Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's South Side by Troy Taylor

Author:Troy Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Detectives investigate one of the railroad dugouts where the Car Barn Bandits hid in the Indiana Dunes. Courtesy of the Chicago Daily News.

As the police officers pulled back, the bandits made a daring escape from the dugout. They ran away on foot, firing at the detectives as they hurried toward the woods. Niedermeyer was hit once in the neck as he ran down a hill into a ravine but managed to get back up and keep running with the others. The bandits escaped while the detectives wired for reinforcements and tried to tend to their wounded comrades. The officers were able to flag down a passing train, and the wounded men were put onboard and taken to a hospital. Officer Driscoll died a few days later.

Fifty police officers with repeating rifles were rushed to the scene onboard a special train. They followed the tracks south, stopping to examine the deserted dugout where the bandits had been found. The room was well stocked with food and ammunition and outfitted with bunk beds.

The original detectives, now five in number, followed the bandits’ trail through the snow, passing a brakemen’s cottage that the outlaws had tried to break into and failed. As they followed the footprints and occasional spatters of blood in the snow, they were startled by and opened fire on what turned out to be nothing but Niedermeyer’s overcoat, which he had strung up in some tree branches as a decoy. One set of tracks, Roeski’s, led into a cornfield and the others continued south. Roeski, who had been wounded badly in the gun battle, was captured in the cornfield later that day.

Niedermeyer and Van Dine made it to the town of East Tolleston, four miles from the dugout. There, they found a Pennsylvania Railroad gravel train sitting on the tracks, preparing to leave. The engineer had gone to get dinner for the fireman, Albert Coffey, who was still in the cab. The bandits climbed into the cab and put a revolver to the fireman’s head. A brakeman, L.J. Sovea, thought the bandits were rail yard drunks, and he jumped up and grabbed Niedermeyer by the wrist. During a struggle, Sovea was shot in the face and his lifeless body was dumped on the side of the tracks.

The bandits forced Coffey to start the engine, and he took them two miles to the town of Liverpool, where a locked switch prevented him from going any farther. Niedermeyer and Van Dine made him back up almost a half mile and then they jumped out of the cab and ran across the prairie.

Meanwhile, posses made up of farmers and police officers formed in East Tolleston to pursue the men. Liverpool had been warned about them by telegraph and sent out a posse of its own. The Liverpool posse tracked down the fleeing robbers as they ran toward a cornfield and opened fire on them—with shotguns filled with birdshot. Niedermeyer and Van Dine were both hit in the face, but the wounds were far from fatal.

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