 CHAPTER XIX FRED URFORT'S FALL FROM GRACE A trusted employee of a jewelry firm robs his benefactor, quick capture of the thief and recovery of the loot. The arrest of Fred Urturt, who had been a trusted clerk in the jewelry house of John Boland and company of St. Louis, occurred in the latter part of 1892. Urturt had been employed by the company since his boyhood. At the time of his arrest, he was about twenty-two or three years of age and had become a trusted employee and carried the keys of the establishment. He was the first man to open the store in the morning and the last man out at night, closing and locking the store himself. The firm was raided among the first establishments of the kind in the city and was doing a large business. A large quantity of valuable goods were mysteriously disappearing and could not be accounted for. And finally the manager, Mr. Clarence White, called at my office one afternoon and stated the facts in the case as he knew them. He stated further that Mr. Boland had requested him to come and see me and tell me of the state of affairs and ask me to take the matter under advisement and that Mr. Boland would call on me the following day for a conference, which he did. Mr. Boland stated to me that they had been missing goods from time to time for the past two years or more and that these losses had grown to alarming proportions. In an effort to clear up the mystery he had secured the services of another local private detective agency at considerable expense, but who apparently had not been able to fasten the numerous thefts on any person. He further stated that the losses seemed to be increasing and that he would like to have me make an investigation and apprehend the guilty party or parties, if possible. He said that in view of the amount of money he had already spent in attempting to locate the thief, he did not feel as though he was justified in spending much more money. But he wanted me to make an investigation and see what I could do. He stated that he had also consulted the police department of the city, but they had failed to apprehend the thief. Mr. Boland instructed me to proceed at once, saying that he did not believe that they had anyone in their employ who was dishonest or disloyal, to which I answered. It is evident to me, Mr. Boland, that you believe all of your employees to be honest and faithful, or you, of course, would not have them in your employ. Mr. Boland replied, you need not spend any time in looking after Clarence White, Fred Erfurt, or myself, but you may use your own judgment as to the other employees, although I want you to understand that I have the utmost confidence in all of them. A short time before this interview took place, the Boland company had purchased a large stock of jewelry at 6th and Locust streets at a bankrupt sale. Upon purchasing this stock, the Boland company sorted out the most desirable parts, which they removed to their own store, and then culled out from the stock in the main store stuff that was growing stale and placed it with the bankrupt stock. They then started to auction off the surplus stock. They placed Erfurt in charge of this auction store with a number of clerks and a professional auctioneer. This auction was running full blast at the time of my interview with Mr. Boland. Mr. Boland stated to me that goods were also being missed from the auction store as well as from their regular store. So the following day I instructed one of my operatives to carefully observe all that he could about the auction store, from the time that the store opened in the morning until it was closed at night, which the operative did. After he'd spent the first day at the auction store, the operative reported to me that he had noticed a number of what appeared to him to be irregularities, especially on the part of Erfurt, the manager of the place. He reported that on the evening of his first day on the job he had seen Erfurt and the other clerks leave the store. Erfurt, being the last man out, locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and the whole party walked to the corner of six and olive streets, where they separated, taking different cars presumably for their homes. He said that Erfurt, however, did not take a car, but walked west, a block on olive street, to Seventh Street, then north on Seventh Street to Locust Street, and east on Locust Street to the side entrance of the auction store, where he unlocked the door, entered the store, and immediately returned to the sidewalk carrying a couple of large and heavy packages, which were fastened with shawl straps. He then went back by the same route to Sixth and Locust, where he boarded a car and carried these two heavy packages, one in each hand, to his home in South St. Louis, where he resided with his widowed mother and his sister. He entered the dwelling with these packages. On learning this, I told the operative to carry out my instructions on the previous day, telling him that in case Erfurt doubled back on the evening after closing the store, and repeated the actions of the previous evening, that after he had emerged from the store the second time, as he had the night before, the operative should then approach him and say to him that I was in my office in the chemical building and wanted to see him at once, and to bring him up without delay. I remained in the office that evening, so as to be on hand in case Erfurt repeated his actions of the previous evening. And that is what he did. It was in the wintertime, and dark about five-thirty p.m., when Erfurt closed and locked the store, and left the other employees apparently starting for home. He accompanied the others, as he had the night before, to Sixth and Olive, and then left them. They were going home, and he making a circuitous route, the same as the night before, and went back to the store, letting himself in and emerging almost immediately again, carrying two heavy packages, heavier than those he had taken the night previous, and fastened with the shawl straps. After he had locked the door and picked up the packages, which seemed very heavy, my operative approached him unobserved and touched him on the shoulder, saying, Mr. Furlong is at his office in the chemical building and wants you to come over and see him at once. Erfurt replied, What does he want to see me for? The operative said, I do not know. He will explain that when he sees you. Erfurt replied, I am in a hurry and I have not time. I am late anyway, and will call and see him tomorrow. The operative said, You can either go with me right now and see Mr. Furlong, or I will call the policeman, according to a policeman who had to be standing diagonally across the street from where they were, and have him take you to the police headquarters, and probably Mr. Furlong will go there and see you. Now, it is up to you. If I take you to the police headquarters, your name and picture will appear on the papers in the morning, and you will probably get a lot of undesirable notoriety. I don't want any notoriety, replied Evert. But I can't understand what Mr. Furlong wants to see me for tonight. However, I will go with you, but I will put these packages in the store. The operative said, No. Take these packages with you. What is in them? Erfurt replied, I have two fine clocks that were sent over to the store by mistake and are too expensive to sell at auction, and I intend to take them back to the main store. Where do they belong? Well, said the operative, you take them up to Mr. Furlong's office, and after you have seen them, he will probably allow you to take them to the main store. The operative brought Erfurt to my office, packages and all. I had known Erfurt since his boyhood, and on his entering the office, I took him into my private office. Here I will say that on the second day I had put another operative to work on this case, unknown to the first operative, who had been shadowing the first operative and had witnessed everything that had occurred, and had reached the office a few minutes ahead of the first operative and Erfurt, so that I was fully aware of all that had occurred. When we were seated in my private room, I said to Erfurt, Fred, what have you in those two packages? He answered, They are two clocks which were sent over to the auction store by mistake. They are expensive clocks, and I will not sell them at auction, and intended to take them home tonight and return them to the main store in the morning before I open the auction store. What other stock have you on, your person, which was sent over to the auction store by mistake? I asked. He replied, I have only a few stickpins and a few other small articles of jewelry. I said, put them on my desk. He did so, and the articles that he had concealed in his pockets, according to the prices marked on them, amounted in all to nearly four hundred dollars. There were gold rings, stickpins, and other small pieces of good jewelry. Thinking that possibly he had not emptied his pocket, I inspected them myself. I found a memorandum book in which he had kept an accurate account of all articles that had been taken from the jewelry company, the cost price of each article to the company, and the price he had received for a large, large of articles that had already been disposed of. This book was written in Cypher. I also found a key to a safe deposit vault that he had in some safe deposit company. I then informed him that thousands of dollars worth of stuff had been stolen from his employers, that he had been practically raised by them, having been in their service nearly all of his life, and that the company had always treated him well and justly, all of which he admitted, and that now, as he had been caught red-handed, I thought that it was his duty, and to his interest, to tell the whole truth as to what he had taken, and do all in his power to return as much of the property as possible. At this time my office was on the fourteenth floor of the chemical building. My private office fronted on Olive Street, and Urfert made a sudden lunge for the window and attempted to jump out. I prevented him from doing this, and after talking to him for a few moments, he admitted that he had been stealing from the company for the past two years. Recently, he had been assisted by another of the employees. His grandfather was conducting a jewelry and novelty store in South St. Louis, and nearly all of the stock in this store had been stolen by himself and his confederate from the Boland establishment. He also stated that he had a quantity of the stolen property concealed in the attic of his mother's house, where he lived, and agreed that he would go with one of my men at once and deliver all of the stolen goods that he could to me, and he faithfully kept his word. At the conclusion of this statement, I sent a messenger to Mr. Boland, telling him that I wished him to come to my office at once, as I had succeeded in capturing the culprit. It should be remembered that the above all took place on the second day that I was working on the case. Mr. Boland arrived at my office about ten o'clock, accompanied by his wife in Clarence White. I met them in the front office. Mr. Boland said, The messenger told me that you had captured the party who has been robbing us. I said, Yes, that is why I sent for you. Whom have you caught? He asked. I replied, Fred Erfurt is the principal party. Miss Boland White simultaneously exclaimed, Why, you have surely made a mistake. Mr. Boland said, I told you not to bother with Erfurt, that I believed he was all right. But this juncture, White, using a slang phrase, butted in, and said, Why, furlong, you have got your foot in it, sure. Erfurt surely had nothing to do with these thefts, and you have made a great mistake by even accusing him. He has been practically raised by Mr. Boland and in his service for many years, and we have always had implicit confidence in his honesty. I replied, Yes, I understand all of that. Mr. Boland employed me to apprehend the party or parties who are robbing him, which I have done. Erfurt knows that he is guilty, and he has fully admitted his guilt, and I am satisfied from the evidence that I found on his person that he told the truth when he said he was guilty. I, of course, realized Mr. Boland's disappointment in finding that Erfurt was the guilty person, but I cannot help his feelings. I have simply done my duty in the matter, and now it remains with Mr. Boland as to what should be done with Erfurt. Where is Erfurt, Mr. Boland asked? I pointed to my private office and said, He is there and waiting to see you. He has promised me that he will tell you what he has already told my assistant and myself, and that he would at once return a considerable quantity of the stolen property to you, which I have advised him to do. I then conducted them to the private room where Erfurt reiterated the statement that he had made to me. He admitted everything. Then I, with some of my assistants, immediately procured a hack and went with Erfurt to his mother's house, where he found about two hack-loads of stolen goods consisting of clocks, silver plate, fine umbrellas, and various articles of bric-a-brac—all valuable stuff. I had these goods hauled direct to the Boland store. We then visited the store of the grandfather in south St. Louis, and recovered about four hack-loads of goods from there. By the time we had hauled the last load away from there, it was nearly daylight. While this loot was being removed from Erfurt's house, by Erfurt himself and two of my assistants, I was standing outside, guarding the hack into which the goods were being placed. A police officer came along. He knew me, and was somewhat surprised to see me at that time of night in that locality, and asked me, in a friendly manner, what I was doing there. I told him that there had been some stuff stolen from a jewelry store, and that it had been taken to this house, and I thought it advisable to remove the goods after night, so as not to attract the attention of the neighborhood, as I felt sure that the woman of the family were not aware of the fact that the property which had been placed in their house had been stolen. The policeman later reported having met me, and what I had told him, to his captain at the Solard Street Station. And of course, this report reached the chief of police Harrigan the following morning, whereupon the chief became exasperated, and ordered the policeman suspended immediately, assigning the reason for doing so the fact that the officer had not arrested the hack driver and myself. He also suspended one or two of the officers connected with the station who were on duty that night. The next morning, about ten o'clock, a city detective called on me at my office and said to me, I have been sent down by the chief to see you. The chief understands that you arrested a young fellow by the name of Irford last night, and that you recovered a lot of stolen property. Is this report true? Part of the report seems to be true, while the larger part is not true, I replied. You know, and the chief should know, that I have no legal right to make arrests, and therefore I have made no arrest, nor have I caused any to be made within the city of St. Louis. But I did recover a large quantity of stolen goods last night and early this morning. I have delivered them to the owner. Where is Irford now? he asked. I replied. I do not know where Irford is at the present time. Why do you want to know this? Because the chief instructed me to come down here and get him, and bring him to headquarters at once, he said. Have you any charges against him at headquarters? I asked. I don't know, he replied. All I know is that the chief sent me down here to get him and bring him to headquarters. I said. I do not know whether there will be any charges preferred against D. Furt or not. His employer seemed inclined to sympathize with him, and more especially with his family. I do not believe that he cares to have him prosecuted for these thefts. I expect Irford to call at my office sometime during the forenoon, and I am looking for Mr. Boland here at any moment. When Irford comes, I will tell him that the chief wants to see him. The detective said. No, you need not do that. I will wait here, and when he comes, I will take him up with me. I turned to him and said slowly, if Irford calls at this office while you are here, and if you have a warrant for his arrest, charging him with any crime, you may take him to headquarters, but unless you have a warrant, I will not permit you to take him out of this office. I think, perhaps, you would better go and communicate this to the chief. The city detective and myself have been friends for a number of years prior to this occurrence, and I must say that I did not like the idea of him coming to my office and attempting to have me admit to him that I violated the law by having unlawfully detained a citizen, thereby laying myself liable to prosecution. However, not having violated the law, I felt perfectly safe. I knew that the chief was overanxious to make me trouble, as he had made others in my line of business in the past. The detective left my office and went to report to his chief. In the meantime, Mr. Boland came to my office, and I told him of the visit of the city detective and what had been said. Mr. Boland said that he did not care to prosecute Irford. In fact, preferred not to do so. But as the police had the right to persecute the case, he was really undecided as to what was the best course to pursue. I advised Mr. Boland to quietly take Irford to police headquarters and tell the chief what he had said to me. As it occurred to me in all probability, the chief would insist on having Irford prosecuted. Mr. Boland accompanied Irford to police headquarters, where the chief and the detective who had called him my office took charge of him, and put him through a series of questions which were principally concerning what Furlong had done. They tried to make him say that Furlong had arrested him, and forced him to make a confession of the thefts. And Irford afterwards told me that they never did ask him whether or not he was guilty of having robbed his employer. They bent their efforts to try and make a criminal case against me, and had gone so far as to prepare a statement which they urged Irford to sign, the claiming that I had violated the law instead of Irford, by having arrested him, and then forcing him to make the statement admitting his guilt, all of which would have been a violation of the law on my part. Irford refused to sign this statement on the ground that it was untrue. I will state right here that the foregoing is a sample of how criminal cases were handled at police headquarters about that time. However, all these efforts were in vain, as Irford truthfully replied to every one of their questions. He told them that I had explained to him in the beginning of our interview that I had no legal right to arrest him, and that I had advised him that it was optional with him whether or not he returned the stolen goods, but that if he did not stay with me and help me, that it would be my duty to turn him over to the police, and he then would be written up in the newspapers, and would get a lot of undesirable notoriety that he wished to avoid. The chief became very much exasperated with Irford's statement, by which he could make no case against me. However, he later made a complaint with himself against me, charging me with running a private detective agency without a license from the police board. He had a warrant issued for my arrest. I waved a hearing, and in due time my trial was called before Judge Murphy. I was placed on the witness stand, and asked if I was engaged in the detective business in St. Louis. I replied that I was. I was then asked if I had a license from the board of police commissioners. I answered that I had not. It had never applied for one. I was then asked by what authority I was conducting my business. I stated that I was conducting my business by the authority of a charter from the state of Missouri. I was asked to produce the articles of incorporation. I did, and after the judge had carefully read them and examined my charter, he dismissed the case and assessed the cost of court on the complaint. The chief of police insisted on a prosecution in the Irford case. Irford was out on bond, and in due time appeared in court, pleaded guilty, and received a minimum sentence, which, if I remember correctly, was two years in the penitentiary. I understand that he was a model prisoner and was released under the two-third rule. The stolen property that had been recovered amounted to several thousand dollars. I have learned that, since Irford was released from prison, he has been leading an exemplary life and is respected in the neighborhood where he resides. His confederate was a mere boy and was not prosecuted. It being understood that he had simply been a tool for Irford, and he had not been concerned in many of the numerous thefts.