The Case of the Pilfered Pants

We seem to have had a little crime wave during the month of April 1917, a time when all Americans should have been pulling together against a common enemy.

This case began around midnight on Sunday, April 22. A hired man from the Demmon farm near Lottaville was going to Merrillville when he passed a buggy standing by the side of the road, loaded with oats and hitched to a blanketed horse, but driverless. He thought the whole thing looked fishy. When he reached Merrillville, he telephoned the Sheriff's office about it. In response, a couple of deputy sheriffs drove out: Claud Davis at the wheel, Hut Olds riding shotgun.

They picked up the hired man and continued east along the Joliet road (73rd Avenue). The mysterious buggy was nowhere to be seen. They drove on, turning north to pass through Ainsworth, toward Hobart. As they neared the Hobart Township line, they met a southbound wagon, drawn by two horses and driven by two men.

One of the deputies called out to the men, asking whether they'd seen the mysterious horse and buggy. The men said they hadn't. As the car passed the wagon, Deputy Davis turned his side lights on the wagon, and asked the men what they were hauling. They didn't answer, just drove on. Such disregard of his authority riled Davis. He took out his revolver and fired a warning shot toward the ground. This time he got an answer — two shots fired back, coming uncomfortably close. The men in the wagon whipped up their horses and hurried on toward Ainsworth.

Deputy Davis turned his car around, and his party followed the wagon south at a safe distance. At the Claude Bullock farm, he stopped to phone up to Hobart for reinforcements.

Marshal Fred Rose got the call. He woke up Clarence Frailey to drive him (it was now about 1 a.m.) and, accompanied by three other Hobart men, set out south. They met up with the Merrillville party at Ainsworth. Together they followed the tracks of the wagon south, then east on the Joliet road. Not far along, they overtook the wagon. The horses were pulling it along the road at a leisurely pace, their drivers having fled.

In the wagon, the officers found some 18 dozen pairs of men's pants and eight large rolls of suiting fabric, along with cooking utensils and several days' rations, as if the men had planned for a long drive.

Further investigation revealed that the pants and the bolts of cloth were stolen. They had been shipped out of New York by train, the cloth destined for St. Paul, Minnesota, and the pants for Seattle, Washington. Presumably they had been pilfered from a freight car somewhere along the way. Since the stolen goods were valued at about $3,000 total, it was a remarkable capture, all the more so since it had come about entirely by accident, while the deputies were looking for some mysterious buggy. (That buggy was never identified.)

Although the thieves had escaped for the time being, county officials were working on the case and still had hopes of tracking them down.


Sources:
♦ "Capture Stolen Merchandise." Hobart Gazette 27 Apr. 1917.
♦ "Valuable Booty Captured Sunday Night; Thieves Get Away." Hobart News 26 Apr. 1917.