The $18,784 Express Package That Vanished—and the Sheriff Arrested for It
A grand jury charged a Northern Pacific agent, a Franklin County sheriff and another man in a January 1894 express theft. The sheriff’s Ainsworth neighbors posted his bond—and doubted the charge.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
On the 21st of January of the present year, a package containing $18,784.27, which was sent from the Portland office of Ladd & Tilton, consigned to E. Johnson, Northern Pacific agent at Ainsworth, for Contractor Bennett, was found to be missing from the express office. Johnson was arrested in this city on the following day, but at the examination the evidence was insufficient to hold him, and he was discharged.
On the convening of the Grand Jury at the May term of the District Court, true bills for larceny were found against Wm. B. Gray, Sheriff of Franklin County, Johnson, the agent, and a man named Garrity. Garrity was recently arrested at Bismarck, Dakota, and on Wednesday Deputy Sheriff L. C. Gilliam arrested Johnson at Spokane Falls. On Thursday Constable Gregory went to Sprague, where Sheriff Gray was found and brought to this city on the charge of grand larceny.
This morning Josh Clark, V. D. Lay and Joseph Keith, prominent and wealthy citizens of Ainsworth, arrived in Walla Walla, in answer to a telegram from Gray, and a bond in the sum of $3,000 was soon made out and signed by these gentlemen, thereby giving the accused his liberty. It is not generally thought by those outsiders best conversant with the circumstances that Mr. Gray shared in the robbery; but it is believed that he can give considerable information concerning it.
“It is not generally thought by those outsiders best conversant with the circumstances that Mr. Gray shared in the robbery; but it is believed that he can give considerable information concerning it.”
Long before wire transfers, an express package carrying nearly $19,000 could disappear between Portland and the Columbia River and turn into a multi-county manhunt. The case—a bonded sheriff, a grand-jury indictment and neighbors who thought the accusation was wrong—has the shape of a modern public-corruption story, just slowed to telegraph speed.
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