Then the rumor-starting began. Warner was seen in ten places on the same day. His presence was reported from every corner of the country. Clews and reports led weary officers thousands of miles on empty pursuits. Finally, when no real information as to the man developed, the public wearied of him, and news of the case dropped out of the papers.
Meantime Hardy and Blake came up for trial. Blake made an attempt to mitigate his case by turning State’s evidence, and Hardy pleaded that he had only been an intermediary, whose motivation was his brother-in-law’s closeness and reproof. In view of the fact that the evidence against the two men seemed conclusive, even without the admissions of either one, the prosecutor decided to reject their pleas and force them to stand trial. The cases were quickly heard and verdicts of guilty reached on the spot. The presiding justice at once sentenced both men to serve fourteen and one half years in the State prison at Dannemora, and they were shortly removed to that gloomy house of pain in the Adirondack Mountains.
All this happened before the first of October. The prisoners, having been sentenced and sent to the penitentiary, and the kidnapped boy being safely in his parents’ home, the whole affair was quickly forgotten.
But a little after seven o’clock on the evening of December 12, two men entered the farm lot of William Goodrich near the little village of Riley in central Kansas, about two thousand miles from Albany and the scene of the kidnapping. It was past dusk and the farm hand, one George Johnson, was milking in the cow stable by lantern light.
As the rustic, clad in overalls, covered with dirt and straw, horny of hand and tanned by the prairie winds, rose from his stool and started to leave the stable with his buckets, the two strangers stepped inside and approached him. One of them laid a rough hand on the farmer’s shoulder and said soberly:
“Warner, I want you. Come along.”
“Must be some mistake,” said the milker in a curious Western drawl. “My name is Gawge Johnson.”
“Out here it may be,” said the officer, “but in New York it’s Albert S. Warner. I have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the Conway kidnapping. You’ll have to come.”
The farm hand was taken to the house, permitted to change his clothes, and loaded upon the next eastbound train. When he reached Kansas City he refused to go farther without extradition formalities. After the officers had telegraphed to New York, the man changed his mind again and proceeded voluntarily back to Albany, where he was placed in jail and soon brought to trial. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, the maximum penalty, as the leader of the kidnappers.
The captor of Warner had been Detective McCann of the Albany police force. He had trailed the man about five thousand miles, partly on false scents. In his wanderings he had gone to Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota, New Mexico, Missouri, and finally to Kansas, where he had satisfied himself that Warner was working on the Goodrich farm. McCann had then called a Pinkerton detective to his aid from the nearest office and made the arrest as already described.