True Detective Stories from the Archives of the Pinkertons. Cleveland Moffett
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dig down into the vault—an immense task, for which the constant presence in Elmira of the whole gang was necessary. It was also necessary that their presence should not be noticed, and to that end a woman from Baltimore, who had been associated with one of the gang in previous undertakings, came on to Elmira and took a house in the suburbs, giving out that she was the wife of a man whose business kept him traveling most of the time. The house was simply furnished, and every day, for the benefit of the neighbors, the woman made a great pretense of sweeping the steps, cleaning the windows, and busying herself about the yard in various ways. Meantime, inside the house, in careful concealment, the members of the gang were living—Scott, Dunlap, "Red" Leary, Conroy, and Perry. They never went out in the daytime, and they left the place at night so cautiously, going one at a time, that, although they lived here for six weeks, their presence was never suspected.
Every night they gathered in the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association after the young men had gone home, using their false keys to obtain admission; and they remained there hours at a time, doing what would ordinarily be the noisiest work; but their movements were so cautious and well planned that their presence in the building was never suspected. Every night the carpet and flooring were taken up, and, after they had finished their excavations, were carefully relaid. Tons of masonry and heavy stone were removed, shoveled into baskets, and carried up to the roof of the opera-house, adjoining the bank building, where there was small chance of the debris being discovered. Thus the unwearying rascals worked downward through the layer of railroad iron, and at last found themselves separated from the inside of the vault by only the plate of steel. Success seemed within their very grasp, when an unforeseen accident spoiled everything.
One day the president of the bank, Mr. Pratt, was surprised, on entering the vault, to find the floor sprinkled with a fine white dust. An investigation was made, and the whole plot was uncovered. The members of the gang, however, got word in time, and all managed to escape except Perry, who was convicted of attempted burglary and sent to the Auburn prison for five years.
Undisturbed by the failure, Scott and Dunlap proceeded to scour the country again in search of another bank suited to their operations, and in February, 1874, notified the gang, which now contained some new members, that they had "found something to go to work at" in Quincy, Illinois. The attack on the Quincy bank was made in very much the same way as the attack on the bank at Elmira. The Baltimore woman again rented a house which afforded shelter and concealment to the men; access was obtained to rooms over the vault by false keys, as before; the flooring was taken up and put down every night without exciting suspicion; the masonry was removed, the iron plates of the vault were penetrated, and, finally, one night Scott and Dunlap were able to lower themselves through a jagged hole into the money-room beneath.
It now remained to force open the safes inside the vault; and to accomplish this the robbers used, for the first time in the history of safe-wrecking in America, what is known as the air-pump method, which had been devised by Evans, and carefully explained by him to Scott and Dunlap. Evans's employers were at this time introducing a padding designed to make safes more secure; and Evans had hit upon the idea of introducing powder into the seams of a safe-door by an air-pump, in the presence of a possible customer, in order to impress him with his need of the new padding. Evans himself was not present at the breaking open of the Quincy bank, and he had nothing to do with the robbery beyond furnishing instruction and the air-pump. Scott and Dunlap did the work.
As a first step, all the seams of the safes formed by the doors were carefully puttied up, save two small holes, one at the top and one at the bottom. Then, at the upper hole, Scott held a funnel filled with fine powder, while Dunlap applied the air-pump at the hole below. By the draft thus created, the powder was drawn into all the interstices between the heavy doors and the frames of the safes. Then a little pistol, loaded simply with powder, was attached near the upper hole, and, by a string tied to the trigger, discharged from a safe distance above. There were several attempts made before a complete explosion was effected; but finally the safes were blown open and their contents secured, the robbers making good their escape with one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in money and about seven hundred thousand dollars in bonds. No part of this money was ever recovered by the bank, nor were any of the gang captured at this time. The securities were, however, afterward sold back to the bank. Indeed, so cleverly had the whole affair been managed that no suspicion fell upon either Scott, Dunlap, or any of their associates.
Here were fortunes made easily enough, with plenty more to be made in the same way, and the gang were in high feather over their success. During the summer of 1874 Scott and Dunlap lived in princely style in New York. They attracted much attention at Coney Island during the season, where they drove fast horses. No one suspected that they were the leaders of the most desperate gang of bank robbers ever organized in this or any country.
By fall their money began to run short, and they decided to look about for another job. In the Quincy robbery they had broken their agreement with Evans, paying him only a small sum for the use of the air-pump which he had furnished them. Now, however, they called upon him again, and, partly by threats, partly by generous offers, induced him to assist them again. A series of unsuccessful attempts at robbery were made on banks in Saratoga; Nantucket; Covington, Kentucky; and Rockville, Connecticut. In several instances failure came at the very time when success seemed sure. In the case of the Covington bank, for instance, nitroglycerin was used in blowing open the safe, and the explosion was so violent that the men became frightened and fled in a panic, leaving behind untouched, although exposed to view, two hundred thousand dollars in greenbacks and one million five hundred thousand dollars in negotiable bonds. In the case of the Rockville bank their plans had worked out perfectly, and they had removed everything from the top of the vault but a thin layer of brick, when Scott accidentally forced the jimmy with which he was working through the roof of the vault and let it fall inside. As it was too late to complete the work that night, and as the presence of the jimmy inside the vault would inevitably start an alarm the next day, they were obliged to abandon the attempt entirely.
The gang's most desperate adventure befell in connection with the attempt on the First National Bank of Pittston, Pennsylvania. This was made late in the fall of 1875. The bank occupied a one-story building covered with a tin roof, and the robbers decided to make the attack from the roof. But there was a serious difficulty in the fact that in case of rain coming any time after they had begun operations, water might soak through the openings they had made and betray them. Dunlap's ingenuity, however, was equal to this emergency; and each night, after finishing their excavation, they carefully relaid the sheets of tin that had been disturbed, protecting the joints with red putty, which matched the roof in color. So well did they put on this putty, that, although it rained heavily the very day after they began, not a drop leaked through.
On the night of November 4 only one layer of bricks separated them from the top of the vault, and it was decided to finish the work and do the robbery that night. Two hours' hard labor with "drag" and "jack-screw" sufficed to effect an opening, and Scott and Dunlap were lowered into the vault. They found three Marvin spherical safes protected by a burglar-alarm. But Dunlap was somewhat of an electrical expert, and was able to so surround the burglar-alarm with heavy boards as to render it of little or no danger. They experienced much difficulty, though, in blowing open the safes. The first one attempted yielded on the second explosion, and they secured five hundred dollars in currency and sixty thousand dollars in bonds. The next one was far more troublesome, not less than ten explosions being required to make way into it. And just as the task was at last accomplished, and they were on the point of seizing a great sum of money, there came a warning call from Conroy, who was doing sentry duty on the roof, and it was necessary to fly.
When Dunlap and Scott had been dragged out of the vault by their associates, they were found scarcely able to run. During all the twelve explosions of powder and dynamite they had never left the vault, but, crouching behind the boards that guarded the burglar-alarm, had remained within arm's length of explosions so violent that they tore apart plates of welded steel and shook the whole building. Worse than the shock of these explosions were the noxious gases generated by them, which Scott and Dunlap had to breathe. On coming out, their clothes were wringing wet with perspiration, and they were so weak that their legs tottered under them, and their comrades had to almost carry them for a time. But, nevertheless, they managed to