Although the WFM never officially terminated the strike, its program had been crushed by the violence following the dynamiting of the Independence depot. By the end of 1904 the WFM was no longer a force in Cripple Creek, Telluride, or Idaho Springs. Its leaders had to seek strength by realigning with other organizations, such as the short-lived American Labor Union or the Industrial Workers of the World.56 But to McParland that only meant the WFM was like a chameleon, changing its name or outward appearance while remaining the same within, and at the top. Therefore, the Great Detective still had the organization and its leaders in his sights.
• • •
Actually, having anything literally in his sights was a serious worry for McParland. The year 1903 had started well, when his much loved nephew Eneas married his sweetheart, Emily Pfeiffer, in Ocala, Florida, on January 14. “Mr McParland is a young man, prominent in both business and social circles in Denver,” a Florida newspaper stated, “where he holds a responsible railroad position.”57 Eneas then returned to Denver with his new wife, who, like her husband, was doted upon by the McParlands.
June, however, brought unpleasant events, as McParland’s weak eyesight took a serious turn for the worse. “On getting up on the morning of the 3d I discovered that everything in front of me looked hazy or smoky while sideways I could see about as usual,” he wrote to Robert Pinkerton. “But on arriving at the office and opening my mail I discovered that I was unable to read.”58 Soon thereafter McParland consulted his oculist, Dr. Walker, who informed him that he was again suffering from choroiditis. “The Doctor stated that a speck of this choroiditis had gotten right on the center of vision. That caused everything in front of me to be clouded, just the same as though you would put a little black patch in the center of a bulls eye lantern; there would be light around the sides of the lantern but the center would be dark.”
Walker’s treatment consisted of applying “leeches just behind my left ear . . . and he kept up the bleeding process brought on by the leeches after they had done their work for a couple of hours.”59 He also prescribed heavy dosages of “iodides”—used at the time for anti-inflammatory purposes—but several days later decided that the treatment “was depressing to the system, and the iodides, when taken in such doses as I was now taking them were very debilitating in this altitude, and if continued for any length of time, would result in my having to discontinue the treatment entirely for some time, and therefore no progress would be made in eradicating the disease.”60 The solution, Walker said, was that McParland “get to sea level just as quickly as possible, and suggested that I go to some hot spring at sea level, or at least I must be somewhere where I could take Turkish baths occasionally, but a hot spring where I had an attendant to rub me down would be more preferable.” Typical of McParland’s work ethic was his request that Pinkerton allow him to go to the San Francisco office, as it was at sea level and would allow him to “take Turkish baths and attend to the business of the Western Division.”61
From a modern medical standpoint, Walker’s treatment plan was questionable,62 although it was supported by another doctor, who told the detective that “while my heart was in good condition, having no organic trouble, nevertheless my pulse was slow, and that was caused by the iodide that I was taking, and in his opinion it would only be a question of time when I would have to discontinue taking iodides and rest up.”63
Yet four days later—before he finalized any travel plans—McParland reported such sudden improvements “that neither Dr. Walker or myself can hardly realize it. . . . I have simply been improving every day, not only the sight but physically. I really think I have not felt better in 20 years.”64 Several days later he noted that “My eyesight has continued to improve, so that on yesterday on testing it, and comparing the test with the record . . . he made after the operation on my right eye eight years ago, my vision is more acute, and I can partially read one line more than I could read at that time. All that is left of the Coroditis is simply a little haze in the distance which is improving from day to day.”65 One surprising result was that despite being expected to lose weight, McParland actually gained substantially. This was never taken off for any extended period, and McParland’s once svelte figure became progressively paunchier.
Concern about losing his eyesight encouraged McParland to think a little about his life away from the office. In September, mentioning the agency’s new policy of allowing each clerk a Sunday off in rotation, he asked Bangs if, “owing to my long service in the agency . . . the Principals and yourself might permit me in the future while in Denver to remain at home on Sundays. . . . [I]f anything transpired . . . I would immediately get down to the office. . . . I do not want the Principals or yourself to strain a point to grant me this favor. If it is not granted matters will remain just as they are now.”66 It is uncertain whether he thereafter received regular time off, but McParland did note in the same letter that he had never taken a holiday. A year later that changed, as he wrote to Doc Shores that he would shortly be leaving for Chicago on vacation.67
McParland’s eyesight was far from his only physical complaint. In March 1904, he sprained his right foot while in Los Angeles, and on the way back to Denver, it “burst” in an unidentified way. The skin between his toes was thereafter prone to suffering serious cracks. The following winter the foot was further damaged when it was frostbitten during a storm, and the skin between his big toe and the next one broke open. Blood poisoning set in, and there “was a red streak from the big toe about as big as a pencil near the vein, to within two inches of the groin.” McParland was put on medication and, despite having no solid food for nine days, regained his health. About six months later, he again suffered blood poisoning, suddenly becoming very ill at work. His temperature rose to 104 degrees, and he spent two weeks in the hospital under the care of two physicians and a specially trained nurse. Again he recovered and returned to his daily routine.68
These health problems inevitably left McParland with concerns about the future, particularly as at the same time he lost one of his oldest and closest colleagues. On April 15, 1904, Robert J. Linden, after being ill for about a month, died in Philadelphia of pneumonia at the age of sixty-nine.69
Age also seems to have brought with it a tetchiness and pedantry that annoyed McParland’s employers. “Mr McParland raises too many technical arguments on matters brought to his attention,” Robert Pinkerton wrote to his brother in 1905, continuing:
The General Management have too much to do to have to keep up a continual correspondence, writing letter after letter to get Mr McParland to carry out what has been outlined in our Orders. There is no [other] Manager that raises the arguments that Mr McParland does. . . . [W]e have more trouble with that Division in having our ideas understood and carried out than with the other two Divisions together. . . . [F]or the future Mr McParland, instead of finding matter for argument, must accept the ruling of the Principals and Management and carry out their directions. . . . Let Mr McParland study how to avoid or at least curtail his correspondence; put it in as few words as possible instead of continually jumping into an argument. This must stop. . . . Mr McParland personally knows the very high regard that our father, you and I have always had for him. There is nothing within reason that either of us would not do for him, but he is getting old, as we are . . . and these constant and unnecessary arguments that he unfortunately brings up are exceedingly annoying, and worse than all, very wearing on everyone.70
McParland was actually only about sixty years old,71 but it is clear that he was becoming less physically able. He had grown portly and taken to carrying a gold-headed cane to help him walk. He was also becoming increasingly curmudgeonly. More important, he seemed to think that he always knew best and realized he could get what he wanted either by charm or a bullish dominance, which he had in equal measure. Butting heads with him would have generally been futile—apparently even for the Pinkertons. But if the brothers thought they saw a difficu
lt side of McParland, it was nothing compared to what the leadership of the WFM would endure—him at his most determined, inflexible, and merciless.
In 1905, John Ingram—a former chief constable in Rossland, British Columbia, a center of gold mining—was killed in a mine explosion similar to those attributed to the WFM in Colorado and Idaho.72 As that union had a local in Rossland, and Ingram had played a prominent role in putting down strikes, suspicion quickly fell on the local WFM leaders. Ingram’s brother, a Member of Parliament, asked Pinkerton’s to find out what had actually happened. After investigating personally, McParland reported that dynamite had been stored at the site and that Ingram’s death was accidental, nothing to do with the WFM.73 It was the last time that he would find on behalf of the WFM or present it as anything less than a criminal organization led by an inner circle of anarchists, dynamiters, and killers. They needed to be stopped at all costs, and McParland knew he was the man to do it.
CHAPTER 19
A MURDER AND A CONFESSION
It was on a snowy evening in a bleak Idaho winter that the opening act in the final showdown between McParland and the Western Federation of Miners was played out. It was a scene that would precede both what was arguably the most remarkable confession in U.S. legal history and a series of courtroom dramas peopled with more famous investigators, witnesses, defendants, prosecutors, and defense attorneys—as well as more stunningly murderous testimony—than perhaps any other American trial on record.
About twenty-five miles west of Boise is Caldwell, the seat of Canyon County. There, on December 30, 1905, former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg ran several errands—including renewing his life insurance policy1—and then followed his usual late Saturday afternoon routine. Braving temperatures that hovered only slightly above 0 degrees Fahrenheit (–18 degrees Celsius)—as well as the eight inches of fresh snow that carpeted the town he had helped build from its rough foundations—the forty-four-year-old Steunenberg headed for home shortly after 6:00 P.M.
Steunenberg’s bulk—235 pounds packed on a frame of six feet two inches—made the man still called “governor” by many of Caldwell’s twenty-two hundred inhabitants a figure easy to spot, even when dressed against the weather. Less recognizable was the much smaller man who passed him, hurrying back the other way toward the center of town from near Steunenberg’s house.2
Steunenberg reached the gate to his home, pulled back the slide to open it, stepped through, and, before he could close it, was hurled ten feet through the air by an explosion so powerful it was heard sixteen miles away.3 As his wife and daughter raced out to help him, one glance told the whole story—the gate was gone, replaced by a giant divot, and the nearby fence and boardwalk had been shattered, their debris blown throughout the neighborhood. Steunenberg himself was a broken and mangled remnant, the clothes on the lower half of his body totally destroyed, the right side of his body shredded and crushed, both his legs broken, and his right hand “having the inside blown completely out.” Both his eardrums were also apparently broken, leaving him deaf. Within about twenty minutes, despite the desperate ministrations of his family and three of the town’s doctors, he breathed his last.
The news quickly spread through Caldwell that the governor had been murdered. Canyon County sheriff Jasper Nichols and his deputies formed a posse to surround the town and prevent the perpetrator from escaping. Assistance was sought from the surrounding communities, and a phone call placed to the current governor, Frank Gooding, who hurried from Boise on a specially chartered train and quickly helped organize a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for the capture of the killer.
Early the next morning, investigators at the scene uncovered some waxed fish line and what appeared to be a trigger mechanism, suggesting there had been a bomb attached to the gate. Meanwhile, several strangers in the town were hauled in for questioning. One man not immediately obvious to the authorities was a round-faced, ruddy-complexioned fellow called Thomas Hogan, who was staying at the Saratoga Hotel. He was not a total stranger, as he had been in and out of town for months and seemed to be an affable, engaging man looking to buy, depending on the conversation, sheep or real estate. Within moments of the explosion, he calmly helped the hotel bartender tie a bow on a parcel, pressing a steady finger on the knot.4
Yet, for a man who in the preceding weeks had shown a peculiar curiosity about Steunenberg, Hogan demonstrated an inexplicable lack of interest about the assassination, even interrupting one conversation by asking if someone knew where to purchase wethers—castrated rams.5 His odd behavior made several locals suspicious, as was Sheriff Harvey K. Brown of Baker County, Oregon, who, happening to be in Boise, had hopped on Gooding’s train to Caldwell. Baker thought he recognized Hogan as a miner from Cracker Creek in eastern Oregon, although Hogan denied he had been there. However, when Sheriff Nichols made a surreptitious visit to Hogan’s hotel room, he found traces of explosive powder and plaster of Paris—ingredients used in making bombs. This was enough for Hogan to be questioned, following which, on the afternoon of New Year’s Day 1906, he was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
• • •
The day after the murder, Charles O. Stockslager, the chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, arrived in Caldwell, joining a rush of public figures who saw political advantage in being there. Keen to be the next governor of Idaho, and wanting to be seen as “tough on crime,” Stockslager jumped into the investigation by phoning an old colleague—James McParland. The Indiana-born Stockslager had known McParland since the case of fraud and arson in Columbus, Kansas, back in 1886. At that time, as Cherokee County attorney, he had successfully prosecuted the case, and the men’s mutual respect meant they had stayed in touch.6
Stockslager asked McParland if he would take over the Steunenberg investigation,7 but the manager of the Western Division referred him to James Nevins, general superintendent in Portland, because the agency was inflexible about the manner and routing of initiating operations. Furthermore, McParland told his friend, the official request must come from Governor Gooding. The next day the uneasy bedfellows Stockslager and Gooding agreed to contact Nevins, but before they could, Gooding heard from Wilson Swain, the Spokane manager of the Thiel Detective Service Company. Swain announced that he would arrive that day, having been hired by the Coeur d’Alene mine owners. Pinkerton’s was thereupon put on hold, as the county and state governments liked any deal that meant they did not have to pay. The decision infuriated McParland not only professionally but personally, as he disliked Swain intensely.8
Swain was self-important, bombastic, and overbearing. He immediately flooded the area with operatives and personally took charge of dealing with Hogan. On January 2, he and several sheriffs searched the suspect and found keys to his trunk, suitcase, and traveling bag. In the trunk they discovered not only clothes, toiletries, business cards, and fishing gear, but also: a loaded Colt automatic pistol with a shoulder holster; a Winchester sawn-off pump shotgun with a shoulder strap (for carrying it concealed under a coat); a pair of brass knuckles; a cloth mask; wire cutters; a fuse; plaster of Paris; four packages of chemicals; and shoes that matched tracks made through the vacant lot adjacent to Steunenberg’s house.9
Not only was Swain certain that Hogan was the killer, he was equally sure he had accomplices. “There is now no doubt,” he told a throng of reporters while stroking his walrus mustache, “that Governor Steunenberg’s death was the result of a conspiracy that was most carefully planned, and which the conspirators were months in bringing to a conclusion.”10 What he did not say was that the detectives felt certain that the chief conspirator was a man who had spent considerable time with Hogan in the prior months, registering at hotels as J. Simmons. Swain had his men produce a photograph of Jack Simpkins—a WFM executive board member active in the Coeur d’Alenes11—and was gratified that hotel employees confirmed his suspicions that Simmons and Simpkins were one and the same. However, he had not been seen in Cal
dwell for weeks.
On January 3, Swain conducted a lengthy interview at the jail, and his first question produced gold. “What is your right name, Thomas Hogan?” he asked. The prisoner responded in the negative. “What is it?” Swain asked. Without pausing, the man replied, “Harry Orchard.”12 That day, other sources confirmed the claim. Sheriff Edward Bell of Teller County, Colorado, arrived and not only identified Orchard, but said that he was wanted for the Independence depot bombing. At the same time, Sheriff Brown also confirmed him as Orchard.13
By the end of the interview, Swain and his colleagues had learned that Orchard had joined the WFM in the Coeur d’Alenes before the 1899 troubles, and had later worked in Cripple Creek during the Colorado Labor Wars, although he did not admit any participation in the Independence bombing. He acknowledged knowing WFM leaders Charles Moyer and Bill Haywood, had recently been in contact with Simpkins, and conceded that the materials found in his hotel room were his, although he insisted that they were for making loaded dice.14
Orchard’s significance to the WFM became doubly mysterious when a telegram arrived from the Spokane law firm of Robertson, Miller and Rosenhaupt—which represented the WFM—stating that attorney Fred Miller was leaving the next day for Caldwell. As Orchard had not sent any messages, it was obvious that someone else had arranged for him to receive legal assistance, even before he had confessed his real name. And as Simpkins was thought to be in Spokane, it appeared that a member of the union’s executive board was keen to protect Orchard.15
Pinkerton’s Great Detective Page 35