Naturally such a story was of great interest to St. Louis, as well as to all the other cities near at hand. It smacked of the lawlessness of the ’forties. All banks, express companies, railroads and financial institutions generally were intensely interested. The whole front page was given to this deed, and it was worth it, although during my short career in journalism in this region no less than a dozen amazing train robberies took place in as many months in the region bounded by the Mississippi and the Rockies, the Canadian line and the Gulf. Four or five of them occurred within a hundred miles of St. Louis.
The truth about this particular robbery was that there had not been seven bandits but just one, an ex-railroad hand, turned robber for this occasion only, and armed, as subsequent developments proved, with but a brace of revolvers, each containing six shots, and a few sticks of fuse-prepared giant powder! Despite the glowing newspaper account which made of this a most desperate and murderous affair, there had been no prowling up and down the aisles of the cars by bandits armed to the teeth, as a number of passengers insisted (among whom was the Governor of the State, his Lieutenant-Governor, several officers of his staff, all returning from a military banquet or feast somewhere). Nor was there any shooting at passengers who ventured to peer out into the darkness. Just this one lone bandit, who was very busy up in the front attending to the robbing. What made this story all the more ridiculous in the light of later developments was that at the time the train stopped in the darkness and the imaginary bandits began to shout and fire shots, and even to rob the passengers of their watches, pins, purses, these worthies of the State, or so it was claimed in guffawing newspaper circles afterward, crawled under their seats or into their berths and did not emerge until the train was well on its way once more. Long before the true story of the lone bandit came out, the presence of the Governor and his staff was well known and had lent luster to the deed and strengthened the interest which later attached to the story of the real bandit.
The St. Louis newspaper files for 1893 will show whether or not I am correct. This lone bandit, as it was later indisputably proved, was nothing more than an ex-farm hand turned railroad hand and then “baggage-smasher” at a small station. Owing to love and poverty he had plotted this astounding coup, which, once all its details were revealed, fascinated the American public from coast to coast. That a lone individual should undertake such an astounding task was uppermost in everybody’s mind, including that of our city editors, and to the task of unraveling it they now bent their every effort.