The Heavy Bundle that Gave Away a Thief
A German drifter's scheme to fund his return to Prussia is undone by a suspicious, heavy bundle of stolen goods left on a train.
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.
William Nache, a German 30 years old, was arrested at the Union Pacific depot today for burglary and tonight confessed to breaking into the Colfax hardware store on Wednesday morning. On that morning a stranger boarded the caboose of a freight train run by Conductor Harry Pond. The passenger bore a long bundle of blankets, and the conductor, in changing the position of the bundle, found it very heavy. The stranger asked Conductor Pond about a certain consignment to his address, giving his name William Nache. The man with the pack left the train at a way station and Pond thought no more about him till he saw an account of the Wednesday burglary in the papers. Then he communicated his suspicions and the name of the man with the heavy bundle to Station Agent Erwin, who kept an eye out for events. Today a box came addressed to William Nache, which was very heavy. The sheriff's office was informed and the box was searched and found full of rifles and pistols from the hardware store burglarized and also a box of jewelry. When confronted with the evidence against him he confessed his guilt, saying that he was tired of the country and resolved to steal enough to get back to his native land, Prussia.
“He was tired of the country and resolved to steal enough to get back to his native land, Prussia.”
This story illustrates the transit-based economy of 1890s Washington, where freight rails were the primary arteries for both legitimate trade and petty crime. The narrative of an immigrant desperate to return to their home country highlights the economic volatility of the era, which saw many caught in a cycle of itinerant labor and crime.
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