Pinkerton’s Great Detective
Page 1
ALSO BY BEAU RIFFENBURGH
The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery
Nimrod: Ernest Shackleton and the Extraordinary Story of the 1907–09 British Antarctic Expedition
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition: The Voyage of the Nimrod
Racing with Death: Douglas Mawson—Antarctic Explorer
Aurora: Douglas Mawson and the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911–14
VIKING
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PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 17: Library of Congress; 7, 11, 13: Author’s collection; 8: Franklin B. Gowen, List of Outrages in Schuylkill and Shamokin Regions (1875); 9, 12: Allan Pinkerton, The Mollie Maguires and the Detectives (1880); 15, 16, 18: Charles A. Siringo, A Texas Cow Boy (1886); 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28: Library of Congress; 22, 24, 27: Albert E. Horsley, Confessions and Autobiography of Harry Orchard (1907); 23: The Idaho Daily Statesman; 29, 32, 33: Current Literature, July 1907; 31: James H. Hawley, History of Idaho: The Gem of the Mountains, Volume 2 (1920); 34: Charles A. Siringo, A Texas Cow Boy (1886); 35: Courtesy Annette Fujita
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Riffenburgh, Beau.
Pinkerton’s great detective : the amazing life and times of James McParland / Beau Riffenburgh.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-670-02546-6
1. McParland, James P. 2. Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency—Biography.
3. Private investigators—United States—Biography. I. Title.
HV7911.M3884R54 2013
363.28'9092—dc23
[B]
2013017204
Version_1
In loving memory of my Mother,
Angelyn Kelley Riffenburgh
CONTENTS
Also by Beau Riffenburgh
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
1. The Makings of a Detective
2. The Molly Maguires
3. A New Identity
4. On the Inside
5. The Long Strike
6. Three Dead Men
7. Murder and Vigilante Vengeance
8. Trials and Tribulations
9. McParlan on the Witness Stand
10. One After Another
11. An Ending and a Beginning
12. A New Life
13. A New Detective in Town
14. Calling the Shots
15. A New Direction
16. Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch
17. On the Trail of the Wild Bunch
18. The Man in Charge
19. A Murder and a Confession
20. Battle Lines Are Drawn
21. The Lull Before the Storm
22. The Fight for Adams
23. The Haywood Trial
24. Four Trials
25. The Long Good-bye
Photographs
Acknowledgments
Index
Appendix A
Appendix B
Notes
Bibliography
PREFACE
McKenna knew his life could end at any moment. Each day that passed pieces of the puzzle were being put together, and soon the inevitable conclusion would be reached by the “bodymasters”—and they knew all too well how to eliminate problems. He realized that his every move was being watched, his actions scrutinized, and that he might soon be given the “black spot,” marking him for murder.
No one understood better than the rough brawler known throughout the less salubrious parts of Schuylkill County as Jim McKenna how easy it was to kill a man. His life could be snuffed out at home in the dead of night, or in the street on a dark evening, or even in a crowded, well-lit place that had seemed secure until it was too late. McKenna would not go easily—he was well armed and could hold his own with a pistol, knife, lead pipe, or his fists—but he could feel Death looking over his shoulder.
The premonition had started a week or so before, in mid-February 1876, when Mary Ann Higgins, whom he was courting, told him about the rumor that he was an informer—accused of being behind the arrests of several men from the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), an Irish fraternal society with a large local membership. McKenna was convinced that the AOH was actually more than that. He believed it was essentially the same as the Molly Maguires, a shadowy and brutal Irish American brotherhood responsible for sabotage, beatings, and at least sixteen murders—some said more than fifty—in the Pennsylvania coalfields.1
But it was not the notion of killing and violence that aroused Mary Ann’s disgust; it was the thought that McKenna might be a spy. For in a region heavily populated by immigrants from the turbulent northern counties of Ireland, few were detested more than informers. And few could expect shorter life spans.
McKenna’s friend Frank McAndrew and a friendly Pottsville saloon keeper, Danny Hughes, soon added to his worries.2 Each indicated that John Kehoe, a handsome, charismatic, steely eyed Irishman who ran a tavern in Girardville and was the Schuylkill County delegate of the AOH, had sent a warning for “every one to beware of me [McKenna]; that I was a detective; that such was the report, and that he, John Kehoe, had it from responsible sources.”3
Outwardly incensed that after two years as an officer of the AOH he should be accused, McKenna went to Kehoe to protest his innocence, and to demand an opportunity to prove his case. Kehoe agreed to set a “trial” for early March, near McKenna’s lodgings in Shenandoah, a grimy little mining town in the anthracite coal region about twelve miles north of Pottsville, the Schuylkill County seat. In fact, so convincing had McKenna’s protests been that he was allowed to spend the night in Kehoe’s house. But in the ensuing days, away from his smooth talking, Kehoe’s suspicions returned.
Kehoe saw McKenna in Pottsville on the day before the scheduled trial and urged him to accompany him on the train back to Shenandoah that evening. McKenna agreed, but when he boarded it, there was no trace of Kehoe. Mrs. Kehoe was there, but she said that her husband had left in the afternoon.
“The suspicion struck me, then, just at that time, that all was not right,” McKenna later testified. “I began to see then where I stood.”4
Concerned that trouble might be waiting at the little crossing where he usually jumped off because it was close to his boardinghouse, McKenna stayed on the train. He was glad he had when he saw several suspicious figures in the shadows around the usually deserted track.
After disembarking at the main station, he made his way toward McAndrew’s house through dark streets encrusted
with oft-thawed and refrozen mud and snow. He exchanged greetings with a few friends and was alarmed when one pointedly ignored him. When he popped into a tavern, another offered him a drink, but the man’s hands shook so violently that he could barely pull the stopper from the bottle. McKenna wryly asked if he had the ague, although he knew the man was simply terrified to be with him.
A fellow named Edward Sweeney fell into step with him after he left the tavern, and McKenna innately sensed danger: “I got him to walk in front of me. I said my eyes were bad, and I could not see; that the pavements had holes in them. . . . I got him ahead of me, and I made up my mind to keep him there.”5
At McAndrew’s house, McKenna was unable to prise any information from his friend, so he waited until several others who were there left, and then, listening intently for sounds of pursuit, slipped out again. He ignored the direct route to his boardinghouse and crept through the edges of a swamp to avoid an ambush. Once inside his tiny bedroom he laid out his weapons and sat awake through the long, freezing night, keeping anxious watch between the tattered curtains into the moonlight for the men he was certain planned to kill him.
• • •
Early the next morning, his hand tucked inside his old brown coat gripping the cold butt of a .36 caliber Colt Navy revolver, McKenna entered a smoky Shenandoah saloon with McAndrew. “My God, man, don’t you know why you’ve been summoned here?” an acquaintance blurted before hurrying away.
McKenna did know. Only a couple of bodymasters—the heads of the AOH lodges—had arrived, and it was obvious that judgment had already been passed: There would be no hearing. McAndrew, the only person now willing to be seen with him, suggested they go for a ride in a “cutter,” a lightweight, open sleigh. Following them in another cutter were two AOH men. Once they were racing across the deep snow, McAndrew informed McKenna that one of them had been charged to kill him. “Have you got your pistols?” he asked.
McKenna answered in the affirmative, and McAndrew continued, “So have I, and I will lose my life for you. I do not know whether you are a detective or not, but I do not know anything against you. I always knew you were doing right, and I will stand by you. Why don’t they try you fair?”6 McAndrew then informed McKenna that he had saved his life the night before.
“He told me that John Kehoe had came to Shenandoah upon the afternoon previous, and that he had assembled . . . all the Mollies who were in town,” McKenna stated, “and that he told him, McAndrew, for God’s sake to have me killed that night or I would hang half the people in Schuylkill County; and McAndrew said that he consented, and Kehoe and the men were satisfied, and they assembled just a little below the depot, twelve or fourteen of them.”7
But the men had been flummoxed when McKenna failed to alight at his usual location. They had been armed with iron bars, axes, and tomahawks, because shooting him would make too much noise and bring the police. “If you had stepped off the train, at that place, you would surely have been killed, cast into a wagon, which was in waiting for the purpose, and then tossed down a deserted shaft.”8
Frightened himself, McAndrew paused to calm his voice. “You were in queer company then, and you will find you are in queer company now,” he said. “What will you do?”
“I do not give a cent,” spat McKenna, furious and indignant. “I am going down to Kehoe’s.”9
It was four miles from Shenandoah to the rough-and-tumble borough of Girardville, where Kehoe ran the Hibernian House. Six feet two inches tall in his stocking feet, with “jet black, curly hair, bushy eyebrows, and bright blue, piercing eyes,”10 Kehoe was an intimidating figure. As well as being a publican, he also served as the town’s high constable. But McKenna was satisfied that Kehoe was something more—he was also the kingpin of the Molly Maguires.
McKenna knew that entering Hibernian House was akin to walking into a lion’s den, but he felt that he had no choice but to brazen out the situation—because, despite all his denials, he actually was an undercover detective.
NOTES, REFERENCES, APPENDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND MAPS
The full Notes and References, two Appendices, the Bibliography, and a selection of maps and more material about the Molly Maguires and other parts of James McParland's career can be easily accessed on the websites below:
www.susannagregory.com/beauriffenburgh/pinkertons-great-detective
and
www.penguin.com/PinkertonsGreatDetective
INTRODUCTION
The gravestone stands in an open area, unprotected by trees and exposed to the blustery snow flurries and frigid winds that regularly rake north-central Colorado. Near the top of this granite marker is a single name: McParland. Below is a record of the supposed birth and death dates of a man once so widely recognized that when his admirers referred to him as the “Great Detective” others instantly knew of whom they spoke. But James McParland surely would have chuckled at the dates on his tombstone, for throughout his life this master of evasion, obfuscation, and, at times, outright deceit maintained that he did not know when he had been born. So was this the long-hidden truth finally appearing? Had his widow ordered this particular date for reasons of her own? Or was it another instance of the elusiveness and ambiguity that marked McParland’s entire life?
Any could be the answer, because it is impossible to be sure about McParland, who relished being a man of mystery. Confusion even surrounds his name: Originally it was McParlan, and he only added the “d” midway through life, while other spellings and aliases were also used at times. Throughout his career he delighted, even when under oath, in evading questions and offering only vague, and sometimes contradictory, information. According to one attorney he was “the most skillful, cunning man, the most unfair witness that I ever saw on the stand.”1
Because of the uncertainty he engendered as a witness, aspersions cast about his behavior and morals during investigations, his creation and perpetuation of myths about himself, and that few of his reports or letters have survived, it has proven difficult through the years to make a full assessment of McParland. But what is certain is that few people have undergone such a dramatic fall from grace after death—such a change from idol to villain.
There is—and long has been—little middle ground about McParland. He has been perceived as a great American hero: “[I]f there ever was a man to whom the people of this county should erect a monument, it is James McParlan,” said one contemporary.2 Others have reviled him as the worst kind of scoundrel, a perjurer who twisted testimony to send innocent men to the gallows, a man with “the bearing of a brute and the visage of a vulture, his hands befouled with blood, venomous as a viper, a beastly snarl on his forbidding lips, he stalks the streets a thing unclean, hated by all.”3 Widely varying depictions still abound in books and film even a century after his death—many making up for a lack of depth, balance, and accuracy with emotive language and unsubstantiated allegations. So who was the real man behind the contrary portraits—courageous hero or contemptible rogue?
Throughout his career, McParland was a controversial figure for the equally contentious Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. In fact, a significant part of that company’s reputation—good and bad—was based on his triumphs and failures. McParland first gained fame for his undercover role in the breaking of the Molly Maguires in the Pennsylvania coalfields in the 1870s, a tale that concluded with twenty men being hanged. He returned to center stage three decades later for his role in the attempt to convict a trio of leaders of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) for the assassination of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg.
Between those cases he rose steadily in the Pinkerton’s hierarchy, eventually managing the agency’s operations west of the Mississippi River. He was a key figure in the investigation of the first-known “murder by mail” and helped solve the theft of $280,000 of gold from a San Francisco smelting works. He oversaw the efforts of legends such as the charismatic “cowboy detective” Charlie Sir
ingo, the incorruptible lawman “Doc” Shores, and the cold-blooded killer Tom Horn. He supervised operations to catch murderers, train robbers, and con men, including swindlers who targeted the lord mayor of London, a band accused of attempting to murder New Mexico politicians, and the Wild Bunch led by Butch Cassidy. He also played a key role in Pinkerton’s much criticized use of undercover agents to infiltrate and destroy miners’ unions.
But more than anything else it was McParland’s role in the Molly Maguire saga that earned him enduring status as a man of exceptional evil or good. The Molly Maguires—Irish miners and tavern owners accused of violent crimes—have been depicted during the past 150 years as everything from thugs and murderers to innocent martyrs in the cause of workers’ rights. Interpretations have changed dramatically as accounts of their actions, fate, and motives have been manipulated to justify different political, social, or legal agendas. McParland’s role in their convictions has been similarly shaped to validate ideological positions.
One classic article stated that “the ambiguity surrounding the episode is such that it permits the construction of a plausible justification for any stance on the issues as well as . . . guilt or innocence.”4 Thus, it is possible to arrive at widely differing assessments of almost any event, decision, or individual in the narrative of the Molly Maguires.
After years being hailed as a savior, more recently the appraisals of McParland have tended to be highly critical. He has been labeled a perjurer, an agent provocateur, and even a murderer. The accuracy of these conflicting judgments is at the heart of the mystery this book is trying to unravel. That is in part because, rather than using established facts as building blocks for a final evaluation, many previous assessments have been derived from preexisting assumptions and display a reckless disregard for actual evidence. Moreover, those making such assessments have overlooked the fact that social norms, societal and ethnic attitudes, and law enforcement and the justice system were far different a century and more ago than they are today.