Patriotic Murder by Peter Stehman

Author:Peter Stehman [Stehman, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036090 History / United States / State & Local / Midwest (ia, Il, In, Ks, Mi, Mn, Mo, Nd, Ne, Oh, Sd, Wi), HIS036060 History / United States / 20th Century
ISBN: 978-1-64012-098-3
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2018-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

7

I Want to Tell and Get It off My Mind

Robert P. Prager Foully Murdered in Collinsville—This Crime Must Not Go Unpunished—

Get the Guilty Men—Let No Guilty Man Escape—The Fair Name of Illinois Has Been Dragged into Disgrace

—Belleville News-Democrat editorial headline, April 5, 1918

When daylight broke in Collinsville and people started moving about on Friday, April 5, 1918, there was little indication of the chaos that had reigned in the city just six hours earlier. Few knew of the lynching upon waking, but word spread like wildfire.1 When businesses opened, those involved in the lynching, witnesses, and others spoke candidly of what they had seen, heard, or done. No effort was made early in the day to conceal anyone’s identity. One observer noted that people were discussing the hanging “as though it had been a picnic.”2

As the lynching had occurred outside the city limits, the Collinsville police would have no part in the investigation. Madison County coroner Roy Lowe arrived from Edwardsville and met with county sheriff Jenkin Jenkins. They spoke with city officials and other witnesses of the events of the prior sixteen hours. By Illinois statute the coroner was compelled to investigate every death. Lowe, at thirty-two years old the county’s youngest-ever coroner, had been elected two years prior and was aggressive and determined to see justice done. Before coming to Collinsville that morning, he had conferred with Madison County state’s attorney Joseph Streuber and then by telephone with Illinois attorney general Edward Brundage. Sheriff Jenkins’s involvement in the investigation seemed minimal, which was good given his close ties with Collinsville’s miners.

Many knew nothing of the incident until reading the first news account in the Collinsville Herald. Publisher J. O. Monroe had been up until 4:00 a.m. finishing the stories for inclusion in the regular weekly edition, published on Fridays. Monroe wrote what he had witnessed and heard, stark and raw with all the dramatic details. And he wanted the story to be accurate, knowing it would be picked up by the “news wires of the world.” Years later Monroe said that this first story was “free from the reactions, the intimidations, the dissembling and the revisions of stories rationalized later.”3 People would rush to buy an extra edition the Herald printed later that evening, which included the day’s events.

The lynching was quickly denounced by State’s Attorney Streuber, who called it a disgrace. “Public acts and utterances disloyal to the American flag are as vicious and atrocious a crime as the acts of persons who form a mob and take human life. One is treason, the other is murder. The penalty is the same for both. This is a moment when loyalty and law alike must be supreme, and loyalty does not require lawlessness.”4

Sheriff Jenkins and Coroner Lowe searched Prager’s shack, and Lowe quickly announced they had found nothing to indicate that the victim was disloyal in any way, nor had he been hoarding powder to blow up the mine. Newspapermen, arriving from St. Louis and places all over

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