PAT CROWE
A Little Background
Before he was nationally known as a desperate criminal, Patrick Edward Crowe was locally known in Crawford County as a notorious thief. Born in 1864 in Davenport, Iowa, his parents moved with their eleven children to a farm located between Aspinwall and Vail. According to all reports, the Crowes were an upstanding family and highly regarded as good and honest people. Pat's mother died in 1878 and is buried in the Vail cemetery. After her death, Pat, at the age of 17, left Crawford County and moved to Omaha where he thought he could make a better living as a meat store owner than a farmer in Crawford County.
Pat's business venture didn't last very long. The steady stream of customers he had acquired started doing business down the street where the owner, Edward Cudahy, had set up shop and undercut Pat's prices. Pat wasn't the only man in that business who lost everything and in his opinion Mr. Cudahy, who was already a millionaire owning the Cudahy Meatpacking Company, was responsible for ruining lives and an evil man who needed to be taught a lesson.
In order to learn all he could about his perceived enemy, Pat took a job at the Cudahy Meatpacking Company and stewed on the injustice of it all. He didn't know how he would get his revenge against Cudahy, but there was no doubt in his mind that he would.
Then something happened that Pat claims turned him into a career criminal. One night after moving to Chicago and imbibing too much, Pat found himself in a house of ill repute. He claims to have had no recollection of how he got there, only that he awoke to find that all his money and valuables were gone, except for "Betsey" the revolver he carried in his pocket. Pat accused the lady of the house of robbing him and as quickly as she had denied the same, Pat held her at gunpoint and stole her jewels:
Denison Review – March 5, 1890
A SOUTH OMAHAN CREATES CONSTERNATION IN CHICAGO
He Wounds Four Citizens, One of Them Probably Fatally.
A Bad Man from Omaha
CHICAGO – March 3 – The most sensational shooting affray which has occurred in this city for a long time took place yesterday, Patrick Crowe, being the principal. He succeeded in wounding a woman slightly and two police officers and a citizen badly. One of the officers will probably die.
Crowe came here from Omaha a short time ago and has been working in a packing house. Last night he wound up a protracted spree in a disreputable house on Clark Street. This afternoon he demanded at the point of a revolver from Annie Hall, in whose company he was, jewels valued at $1,500 which she had. The woman screamed and Crowe fired, the bullet lodging in the fleshy part of her arm. Crowe seized the jewelry and rushed toward the street. At the door he was met by a colored woman whom he knocked senseless with the butt end of his revovler. He got away for the time being, and later in the afternoon pawned the diamonds. Officer Liuville, who had been watching for him, met him at the door of the pawnshop and attempted to arrest him, but was instantly shot down, the bullet passing through his face and cutting his tongue in two.
Crowe ran down the street, followed by a hundred citizens. Officer Brisno, located several blocks down, attempted, with a drawn revolver, to stop the flying man, but Crowe promptly planted a bullet in Brico's breast and kept on. Soon after he turned and discharged the last cartridge at his pursuers, the last cartridge striking C.E. Cole in the arm. At last Crowe was cornered in a blind alley, but kept the crowd at bay with his empty revolver until two detectives stole a march on him, knocked him down and handcuffed him.
Fully a thousand people followed the trio to the station yelling: “Lynch him!” but the detectives landed him safely behind the bars.
Crowe is supposed to have been crazy from drink. He was a packing house employee in Omaha, and, according to his statements, is of a respectable family.
Crowe is a native of Davenport, Ia., where his wife is at present. His mother resides at West Side, Ia., and Magistrate King, of South Omaha, is his brother-in-law.
(Pat Crowe claimed himself to be from Vail)
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Pat didn't stay in jail in Chicago very long. Among his many talents was the ability to break out of jail and to appear in public as a clean cut, respectable citizen. After setting himself free, Pat realized, with arrogant certainty, that although dangerous, he could live very comfortably with a "Betsey" or two by his side and he turned his back on any ideas of "going straight". With the capers pulled off in Chicago, and as would be the case time and again, he bought a first class train ticket with money from the sale of stolen jewels and headed for Crawford County where he could visit among unsuspecting friends and spend a little time with his father before the law could figure out where he had gone.
Photo from the St. Louis Republic newspaper 10-14-1901
Stealing Hogs and the 1893 Denison Train Station Robbery
As was generally the case with criminals, birds of a feather stuck together. In August of 1893, while frequenting his brother John's tavern in South Omaha, Pat became friends with Charles L. Baker who went by the alias, Billy Kane. Kane had a great hog theft operation going and Pat was intrigued with Kane's intelligence in pulling off his capers. Kane and a cohort, working with the aide of train workers, would steal hogs in route from Iowa to Illinois. Near Davenport, where Pat was born, the rails took a steep incline. When approaching the climb, the train would stop, unhook the back half of the stock cars, pull the first cars up the hill and park them on a side track and then go back for the cars at the bottom of the hill. As soon as the train headed up the hill with the first cars, train men would open the doors of the cars left behind, let a few hogs out of each one and Kane would take the hogs. The plan worked for a long period of time before the farmers started to notice their shipping weights were greater than the checks they received for market weight. The railroad companies started putting pressure on their workers to figure out what was going on and Kane's operation ended when a train employee broke down and told all.
With both of them on the run, Pat invited Kane to lay over with him in Crawford County, using the time to plan future endeavors. Their first idea, when heading out again was to rob the Northwestern station at Denison. They were short of cash and would need money on the road. Pat knew it was a great risk because he could easily be recognized, but he was comfortable with his own instincts and Kane's intelligence in working jobs.
Denison Train Station
In his own words, as found in his autobiography, the following is Pat Crowe's account of the Northwestern station hold up:
When the red markers on the rear end of the last vestibuled sleeping car of the flyer vanished around the bend in the track, the night operator at the Denison railway station reentered the building, closed and locked the door behind him. He crossed the waiting room and was about to close that door, when a masked figure loomed up in the darkness and a big Betsey stared him full in the eye.
"Put up your hands," said Kane, while Crowe remained silent, lest his voice betray him. The appalled young man complied. Crowe stepped behind him and whipped the revolver he wore out of his pocket. Then Kane backed him into the telegraph room and Crowe secured his hands and feet.
"What are you going to do?" quavered the youth.
"Blow your head off if you open your mouth too loud," savagely replied Kane. Crowe finished trussing up the prisoner. Then he went to the money drawer and secured the cash there.
"Where's the rest of the dough?" demanded Kane gruffly. "In - in the safe," stammered the young man.
"Well, if it ain't," said Kane, "you're out of luck."
He dropped to one knee and fitted a drill to his brace. He started to bore a hole just above the combination dial, while Pat secured the key from the agent's pocket, unlocked the door, walked out and prowled the yards and station from all sides until he was sure there were no chance observers about.
Then he went within, leaving both doors unlocked for a quick get-away if they happened to be interrupted. He also unhooked the battery wires connecting the telegraph instruments in an adjoining room. The instruments suddenly ceased their ticking. Pat went back to where Kane was drilling like a fiend.
"Got the juice ready?" asked Kane. "Yep!" growled Crowe.
"Wait!" exclaimed the startled night operator, "These instruments have gone dead!"
"What do we care?" growled Kane.
"Please—sir—listen to me a minute. You don't understand!" pleaded their prisoner, his face breaking out into terrorized lines.
Crowe stiffened. The lad was one he knew well. He had borne up manfully when stuck up. Why this sudden terror? He gestured to Kane to let the lad speak.
"What is it?" demanded the other robber.
"The dispatcher was just sending a meet order for Western trains," said the youth, speaking feverishly, "when his wire went dead. This other man," he gestured to Crowe, "has cut off the connection. For God's sake, put it on again. There are two trains running wild!"
Kane's jeering laugh cut him short. "And have you notify the dispatcher that we're here after we blow this old box, eh? Not much! We're going to make a clean job of this and a clean get-away, too!"
His drill bit again into the hole and the operator fairly collapsed with terror. "Women and children—they'll all be killed!" he moaned.
Pat Crowe stiffened. He was a bandit, but he had never yet sent a woman or child to deliberate death. Nor a man. He had risked death himself, and if needful would kill any one arresting him to avoid arrest. But women and children—no!
"Wait!" he growled to Kane. Then he gruffly turned to the operator. "Isn't your father the station agent here days?"
"Yes," said the young man, too horrified to note Crowe's identity by his voice. "Doesn't he know the combination to this safe?" persisted Crowe.
"Yes, and I know it, too," said the frantic operator. "For the sake of those passengers..."
Crowe leaped from the room. He replaced the connections to the battery. When he got back into the room, all instruments but one were silent as before, but that one was sending Morse in swift staccato syllables and the relieved operator was leaning forward in his chair. His hands and feet were still bound. He made no move to reach the instruments. This was the death message that had silenced every other wire on that railroad division, and in every station other night operators, unknowing the cause of the sudden wire trouble, were straining nerves as alert as this one bound hand and foot, waiting with bated breath as the emergency orders raced along that would save two trains from colliding, head-on, in the otherwise gloriously effulgent night. The message ceased.
"O. K.," rattled the operator receiving it somewhere along the line. Then silence. A moment more and the chattering train wire broke into volubility. The terror slid from the listening operator's face.
"In the clear!" he exclaimed. "That was all that mattered!”
Pat Crowe whipped him from the chair, cut the bonds to his hands and shoved his Betsey against his head. "We're in the clear, too," said he jubilantly. "You open that safe and be quick about it, or you'll go where the women and children didn't go!"
"You needn't hold that gun to my head," laughed the operator. "I'll open the safe. I'm glad to open it. You can't be such a bad man. I don't care about the money. I did care about those lives and you cared, too, or you wouldn't have hooked the train wire con- nections on again to the batteries. Watch me!"
He twirled the dial. Right and left. Then he threw the bolt. He rose and held out his hands for his bonds.
Kane swung wide the door while Pat tied up the young chap again. Then he gagged the youth effectually. They were in the clear in very truth. They had been inside of the station for less than fifteen minutes, unseen and unsuspected, and still had the balance of the friendly night to mask their departure, ere their bold deed would become known. The operator was not required to signal other trains after the flyer had passed, eastbound. So he made the best of it as the two robbers sped away.
Pat Crowe (Publicity pose years after his crime sprees)
To be continued: Shoot Out at Dow City
