"Arrested For Adultery"

(Continued from part 1)

For several weeks the Gazette and the News maintained a prudent silence regarding the identity of the man who'd stolen Fred Yager's wife. Meanwhile, Hobart's Marshal Fred Rose was working on the case. Near the end of May, he cracked it, and at last the newspapers felt free to trumpet the wife-stealer's name on their front pages. That name was — did you guess it? I did! — Jerome Chester.

Apparently Jerome had decided to delay his Wild West adventure for some horseplay closer to home. Now his poor old mother, as well as his more respectable siblings, had yet another scandal to live down. (In reporting this story, the News saw fit to dredge up Jerome's bastardy case from 1908.)

Back in March, a few days after Anna Yager disappeared on a westbound passenger train, Jerome went missing too. Fred told Marshal Rose he believed they were together in Chicago.

If so, they were well hidden in that teeming city. After some fruitless attempts to trace them, the Marshal decided the best way to catch them was to be patient. Sooner or later, he figured, Jerome would show up in Hobart — I suppose because all his worldly goods were here, and the money he'd need to fund his Chicago love shack was in a Hobart bank.

The Marshal proved correct.

On May 20, 1911, Jerome showed up in Hobart, alone. Rose discreetly kept an eye on him. When Jerome finished his business transactions, he boarded a Chicago-bound Penna train, and so did Rose.

On arrival in Chicago, the Marshal trailed Jerome through the streets, on foot and on streetcar, until his quarry disappeared into a rooming house at 532 LaSalle Street.

After ascertaining that several rooms there were rented by Anna Yager and her father, and enlisting the help of two Chicago police detectives and the owner of the building, Marshal Rose made entry to those rooms. At first he saw no one, but one of the rooms was closed off by a curtain, and the Marshal yanked it aside to reveal a bedroom and the two astonished lovers. Jerome was sitting on the bed, taking off his shoes; Anna was standing nearby.

Arrested, and informed that they could either return to Hobart to face prosecution or go directly to (Chicago) jail, they chose Hobart. They all returned by train that night, and before Justice of the Peace John Mathews, Jerome and Anna were booked for trial the following Friday. Jerome posted bond for the both of them, totaling $2,000.

The two lovers then hopped the late train for Valparaiso, and signed themselves into a Valpo hotel as "J.N. White and wife." Hobart authorities expected them to return eventually to Chicago.

[To be continued]

Sources:
♦ "Arrested For Adultery." Hobart Gazette 26 May 1911.
♦ "Jerome Chester in Trouble." Hobart News 25 May 1911.