I would say, to use the criminal vernacular, that Big Jim Kinealy went 'Chinese angle' when the 'buttons' nipped his 'boodler'.
Benjamen F. Boyd was the Midwest’s foremost boodler, and maybe the finest engraver of conterfeit printing plates outside of the U.S. Treasury Department. Boyd’s queer fin was so good that by 1875 there were more than 300,000 examples floating about, maybe half of all five dollar notes in circulation. The treasury stopped issuing legitimate fins out of the Chicago branch entirely.
Then, in October, the Secret Service descended upon the little Mississippi river town of Fulton, Illinois and before Ben Boyd could slip across the railroad bridge to Iowa, slapped the bracelets on him right in front of his outraged wife. And that left Big Jim squarely behind the eight ball.
Big Jim owned a stable in St. Louis, but that was just his dodge. He was “a born crook” and the high pillow to hundreds of finders, passers, runners, smashers, bindle stiffs, butter and egg men and fake-a-loo artists, in short everyone and anyone who passed the queer soft on to unsuspecting marks. So with Ben doing a decade in the Joliet caboose (above) you would guess that Big Jim would to be looking for a new slant. Instead he came up with a plan that was a real bunny; he would steal the body of Abraham Lincoln, and exchange it for the live body Benjamnn Boyd - plus $200,000, just as an afterthought.
Late in January of 1876 Big Jim reached out to one of his Chicago passers, Ben Sheridan, who was looking for a vacation anyway after getting pinched and jumping bail. Ben was a cool customer and played the Jasper in his fancy suit with a full beard. Big Jim figured him as the man who knew just how far he could push the bulge.
Big Jim owned a stable in St. Louis, but that was just his dodge. He was “a born crook” and the high pillow to hundreds of finders, passers, runners, smashers, bindle stiffs, butter and egg men and fake-a-loo artists, in short everyone and anyone who passed the queer soft on to unsuspecting marks. So with Ben doing a decade in the Joliet caboose (above) you would guess that Big Jim would to be looking for a new slant. Instead he came up with a plan that was a real bunny; he would steal the body of Abraham Lincoln, and exchange it for the live body Benjamnn Boyd - plus $200,000, just as an afterthought.Late in January of 1876 Big Jim reached out to one of his Chicago passers, Ben Sheridan, who was looking for a vacation anyway after getting pinched and jumping bail. Ben was a cool customer and played the Jasper in his fancy suit with a full beard. Big Jim figured him as the man who knew just how far he could push the bulge.So he set Sheridan and his four man crew of goons up in a tavern in Springfield, Illinois (above), complete with a full liquor stock, and they spent a couple of months just taking the lay of the land. They played tourists at Lincoln’s tomb in the Oak Ridge Cemetery several times and it looked like an eggs-in-the-coffee job to them. 
The rectangular granite monument sat atop the highest point in the cemetery. Two curving, confusing corridors met in the center of the marble monument at two rooms. In one room rested the body of Mary Todd Lincoln. In the other rested the President’s sarcophagus.
The monument itself was surrounded by tall oaks that would hide any nighttime visitors. The cemetery was two miles outside of town, the room containing the sarcophagus had but a single padlock on its gate, the groundskeeper lived elsewhere, there were no bulls on duty at night and questioning a custodian revealed that the casket itself had been sealed with simple plaster of Paris.
By the end of June things looked so Jake to Sheridan that he took a night off to relax. And that was when he stuck his foot in it. Drunk on corn in a local "can house" (above), Sheridan boasted to a chippy that on the night of July the third he was going “steal old Lincoln’s bones”. Well, the chippy called copper, which is to say she notified the local bulls, and in the morning the buttons paid a visit to Sheridan’s establishment just to let him know the caper was blown. Big Jim was not happy. He repossessed the liquor stock, locked the tavern tight and ordered the whole crew back to Chicago.
The rectangular granite monument sat atop the highest point in the cemetery. Two curving, confusing corridors met in the center of the marble monument at two rooms. In one room rested the body of Mary Todd Lincoln. In the other rested the President’s sarcophagus.The monument itself was surrounded by tall oaks that would hide any nighttime visitors. The cemetery was two miles outside of town, the room containing the sarcophagus had but a single padlock on its gate, the groundskeeper lived elsewhere, there were no bulls on duty at night and questioning a custodian revealed that the casket itself had been sealed with simple plaster of Paris.By the end of June things looked so Jake to Sheridan that he took a night off to relax. And that was when he stuck his foot in it. Drunk on corn in a local "can house" (above), Sheridan boasted to a chippy that on the night of July the third he was going “steal old Lincoln’s bones”. Well, the chippy called copper, which is to say she notified the local bulls, and in the morning the buttons paid a visit to Sheridan’s establishment just to let him know the caper was blown. Big Jim was not happy. He repossessed the liquor stock, locked the tavern tight and ordered the whole crew back to Chicago.The truth was, Big Jim might have been lucky things went adrift at this point, because when John Carroll Power, the custodian, was interviewed later he described in detail the entire gang and offered the opinion that Sheridan was “of more intelligence “than all four goons “combined”, but “of exceedingly depraved morals”. Obviously Mr. Power was an observent judge of character and a powerful witness.
That fall, in the back room of The Hub, a saloon at 294 West Madison Street in Chicago, Big Jim met with his second choice of conspirators; Terrence Mullen (above), the bar owner, and a passer named Jack Hughes (below).
That fall, in the back room of The Hub, a saloon at 294 West Madison Street in Chicago, Big Jim met with his second choice of conspirators; Terrence Mullen (above), the bar owner, and a passer named Jack Hughes (below).But Big Jim decided that this time they needed an actual resurrectionist, a man familiar with the problems of body snatching. And he was lucky enough that just such a man had recently started hanging out at The Hub, an ex-sailor and life long bindle stiff and body snatcher by the name of Louis C. Swegles. Swegles knew the right people and they seemed to know him, so Big Jim brought him into the plot, now laid on for election night, “a da-ned fine elegant time to do it”, as Jack Hughes said.
They caught the night train for Springfield and arrived at six on the morning of November seventh, and checked into the St. Charles Hotel. In their luggage they brought a can of blasting powder, a six foot fuse, a small file and a saw. They gang caught some sleep, leaving a call for 10:30 A.M. After breakfast Louis Swegles and Jack Hughs paid a visit to the monument. Hughes assured his fellows they wouldn’t need their tools to open the locked gate on the tomb. “I could fall against it and open it,” he boasted. Terry Mullen wanted to be certain, so that afternoon he stole an axe from a hardware store.
About nine o’clock that night they slipped into the looming silent monument. While Swegle held the lantern, Mullen began to saw through the padlock that Hughes had shown such disrespect for. And almost immediately the saw blade broke. Mullen was reduced to working the padlock with the file. It felt like it was going to take forever.
They caught the night train for Springfield and arrived at six on the morning of November seventh, and checked into the St. Charles Hotel. In their luggage they brought a can of blasting powder, a six foot fuse, a small file and a saw. They gang caught some sleep, leaving a call for 10:30 A.M. After breakfast Louis Swegles and Jack Hughs paid a visit to the monument. Hughes assured his fellows they wouldn’t need their tools to open the locked gate on the tomb. “I could fall against it and open it,” he boasted. Terry Mullen wanted to be certain, so that afternoon he stole an axe from a hardware store.About nine o’clock that night they slipped into the looming silent monument. While Swegle held the lantern, Mullen began to saw through the padlock that Hughes had shown such disrespect for. And almost immediately the saw blade broke. Mullen was reduced to working the padlock with the file. It felt like it was going to take forever.Finally the padlock fell apart and the three then prepared to attack the sarcophagus itself. Mullen wanted to use a sledge hammer but Swegles pointed to the copper dowels that were all that held the lid on. Having removed the lid (the open sarcophagus, above) they slid the President’s cedar covered lead coffin out. Swegles handed the lantern to Hughes and slipped back outside to bring the wagon up to the service door.
After waiting a few moments for Swegles to reappear, Hughes and Mullen decided it would be better if they waited outside. They were standing under an oak tree a hundred feet away from the service door when they heard the crack of a gunshot echoing from inside the monument. Being experienced theives, they ran for it. Outside the cemetery walls they boarded the last streetcar for the night bound for downtown Springfield, and heard more shots and shouting behind them. Hughes and Mullen did not return to their hotel, but split up and made their seperate ways out of Springfield on foot.
By November 9th Mullen was back in Chicago, tending bar at the Hub as if nothing had happened. Two days later Swegles reappeared with a harrowing tale of having escaped the bulls by the skin of his teeth. A week afterward Hughes showed as well. They were all thinking themselves very lucky to have escaped the Bulls. 
After waiting a few moments for Swegles to reappear, Hughes and Mullen decided it would be better if they waited outside. They were standing under an oak tree a hundred feet away from the service door when they heard the crack of a gunshot echoing from inside the monument. Being experienced theives, they ran for it. Outside the cemetery walls they boarded the last streetcar for the night bound for downtown Springfield, and heard more shots and shouting behind them. Hughes and Mullen did not return to their hotel, but split up and made their seperate ways out of Springfield on foot.By November 9th Mullen was back in Chicago, tending bar at the Hub as if nothing had happened. Two days later Swegles reappeared with a harrowing tale of having escaped the bulls by the skin of his teeth. A week afterward Hughes showed as well. They were all thinking themselves very lucky to have escaped the Bulls. But just as Mullen and Hughes started to ask themselves what had gone wrong, that was when the bulls swept them up. Both Hughes and Mullen were arrested and transported back to Springfield. Swegles was not arrested because he had been a stoolie for the Treasury bulls from the very beginning. From the second he had been asked to join the scheme, the bulls had been kept apace at every step of the way. Swegles had not gone for the wagon, he and alerted the bulls waiting in tomb to make the arrest. But instead they had ended up fighting a gunbattle with each other in the dark. And Big Jim? Well, he never liked to be close to the actual crime, and immediatly made himself scarce. The last he was heard of, Big Jim was heading for New Mexico territory.
Oddly enough there was no law in Illinois against grave robbing, so Hughes and Mullen were convicted only of the theft of Lincoln’s coffin, value set at $75.00. They were sentenced to one year each at hard labor and then dissappeared from the pages of history. Big Jim would be convicted in 1880 of a land fraud in New Mexico Territory, and end up serving his time in the Joliet prison, the same institution once occupied by his onetime printer, Ben Boyd.
Oddly enough there was no law in Illinois against grave robbing, so Hughes and Mullen were convicted only of the theft of Lincoln’s coffin, value set at $75.00. They were sentenced to one year each at hard labor and then dissappeared from the pages of history. Big Jim would be convicted in 1880 of a land fraud in New Mexico Territory, and end up serving his time in the Joliet prison, the same institution once occupied by his onetime printer, Ben Boyd.As for the corpse of President Abraham Lincoln, the unwilling player in this farce, Mr. Power had him secretly reburied in the basement of the tomb. And there he resided in obscurity in his own tomb until 1901 when Lincoln's son, Robert, had his father's coffin reburied. But this time it was placed inside a steel cage, lowered into a new 10 foot vault dug into the Illinois soil, into which was poured several tons of concrete and then the original stone sarcophagus was placed on top of it all, making it very unlikely anyone would ever try to steal Lincoln's corpse, ever again.
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There Nicolas used his precious funds to buy paper and ink and set himself up in business on the street near the Cathedral of Saint-Jacques la Boucherue, (the butcher) as a scribe. The church (the bell tower, the only remaining structure) was at the center of the Paris market, Les Halles, the “stomach of Paris”, created in 1183 by Philip II. It was the financial core of the metropolis. And Nicolas, surrounded by butchers, bakers and sellers of everything from rare silks to local farmers’ produce, wrote and copied letters for a fee. Any merchant wishing to communicate with his clients or suppliers or debtors outside of Paris would pause at the cathedral the same way later generations would visit a telegraph office. And in time Nicolas moved from being a simple scribe into the greatest and most dangerous opportunity available to an ambitious young Christian in 14th century Europe; usery.
“Nicolas Flamel”, she whispered dramatically, “is the only known maker of the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
As recently as 1311 Pope Clement V had declared that charging interest on a loan was heresy for a Christian, and punishable by death at the stake. It was the function of Jews in medieval Europe to be the money lenders, and they were restricted from doing any other business with gentiles, leaving ambitious Jews little choice but to go into banking or money lending. The only problem was that every time the French nobility found their debts piling up they simply expelled the Jews and seized their property, as did the misnamed “Phillip the Fair” in 1306, Charles VI did again in 1394.
Nicolas’ entry into banking was natural. When writing a letter for a merchant demanding payment of a debt, he would offer to forgo his usual fee in exchange for a percentage of the repayment. If the debt were not repaid Nicolas would not be paid. But by insisting in the letter that any payment be sent to him rather than directly to the merchant, Nicolas insured that his percentage – often upwards of 50% - was paid before the merchant recieved a sou. It was easy to keep this secret since the merchant was a co-conspirator and equally as guilty as Nicolas, in the eyes of the church.
“It is certain that he had been seen often walking along the Rue des Lombards, and furtively entering a small house at the corner of the Rue des Ecrivains and the Rue de Marivault. It was the house built by Nicolas Flamel, in which he died about 1407, and which, unoccupied ever since, was beginning to fall into ruins, so greatly had the hermetics and alchemists of all countries worn away its walls merely by scratching their names upon them…It was supposed that Flamel had buried the philosophers stone in these cellars, and for two centuries alchemists from Magistri to Father Pacificque, never ceased to worry the soil, until the house, so mercilessly ransacked and turned inside out ended up crumbling into dust under their feet.”
About 1370 Nicolas married a widow, Perenelle. They lived frugally in a modest house on the Rue des Escrivains, in order not to attract attention to Nicolas' business - call it the Silas Marner syndrome. They had no children. In 1407 Nicolas built a shop at 51 rue de Montmorency (above,now a restaurant) where he employed other scribes and artists to create illuminated manuscripts. The most promimently dispalyed, no doubt, were the copies of ancient texts of alchemy. On the second and third floors of the house (now the oldest still standing house in Paris) Nicolas sheltered the poor, as he did in several other houses he owned and built in Paris.
‘True, Sir. The two favorite studies of my youth were botany and mineralogy, …I have regretted I were not a man that I might have been a Flamel, a Fontana or Cabanas”
During his lifetime Nicolas endowed large sums to la Boucherue cathedral, and endowed seven churches, fourteen hospitals and three chapels; the church was no more likely to ask questions about the source of that income than a modern politician. 
On June ninth 1936 Herbert addressed the Republican Convention in the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio, and did his very best to rally the faithful to his cause. As Time Magazine detailed, “After 15 minutes (of) yelling, shrieking (and) hooting, (Hoover) was allowed to begin. …"Fundamental American liberties are at stake. Is the Republican Party ready…to cast your all upon the issue?" "Yes!" roared the crowd….".. have you determined to enter in a holy crusade for freedom which shall determine the future and the perpetuity of a nation of free men?" "Yes!" roared the crowd in ecstasy.” The faithful went on chanting “Hoo-ver, Hoo-ver, Hoo-ver,” long after Herbert had left the stage.
Noted Time Magazine; “The demonstration could not be stopped for half an hour, even when Speaker Snell tried to introduce a little old lady, surprisingly pert for her 77 years, the widow of President Benjamin Harrison.” Finally Bertrand banged the big gavel and informed the crowd that Herbert had already boarded a train for New York. The floor demonstrations paused for a breath and quickly petered out. Except, Herbert had not even left the building yet; he was waiting off stage to be recalled by the carefully prepared demonstrations and proclaimed the nominee by acclamation. But Bertrand had already determined that the party nomine would be Governor Alf Landon, known affectionately to the faithful as “The Kansas Coolidge”.
Alf, was the only Republican governor re-elected in 1934. He had a reputation as a fiscal conservative who cut taxes and balanced the state budget. That made him the Republican wonder-kid, the perfect man to oppose the “tax and spend” Roosevelt.
The party platform had been engineered by Bertrand and forty-four year old John Daniel Miller Hamilton, the “crinkly haired” “jut-jawed” G.O.P.’s general counsel who reeked of “animal vigor.” Hamilton was actually paid $15,000 a year to be the parties’ attack dog. He was described by one fellow Republican as having, “…a seven-devil lust to live and shine under the blessings of the rich”. Both Bertrand and Hamilton were front men for the party power brokers, even though, at the convention Hamilton was Alf’s front man, and made his nominating speech. And to seal the deal, Hamilton read a telegram from Governer Landon promising to support the anti-New Deal platform. 
Said the platform; “For three long years the New Deal Administration has dishonored American traditions…has been guilty of frightful waste and extravagance, …it has created a vast multitude of new offices, …set up a centralized bureaucracy, and sent out swarms of inspectors to harass our people. It has bred fear and hesitation in commerce and industry, thus discouraging new enterprises, preventing employment and prolonging the depression….We pledge ourselves: To preserve the American system of free enterprise, private competition, and equality of opportunity.. We advocate: Abandonment of all New Deal policies that raise production costs, increase the cost of living, and thereby restrict buying, reduce volume and prevent reemployment. …”. To read the Republican platform you would have thought the nation was in much worse shape after the New Deal, than before.
The campaign that followed saw the constant repetition of attack. The New Deal became “The Raw Deal”. Franklyn Delano Roosevelt became “Stalin Delano Roosevelt”. William Randolph Hearst asserted in a pro-Landon editorial, “The Bolshevist tyranny in Russian has ordered all bolshevists, communists and revolutionaries in the Untied States to support Roosevelt!" It all sounds so familar in 2009.
However, it appears that most Americans saw all of this Republican effort in the same light as FDR did, as illustrated by a story Roosevelt wrote himself for a speech he delivered in Boston. “In the summer of 1933 a nice old gentleman fell off a pier. He was unable to swim. A friend ran down the pier, dived overboard and pulled him out. But his silk hat floated away with the tide. After the old gentleman was revived he was effusive in his thanks. He praised his friend for saving his life. Today, three years later, the old man is berating his friend because the silk hat was lost.”
The election of November 3, 1936 was the most lopsided since James Monroe ran unopposed in 1820. Eighty-three percent of eligible voters showed up at the polls and Roosevelt won almost 61% of their vote. He carried every state in the union except Vermont and Maine, giving rise to the Democratic twist on the old adage, “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont”. Roosevelt won 532 electoral votes to Landon’s 8. Seventy-one percent of Black Americans voted Democratic, as well as 57% of women, 63% of men, 76% of low income voters, 80% of Catholics and 86% of Jewish voters. After the election the Democrats held the Senate, 75-16, and the House, 332 to just 88 Republicans. Things would get even worse for the Republicans in the next few years. 
John D. Hamilton would say after the election, "The Lord himself couldn't have beaten Roosevelt in 1936, much less the Liberty League." Maybe; but the election was the death knell of the Liberty League. They lingered into 1940, when the DuPont family finally pulled their funding, and the group then quietly died. Long before that John Hamilton had his own reactionary reckoning. In 1937 Hamilton's wife sued him for divorce, on the grounds of “gross neglect of duty, abandonment and extreme cruelty.” That same year Alf Landon had Hamilton removed as Party Chairman, as Landon rebuilt the party in his own Midwestern less reactionary less idelogical image.
On Tan House Lane in the “…pleasant little market town…” of Alton, stood the modest home of bricklayer George Adams, his wife Harriet (above) and their seven children. You can see the hardness of their lives on their worn faces. And perhaps the inexplicable grief, too.
On that Saturday afternoon, August 24, 1867, sometime after one thirty, seven year old Lizzie Adams and her year older sister Fanny were playing with their neighbor, eight year old Minnie Warner, in the flood meadow when a man appeared. He was dressed in a black frock coat, light colored waistcoat and trousers and wore a top hat. The girls immediately realized he had been drinking. Still the man seemed pleasant enough, and offered Minnie and Lizzie a half penny each if they would run a race to The Hollow, while he and Fanny followed. The two girls agreed and scampered off. When they were all rejoined at the Hollow the man congratulated the girls and paid them. 
We have gained some insight into the fate of "Sweet" Fanny Adams (above) in the 150 years since her ordeal, lessons paid for by the thousands of those innocents who have followed her. According to a 2006 study released by the Washington State Attorney General, 44 % of child victims were killed by strangers and 42% by family or acquaintances. Two thirds of the perpetrators had prior arrests for violent crimes, but just half had prior arrests for crimes against children. In 76% of homicide cases involving child abduction, the child was dead within three hours. And in 74% of the cases, the victim was a female under the age of 11. Of course none of this insight explains why Frederick Baker sexually assaulted 8 year old Fanny Adams and then butchered her corpse. The crime itself may be beyond explanation or understanding. And that may be the saddest thing of all about Fanny's brutal death; the idea that there is little we can do to prevent it from happening again.
At the inquest at the Alton Old Town Hall (above) Minnie Warner and Lizzie Adams identified Frederick as the man who had carried Fanny off. Harriet Adams and their neighbor, Mrs. Gardner, testified they had met Frederick coming out of the meadow when they first went to look for Fanny, sometime after five. When Alton Police arrested him the next day at his workplace, Frederick’s wristbands were still spotted with blood. It was noted that his pant legs and socks had been wet when he had returned after lunch the day of the murder. And a diary entry found in his desk, read, “24th August, Saturday; killed a young girl. It was fine and hot.” 
The night before his execution, Christmas eve,eve, Frederick Baker wrote to George and Harriet Adams. He wrote that he was sorry for murdering Fanny and had done it in “an unguarded hour” only because she would not stop crying. It was done, he insisted without “malice aforethought” and without “…pain or struggle”. Frederick assured the grieving parents he had not molested Fanny, but he offered no other explanation as to why she had been crying when he had murdered her. 
The execution of Frederick Baker, as gruesome as any parent of a murdered child might wish for, did nothing to save the lives of the uncounted children who have followed Fanny. But every child saved by an Amber (Hagerman) Alert (below) must thank her parents, Donna and Jimmy Hagerman, who in 1996 pushed to change the way police respond to child abductions. And those children saved by Amber's sacrifice can also thank those who ask questions about these monsters in our midst, rather than simply calling for their blood.
