The Bank Wrecker’s Last Stand

St. John Dix, the bank wrecker, will probably not come to the Walla Walla penitentiary at present. According to his own announcement, he will appeal his case to the United States Supreme Court. Dix stands convicted of looting two banks in Whatcom County, the state supreme court having upheld the decision of the lower court. Dix said to a newspaper reporter at Whatcom who called on him in the county jail: 'The experts whom the committee of depositors set to work upon the books of the bank have made a report which shows that of the $24,000 I was convicted of embezzling, I really got less than $2,000, and that was money borrowed by me from the bank before I became interested in it. The sentence is unjust and I am to be made to suffer for the crimes of others, say the courts of the state. But before I do, the supreme court of the United States must say so. Federal questions of moment are involved in the extradition proceedings by which I was returned to this country.' St. John Dix was appalled when the Fairhaven Evening Herald appeared on the streets a few days ago with the news that he must go back to jail and from there to the penitentiary. The past summer Dix, or H. St. John, as he now calls himself, has conducted himself with a buoyancy hardly befitting his condition. His favorite pastime has been horseback riding and he has been unusually attired in the jaunty costume of a wealthy English fieldsman. He carried no hunter's horn, however, but blew his own horn a good deal, going so far as to apply for an Associated Press franchise for the Weekly Blade, which he proposed to turn into a daily.