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HALF MILLION OF LOOT RECOVERED
(Continued From Page One) proximately 600 thousand dollars' worth of the bonds," he said. "For several weeks we have had under surveillance two places where we suspected the bonds were hidden. Night before last, we had about made up our minds that the time was opportune for raid. "I was asleep at my home when the telephone rang. It was sometime before 2 a. m. and upon answering the phone, I heard a man's voice say: "If you will go immediately to the corner of Armitage and Newcastle avenues, you will find what you have been looking for.
"Then he hung up Newcastle and Armitage avenues happen to be about 500 feet from my home, in what you might call a wild and wooly suburb of Chicago. I didn't know what it was but must confess that I wouldn't have been surprised if, after going to that corner, I would have found a hall of lead. You know those things happen here in Chicago. "I immediately put in calls for Touzinsky, Roberts and one or two other officers. We had a good supply of machine guns trained on the corner by officers hidden about and Touzinsky, Roberts and I walked up to the corner.
"There, in a suitcase leaning against the pole, we found the bonds There was not a soul in sight." "What part did Gus Winkler play in the return of these bonds," Steffens was asked politely.
"I can only say this," he went on. "I had hell of a lot of help from the underworld. Frankly know what it's all about; how they came to be returned-but I'm not making any speeches about It." At that point Steffen said gingerly: "There has absolutely been no compromise with crime in the return of these bonds. And don't let that little prosecutor of yours out there (Max Towle, county atorney at Lincoln) take any bum raps about it. He absolutely made no compromise with Winkler or anybody else." And then he summed up his story with this:
"Barkley was jubilant when Iwe turned the bonds back to him. Max Towle was as happy as a kid with a new toy and now, with the bonds back safely in the hands of their rightful owners, we, here in Illinois, pledge again to keep on the case until we have every hoodlum who participated in that holdup behind prison bars." Towle, in the office of the 'Secret Six," said:
"There's not much to be added to what Sergeant Steffens has told you. We have the bonds back, and we're stimulated anew to keep after the bandit gang which stole them." Asked what part he thought Winkler played in bringing about the recovery of the loot, Towle said: "I think he gave Steffens a lot of help, all right." Towle said he did not know what effect the return of the bonds would have in Lincoln.
"Im a prosecutor, not a banker," he smiled, and he referred the correspondent to Mr. Barkley at the LaSalle hotel.
Towle, Steffen and Barkley all differed in their estimates of the estimated them at close to 600 thouamount of bonds returned. Steffens sand; Barkley a approximately 575 thousand and Towle at something over half million."
"Three banks failed because of this robbery," said Mr. Barkley, but I am happy to say that now the depositors in those banks will get a much larger dividend. Six or seven other correspondent banks of the Lincoln National are now safe and their securities, representing chiefly; capital stock deposited in the Lincoln National, will be returned to them. "As for the Lincoln National itself, its assets have been sold, but its stockholders and depositors who had securities deposited for safe keeping in its vaults will get them back." Mr. Barkley estimated the stockholders and depositors had stood to lose about equally, and that altogether there were perhaps one hundred individuals affected. He could make no estimate of the number of depositors in the correspondent banks which will be benefited. Intermittent jets of drama flared up during the 16 months since the raid on the bank in Lincoln, throwing bold light at times on the quiet determined investigation chiefly by Steffens and the "Secret Six." The inquiry has gone forward in many states of the middle west, police of Nebraska, Iillinois, Michigan, Iowa and a number of other states pooling their resources to trail the robber band and uncover the loot. Throughout the intervening months Winkler has loomed as the chief figure in the investigation. Captured near Benton Harbor, Mich., after an auto accident that cost him the sight of one eye, the gangster-aviator vowed his innocence but was "identi fied" and taken to Nebraska, where Pop Lee and Tommy O'Connor of East St. Louis already had been convicted and sentenced to 25 years each in the pen.
Winkler asserted he could prove himself innocent, but that he feared "railroading" to prison because of his reputation as a Chicago gangster. His friends dug up a 100 thousand dollar bond for him. Winkler came back to Chicago, and announced if Nebraska would investigate his alibi and free him, he would spend 75 thousand dollars of his own money, buy back the loot from the real gang that held them and return the bonds to Nebraska officials. Sergeant Steffens branded the report that thousands were spent by Winkler and his associates to bring about returns of the bonds as the purest bunk. "If Winkler had enough influence to know where those bonds were and who held them, do you suppose he would be foolish enough to spend one penny to get them back to us? It's absurd," said Steffen. County Attorney Towle and Steffen went to Buffalo, investigated Winkler's alleged alibi, found that it was "air-tight" and dismissed Winkler of the Nebraska charge. And now the bonds are back. Did Winkler return them? Ask Steffens. Ask Towle. Ask Touzinsky. Ask Roberts. They won't tell.
Barkley left Chicago by train for Lincoln. Towle, who has his auto in Chicago, said he will wait a few days until the highways are cleared of snow.-World Herald.
Two horses were shot under Col. George Washington, and four bullets went through his clothing at the time of Braddock's defeat.
