed to go ahead on new lines, regardless of
trouble or expense. Their first endeavor was to capture "Butch" McCoy,
the leader of the gang. "Butch" was a pickpocket, burglar, and
all-around thief, whose operations kept him traveling all over the
United States.

The police in various cities having been communicated with to no
purpose, Mr. Stone finally decided to do a thing the like of which no
newspaper proprietor, perhaps, ever undertook before--that is, start
on a personal search for McCoy and his associates. With Frank Murray,
one of the best detectives in Chicago, and other detectives, he went
to Galesburg, where the gang was said to have a sort of headquarters.
The party found there none of the men they were after, but they
learned that "Thatch" Grady, a notorious criminal with whom "Butch"
McCoy was known to be in relations, was in Omaha. So they hurried to
Omaha, but only to find that Grady had gone to St. Louis. Then to St.
Louis went Mr. Stone and his detectives, hot on the scent, and spent
several days in that city searching high and low.

The method of locating a criminal in a great city is as interesting as
it is little understood. The first step is to secure from the local
police information as to the favorite haunts of criminals of the class
under pursuit, paying special regard in the preliminary inquiries to
the possibility of love-affairs; for thieves, even more than honest
men, are swayed in their lives by the tender passion, and are often
brought to justice through the agency of women. With so much of such
information in their possession as they could gather, Mr. Stone and
his detectives spent their time in likely resorts, picking up
acquaintance with frequenters, and, whenever possible, turning the
talk adroitly upon the man they were looking for. It is a mistake to
suppose that in work like this detectives disguise themselves. False
beards and mustaches, goggles and lightning changes of clothing, are
never heard of except in the pages of badly informed story-writers. In
his experience of over twenty-five years Mr. Murray never wore such a
disguise, nor knew of any reputable detective who did. In this
expedition the detectives simply assumed the characters and general
style of the persons they were thrown with, passing for men of
sporting tastes from the East; and, having satisfied the people they
met that they meant no harm, they had no difficulty in obtaining such
news of McCoy and the others as there was. Unfortunately, this was
not much.

After going from one city to another on various clues, hearing of one
member of the gang here and another there, and in each instance losing
their man, the detectives finally brought up in New Orleans. They had
spent five or six weeks of time and a large amount of money, only to
find themselves absolutely without a clue as to the whereabouts of the
men they were pursuing. They were much discouraged when a telegram
from Mr. Pinkerton told them that "Butch" McCoy was back in Galesburg,
where they had first sought him. Proceeding thither with all despatch,
they traced McCoy into a saloon, and there three of them,--John Smith,
representing the Rock Island Railroad; John McGinn, for the Pinkerton
Agency; and Frank Murray, working for Mr. Stone,--with drawn
revolvers, captured him, in spite of a desperate dash he made to
escape.

McCoy's capture was the occasion of much felicitation among the people
interested in the matter. Mr. St. John and Mr. Stone were confident
that now the whole mystery of the express robbery could be solved and
the murderer convicted. But McCoy showed on trial that he had left New
Orleans to come North only the night before the murder and had spent
the whole of that night on the Illinois Central Railroad. It also
appeared that McCoy's associate, Connors, was in jail at the time of
the robbery, and that the man "Jeff" was dead. Thus the whole Plunkett
story was exploded.