From Boniface to Bank Burglar; Or, The Price of Persecution / How a Successful Business Man, Through the Miscarriage of Justice, Became a Notorious Bank Looter

by George M. White

It was a hard matter to realize, that I, an innocent man, was actually under arrest and locked in the same jail with professional criminals, and accused, jointly with them, of burglary. Yet more difficult was it to believe that this man Shinburn was Wyckoff, the United States deputy marshal and guest at my hotel. Though he was identically the same smooth, affable gentleman in jail that I had met and travelled with the year before, I found it almost impossible at times to believe that he was a criminal—which I knew from the accumulating evidence. Day after day I came in contact with him, talked with him, discussed the evidence for and against him, and heard him confess to being sorry that his acts had involved me. I had liked Wyckoff the deputy marshal, and I liked none the less Mark Shinburn, though he was the means of my undoing.

My attorney, A. V. Lynde, with whom I had done no little real-estate business, often visited me in jail, and we discussed the points that were held by the prosecution to be positive proof of my guilt. There was my journeying about the country with Shinburn and Cummings, while they were, at the same time, plotting to rob the Walpole Bank, and many other points that were brought against me, but of a still more circumstantial nature. All these matters were laid before me, and I could well understand how some people might honestly believe me guilty.

As I lay in jail, I did not know that the avarice of a stockholder of the Walpole Bank would lead him to persecute me almost beyond measure. I did not think that he would, with good reason to believe me guiltless, use his influence to set one of the real criminals free, and set the law upon me, in order that he might recover the loss he had sustained through the robbery. I did not know that he would continue his persecution until every dollar of my wealth was stripped from me, and I was left at the mercy of my friends to defend my innocence. But so it was.

While I lay in jail, asking day by day for a hearing, the coils of injustice were being tightened about me. The prosecution did not show its hand by any too quick action. It was only when the process of the law must be carried out that there was no longer secrecy kept by those who held my fate in their hands. I had asked for an immediate hearing on the day of my arrest, but it had been denied me. One would have thought that a man who had borne a good reputation in a community bordering on the very jail that held him, would have been given more consideration than a professed criminal. It was not so. The earliest opportunity given me to be heard was four weeks after my arrest. Then I was afforded only a chance to plead not guilty to the charge, for the district attorney, F. F. Lane, asked for an adjournment for two weeks and was given it. What conspiracy was hatched during those two weeks, I shall allow the facts to tell in their undeniable way.

The jail was one, for strength, that modern builders might copy with profit to governments. It was of granite walls, two feet thick, with double-barred windows and ponderous doors, well secured with massive locks. The main floor of the jail proper was used for small fry thieves and petty offenders, but the second floor contained three cells which were used for the safe keeping of those charged with murder and felony. Shinburn, Cummings, and I occupied these cells. The two end ones were light, but that in the middle was on the order of a dungeon. My cell was large, and two windows opened from it to the street.

One morning, shortly after the adjourned hearing, I missed Cummings. No meals were brought to him that day, and when I could speak to the jailer’s wife, she told me that he had been set free. At the first opportunity I communicated with Shinburn, whose cell was the farthest from mine. He said that Cummings had been let out of the back door of the jail, so to speak, after relinquishing all claim to the five thousand dollars he had when Detective Golden arrested him.

“Although the district attorney knew that Jim sold the bond to the Scranton man, it was not possible to prove that the cash found on him was received from the sale,” said Shinburn; “and when Jim said he’d let up on the dust in case there was no conviction, Lane let him go. What’s more, Jim’s railroad fare was paid to Rochester.”

Galling to me were these facts, if facts they were; and I had no reason to doubt Shinburn in view of the positive information that Cummings was no longer a prisoner. What a turn of fate was it, indeed, that wrought out the freedom of a guilty man and left me, the innocent one, still in jail! Was it any wonder that I groaned aloud and wondered whether there was a God?

I now recall with what rapidity my case was called after the district attorney had gotten Cummings out of the way. It was put forward with all the vigor that I had clamored for six weeks prior, and excuses were made that the delay was caused by the difficulty in framing the case. As the time for the hearing drew near, I had a feeling that I was in deadly peril, though Mr. Lynde assured me that there was no doubt that I would not be held for the grand jury.

At last the day of the hearing before the magistrate came, and Shinburn and I were taken into court. Mr. Lynde represented me, while Don H. Woodward, a bright young attorney, had been retained by Shinburn. The latter’s brother Frank, of Saratoga, had come East to look after his interests. At times I had hopes that I would be free at the close of the hearing, and again I would be despondent. I knew that I ought not to be where I was, and it did seem to me that no circumstances ought to be convincing enough to long imprison an innocent man. The discharge of Cummings, by what means I never quite knew, created a grave doubt in me; besides, I hadn’t much faith in the wisdom of the magistrate at the hearing.