A Book of the Saint Paul Police 1838 - 1912 — 7

Charles Doherty, an American Express Co. clerk was met by Clara Blatz sometimes known as Lizzie Hart a prostitute with whom he had been living at Fifth and Robert street. She fired two shots killing him instantly. The murder took place in broad daylight on one of the most important corners of the town and created a terrible sensation. The murderess was twice tried, a disagreement resulting from the first trial and twenty year penitentiary sentence from the second and final trial. In 1889 the new Municipal Court act went into effect providing a four year term for two judges at a salary of $4,000.00 a year. Henry W. Corey was re-elected judge and the new judgeship went to John Twohy. In this year the Municipal Court moved into the basement of the New Court House and City Hall which after four years of construction was completed at a cast of one million fourteen thousand five hundred and ninety two dollars. In this year also Bill Erwin, otherwise known as the tall Pine whose death occurred but recently began his famous career as a criminal lawyer in St. Paul, through his defense of Walter F. Horton accused of double murder. Horton was employed as a clerk in the Land Department of the Northern Pacific Railway. Horton and his wife had been separated for about four years prior to the murder. The wife had the custody of their ten year old daughter Mable. Horton shortly before the murder induced his wife and daughter to come back to him and he fitted up a home on Eaton Ave. on the West Side. On August 14th he invited his wife and daughter to take a boat ride with him on the river. Half an hour after they had started out “Six Finger Jack” a Pig’s eye riverman, hunter and trapper and a. well known character about St. Paul for many years, rushed out of his cottage on the shore of Pig’s Eye Lake opposite the West Side Flats upon hearing the screams of a woman. He arrived on the shore in time to see Horton climbing onto a sand bar. Horton told Jack that Mrs. Horton and Mable had been drowned. Horton’s landlady suspected foul play and notified the police. Horton was arrested and tried and defended at the trial by Erwin who secured Horton’s acquittal. We shall not comment upon this case, but rather let us draw a veil of dignified silence across the doorstep of this outrageous miscarriage of justice due to the peculiarities of the modern jury system.

The Bell Charter was adopted in 1891 and gave the city $185,000 to spend for its police department annually. It was a large sum in those days. In 1891 the legislature passed a very reasonable and necessary pension fund bill. All police officers over fifty years of age and all widows and minor children of men who had seen twenty years service in the department were entitled to the benefits of this fund which was supported by taking ten per cent of all the fines imposed in police court upon prisoners and those imposed by the mayor upon delinquent police officers. This fund lasted a few months and was abandoned after the Supreme Court had ruled against its constitutionality. In 1889 K. P. Cullen rented the property at 87 W. Third street, a three story and basement stone building to the Police department for its headquarters at a rental of $150 a month. This building served as police headquarters until 1910 when the present quarters were secured almost across the street from the Cullen property. The legislature has authorized a bond issue for the erection of a new police station but as yet nothing but the purchase of property has been made in this direction. The site will be adjoining the old Cullen property. In 1891 Chief Clark, who was now commanding a metropolitan police force abolished the use of clubs by policemen. After bringing the department up to a point never before equaled in a city of its size of the west Chief Clark was retired in 1892 by Frederick P. Rice the newly elected reform Mayor. Albert Garbin, warden of the penitentiary at Stillwater was named as Chief of police and John C. McGinn was named chief of detectives succeeding Chief O’Connor. The following year was a year of terror in St. Paul as shown by the following from the 1904 history of the department.

“The daylight hold-up of Renaldo Lares, messenger of the Merchants National Bank, at Fifth and Jackson streets, was the police event of the year 1893. The hold up was committed by five men: James J. Meigs, Thomas Fluery, James Howard, Ben Miller and Henry Morris. They were Englishmen, and if any better or more accomplished crooks ever struck the city of St. Paul they ‘got by’ without the knowledge of the St. Paul police. The holdup occurred during the forenoon of August 14th. Lares was standing in the corridor of the First National Bank with $20,000 in a bag beside him. Jim Howard reached out from behind a pillar and grabbed the bag, handing it to Miller, who in turn, darted to the sidewalk and passed it to Morris. Morris hid the bag beneath his coat and cooly walked up Fifth street. Fluery and Meigs who were acting as "stalls," stood near the door, preparing to interfere with the pursuit. They successfully got away with the money, although Jim Howard, one of the gang, was arrested on the day of the occurrence. The day before the robbery the five men had been arrested in Minneapolis for vagrancy, and they were photographed by Inspector Hoy, before they were turned loose. It was on these five men that the police placed the guilt. Fluery and Meigs were arrested by the Pinkertons in Chicago, and Inspector Byrnes got Miller and Morris in New York City. The trials resulted as follows: Fluery, ten years; James Meigs, eight years; Jim Howard, six years; Ben Miller, four and one-half years. Morris was not arraigned on account of the inability of the police to properly show his connection with the criminals.

The Ermisch and Wonigkeit murder was the sensation of Mayor Wright’s administration. In cold blood they shot William Lindhoff, who was tending bar in a saloon at the corner of College avenue and Wabasha street. The hour was nine o’clock in the evening. The two men entered the saloon from different doors, and ordered Lindhoff to throw up his hands. Mrs. Kohlman, who was sitting at a table nearby cried to him to get his revolver. One of the men turned on her and the other began firing at Lindhoff. Seven shots were fired and the robbers ran off.

Lindhoff was removed to the city hospital and died within a short time. Chief of detectives McGinn detailed Detectives McGuiggan, Weirrick and Gruber on the case. Suspicion was directed toward Ermisch and Wonigkeit, because the two had committed a somewhat similar burglary, minus the murder, in a West Seventh street saloon. Gruber caught Wonigkeit loitering on the levee and persuaded him to confess.

The two murderers had been hiding in a summer cottage at Red Rock for some days. The story of the young men was that they had spent the night after the murder in a Merriam Park barn. At five o’clock the next morning they made their way to the railroad tracks and walked to Red Rock.

After Wonigkeit had confessed the detectives started out to get Ermisch. He was found at the home of his mother on Blair street, where she was sick with pneumonia. The men were tried and convicted of murder in the first degree, and Friday, October 19th, 1894, they were hung by Sheriff Chapel. Ermisch had to be carried to the gallows.

Throughout his imprisonment this young man displayed an unusual criminal tendency. With a revolver which his mother had smuggled to him, he tried, six weeks before the hanging, to escape from the jail by shooting Deputy Edward Horst.