All moneys paid police and court officers, except John Jourdan’s share, I paid direct to John McCord as early as November 1. Jourdan’s rake-off was paid to him personally by me at his home in Prince Street on a Sunday evening three days before Shinburn sailed for Hamburg. At this meeting McCord was present, and it was arranged that McCord and Radford should be at the Hoboken pier to protect Shinburn from the Pinkertons.
As to the money paid to McCord for George Elder, the latter claimed he never received it. The five hundred dollars to Browne was paid after he had been bounced from the police force, and while he was runner for Mayor Oakey Hall. This money was not paid to Browne for services, but for the following reason: He came to me some time after the robbery, and, pleading poverty, said that he should have been “seen” in the Ocean Bank affair. I told him that I did not know what I had to do with that. He tried a bluff, but it didn’t work. Finally he came down, said he was in trouble over a girl, and that she would have him arrested if he did not give her five hundred dollars. Purely out of compassion—more for the woman than for him—I paid her the five hundred dollars and she released him. Later, Browne tried to hold me up again—this time for one thousand dollars. We had some rather hard words and he got nothing, and we have not been friendly since.
Many and varied were the episodes that grew out of this great robbery, owing to the great notoriety it gained throughout the country. Messrs. Linenthal and Co., wholesale tobacconists, had two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in government bonds on deposit with the bank as security in a lawsuit they had pending with the government. Linenthal and Co. sued the bank for the value of the bonds, claiming that the robbery was put up by some of the bank officials. To prove this claim they obtained a pardon for a convict in Sing Sing who claimed to be one of the burglars. He knew absolutely nothing about the robbery, and what, if any, testimony he gave I do not know. But he got his pardon.
At another time a crook named John Irving, being stranded in San Francisco and desirous of coming East, “confessed” that he was one of the burglars. The New York police were notified, and the Commissioners, not being in the “know,” ordered Captain Irving to go West after his namesake. Consequently he started, accompanied by Detective Dusenbury. About a month later I was at Suspension Bridge, on my way to attempt the robbery of a bank at Goodrich, Canada. A train from the West had just arrived, when I heard my name called. On looking up, I saw Captain Irving on the platform of a car of the east-bound train.
“Come over here, George,” he said. I walked across to the car and shook hands with him.
“Come inside,” said he. “I have something to show you.”
Together we went into the car, where we found a man handcuffed to Detective Dusenbury.
“This,” said Irving, pointing to the prisoner, “is, it is claimed, one of the Ocean Bank burglars.”
“You don’t mean it!” I replied. “How did you catch him?”
“Oh, he confessed, out in San Francisco, and the Commissioners sent us out after him. But by the time we got out there he had changed his mind and put up a fight. We have him, however; though, to tell you the truth,” said Irving, winking, “I don’t believe he did it. His story don’t sound right.”