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| Willie and Willis Newton |
If you ask the average guy on the street who
the James-Younger or Dalton Gang are, they will smile knowingly and nod their
heads. If you ask the same question about the Newton Boys, people will shake
their heads and cast a strange glance at you like you’re asking about some
long-forgotten boy band from the 60s.
The funny thing is that the four Newton
brothers—Willis, Willie, James, and Joseph — were probably the most successful
robbers in American history.
In the five years between 1919 and 1924, the
brothers robbed nearly ninety banks and six trains—taking in close to
$4,000,000. But,
unlike the James-Younger Gang or the Dalton Brothers, the Newtons kept a low
profile. They crept into banks after dark, blew the safe, and disappeared
before they had to deal with any bank employees or customers.
Robbing Texas banks proved a cakewalk. Willis
bribed an insurance official with the Texas Association of Bankers. In return,
he got a list of banks using older model safes he could blow open with a few
dabs of nitroglycerin.
Unfortunately, the gang’s information in the
Rondout robbery was too good. The train had nine mail cars and carried over
fifteen hundred mail pouches. Yet, the bandits knew precisely where to find the
sixty-three big-money bags of registered mail.
“The bandits could not have planned the robbery so carefully,” said postal authorities, “unless they had reliable information as to what was in the cars and which cars contained registered mail.”
That meant someone on the inside was feeding them information.
Planning the Robbery
Joe “Kid” Newton said his brothers met Herbert
Holliday and Brent Glasscock on January 10. They needed help with a big job in
Chicago. They met again the following month in Chicago and learned the plan was
to rob a mail truck. Nothing else happened until April. Willis told him they
were going to hit the truck on April 24.
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| Postal inspectors looking over one of the recovered mailbags |
The truck was supposed to carry a hundred-thousand-dollar payroll shipped out of Danville. Everyone was ready, but Glasscock called the job off at the last minute, saying it was a “piker job.” So instead, he’d switched gears and set his sights on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul train that usually carried seven or eight million dollars in registered mail.
The job was set for June 5, but there was so
much rain that day that they put it off until the following week.
The boys drove to Chicago before the robbery. On the way, they stashed a car they didn’t need in Joliet and another on the south side.
Glasscock spent three days driving the roads around Rondout to get used to them.
He knew every sideroad and hideaway between Rondout and Joliet by the time he
was done. He set up several garages along the route to hide the getaway cars
and stash the loot.
Glasscock and Willis Newton met with William
Fahy on May 17. Glasscock told him they wanted “good dope for robberies.”
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| William Fahy |
“I can do that, alright,” said Fahy. “I can go anywhere—in the mail cars, in the registered mail departments, around the trucks, into the offices, and anyplace else.”
Fahy, Murray, and Glasscock met a few days
later to discuss train No. 57, which regularly carried multimillion-dollar
shipments.
The registered mail is carried in the third
car, said Fahy. “There’s only three guns on the train. They’re carried by the
chief clerks. But hell, they won’t shoot!” exclaimed Fahy. “They don’t know
how.”
Joe Newton and Herbert Holliday drove to Milwaukee to verify the information. The inspector was correct. The mail clerks loaded the registered mail into the third car.
The Robbery
Brent Glasscock and Willis Newton climbed on
the tender of train No. 57 on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul line as it pulled
out of Union Station in Chicago. When the train passed the viaduct at Rondout,
they crawled into the cab and stuck their pistols in the engineer’s and
fireman’s ribs.
The engineer slowed the train until he came to
a complete stop at Buckley Road, where the rest of the gang waited in four
Cadillac touring cars.
The robbers marched the engineer and the
fireman to the third mail car. Suddenly, Glasscock saw the shadow of a man
standing near the track. Thinking one of the mail clerks snuck out of another
car and was circling to get them, Glasscock put five bullets into the man.
 |
| Inspector Oros questioning Jesse Newton |
Brent Glasscock and Willis Newton continued walking toward the third mail car without checking who had been shot. When they got there, the door was wide open. The clerks broke all protocol and stared into the darkness, wondering why the train had stopped. Herbert Holliday leveled his gun on them and held the clerks at bay until the rest of the band came up.
From this point on, the robbery “was carried
out with machine-like precision,” wrote The Daily Illini, “and with a
daring never before attempted by train robbers anywhere.”
Holliday jumped into the mail car and ordered
the crew to “throw out those reds,” meaning the bags that contained money. The
clerks handed out sixty-three registered mailbags, then helped load them into
two Cadillac touring cars waiting on Buckley Road.
While Holliday, Glasscock, and Willis Newton
robbed the registered mail, the remaining Newton brothers fired half-ass shots
into the other mail cars, not so much to hurt anyone but to keep the clerks
contained inside.
Conductor Sandy McRae convinced Willis Newton a
freight train was close on their heels. If he didn’t signal it to stop, there
could be a major collision. So Willis let him go unattended. Once he was out of
sight, McRae headed to a trackside telephone box and called for help.
As the robbers were getting ready to head out,
they noticed Willie Newton was missing. They found him up the track, where
Glasscock opened fire at the robbery’s beginning. Willie was still alive but
bleeding badly and in severe pain. The brothers tossed him on the mailbags in the
car and sped off.
Albert Murphy, a farmer, found an abandoned car
containing sixty-two rifled mailbags in a pasture on the Daniel Mahoney farm,
seven miles south of Joliet. The robbers had hurriedly searched the bags, only
taking items they believed were valuable. They missed at least $60,000,
including fifty-two State of Minnesota $1,000 bonds, five $1,000 General
Railway Signal Co. bonds, one hundred shares of J. I. Case Co. stock, and
$5,000 in General Motors stock.
The robbery from start to finish took fifteen
minutes, matching Jesse James’s record in some of his old-time robberies. The
difference was the take. Jesse usually got away with $5,000 to $10,000.
Sometimes more, sometimes less—but nothing close to $3,000,000.
 |
| Willie Newton |
Thanks to Sandy McRae’s call, Lawrence J.
Benson, the general superintendent of the railroad police, arrived on the scene
less than an hour after the robbery. His men discovered the blood-covered
ground where Willie Newton lay bleeding. In addition, they found two gas masks
and two glass bottles. One was filled with formaldehyde gas—the other with
nitroglycerin.
Chicago postal inspector William J. Fahy showed
up a few hours later. He was half-drunk and taking frequent swigs from a
whiskey bottle, unusual behavior for Fahy.
The following day, Benson received a call from
Fahy’s boss saying he would put him on the case. That and Fahy’s drinking put
Benson on alert. He ordered his men to investigate Fahy’s movements in the days
leading up to the heist.
What they found was troubling. Fahy had
requisitioned a driver and started investigating the crime before it occurred.
There was more to the story than met the eye. Benson ordered his men to keep a
close eye on Fahy.
While Benson investigated Fahy, Chief Michael
Hughes’s detectives learned about a shot-up robber hiding at Walter McCombs’s
flat at 53 N. Washtenaw Avenue.
When the police raided the apartment, they
found Willie Newton in his sickbed. Joseph Willis was sitting nearby, and booze
runner James Murray hid under the bed. The next afternoon, Willis Newton walked
into the apartment. He was immediately put under arrest.
Detectives now had four of the eight men
responsible for the Rondout train robbery. After that, it didn’t take long to
get the other names. The Newtons quickly implicated their brother Jesse, Brent
Glasscock, and Herbert Holliday.
Jesse Newton had fled to Texas, then Mexico,
after he learned his brothers had been arrested. Before heading to Mexico, he
hid $4,000 in gold coins in a drunken fit and could never remember where he put
it.
Postal detectives played up to Jesse’s vanity
and convinced him to compete in a Texas broncho-busting contest. So Jesse got
all duded up in a fancy cowboy costume and crossed the border, where waiting
postal detectives whisked him off to jail in Chicago.
 |
| James Murray |
Jesse filled in a lot of the blanks for postal inspectors. He said the gang spent four months planning the robbery. They conducted four failed raids before making their big score at Rondout.
Joseph Murray, an Ottawa auto painter, William
Fahy, a crack postal inspector, and Brent Glasscock planned the robberies.
After Jesse’s brothers got caught, Glasscock
gave him $5,000 and told him to get out of town. Jesse buried the money in
Texas, then crossed the border into Mexico.
Jesse provided detailed information that helped
put William Fahy and James Murray away. First, Fahy provided the inside dope on
which cars and trains carried the money. Next, he gave detailed instructions on
how to conduct the robberies. On at least one occasion, Fahy stood on a nearby
street corner as they attempted to rob a mail truck on the loop.
James Murray helped in many ways, but his
specialty was hiding and disposing of the loot. After the robbery, he secured
the garage where they had hidden the money and cars. Brent Glasscock was a
crack shot with a gun and knew explosives like the back of his hand.
Unfortunately, he was too quick to pull the trigger. If he hadn’t shot Willie,
they would likely have gotten away.
The Chicago Tribune hinted that
38-year-old Jesse Newton had a strong back but fell short in “mental breadth.”
Throughout his testimony, Jesse portrayed himself as a “gun-toting rube” who
was a “bit dumb in the ways of the world.”
The press wasn’t so sure it wasn’t all an act.
One man commented, “No wonder these birds got caught—if they’re no smarter than
that.” Another suggested that “it takes a shrewd fellow to pretend to be dumb
like that in front of all these lawyers.”
That may have been so, but Jesse Newton comes
off as a halfwit in most accounts. It seems he was in it more for the adventure
than the cash.
Jesse ended his testimony by saying, “My God,
ain’t this an awful way to get money?” He got a paltry $5,000 for his part in
the heist.
At first, William Fahy claimed it was all a
frame-up. “It would all come out in the wash.” He was trying to solve the robbery, not a part of it.
Previously, he had sent “Big Tim Murphy” to
prison for his part in the Dearborn mail robbery and recovered $126,000. In
addition, he solved several high-profile cases, including the Pullman robbery,
the Harvey robbery, and the Grand Rapids robbery.
While other inspectors slept, Fahy roamed the
stations at night, overseeing security and advising clerks and armed guards how
to thwart robberies. In spring, when the Rondout robbery was planned, he got on
the guards for wearing coats over their guns because it made them inaccessible.
Those were all points in his favor, but Fahy
sealed his fate when he reported the robbery “bore marks of inside direction.”
Albert E. Germer, the lead postal inspector, came to Chicago to investigate. He
tapped Fahy’s office phone, then searched his office and home.
One suspect tipped Germer off about Fahy. “The
man who directed the whole works is from the Federal Building,” he said. “It
wouldn’t do any harm to watch Fahy.” Germer thought it was a useless clue, but
he went through the motions and soon hit pay dirt.
The postal agents were sure James Murray had
the bonds stolen in the robbery. They just had to prove it. The plan was to buy
the bonds from him. The only one in the Chicago office who knew about the plan
was Fahy, so they’d know who passed the information if word got out. When
Murray refused to deal with postal agents, it was assumed Fahy tipped him off.
Women were Fahy’s downfall. “Fahy was a gay one
among women,” said C. H. Clarahan, chief postal inspector in New York. “The
fellows called him the Lothario of the service. He stepped out on occasions,
and one of these times, about two years ago, he did something unwise that put
him in the power of a ring of criminals.”
As more evidence piled up against him, Fahy
confessed.
James Murray tried to convince the authorities
he was a “hard-working bootlegger,” not a bandit. He rented the garage in
Ottawa, Illinois, as a stopping place for his bootlegging trucks. He did not
know $2,000,000 in loot from the robbery was hidden there.
However, he admitted taking Willie Newton to
Walter McComb’s flat. He understood the injuries occurred when someone tried to
hijack a booze shipment. “It was all liquor,” he said, “not mail.” Whether or
not anyone believed him was a question for the jury. Glasscock admitted meeting
with James Murray and William Fahy to plan the robbery. What else could he do?
In the end, all the robbers except Herbert
Holliday confessed to their part in the robbery. They helped postal
investigators recover much of the stolen loot.
The gang members were sentenced in December.
Brent Glasscock, Willis Newton, and Willie Newton got twelve years; Joe Newton
three years; and Jesse Newton got a year and a day. Herbert Holliday got the
longest sentence—25 years — because he refused to talk or return his share of
the loot.
Roughly $2,000,000 of the $3,000,000 taken in the robbery was eventually recovered. However, the remainder of —10,000 $100 and 5,000 $50 bills are still unaccounted for.
Wrap-up
After returning $101,000 in Liberty Bonds stolen in the Rondout robbery,
Herbert Holliday received a commutation of his sentence. However, railroad
special detectives shot and killed him in June 1931 as he attempted to steal
five tires from the Missouri Pacific station’s express room.
Walter McComb was tried but not convicted in connection with the
Rondout robbery. Police found him shot and critically wounded at Madison and
Paulina Streets in Chicago in early September 1938. The motive for the shooting
remains unknown.
James Murray received early parole and was released from prison
in February 1931. However, he was sent back to jail in May 1939 for robbing the
People’s National Bank at Clintonville, Pennsylvania.
Joseph Newton was back in trouble with the law not long after
his release from prison. Detectives arrested him for robbing a bank in Oklahoma
City in May 1934. He was also questioned for kidnapping six-year-old June
Robles. Joe Newton died at age 88 in 1989.
Jesse Newton returned to Uvalde, Texas, and spent the rest of
his days working as a cowboy. His one regret was burying his share of the loot
in a drunken fit. He never could remember where he buried it. Jessie died at
age 73 in 1960.
Willis Newton lived to the ripe old age of 90 and remained as
cantankerous as hell. He became a regular businessman, owning nightclubs and
gas stations in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and real estate in Chicago. Willis and his
nephew Noel Bruce Oglesby were arrested in 1963 for kidnapping Frank Brent. He
was tried twice but never convicted. Before he died, Willis held a series of
conversations with author G. R. Williamson, in which he shared the intimate
details of his outlaw life. The talks grew into the book Willis Newton: The
Last Texas Outlaw.
Willie Newton, or Wylie, as he was sometimes known, died in 1974 at 83.
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