The railroad authorities secured a warrant for his arrest and after detectives had chased him through several cities of the Middle West, he was arrested at Tonopah, Nev. He was brought to Duluth under an extradition process and stood trial on the charge. During the course of his trial much of his past history, and a more or less unbroken story of his operations, were brought to the light of day.
Koch was born forty-five years ago in Germany and emigrated to this country when a boy of 15, settling at Rosedale, Iowa. He married when a young man, but, after his wife had lived with him ten years, she secured a divorce from him on the grounds that he had been convicted of a crime and committed to the Iowa state penitentiary. This was in 1903. She remarried. Koch’s parents are old and respected residents of Rosedale.
In 1903 Koch joined the army, enlisting in the state of Washington. Two months later, however, he was discharged on account of “chronic anaemia and debility.” In 1906 he claimed that he had been injured while working at Missoula for the Northern Pacific, brought suit for $50,000 and recovered $5,000 in the lower court. The case dragged on six years in the Montana courts and judgment was finally reversed in January, 1912. A portion of the time Koch spent on a poor farm, supposedly a down-and-out cripple, forced into the almshouse by the law’s delay. He went by the name of C. F. Post.
In July, 1911, at Portland, Or., posing as C. F. Pantle, he secured from the Portland Light & Power company a sum of money on a fake injury. On Feb. 16, 1912, at Breckenridge, Minn., under the alias of C. F. Jones, he secured $4,500 from the Great Northern Railway company for injuries claimed to have been sustained in falling from a passenger coach step. On Aug. 12 of the same year, as Clarence F. Main, he again tried to work this game, but unfortunately ran up against the same claim agent at Great Falls, Mont., who recognized him as an impostor and had him arrested. He served four months in the Montana penitentiary.
On Feb. 28, 1914, at Hampton, Iowa, he claimed that he was injured while alighting from a train, and on May 9, 1914, collected $600 from the Minneapolis and St. Paul Railway company. On July 23, 1914, while crossing a railroad crossing at Grand Rapids, Mich., he was injured, he claimed, and he later extracted $1,600 from the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad company. His latest offense was the affair of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad company.