In the meantime, I having learned that Ebberling had gone to Hot Springs and his address there, notified Inspector Dixon, who immediately sent one of his assistants to Ebberling's lodging place, where he secured an adjoining room to enable him to keep a closer watch on the suspected mail robber. The teller of the bank reported the finding of the bill to Inspector Dixon promptly, and we immediately planned the arrest of Lowe.
William W. Lowe. George Ebberling.
| Train robber and thief now doing a long sentence for robbing a mail train near St. Louis. | Train robber and thief who assisted Lowe in many of his robberies, also doing time. |
The following morning accompanied by two of Mr. Dixon's postoffice inspectors, James Smith, Chief of Detectives of St. Louis, and two of his men, and my Assistant Superintendent, J. S. Manning, I went to Lowe's office in the Granite Building, having previously been advised by Mr. Manning that the man under suspicion was in his office. I pointed Lowe out to the city officers, who arrested him promptly. He was locked up and after his arrest, Mr. Dixon telegraphed his inspector at Hot Springs to arrest Ebberling immediately and bring him to St. Louis. After Ebberling had been arrested at Hot Springs, when he was asked how he got possession of the ten-dollar note, before mentioned, he confessed that he had gotten it from Billy Lowe and made a further and full confession as to how he and Lowe had robbed the train at Glencoe.
Lowe did not make a confession, nor did he make any admission as to his connection with the robbery; on the contrary, he strenuously denied everything.
In his confession, Ebberling stated that Jimmy Lowe, a younger brother of Billy's, knew all about the robbery, and would have taken part in it but for the fact that he became intoxicated on the evening the robbery was scheduled to take place and could not make the trip. Ebberling also stated that James Lowe had visited the cache in South St. Louis where the guns and masks had been hidden, and brought them to St. Louis and delivered them to Billy Lowe at his mother's house.
The amount of money secured from the rifled mail pouches, according to Ebberling, was between six and seven hundred dollars, but the pouches which had been "stashed" in the cornfield by the robbers, and afterwards recovered by the officers, contained a great deal more than this amount.
Ebberling and Lowe were tried in the April term of the Federal Court at St. Louis and were convicted—Lowe being sentenced to forty-three years at Leavenworth, United States Penitentiary, and a fine of $3,000.00, or the equivalent of two years in prison. Ebberling was sentenced to eighteen years in Leavenworth Prison, and fined $3,000.00. Jimmy Lowe, who had laid in jail for months and had taken the witness stand for the Government, was released and is now leading an honest life, so far as I know.
After arriving at the penitentiary Ebberling made a further confession in which he stated that he and W. W. Lowe had held up and robbed eleven trains at different points on the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific Railway lines in the vicinity of Spokane, during 1908 and 1909, and in this statement he described so accurately the places at which he and Lowe had hidden certain property they had secured in these robberies that the United States authorities went to the places designated and recovered the property. Lowe and Ebberling have since been indicted for these robberies, proving conclusively that I was right when I wrote the officers of the roads named that I believed I knew who the parties were who had been holding up and robbing their trains.