[A]. In her anxiety to secure the release of her husband, Mrs. Kerns went to Detroit to see Higgins. Stewart was there in Windsor, Can., where Mrs. Kerns and Higgins found him. He politely handed her twenty dollars and told her to return home as “as every one must skin his own eel.” That was the only satisfaction she obtained.
It will not be out of place here to recount the heroic and magnanimous (?) zeal which Col. Jason B. Brown displayed in our behalf in due time. Some three weeks after our incarceration he made his appearance at the penitentiary and requested an interview with us. He did not leave us long in ignorance as to the object of his visit. He told us that old Deputy had been in debt to the amount of about $6,000 before that unlucky day, when, at one fell swoop, he lost both his $3,000 and his confidence in mankind. “If,” said the Colonel, “Mr. Deputy’s debt could be squared up, I could arrange to have you pardoned in about ten days.” This generous proposal being “declined with thanks,” he suggested $3,000, and later $2,000 as a sum the payment of which might at once convincingly prove our penitence and measurably solace Mr. Deputy under his existing weight of misfortune. Finding his mission fruitless he left us, but subsequently opened a correspondence, in the course of which he offered to accept $1,000, which sum he gradually reduced to $300, as the price which we were to pay in consideration of being pardoned for an offense which we had never committed. These letters, of course, were read by Mr. James Patton, the warden of the prison, who advised us to have nothing to do with Col. Brown, inasmuch as he was quite as likely to oppose our pardon as to champion it.
Meanwhile, requisition papers had been obtained from the Governor and sent to Detroit by Sheriff Byrnes. The Detroit authorities showed great vigilance. A watch was placed upon the houses in that city where the families of the guilty parties resided, as well as upon their accustomed haunts. The result was that one night in November, 1887, Stewart and Rice were arrested at their homes and Mason at a gambling hell. Although a messenger was despatched to Rice to warn him of the impending danger, the police were on the alert, and he was brought to headquarters within a few hours after his confederates. Sheriff Byrnes was notified and went to Detroit at once. For five weeks the rascals fought extradition in the courts, and the sheriff was offered $1,000 to drop the prosecution, an offer which he indignantly spurned.
While in jail, the prisoners were photographed. Rice was obstinate and had to be held during the operation, in consequence of which the picture obtained showed him with closed eyes and open mouth. Poor as the likeness was, however, it was recognized by no less than ten persons as that of the man who had stopped at the Snodgrass House in North Vernon on the day when Deputy had been victimized. The other two were easily identified, and Stewart was recognized as the man who had boarded at that hotel for a week preceding the crime. When the Detroit court finally directed the surrender of the prisoners to the Indiana authorities, there ensued an attempt to rescue them by force, but the officers succeeded in placing them in a wagon in which they were driven to the Indiana State line. Albert Boebritz, a detective, and James J. Houston, a deputy sheriff, both of Detroit, accompanied the party to Brownstown.
The best legal talent of the State, including such eminent advocates as United States Senator Dan Voorhees and John Lamb, of Terre Haute, were engaged for the defense. The trial was had in January, 1888. The accused were positively identified by twenty-three reputable witnesses, among them all the members of the Snodgrass family. The fact of their driving out of town on the morning of the day of the robbery with two of Burge’s teams, was also established, and a liveryman from Kentucky testified to their having hired a rig from him.
It grieves me to say that the aged Deputy and Colonel Jason B. Brown did not appear in a favorable light in connection with the investigation. Relying upon the assurance that the nature of his evidence should be kept secret, the old farmer went before the grand jury and identified the men then accused, virtually admitting that he had lied while giving his testimony at our trial. It was also learned afterwards that the unsophisticated old man, under the tutelage of the astute Col. Jason B. Brown, had received from Stewart and company $1,000 not to appear as a witness against them at the trial, and had been promised the remaining $2,000 of his loss immediately upon their acquittal. Kerns, Forbes and myself were brought from the penitentiary to testify that we were not within the State at the time the crime was committed. Upon our parole to accompany the officers quietly and make no attempt to escape, we were permitted to go without hand-cuffs in custody of Deputy Warden Barnes and Mr. Lemons, one of the guards. At Brownstown we were kindly treated, occupying a private room in the sheriff’s house.
After the case of Stewart, Rice and Mason had been submitted to the jury and that body had deliberated for thirty-six hours, a ballot showed eleven for conviction and one for acquittal. Finally the jury returned, announcing that an agreement was impossible and they were discharged. It was understood that the final vote was nine to three in favor of conviction. Sheriff Byrnes had predicted a disagreement from the first. He had himself been offered $500 if he could induce the court to reduce the prisoners’ bonds to $1,000 each, and afterward said that he had learned that Philip Davis, one of the jurors, had been promised $300 and an increase in his pension if he would “hang” the jury. It is unnecessary to state that the sheriff rejected the offer, but the judge, Collins, saw fit, of his own motion, to make the desired reduction. The prisoners then gave bail and fled the country, their bonds being declared forfeited at the next term of court.
The officers of the penitentiary now took an active interest in securing our release. A strong petition for pardon based upon the allegation of our innocence, was addressed to Governor Gray and was endorsed by Senator Voorhees and John Lamb, counsel for Stewart, Rice and Mason, who not only wrote to, but also personally called upon, the executive, Governor Johnson of Missouri, rendered invaluable service in securing favorable action upon the petition. He demanded, not clemency, but justice. He had sifted and weighed all the evidence bearing upon the case, and he spoke with no uncertain sound. Words such as his, prompted by the deliberate judgment, unerring instincts and warm heart of one of the greatest criminal lawyers of the Mississippi Valley, could not fail to carry weight. The result was inevitable. The executive of the State in whose so-called courts of justice we had suffered such a grievious[grievious] wrong, restored to us our liberty and citizenship by his pardon. But to remove from us the stigma of the felon, to atone for the weary months of suffering which we had undergone, in a word, to put us back where we were upon the morning of that day when we first became entangled in the machinations of that diabolical plot,—these were boons which even this great seal of the Sovereign State of Indiana could not bestow.