'You might as well give in,' Collins said, 'the whole country is out after you and you are bound to be caught. Suppose you do kill a few people. It'll only be worse for you in the end.' 'If I give up,' replied Perry, 'it means spending all my life in prison. Liberty is sweet to me and I'll sell it dear.'
Then, hearing a noise behind him, he turned around to check, and at that moment Collins took his chance. He knocked the pistol off the wall into the snow and launched himself across the wall, grabbing Perry in a bear-hug. Perry struggled and managed to unbalance Collins. The two men fell to the ground fighting. Eventually Collins pinned him down on his back. Perry kept struggling. His arms held down, he tried to bite Collins's face, but the Deputy had size on his side. The watching men, bolder now, moved in as Collins handcuffed his captive and prepared to take him back to jail. Slowly the crowd dispersed. Some returned to their farms and chores they had left undone. More followed the posse back to Lyons to witness the next scene in the drama.
Perry had done the unthinkable. After single-handedly robbing the American Express Special and evading capture for over four months he had, everyone assumed, got away with his crime and a fortune. Now he had risked everything, including his freedom, by trying to rob the very same train again. Why had he done it? This robbery had been as meticulously planned as the first but the decision to do it was extraordinary. Was he showing off, inviting capture, or both? What sort of man would be so bold, so rash? America's most wanted man had been captured, but just who was Oliver Perry?
The scene of the robbery and chase
CHAPTER 4
'Woman's Mawkish Sentimentalism Again Manifests Itself
THE WAYNE County Jail in Lyons is an attractive building on the outside. Standing on Butternut Street, in the chocolate-box pretty centre of the village, it looks like a sturdy family house. Until not long ago it was just that, housing the sheriff and his family, as well as local wrongdoers in separate quarters. Today it is a museum. The family quarters display civil war memorabilia, regional crafts and work by local schoolchildren, symbols of a close-knit community, past and present. On the ground floor a small room serves as office and shop. At the back of this is a stout door behind which is the one part of the jail that has no modern use: the cellblock.
Wayne County Jail (From the collection of the Wayne County Historical Society, Lyons, New York).
When word spread that the captive was Oliver Curtis Perry, the notorious train robber, reporters, policemen, detectives, treasure hunters and curious members of the public descended on Lyons in droves. Almost as quickly, keen entrepreneurs started hawking a suspiciously large supply of bent bullets and shards of glass among the crowds as genuine souvenirs of the engine duel.
While the people of Lyons stood outside the jail hoping to catch a glimpse of the man the press now declared had 'outdone' Jesse James, inside a crowd of policemen, detectives and even reporters had been granted access to identify the suspect. When they placed the exhausted robber in one of the small cells, the lawmen knew they had a real catch. All they needed was a formal identification as the prisoner insisted he was called William Cross and came from New Mexico. Perry must have been exhausted and should have been overwhelmed, but he impressed everyone with his cool manner and dry wit. One railroad detective who had encountered him years before asked if he knew who he was. 'Yes,' replied Perry, to the amusement of onlookers and the annoyance of the detective, 'but I never knew any good of you.'
When Perry had been formally identified, he dropped the false name that he may have hoped was a last chance of evading charges for the first robbery. Calmly and without apparent concern, he confirmed that he was indeed Oliver Curtis Perry, the son of Oliver H. Perry, a contractor from Syracuse, and confessed to the attempted robbery that day and to the successful robbery in 1891. Such was his apparent self-assurance that an agent for American Express who spoke with him in the jail told reporters, 'I never saw anyone who was so cool.' His coolness would be put to the test as he awaited his trial.
The jail itself was not daunting. Many prisoners preferred the regime of the county jail to the penitentiaries to which they might be sent after sentencing. The smaller jails had quite a homely atmosphere, and conditions, though tough, were rarely unduly harsh. Most prisoners were being held for minor offences, like drinking or fighting. Many knew their keepers. Like the lunatics in early Bedlams, however, the more infamous prisoners in jails were expected to be on display. Some guardians of law and order were happy to run their jails like sideshows, while others were more reluctant. But when more influential local citizens wanted to see the show, few sheriffs had the real power to refuse. The Wayne County Jail was no exception and soon Perry would have a stream of visitors. Among them were reporters with whom the young robber struck up a very special relationship.
Oliver Perry had a remarkable ability to make use of the press. From his earliest interviews in Lyons it is clear that he knew he was big news but also that he could manipulate public sentiment and spin a story for his own ends. Many years later he would quote President Theodore Roosevelt's comment that the quickest way to work for change was through the newspapers. Now he just seemed to have an almost instinctive understanding of how his gifts as a story-teller and talker might win him new friends. As he adjusted to his new situation, the man who had meticulously planned two robberies now embarked on a new project: to win over his audience. Public fascination with Perry had grown since his mysterious disappearance from Utica and he had followed the stories in the press that had fed this interest. Now he took the chance to tell his own tales. He started by explaining how he had evaded capture in Utica. His account pushed at the edge of credibility, especially an anecdote of hiding in a field where an unknowing farmer built up a corn stack around him, but the basic narrative made sense and fitted in with the witnesses' stories.
Perry clearly had an acute sense of his audience's tastes. The anecdotes he told with most relish were clearly designed to humiliate the Pinkertons. He claimed, laughing, that he had been under their noses all the time, and had even been out walking with agents who were holding the flyer with his photograph. Perry knew that many of the public would be on his side. The agents' work as strike breakers made them targets of radical condemnation but they were also despised by country people for their city arrogance and by others for their underhand tactics. When agents hurled a bomb into Jesse James's home, killing his young stepbrother and blowing off his mother's arm, their attack on the family affronted public decency and won sympathy for the outlaw. Perry made his own feelings clear: 'I hate Pinkerton men. I have nothing but contempt for them. They are nothing but the scum of cities, though I wish to except from this assertion some of the officers. I was working on the Fitchburg Railroad when, during the strike on the New York Central, Pinkerton men were employed, and though I probably only disliked them before I hate them since.' Local reporters were glad of a chance to mock the Pinkerton detectives for their failure to catch a man who had 'finally been landed by rural officers in a rural jail'.
Justice, meanwhile, moved swiftly. The first stage of Perry's arraignment took place the day after his arrest. In the afternoon of Monday, 23 February he was charged with two offences shooting at an engine and assault in the second degree on the engineer of the freight train whose engine he stole. The main purpose was to enable the Wayne County lawmen to hold Perry until Daniel Mclnerney had recovered sufficiently to testify. Then Perry could be charged with breaking into an express car and assault with intent to kill.
The first hearing took place before Justice Theodore Fries and years later his grandson Theodore Harry Fries, nine years old at the time, recalled the scene. Word spread that Perry was being brought out, and as he was marched through the streets, handcuffed to Deputy Collins, people filled the sidewalks and leaned out of windows to catch a glimpse of him. Some even clambered on to rooftops to get a better view.
Amateur photography was the newest fad at the time and the local dentist set up his camera in the
street, hoping to catch the desperado as he passed. In an age of slower shutter speeds, when newspapers still employed artists to illustrate their reports, it seems unlikely that this early paparazzo would have been successful. In any case Perry, much to the frustration of the crowd, had covered his face with a white handkerchief. Sharp observers noted that it was silk. The effect was tantalizing. All the crowd could see of the infamous Perry was his eyes.
Justice Fries's office was not large, so nearly all the furniture had to be removed to make room for the participants and spectators. Sheriff Thornton's party and the lawyers were forced to squeeze past dozens of people standing on the stairway leading to the office. Perry looked slightly pale and both he and Collins lost their hats in the scramble, but, as one reporter observed, he was 'perfectly collected, his piercing eyes staring boldly into the faces which surged around him'.
Young Theodore Harry took refuge from the sea of legs, standing on top of a desk that was also a convenient vantage-point. In the rush and crush, coats were torn, hats trampled, and pictures on the wall broken. The room was so tightly packed that when Theodore Harry's grandfather felt faint in the middle of the hearing, he had to be passed over the heads of the crowd to the door. It was some time, his grandson recalled, before the elderly gentleman saw the funny side of his undignified exit.
Perry's response to being charged was both assured and surprising. 'I have no counsel and I want none,' answered Perry. 'I will argue my own case. I plead not guilty.' He had gained some control in jail by making a confession but that no longer suited his purpose. He kept up his new image of the witty performer, amusing the court by playing word-games and chopping logic with the witnesses just like a real lawyer. But he had a serious intention: pleading not guilty gave him a chance to try to undermine the charge of shooting with intent to kill, the most serious he faced. In his cross-examination, he asked the witnesses if they could swear that the shots he fired at the engine were aimed to kill. Both men admitted that they could not. Justice Fries decreed that there was, nevertheless, a case to be heard by the next Grand Jury.
If Perry was disappointed he made no sign but when he was escorted to the police court to face the next charge, the crowd began to annoy him and he muttered, 'I'll hire a hall and give an exhibition of myself. The people act like a lot of cattle or bronchos on a ranch out west.' There were clearly limits to the performer's patience.
Perry soon regained his composure and scored a few points cross-examining witnesses in the second hearing but was again held for Grand Jury trial on $3,000 bail. It was judged highly unlikely that anyone would stand such a high bail, but if someone did, the Lyons authorities were prepared. They announced that they would simply charge Perry on another count and take him back into custody. Perry would be in the Butternut Street jail for a long time: the regular Grand Jury hearing was many weeks away.
Standing quietly at the back of the courtroom while the witnesses were examined was a respectable-looking middle-aged man. He was Oliver H. Perry, the accused's father. As the hearing ended Perry walked up and kissed him, reassuring him that everything would be all right. Back in the jail, the two men talked through the grilled corridor door and the father asked if he could give Perry some oranges, his favourite fruit. It was a rare moment of intimacy for the man who had been performing for days.
When his father was searched, as a matter of routine on leaving the jail, nobody expected to find anything. But in the respectable builder's pocket was a pencil drawing of a key with a message in Perry's handwriting: 'make of very hard wood, be sure and not get it brittle, for it must be very tough and strong make it about the size of this drawing. Hole in key 3/8 of inch, make the key blade so thick as it is drawn above.' It was a guide to making a key to the corridor door.
The discovery of an escape plan was a real embarrassment. Perry had clearly been plotting escape from the moment he arrived in the jail, while he was charming reporters and playing the lawyer, and the Lyons men had suspected nothing. Pinkerton detectives were still hanging around the jail, looking for evidence that the Lyons lawmen were incompetent. Now they seemed to have found it. Thornton reacted swiftly, calling in a local blacksmith who riveted heavy iron shackles linked by an eight-inch-long log chain round Perry's ankles.
Perry's drawing.
Cool as he seemed on the surface, Perry was clearly determined to be free. Asked why he had tried to escape, he replied quite simply, 'Did you ever know a bird to be imprisoned and did not try to get free?' And when his plan was frustrated he took the chance to make fun of his keepers, commenting wryly, 'I think you ought to get a jail strong enough to hold me without this. I ain't very hard to hold.' Was this reaction, like his mockery of the detectives hunting him after the first robbery, just youthful bravado, or a symptom of the same reckless streak that had led to his arrest? It certainly made the lawmen even more determined to avoid further embarrassment. He went on to joke that shackles were often called 'Irish Charms'. But the officers noticed that when he walked these charms were slippery, as his feet, which were long and slim, looked as though they could slip through the shackles. They swiftly ordered the blacksmith to fit a new, tighter pair. Again Perry reacted with some swagger: 'I think these people must be afraid of me for they anchor me down as if I was a giant.'
Perry's escape attempt revealed his ability to conceal his real purposes. It also pointed to a complicated family history. Oliver H. Perry had vehemently insisted that he had no idea that the drawing had been slipped into his pocket. The lawmen had no proof that he was lying but some reason to doubt him. He seemed respectable enough, living and running his building business in a decent road in Syracuse, but he had had his own run-ins with the police, usually over scams to pay off debts. Eventually they released him without charge, but banned him from visiting his son again. Thornton and Collins pretended to Perry that his father had betrayed him and he seemed to believe them, complaining loudly about not being able to trust anyone. They were obviously trying to undermine his confidence, but was he just feigning anger and hurt to keep his father out of more trouble? Or was there, as some observers thought, a hint of real doubt and anxiety in his reaction? The lies both men told about their relationship made it hard to know.
When his father had first been questioned about Perry, he claimed not to have seen him for many years, after an earlier estrangement, but he was clearly lying. Neighbours testified that a man identical to Perry, going under the name of Mr Hopkins, had visited Oliver H. and his wife Sarah just before the recent robbery. They remembered him particularly because he had shown off a strange object: a pickled human ear. Perry adamantly denied visiting his family and, despite his scheme with the drawing of the key, and his show of anger at his supposed betrayal, seemed determined to protect his father from involvement in his current predicament. With his father banned from the jail, Oliver Perry kept in contact by writing, while his father began to give his own interviews to the press about the son from whom he had supposedly been estranged. Mrs Perry, a striking woman, visited the jail with clean clothes but did not stop to see her son. Her behaviour seemed as odd as her husband's was slippery. What mother, knowing her son was shackled in a cell, would not seek to comfort him?
Clean clothes would clearly have been welcome, even if they did not come with comfort, as the contents of Perry's valise revealed that he had a definite liking for the finer things in life. As well as the drawing of the key, Perry had given his father a ticket to reclaim a valise from storage. Detectives followed him back to Syracuse, impounded the case and took it back to Lyons for examination. Its contents were fascinating, offering proof of some of the known facts of Perry's past and tantalizing hints of others yet to be revealed.
An expensively bound Bible with many passages underlined and marked in red ink appeared to indicate that Perry had indeed shown religious inclinations, as the citizens of Troy had insisted after his first robbery. One underscored passage read: 'For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God e
ven to the pulling down of strongholds' (Corinthians X: 11). The Bible also showed Perry's determination to conceal his identity. It had clearly been a gift and bore his name imprinted in gold letters on the cover. A date remained, 1891, but the name had been scratched out with a knife.
More religious cards and pamphlets were bundled together in a leather case, along with a red railroad flag and a long-blade butcher's knife, its blade spattered to the hilt with what one paper luridly called spots of 'blood rust', cartridges and tools for cleaning revolvers. Other items included the smoked-glass spectacles Perry wore as a disguise, some fine silk underwear, a pillbox with the place of purchase scratched off, a mouth organ, a buckskin bag containing Mexican coins and two pieces of gold wire, probably from broken jewellery, a Spanish-English phrase book, published in Mexico City, an 'indecent book in Spanish', that sat rather oddly with the religious reading matter, and a glass jar containing the severed ear of a black man.
The ear was final proof that the son had been visiting his family just before the robbery, but, although they were sheltering him, there was no evidence that they had been aware of his plans to rob the second train. The ear gave Perry a chance to display his rather dark sense of humour, as he teased reporters that he had killed the ear's original owner and had planned to send it to the detectives. He eventually revealed that it was a souvenir of a night-time visit to a dissecting room with some medical students he had lodged with while on the run.
The most intriguing find was a small collection of photographs, all of women. Two were in an expensive, Russian leather pocketbook. The third was in a frame. The photographs in the pocketbook were in sharp contrast to each other. One, a cabinet photograph taken in Wilmington, Delaware, was of what the papers called 'a coarse-faced woman'. The other, a tintype, showed a girl in her early teens. Entwined about it was a braid of jet-black hair. The framed photograph was of a plain-looking woman wearing spectacles. At the bottom of the picture, in Perry's handwriting, was the inscription, 'My Mother, December 21,1891'. The woman in the photograph looked nothing like the Mrs Perry who had been seen in Lyons. Who were these women in Perry's life and where were they now as he sat shackled in his cell awaiting his trial?
Wanted Man Page 4