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A Burning Cold Morning (Part 22)

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Leo sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“I always have known you were a sharp one Grace, sorry, Veronica.  You seemed it from the first time we spoke and I still see it now.”  He ran a hand through his thinning hair and then told her about his misadventure at Crombie’s.  When he was finished Veronica laughed and then stared at him for a few moments, blowing smoke into his face.

“Damn Leo, that story sure don’t say much about your level of talent, does it?”  Before he could reply she went on.  “You know, when I saw you out there, going past me on the sidewalk, well I had an inkling that you might be chasing me down.  I wasn’t too sure if that was a good thing or not but I followed you figuring we might at least get into business together, if you happened to be interested in such a thing.”  She paused again, blew more smoke and finished with, “But now I’m not so sure.”

Leo blushed deeply, pulled his glasses off and looked at the floor.  He was embarrassed, exposed again as a failure in the criminal world, and it quickly turned into anger.

“Damn it, don’t be thinking I’m some Dumb Dora!  I cased that place good and had a plan.  How was I to know,”

“You can’t know sometimes,” Veronica interrupted, “but that just was not a good plan.   Who makes a trial run to steal one box and check out what’s inside?  You figure out what’s in the boxes and then either pass or steal them all.  It’s that simple.  It was a dumb move, Leo, real dumb.”

“Damn it!”  Leo slammed his right fist into his left hand.  “I know what I’m doing Grace.  I can run some business with you.”  He returned his glasses to his face and looked up to see Veronica smiling at him.

“You are sensitive aren’t you Leo?  And you need to stop calling me Grace.”

“Sorry,” he replied, “just don’t, well, don’t go making me out like some kind of idiot.  We can do business, I can do this.”

She waited again, and as she did so Leo’s face retuned to its normal color and he composed himself, leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes for a few moments.  Veronica eyed him while continuing to smoke her cigar, her brow furrowed as she calculated what to do.  Finally she reached over and touched knee.

“Yes, well maybe we can at that.  I think you just might be useful despite all your tall tales about Kansas City.”  Leo started to blush again but she reassured him.  “It’s alright, we all do it, little exaggerations here and there to make ourselves look tougher or meaner or whatever.  You don’t seem to have had much success so far but maybe you’re just unlucky, or maybe you just need a good partner.  I’ll come by on Monday and pick you up around five.”  She then reached over and dropped her cigar into the glass of water which had remained untouched during their conversation.

“Where are we going?” Leo asked.

“Plumb’s.”

Leo stared back blankly but Veronica exited his room saying, “Just be ready on Monday.”

After she left he leaned back and closed his eyes again.  Even though he had composed himself fairly well, the entire conversation he had just had was still running through his mind.  There was anger inside of him both for the way Veronica had laughed at him and also at his own criminal failings.  He was even mad at himself for getting mad, knowing that his outburst only made him look weaker.  He should have laughed back at her and just told her what they were going to do.  That would be the way a real hard-boiled man would have handled it.  Thinking about it did not resolve much though and he kept going over it in his head until he fell asleep in the chair.

He awoke around midnight, neck stiff and back sore from sleeping in such an awkward position and stayed up until daylight, this time thinking about what kind of business might be good for him and Veronica.  He wanted to show her he was in charge and could come up with a plan.  After eating breakfast he asked the hotel manager where Plumb’s was and then walked over to check out the place, determined to know where he was going before Veronica picked him up.  Maybe that would even give him some ideas for developing a plan of action.  He was disappointed though when he got there as it was just a simple cigar shop, full of the usual supplies and accessories.  Could she really be picking him up to go buy cigars?  Surely this was not a place she planned on robbing?  Maybe he was the brains of their new venture after all.  Leo poked around a little in the store but did not buy anything, giving a curt “Just looking,” response to the old man behind the counter who offered to assist him.  He left and kept walking, trying to come up with ideas and although a few came to him none seemed good enough to present to Veronica.  After an hour of walking he returned to the Governor, toes cold and ears hurting a little from the biting wind outside that day.  As he passed the desk the manager he had spoken to in the morning called out to him.

“Enjoy yourself at Plumb’s?” the man asked, a slightly mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Leo, thinking the man was in on some joke against him, just glared back and returned to his room.  He stayed in that weekend, writing down plans and then crumpling each one up and throwing it into the fireplace.  Veronica’s laugh echoed in his head constantly and he could see her scoffing at each one as not good enough, or stupid, or silly, or any other reason she could come up with to put him down.  It was not a very good way to start a criminal venture and he began to regret ever coming to Olympia.  He needed money though and realized he could not come up with a good enough plan on his own.  Veronica was going to be necessary.  By the time she picked him up on Monday he was resigned to that fact, determined to make the best of it for awhile and then see what happened.  Veronica was all dressed up when she arrived, looking about as good as Leo could have imagined.

“A bit fancy for cigar shopping?” Leo inquired.

She laughed before replying.  “You’re quite the detective, huh?  But you missed the picture entirely my dear.  We’re going drinking Leo, not shopping.  It’s going to be quite a toot so I hope you’re ready for it.”

…to be continued

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 21)

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Leo was not the fastest man but he did have the advantage over the driver, who seemed to be having trouble moving at a pace much faster than a light jog.  The man did, however, have a rather loud voice and his cries of “Thief!” and “Police!” trailed after Leo as he ran out onto Fifth and then left around the corner onto Washington Street.  The man’s yelling was a little bit fainter there but increased again a few seconds later and Leo realized the driver was around the corner also and still chasing him down.  The overcoat was making it difficult to run but Leo did not have time to take it off and also did not want to leave it laying around for the police to find later.  So he kept on, people staring at him as he passed by, one hand holding his hat low over his eyes and the driver’s shouts chasing after him.  He crossed over State Avenue and then cut down an alley back toward Capitol Way.  As he neared the end of that dim passageway he slowed down to a walk and tried to hide the fact that he was breathing heavily by turning up the collar of his overcoat.  Two men engaged in a conversation glanced at him as he stepped onto the road but quickly turned back to their own business.  Leo was only two blocks north of Crombie’s and knew he could not walk directly past it to return to the hotel.  Instead he wove through a few other blocks and then turned onto Fourth right down by the waterfront.

It was here that another improbable coincidence occurred.  Leo needed to get to Columbia Street so he could walk the back way to the Governor and in doing so he passed directly in front of the Angelus Hotel.  By this point his breathing had recovered and he was doing his best to look relaxed and natural.  Veronica was out front talking to M.E. George and happened to look up at the passing figure, doing the classic double-take when she recognized the man she had known from McNeil Island.  Leo noticed nothing including how Veronica quickly excused herself from her discussion with the store owner and quietly followed behind him.  When he swung around the back of Seventh Street and ducked into the side entrance of the Governor, she stopped and sat down on a nearby bench.

Although not as sure about Leo as he seemed to be about her, she was always looking for a good partner in crime and believed Leo was at least useful in that regard.  She had made a decent place for herself in the criminal world, especially in these years of living in Olympia, but having a male partner could open up a few new angles for exploration.  It was curious that Leo was here, and it made Veronica a little bit nervous considering that he may have some back looking for her.  He did not even know who she really was and there had not been anything romantic between them for Leo to come back looking to reignite.  Either way, she needed to confront him, get some answers and then decide how to play this situation.  After a brief, playful discussion with the desk clerk she obtained Leo’s room number and several minutes later was banging at his door.

“Yes, what,” Leo began as he opened that door but then stopped cold.  His mouth moved a few times before he found his words again.  “Grace, good lord, what are you doing here?”

“I came up here to ask you the same damn thing Leo.  What the hell are you doing in Olympia?”

“Really, well, maybe we should talk inside.  Please come in.”

After getting her a glass of water Leo sat down and leaned forward.

“It was a shock to see you at the door Grace, but, well you might not believe it but I’ve been looking for you.”

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or afraid.”

Leo gave a small laugh.  “Really, no harm intended.  I was looking for you to see about getting some business started.  You know Grace,”

blue ribbon cigar box

blue ribbon cigar box

Veronica held up her hand to stop him.  “First of all, do you have a light?”  She reached into her heavy white cardigan and produced a Blue Ribbon cigar.  After Leo had produced a box of matches she lit it and breathed out heavily.  “And secondly, my name is Veronica.”

Leo just stared at her for several long moments but then recovered and replied.  “Well, that is a surprise.  I guess then I have been hunting for the wrong person all along.”

“Not the wrong person, just the wrong name.”  Veronica smiled as she said that, the act an unnatural one on her usually stern face and it looked more like the grimace of a dying patient trying to fight through a bout of internal pain.  It went away quickly, replaced by her usual scowl.  “So, to get back to the start of this conversation, what the hell are you doing in Olympia?”

Leo told her a story, not the real one of course as that reality did not really put him in the best light.  Instead, he told a version of it that was more suitable, one where he left Kansas City voluntarily because there was not enough money to be made there for a man of his talents.  He did include the mainly truthful fact that Tom Pendergast owed him a favor, the only point in his storytelling where Veronica openly scoffed at him.  She knew about the Pendergast machine, she told Leo, and there was not  much chance that a man like that owed even a penny to a small-time operator like Leo.  He tried to convince her, insisting that he had indeed made an impression on the man, but she would not believe it and cautioned him to, “stick to your little lies, not these grandiose things.”

Giving up, Leo finished his story by saying he had just arrived in Olympia and had been looking for her since then.

“That’s it?” Veronica asked.

“Yes.” Leo replied.

“You just passed the days away looking for me?”

“Like I said, yes.”  Leo tried to look sincere but it was not working.

“You’re either a terrible criminal, a terrible liar or maybe both.  I’m not sure at this point except that I’m disappointed.”

That seemed to hit Leo hard and he leaned back with a hurt look on his face.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Veronica continued, “I think you needed a place to hide from something, I don’t know what and it really doesn’t matter.  Maybe you remembered me, or maybe Olympia seems far away from everything else, or maybe you have some bushwa sentimental attachment to places you’ve been.  I don’t care about that either.  You are a criminal though, I know that for a fact.  And, you’re here and in my town, where I do business, so now you better come clean about what you’ve been up to.”

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 20)

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Angelus Hotel Olympia Wa - courtesy olympiahistory.org

Angelus Hotel Olympia Wa – proprietor and staff of M.E. George Grocery – courtesy olympiahistory.org

The incredible coincidence of Veronica’s presence in the same town as Leo, not to mention her living less than a block away from where he was staying, would be unbelievable in any story.  It was, however, true in this one.  Veronica had lived at the Angelus Hotel, located at 204 West 4th, for almost six years in what was an unusual stretch of location stability in her life.  All of the rooms were on the upper floors, with the entire ground level dedicated to various retail establishments including the M.E. George grocery where she occasionally picked up part-time work.  The owner of that business, Michael Edward, was one of the few people in town who knew Veronica and did not consider her to be a complete scoundrel.  She was good with numbers and he would ask her to check his books and inventory from time to time, and she also filled in at the register when he needed some time off.  On this particular day, with Leo sitting in a park around the corner, Veronica was off to tend to one of her other schemes.

Capitol Way Olympia WA looking south - Crombie's is on the left

Capitol Way Olympia WA looking south (caption is incorrect) – Crombie’s is on the left

She walked out of her building and proceeded to pass directly in front of the Governor, walking past the park although neither her nor Leo glanced in each other’s direction.  Instead she walked on and Leo got up four minutes later and walked back toward Crombie’s Drugstore which bordered the park on the north side.  While out previously inquiring about jobs and scouting locations, he had been in the drugstore while a delivery was bring made.  The store had a back entry, which was open at the time and Leo could clearly see the truck, rear door open and piled up with various boxes.  The driver, a short man with a slight hunchback, was standing at the lunch counter eating a sandwich and having a loud conversation with the owner Jack Crombie about his disagreements with President Coolidge.  Leo had already been dismissed Mr. Crombie, told that they did not need any help at the moment, but he lingered, sipping on a soda he had purchased and counting the minutes.  Twenty of them passed with the truck wide open and the driver and owner oblivious to anything except their own conversation.  It was the driver’s final comment, “I’ll see ya in two days,” made after he finally went back and unloaded the boxes, which gave Leo the information he had used to develop his plan.

It had indeed been two days since that observation and he wanted to see if everything happened again in the same way.  Purchasing a soda, he waited but the truck did not arrive.  Not wanting to be looked at suspiciously for lingering too long, he walked out and across the street, leaning up against the cold brick of a mercantile business.  Forty minutes later Leo saw the truck come around the corner and a short time after could see the driver at the lunch counter.  Making notes in his pad he counted off twenty three minutes this time and then returned to his hotel room.  It took another four scouting sessions before he felt confident enough in the timing of the deliveries to decide to undertake the mission the next time the truck was scheduled to come to the drugstore.  That day was January 21st and he woke that morning eager to put his plan into motion.

United Suitcase ad 1911 - similar to the one purchased by Leo

United Suitcase ad 1911 – similar to the one purchased by Leo

This first robbery was planned to be a small one, just a snatch and grab from the collection of boxes in the rear of the truck.  Leo wanted to see both what exactly might be in those packages and also determine what kind of reaction occurred.  Would the one missing box be noticed?  Would it be assumed to have been stolen, or maybe just lost off the truck?  Would the police be called?  Once he had that information he would be able to develop a plan for a larger robbery or possibly a series of smaller ones.  He had dressed for the event in a light grey suit, a brown overcoat and a dark grey fedora. He wanted to be nondescript and the wider brimmed hat would also allow him to partially cover his face by pulling it low and bending the edge.  Leo’s plan was to grab the box, walk out onto the side street off Capitol Way and duck into an alley that was one block west.  There he could open the box, get a quick idea of its contents and transfer them to a rather bulky United brand suitcase he had picked up from a secondhand store.  Once that was accomplished, he planned to stroll back to the Governor, looking to anyone who noticed like a guest coming in for a stay.   That was the plan he had come up with anyway and after tucking the suitcase behind a pile of garbage in that alleyway he walked toward the drugstore. Leo then stepped into the driveway behind Crombie’s, truck already parked and the driver inside,  feeling confident that the day was going to be a success.

It was a few small but important details, changes to what Leo had observed as the usual pattern of these deliveries, which would lead to the downfall of his plot.  Leo had not been inside the drugstore when the truck arrived, observing instead from across the street.  He missed the driver’s comment to Mr. Crombie, made as he came through the back door, that his wife was sick and he needed to pick up some medicine for her.  He also had not noticed that there was a sign in the front window, “Cook Sick – No Food Today,” which meant of course that there would be no lunch for the driver.  Instead, Mr. Crombie offered to prepare the medicine while the driver unloaded the truck.  That had begun while Leo stashed the suitcase and he was just lifting a box out of the vehicle when the hunchbacked man emerged from the store.  There was a shout, the box fell to the ground, and the chase was on.

…to be continued

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 19)

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Governor Hotel, later renamed the Mitchell Hotel, Olympia WA

Governor Hotel, later renamed the Mitchell Hotel, Olympia WA

Exactly how Leo traveled during his return to Washington, or how long it actually took, is unknown but by January 9th of 1926 he is listed as a guest of the Governor Hotel on Capitol Way.   The hotel, built in 1890 and well situated in the heart of the city, was a place you would probably not expect to find a man with a price on his head.   It was a clean, respectable establishment, definitely one of the more well-known lodging locations in town and a place to get yourself noticed.  It was this, the opportunity to be among the local and visiting bigwigs, that likely drew Leo to the Governor.  Along with his long burning desire to be more important socially he also had the rebuke from Pendergast, and the accompanying failure to succeed in Kansas City, hanging over his ego.  He had really thought he was going to end up being someone in that town.  So, even though he could barely afford it, Leo checked himself into a very nice double suite and started to think about ways to make some money.  He also was thinking about something else.

His initial interest in coming back to Olympia centered on finding Grace Melcher, his lone visitor from his McNeil Island days.  Although he never did disclose what they had discussed during that visit, Leo made little secret of the fact that he had found her to be a very interesting woman.  As he had once told Chaz Mayfield, she was, “A woman you could do business with and not have to worry about her getting soft on ya.”   How Leo knew that is another fact which is not known as only the one visit from her is recorded and no other records exist of their having communicated.  One thing he did not know then or when he arrived back in Olympia in 1926 was that she was well known in the area for her passing attachments to criminals, her many and varied small-time schemes and for her chain smoking of cigars.  Her name also was not Grace Melcher.

veronica stillman 1926

veronica stillman 1926

Veronica Stillman, who eventually went by a variety of names including the one Leo knew her under, had been born in Tuckerton, New Jersey in 1901 to a father named James Williamson who worked as a fisherman, and a mother named Anna.  Her parents were not married when she was born nor would they ever be, and James was in and out of their lives throughout Veronica’s childhood.  Her mother, a slim and attractive blonde with pale skin and light green eyes, made money by robbing men that she lured to their small apartment with promises of sex.  She always targeted men who were not locals, pulling a knife on them once their clothes were off. She would then relieve them of whatever money they had and threaten to report them to the local sheriff for trying to do improper things to her poor little girl if they made any kind of a fuss.  That was just one example of the kind of cons and scams Anna was running and she was never shy about invoking Veronica when it suited her purposes.  Being involved, even indirectly, in her mother’s schemes from a early age led to Veronica growing into a cynical and rather cold young woman.  She also picked up her mother’s penchant for petty crimes and minor felonies along the way,  running her own operations on the side by the time she had turned fourteen.  At sixteen, in a reenactment of her own mother’s life, she ran off with a local fisherman also named James, and was soon living in Gloucester, Massachusetts as Veronica Gibbs.  That marriage did not last long and when she was eighteen she is listed as Betty Cooper on an arrest report in Chicago.  She becomes lost after that, next turning up as a possible accomplice to Roy Gardner during his McNeil Island escape, and then, as we know, she met Leo Humbert.  By the time he started looking for her in 1926, Veronica was a severe looking twenty-five year old woman with short, dark brown hair and hard brown eyes that looked at the world with a calculated lack of passion.

Capitol Way by Governor Hotel

Capitol Way by Governor Hotel

Leo only knew that he was trying to find Grace, who had told him she was from Olympia, and he was determined to do so.  The day after checking into the Governor Hotel he started asking around while also surveying opportunities to make some money.  He thought about going to the hardware store where he had worked during his short stint in Olympia after his release from prison but then remembered how much he had hated the job and the man for whom he worked.  There was a drugstore, Crombie’s, and Harris’ Dry Goods near the hotel and he inquired at both but was politely turned away.  He received the same response at all the other places he went, always going in with a story of his experience in whatever job it was, and always being told they were not interested in hiring him.  It probably would have been discouraging to most people but not to Leo, who was really using the job inquires to case each place for whatever criminal opportunity it might present to him.  He also was making contacts along the way and making note of the police activity in the area.  After two days of this, and still with no luck finding Grace, Leo sat in Sylvester Park contemplating his next move.   As he sat there on a unseasonably warm fifty degree day and scribbled notes on a small pad of paper, Veronica Stillman stepped out of her apartment building, which was directly around the corner from the Governor Hotel.

…to be continued

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 9)

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I guess it would be more accurate to say that these aliases were born at some point during Leo’s confinement in prison, as it was certainly something about which he had been thinking.  These are the main alternate names he would continue to use throughout the remainder of his life and their origin is fairly easy to determine.  Lee O’Dare is a play on his first name and Robert O’Hara uses the first name of two men who had played a role in his early criminal development.  Leo used those names interchangeably in the years to come, along with a few variations closer to his actual identify, as he traveled along the path of crime that he seemed incapable of escaping.  He also sprinkled in a good number of other aliases, although those were used only for very short periods of time in attempts to mask his identify from local law enforcement.  He would actually be arrested under these various names several times in his life including the first time he was taken back into custody after McNeil.  That was, however, several years in the future and for now he has just emerged from prison.

Leo did seem to make another attempt at legitimacy, applying to the University of Hawaii immediately after his release and lingering for a month or two in Washington State waiting for a reply.  During this time he lived under his real name at a shabby rooming house in Olympia, with a few reports indicating he worked part-time at a nearby hardware store.  Eventually the answer did come, a simple letter expressing the university’s regret that they could not admit him, and he departed the area sometime in early 1925.

Pacific House Hotel Kansas City MO

Pacific House Hotel Kansas City MO

Using a combination of train and bus travel, Leo arrived in the Kansas City, Missouri area in February of 1925, setting himself up at the Pacific House Hotel.  This lodging establishment had previously been the best in town but had fallen from that stature by the time Leo arrived.  Although it could claim that the James brothers had hung out at the bar, and that it had housed occupying Union troops during the Civil War, by 1925 it was a rundown building with seedy clientele.  When Leo moved in he promptly met Chuck Miner, a small-time operator in fencing stolen property.  Miner happened to be in the outlying orbit of a man, Tom Pendergast, who was becoming increasingly powerful in Kansas City and the surrounding area.

Tom Pendergast courtesy vcu.edu

Tom Pendergast courtesy vcu.edu

Tom Pendergast had been making his way up the ladder of Kansas City politics and influence for quite awhile, beginning with assisting his brother James in gaining control over the West Bottoms area of the city.  Much of their influence came from providing vice opportunities to the working class in this poor and rundown area, and their wealth came from the profits associated with those illegal business ventures.  James eventually became an alderman and fought for the working-class residents of his ward, promoting ideas such as citywide garbage collection, parks and the maintenance of fire stations.  The family business, however, remained fixed in the areas of vice that they had always profited from and James used his influence to protect those enterprises.  He also provided jobs, via the political spoils system, to members of his family including his brother Tom who began his ascent as a constable in the court system.  Following James’ death in 1911, Tom ran for and won his council seat and by 1925 was poised to basically take over the political power in the city.  That power, wielded freely and in a wide-ranging way by Pendergast, provided opportunities for some of the criminal elements in Kansas City.

Leo only factors into the history of the 1920’s Kansas City crime scene in a small way.  Chuck Miner struck up a conversation with Leo, who inflated his criminal resume by including several arrests and a prison term in Hawaii that never happened.  These tall tales matched the stories Leo had been telling at McNeil during the latter part of his imprisonment, which was fortuitous for Humbert.  Chuck knew a man who had also been imprisoned there and just been released, and that man verified that Leo was an experienced criminal.  Convinced that he was a like-minded fellow, Chuck gave Leo the name of a person who could provide him with some opportunities to make money.   These jobs were of course illegal in nature, something to which Leo did not object.  Although he proved to have little talent or interest in making liquor runs or strong-arming merchants and voters, he did prove to have skills in car theft and converting stolen property.  He spent almost a year in Kansas City, living well enough to eventually move out of the Pacific House and avoiding arrest mostly through the corruption of the local police force.  Leo also made several more connections on the edges of the city’s criminal world and was known as a competent and trustworthy operator.

Although it is hard to tell exactly when Leo changed his name in Kansas City, the first record available is when he moved out of the Pacific House.  Every reference to his stay there lists him as Leo Humbert and when he moved into the Savoy Hotel in June 1925 he is known as Lee O’Dare.  His room, a third floor corner space that overlooked 9th Street, was fashionable for the time and a big step up from his former address.   There were several other residents at the Savoy who were also members of the city’s criminal element, and this group would often sit around and drink their morning coffee in the hotel restaurant.  It was a small group of small-time operators but they looked out for each other and passed along excess jobs when they could.  The group had no leader but Leo was considered to be smart and well-mannered and he may have eventually risen to a position of influence in Kansas City.  However, this was not to be as one day in December 1925 Leo crossed the wrong person.

…to be continued

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 6)

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Just how Leo Humbert, who at the time of his conviction in the territory of Hawaii was a civilian, ended up as a prisoner at the Pacific Branch, U.S. Military Prison on Alcatraz Island is partially lost to the passage of time.  On October 18, 1921, when Leo was received there, Alcatraz was a prison used to house, with very few exceptions, military prisoners.  The men held there were broken up into two group; those in what were referred to as disciplinary companies, and those referred to as general prisoners.  In the spirit of rehabilitation, the disciplinary companies were used to try to restore men who had committed relatively minor crimes to active duty.  They basically served a four month period of training during which they received military-oriented instruction, more privileges than the general prisoners, the right to be referred to by name rather than number, and the ability to be evaluated at the end to go back onto active duty.  The program proved rather successful in the short period of time it was in place on Alcatraz.  Leo, prisoner number 13267, was not a member of this special company.

mcneil island prison courtesy legends of america

mcneil island prison courtesy legends of america

Although it is possible that the Army had intervened in some way to get him sent there, it is more likely that he was transferred there only as a stopping point on his way to McNeil Island prison in Washington, where he ultimately ended up serving the majority of his time.  Leo spent about three and a half weeks as a prisoner of Alcatraz, transferring out on November 9th, so any additional punishment the Army may have hoped he would receive by being in the general prisoner population there was short-lived.  No other records exist of his time there and the next mention of him is of being received at the United States Penitentiary McNeil Island, Washington on November 11, 1921.

gardner escape mcneil island newspaper

gardner escape mcneil island newspaper

It was a rather tense time at the prison when Leo arrived.  Just a few months before, on September 5th, prisoner Roy Gardner had made good on his escape threat from McNeil, running off during a baseball game while the guards were distracted.  The drama surrounding that, with Gardner recaptured in Arizona just the day before Leo arrived, had everyone at the prison on high alert.  Guards were wary, procedures were tight and even the prisoners seemed to sense that screwing around was not a very good idea, especially with the count of armed guards having been increased over the last few months.  Most of that increase was attributable to the fact that over seventy-five rounds had been fired at Gardner as he ran off, all of them failing to actually stop him.  Things like that tended to be a little embarrassing and every guard was determined to not have a repeat performance.

thomas maloney courtesy digitalarchives.wa.gov

thomas maloney courtesy digitalarchives.wa.gov

None of that seemed to make the slightest difference to Leo, who was fascinated by the entire Gardner escape and constantly asked questions about it.  Guards, prisoners, even the warden Thomas Maloney, none of them were exempt from questioning, with Leo spending his evenings jotting down notes in a small paper pad he kept tucked into his bed frame.  He asked about which guards were on duty, who knew about it beforehand, what everyone thought had happened during Gardner’s time on the lam, and every other detail you could imagine.  He also convinced a few of the prisoners to draw a map, as best as they could remember, of exactly how the caper had went down that September day.  He was vocal about it too, not really bothering to hide the fact that he considered Gardner to be a hero.  Eventually a few of the prisoners, possibly following some prompting from the guards, cornered Leo behind the bakery and gave a him a fairly good beating.  That worked for four days, the amount of time that he was confined to the infirmary, healing up his black eyes, bleeding kidneys and other injuries.  As he walked out of sickbay that day he yelled up to a guard in a tower, “I’m hoping your aim is still lousy” and then laughed before lighting a cigarette.

mcneil island guard tower 1920 1950 courtesy digitalarchives.wa.gov

mcneil island guard tower 1920 1950 courtesy digitalarchives.wa.gov

When he returned to his cell, the notebook of course was gone, and he found that his privilege of even having access to any kind of paper had been taken away.  That did not stop Leo, it just hindered him a bit as he slowly managed to trade away cigarettes and other small items for pieces of paper and eventually an even smaller notebook than he had possessed before his beating.  These items came from those prisoners who were less afraid of the guards and shared some of Leo’s thinking on the relative merits of Gardner’s escape.  He continued to collect information, make maps, and keep notes during the remainder of his time at the prison.  It is also likely that he managed to figure out the identity of the outside accomplice who had aided Gardner in the days immediately following his escape, something the authorities had never been able to do.  That person would play a role in some of Leo’s future endeavors and may have actually been in contact with him while he was imprisoned there.  Although he never actually escaped from McNeil, it is very possible that this is where the first inklings of the idea of prison escape started to form in Leo’s head.