American Lightning

by Howard Blum

  A few days after this demonstration McManigal received a telegram instructing him to go to Indianapolis. There he met Jim’s brother, J.J., the union’s secretary-treasurer. It was J.J. McNamara, he learned and observed, who chose the targets and directed the operation. At this meeting, McManigal was given a raise to two hundred dollars per job and assigned a new target—the Peoria train yard. That was the first time McManigal had used Jim’s invention, “the machine, as he called it.” He had not participated in the Los Angeles Times job. Two anarchists, Caplan and Schmitty, had been recruited in San Francisco to help procure the dynamite and fabricate the bombs, but they never went to Los Angeles. Jim alone had planted that “machine” in the alleyway of the Times Building.

  The deaths had not been anticipated; they were a shock and a surprise to everyone involved, McManigal explained. Still, the deaths did not put a halt to the operation. J.J. McNamara sent him to the West Coast, and on Christmas Day 1910 he planted the bomb that did $25,000 in damages to the anti-union Llewellyn Iron Works in Los Angeles. Throughout that winter (as his own operatives had been lurking around the Home Colony, Billy sourly noted), McManigal and McNamara had kept busy. They hit targets in the East and the Midwest. During the month of March alone the pair had set off explosions at nonunion sites in Springfield, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; French Lick, Indiana; Omaha, Nebraska; and Columbus, Ohio.

  Prodded by Billy’s questions, McManigal told an impressively detailed and convincing story. He revealed that Jim McNamara had hidden some “soup”—his shorthand for the 80 percent nitro—in a barn on the west side of Indianapolis. There was another reserve of “soup” in J.J. McNamara’s safe on the fifth floor of the American Central Life Building. Billy shuddered at the thought of a large quantity of dynamite stored in downtown Indianapolis. But what truly amazed him was the size and scope of the operation McManigal had detailed. Between the summer of 1905 and McManigal’s arrest in Detroit, the union had planted, he estimated, more than one hundred bombs. Billy realized that his men would have to investigate each explosion. He would have to build cases against all the union officials involved. It had been, a stunned Billy now understood for the first time, an all-out war. Between three and four hundred quarts of nitroglycerin and more than two thousand pounds of dynamite had been used. The damage had run to well over one million dollars. And twenty-one lives.

  McManigal was neither a deep thinker nor a political person, but he had picked up enough from J.J. and the other union officials to offer up a defense for what he had done. The steel magnates, he lectured, had set up the National Erectors’ Association (NEA) in 1905 to destroy the union. The NEA insisted that only scabs working for cheap wages be hired for construction projects. The union men, who demanded “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work,” were turned away at job sites, unable to feed and clothe their families. They were helpless against the wealth and greed of the capitalists. Morally complacent police dispersed their picket lines. Goon squads of private detectives attacked the protesters. In desperation, the union resorted to terror. The intention was to strike an intimidating blow, to destroy property. It was never to cause physical harm. Terror was a political weapon, a symbol of both the union’s frustration and its refusal to yield. Dynamite was the only means the workingman had to fight back against the powerful forces determined to deprive him of his fair, God-given due—the right to work for a decent wage.

  Billy heard him out politely, and then moved on. He did not argue, but McManigal’s view of the world struck him as too pat and his rationalizations too easy. For the detective, all the political jargon and catechisms could not hold up against a final judgment that was both practical and moral. Billy did not see how killing twenty-one innocent people would help anyone’s cause.

  McManigal’s confession went on for hours, and by the time it was over, Billy felt as if he had joined him on a long, exhausting journey. But Billy also realized that he had reached the end of his own personal mission. It had started six months ago, when he had stood on a street in Los Angeles and looked at the still-smoldering rubble of the Times Building. It had taken him to the San Francisco docks, the northwest woods, a Wisconsin camp, an Indianapolis office building, and finally to this kitchen table in the Chicago suburbs. J.J.’s arrest and the task of getting the three conspirators to Los Angeles were still ahead, but Billy at this moment couldn’t help looking at all that remained with a sense of anticlimax. He had his confession. Billy Burns had solved the crime of the century.

  In the days that followed, McManigal and McNamara remained hidden away while Billy waited with increasing impatience for the extradition writs from Los Angeles. He tried to convince himself that the delay was unimportant; after all, J.J. still did not know that his brother had been arrested for his role in the Times explosion. And the union leader certainly had no idea about McManigal’s confession. But Billy’s artificial calm began to break apart after the Associated Press article appeared.

  James Sullivan and Ortie McManigal, the AP reported, had been arrested in Detroit on charges of safe blowing and had then been taken to Chicago. It was only a small story, and fortunately the reporter had not known that “Sullivan” was an alias. Still, it was likely that J.J. McNamara had read the piece with alarm. The union leader had to fear that McManigal would panic and try to work out a deal with the authorities. It wasn’t hard for Billy to imagine J.J. deciding to flee while he still had the opportunity. Perhaps, Billy considered, he should forget about the extradition papers. A delay would be foolish. He should make the arrest immediately. But even as he debated, Billy knew that without the proper legal authorization to move the prisoners from Illinois, a shrewd union lawyer could get the entire case dismissed. So, always resourceful, he came up with a new plan—and a new role to play. He rehearsed this new script in his mind and then picked up the phone and called Emma McManigal, Ortie’s wife.

  “You don’t know me,” Billy said into the receiver in what he hoped was a suitably gruff, tough guy’s voice. “But I have just received a letter from a friend of mine in Detroit.”

  “Who are you?” Emma demanded.

  “I do not care to give my name, but I will read you this letter, and perhaps that will enlighten you,” he answered with a sudden formality. “I’m sure it’s Greek to me. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Very well.”

  “ ‘Dear Jack,’ ” he pretended to read. “ ‘Immediately on receipt of this letter, call up and tell the woman there that her husband and his friend were arrested in Detroit for safe blowing. As nothing could be proved, they were discharged and they are now in Windsor, Canada.’ ”

  “My God, but I’m so glad to hear that. That’s splendid news.”

  “Now listen to the rest of it,” Billy interrupted. “ ‘Tell her to go to a friend of theirs.’ Now it doesn’t say who the friend is.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. I know who it is.”

  Billy hid his excitement and continued: “ ‘Go to a friend of theirs and tell him to give her five hundred dollars, and for her then to return home and await a further message from her husband.’ Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, perfectly. I will leave tonight.”

  “All right. Good-bye,” Billy said, and then hung up the phone.

  The next day the tail he had put on Emma McManigal reported that she had gone to Indianapolis and met with J.J. McNamara. Billy congratulated himself. Maybe he really should have been an actor. His performance had convinced Emma McManigal. Now all he could do was hope J.J. McNamara had been persuaded, too.

  As Billy continued to wait, and as his men continued their uneventful surveillance of the union leader, Los Angeles assistant district attorney Robert Ford arrived in Chicago. He worked swiftly to present the requisition papers to the Illinois authorities. A secret extradition was approved. Billy instructed the men guarding McManigal and Jim McNamara that as soon as he sent word, they should drive the prisoners to Joliet and board the fast train to Los Angeles. Then he
went off to Indianapolis to make an arrest.

  A light, early spring rain was falling on April 22, 1911, when Billy, accompanied by two local police detectives, went to the Structural Iron Workers offices. An officer rapped at the door. Billy deferentially stood to the side; it was his case, his moment of triumph, but he knew he had no legal authority.

  A pleasant-looking man with a shock of gray hair that seemed out of place with his youthful face opened the door.

  “I want to see J.J. McNamara,” the officer announced.

  “I’m the man,” said McNamara. If he had any suspicion of the reason for the police’s arrival, he did not show it.

  “Well,” said the officer, “the chief would like to see you.”

  Suddenly J.J. understood, and a rush of panic hit him. Moments before J.J. had been sitting at a long walnut conference table with Frank Ryan, the union’s president, and six other members of the executive committee. J.J. now went back to the room and huddled anxiously with Ryan. “They’re after me. What had I better do about it?” he whispered.

  “You’d better go ahead,” Ryan advised.

  J.J. considered, then realized he had no choice. “I’ll get my hat,” he said. But he also made sure to close the union’s safe. Trying to regain a bit of his usual breezy manner, he told the executive committee members as he was being led out the door, “I’ll be back in time to make the motion for adjournment.”

  Billy hadn’t said a word during the entire arrest. It wasn’t necessary. He knew his moment would come. And he knew that if things worked out as he had planned, J.J. McNamara would not be back in the union office, or even in Indianapolis, for a long, long time.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ______________________

  AT LAST, TWO very long days later, Billy boarded the California Limited. The Limited was a wonder, not just the fastest way from the Midwest to the coast but also the most luxurious. The dining car was first-rate, and there was even an onboard barber, a beautician, a steam-operated clothing press, and a shower-bath. And in separate cars, guarded by Winchester-toting police officers, Billy had sequestered the McNamara brothers and McManigal.

  The detective was both exhilarated and totally drained. The past days had been a whirlwind. They were filled with moments that were too large, too consequential, to be understood as they happened. But now sitting in a comfortable tufted-red-leather window seat, the countryside outside swiftly changing like successive scenes in a movie, Billy could begin to review the events that had followed the arrest of J.J. McNamara.

  Less than an hour after being led from his office, J.J. stood before police court Judge James A. Collins. In a deep booming bass—a voice from Olympus, Billy approvingly decided—Judge Collins had read the extradition papers. Signed by the honorable governors of the states of Illinois and California, John J. McNamara was to be sent to Los Angeles to stand trial for the dynamiting of the Times Building and the Llewellyn Iron Works. He was also charged with twenty-one murders.

  J.J. paled. Billy watched as the union leader leaned on a chair to steady himself. At that moment the detective tried to feel sympathy, but he could not.

  Pointing a long accusatory finger at the union leader, the judge asked, “Are you the man named in the warrant?”

  It took J.J. a moment to find the words. Finally: “I admit that I’m the man named in the warrant.”

  “Very well, then,” said the judge, “the only thing left for me to do is to turn you over to the State of California.”

  Recovering some of his former confidence, J.J. began to protest. “Judge,” he insisted, “I do not see how a man can be jerked up from his business when he is committing no wrong and ordered out of the state on five minutes’ notice. Are you going to let them take me without giving me a chance to defend myself? I have no attorney and no one to defend me.”

  The judge cut him off. The man accused of the crime of the century had no rights in his court.

  “Take him away,” the judge ordered.

  Handcuffed to a police officer and accompanied by Billy’s handpicked Chicago police detective, Guy Biddinger, McNamara was led to a waiting seven-passenger Owen motorcar. The officers were armed with rifles and large-caliber revolvers. Two hundred rounds of ammunition were stored by the front passenger seat. Billy instructed Frank Fox, the driver, to go as fast as possible. Don’t stop for anything, he warned. No matter what McNamara’s friends try, keep going. Billy had a plan, and for it to work they needed to be in Terre Haute, Indiana, not a minute later than 1:45 that morning.

  But it was now 6:45 P.M., and Billy’s long night was only starting.

  Billy returned to the union headquarters in downtown Indianapolis. He was accompanied by an entourage of police, city officials, and reporters. Now that the press had been brought in and the arrests had been announced, Billy made sure it was his show. An instinctive performer, Billy played both to the occasion and to the crowd.

  Like a king claiming his throne, Billy sat down in the big ladderback chair in front of McNamara’s roll-top desk.With deliberately elaborate attention, he began examining the union leader’s papers. All the while the reporters made note of his every gesture.

  “Who are you,” Frank Ryan, the outraged union president, demanded, “that you have a right to come in these offices and search these apartments?”

  “Burns,” the detective answered, full of his own importance and authority. It was only a single one-syllable word, yet he was certain it would carry all the explanation that was necessary.

  The room went quiet. Ryan stared at his adversary. Reporters watched, documenting in their notebooks the intensity charging through this small moment of confrontation. “Ah, and who is Burns?” Ryan asked disingenuously.

  Billy rose from the desk. Insulted and demeaned, it was as if all the frustrations in the long course of his investigation had risen up at once within him. He was looking for a fight.

  Ryan did not back down. The union president, a steelworker for years, had traveled his own hard road. He moved toward the detective.

  All at once Police Superintendent Hyland stepped between the two men. His bulky presence was an effective obstacle, and the moment passed.

  Now ignoring Ryan, Billy headed toward the union’s safe. He had found a set of keys on McNamara’s desk, but he tried each one only to discover that none of them worked. The safe would have to be drilled. Billy asked the chief of police to get a locksmith. In the meantime, Billy would move on. Like a tour guide, he announced that anyone who wanted to join him was welcome.

  It was nearly midnight by the time Billy and his eager troops arrived at the barn on the outskirts of Indianapolis, near Big Eagle Creek. A day’s rain had turned the approach to the barn into a sea of mud. Beams from flashlights and torches struggled to light the way through the nearly starless night, and each new step across the oozing, sloshing field was a small battle. In his confession, Ortie McManigal had revealed that a cache of “soup” was hidden in a locked piano box in the barn. Once the box was found, Billy reached into his pockets and took out a set of keys he had confiscated from Jim McNamara. He kept trying keys, until finally one opened the box.

  Inside was another locked box. Billy had not expected this. For a moment he seemed to falter. What if McManigal had been lying? Determined not to betray his doubts, he began trying McNamara’s keys on the new lock. At last one worked. He had to reach deep into a packing of sawdust until, with a magician’s sense of drama, he extracted two quart cans of nitroglycerin and, relishing the moment, fifteen sticks of dynamite.

  Billy made sure that each of the reporters had a good look at his discoveries.

  An hour and a half later on that same endless night, Billy was back in the downtown union office. The locksmith had still not arrived, but now a janitor approached the famous detective. He, too, wanted to play a role in breaking this momentous case. “Mr. Burns,” he suggested, “do you want to search the vault in the cellar?” Billy had not previously known about the vault, but now
he hurried to the basement. Full of curiosity, his entourage followed.

  Billy inspected the vault and decided that the doors would have to be wrenched off. He instructed the officers to get crowbars and begin. But before the work could start, Leo Rappaport, the union’s attorney, arrived. He demanded the officers desist. The court’s warrant granted the authorities the right to search only the fifth-floor offices, not the cellar.

  Billy’s instinct was to ignore the attorney. He’d do what needed to be done, and damn the law. But as he was about to give the officers the order to proceed, he stopped himself. Everything that occurred tonight would have to stand up to a judge’s—a nation’s!—scrutiny. Get Mr. Rappaport his warrant, he told the police superintendent.

  By 1910, Los Angeles had become “the bloodiest arena in the Western world for capital and labor.” The editorials in the fiercely anti-union Los Angeles Times gleefully fueled the tensions. Courtesy Brown Brothers USA

  “The crime of the century”: After midnight on October 1, 1910, a series of explosions thundered through the Los Angeles Times Building and left twenty-one dead. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-08499

  Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the owner of the Times, inspects the ruins of his news-paper’s headquarters. “Depraved, corrupt, crooked, and putrescent” was how one labor supporter publicly described Otis. Los Angeles Times Company Records, The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA

  Billy Burns, “the American Sherlock Holmes.” “The only detective of genius whom the country has produced,” gushed a New York Times editorial. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-101093

  The Burns Agency threw agents from its offices around the country into the investigation, hoping to solve the mystery behind “the crime of the century.”