One day the doors of the Moundsville, W. Va., prison opened on a tall, slender, mild-eyed man, upon whose face and form time and confinement had left their impress, and he passed out to take up again the broken thread of his life.
This was John Ogle's first day of freedom for more than three years. On July 4, 1898, he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for trying to increase the negotiable value of one-dollar bills by altering their denominational characteristics.
Little more than a year before his brother, Miles, was released from the Ohio penitentiary, where he had paid the extreme penalty imposed by law for spurious money making, only to die two days later of paralysis, with which he had been hopelessly stricken over a year before.
The Ogles, father and sons, during the past fifty years have had much to do with the making of the criminal history of this country. George Ogle, the father, was a river pirate and farmhouse plunderer, the Ohio River and its tributaries being the scene of his operations. The sons, bred in an atmosphere of crime, early embarked in independent unlawful enterprises. Miles displayed pugnacity, intrepidity, and skill, while John was shrewd, plausible, and cunning.
After serving five years for killing an officer who attempted to arrest the family, and when but twenty-six years old, Miles allied himself with the notorious "Reno" gang of bandits, and became the pupil and confederate of Peter McCartney, that past master of the counterfeiter's art. How well he applied himself the records of the Secret Service will testify. An even dozen skilfully executed spurious note issues were directly traceable to him, despite the fact that two-thirds of his manhood were spent behind prison walls.
John Ogle, while not possessed of the dangerous skill of his brother, was his equal in hardihood, and, in his way, quite as detrimental to society. For cool daring, ingenuity, and resourcefulness he was without a peer in his chosen profession, and some of his escapes from the officers of the law bordered on the miraculous. He was introduced to prison life in 1864, being sentenced in the fall of that year to five years in the Jeffersonville, Ind., penitentiary for burglary. Shortly after his release he was traced to Cairo, Ill., with twenty-eight hundred dollars of counterfeit money intended for one of Miles' customers, and, after a desperate fight, was placed in jail. He managed in some way to effect his escape, but was soon recaptured at Pittsburg. This time he told the officers that he knew of a big "plant" of spurious bills and tools near Oyster Point, Md., which he was willing to turn up if it would benefit him. Being assured of leniency, he started with a marshal for the hiding-place. En route he managed to elude the watchfulness of his guard, and jumped from the car-window while the train was at full speed. At Bolivar, Tenn., Ogle was arrested, January 8, 1872, with five hundred dollars of counterfeit money in his pocket. A sentence of ten years was imposed; but John had a reputation to sustain, so he broke from the jail where he was temporarily confined awaiting transportation to the penitentiary. Several months later he was arrested and indicted at Cincinnati for passing bad five-dollar bills. Pending trial, he was released on five thousand dollars bail, which he promptly forfeited, and was again a fugitive.
February 18, 1873, one Tom Hayes was detected passing counterfeit money at Cairo, Ill., but it was not discovered that "Tom Hayes" was none other than the much-wanted John Ogle until after he had made good his escape. So chagrined were the officers over this second break that all the resources of the department were employed to effect his capture, and but a week had passed before he was found in Pittsburg and taken to Springfield, Ill., for trial. This time there was no escape, and he served five years in Joliet. As he stepped from the prison door Marshal Thrall, of Cincinnati, confronted him with an order for his removal to answer the indictment of May, 1872. The Cincinnati jail was undergoing repairs. A painter had left his overalls and hickory shirt in the corridor near the cage where Ogle was placed. Adroitly picking the lock of his cell with his penknife, he donned the painter's clothes, took up a paint-bucket, and coolly walked down-stairs, past the gate (which the guard obligingly opened for him), through the jailer's office, and into the street. Proceeding leisurely until out of sight of the prison, the daring criminal made his way to the river, which he crossed at Lawrenceburg, and, discarding his borrowed apparel, struck across the country, finally bringing up at Brandenburg, Ky., where he obtained employment as a stonecutter. Respectability was, however, inconsistent with Ogle's early training; so about a week after his arrival he broke into a shoe-house of the town, stole $200 worth of goods, and was arrested three days later while trying to dispose of his plunder in Louisville. Fearing a term in the Frankfort prison for some reason, he informed the Kentucky officers that a large reward was offered for his return to Cincinnati. This had the desired effect, and he was sent to the Ohio penitentiary to serve five years.
Returning to Cincinnati at the expiration of this enforced confinement, he met his brother, who had just been released from an eight-year "trick" in the Western Pennsylvania penitentiary, and, altho no real affection existed in the breast of either for the other, John needed money, and Miles had money and required assistance in a contemplated enterprise. An understanding was soon reached, and these two dangerous lawbreakers joined forces in another scheme to debase their country's currency. Using the same conveyance employed by their father in his plundering expedition (a house-boat), they started from Cincinnati and drifted down the Ohio River, John steering and keeping watch while Miles plied the graver. When the plates for a twenty-dollar silver note and a ten-dollar issue of the Third National Bank of Cincinnati were complete, Miles took the helm and John went below to do the printing. $150,000 of the "coney" had been run off by the time they reached the mouth of the Wolf River, and here the trip ended. Disposing of the boat, the brothers started back to Cincinnati. En route they quarreled over the division of the notes, and separated with the understanding that John was to receive $500 of the proceeds of the first sales.
Miles did not keep faith, and John subsequently assisted the government officers in locating and securing his brother, who was arrested in Memphis, Tenn., on Christmas day, 1884, with $6,000 of the counterfeits in his pockets.
For a number of years thereafter John steered clear of offenses penalized by the federal statutes, and successfully feigned insanity when he could not escape punishment for crimes against the State by any other means.