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# STENSLAND'S SON # SCENTS SUICIDE. TELLS STORY OF HOW DEFALCA- TION CAME TO LIGHT AND OF THE ESCAPE. GOTLETTERS FROM MINNESOTA Last Word of Fugitive by Vice President of Chicago Defunct Bank Came from Gopher State. CHICAGO, Ill., Aug. 13. The Tribune today says that Theodore Stensland, son of the fugitive Milwaukee Avenue bank wrecker, has made a full statement of his knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the flight of his father and touching the colossal forgery fraud in the bank. He declares absolutely that he was not only ignorant of the steals perpetrated but that he never profited in any way from them. Thinks His Father Is Dead. The young man advanced the belief that his father has not fled the country, but has committed suicide. He also advanced the theory that his father could not himself have committed the forgeries of notes because of an impediment through a street car accident in his control of the pen in recent years. He thinks also that Cashier Henry W. Hering could not have sufficiently disguised his own distinctive chirography to perform the imitations and that, therefore, an outside expert was employed for the purpose of copying signatures on blank checks. It became known in the evening that young Stensland late on Saturday had given to Receiver John C. Fetzer for the benefit of the bank depositors a deed to all the Cook county real estate held by his father, who had given him power of attorney. Tells the Whole Story. Young Stensland is a man of giant frame. "I'll tell you just how it was from start to finish," he said. "In the first place, I never knew anything was wrong in the bank with the exception of the stealings of Walter Frantzen, the receiving teller in 1901. When they were discovered Frantzen was discharged. His thefts were about $40,000. "My father shouldered the responsibility for the shortage and refusing to prosecute Frantzen hushed up the whole matter, because he feared a run on the bank. Conference with His Father. "Now, to come down to present times, let us go back to the Saturday before my father went away that was July 14, I believe. My father sent for me to come to the bank late that afternoon. I found him busy near the safety deposit vaults. It appears that he had been telling Hering and Aalbery and some others that day that he was going away for a short vacation. He left me power of attorney. Then my father called Boedeker, custodian of the vaults, and said: 'Boedeker, I guess Theodore had better give up his small box, and you can put him down as part owner of mine. I will give him one of my keys.' "He started to hand the key to me, and then hesitated in an absent-minded sort of way. I was in a hurry to get home on account of sickness in the family. Departure of the Banker. "The next day-Sunday-I received an urgent telephone message from my father to come to his house in Irving Park immediately. When I got there all my father wanted was to know if I knew where he would find a certain shawl strap. I thought this was a peculiar thing and got him one. When I returned I found my father had packed his effects in a big grip and no longer wanted the shawl strap. "When I came to go away my father bade me good-bye, saying he would be away only a short time and that he would go to Duluth to look at some dock property." Young Stensland said he returned home and heard nothing more of his father until the next morning, when he found a letter from his father, which had been mailed before he left Chicago. Letter from Minnesota. "That letter," continued the young man, "cautioned me again concerning the Curtis property deal. My father said I would find the power of attorney in the deposit box and added, 'I inclose the key to the box. The funny thing about it was that there was no key inclosed. I suppose he forgot. The real estate deal was postponed. Later I got the key in a letter." The letter which young Stensland thereupon drew from a sheaf of papers was an undated sheet of hotel paper bearing the letter head of the Golden West hotel, Royalton, Minn. The letter read: Dear Theodore: Just in from the woods and have to go back with the team when ready to start. I hope everything is O. K. at the bank. Ask Hering to put in some hard strokes and I will take hold with renewed vigor when back from my trip. More later. After this, said Stensland, things ran along smoothly at the bank, though he heard nothing more from his father until on Friday, August 3. Debt Memorandum Mentioned. "On that day," continued the young man, "I received a letter from my father which was postmarked St. Paul. A safety deposit box key dropped from the envelope. It was the companion key to the one father had sent me in the previous letter. "In the letter father asked me how things were at the bank. Then he referred to having bad bad luck in the real estate deals and the loss of money generally. He said that things at the bank had not gone as they should have gone, and finally he said that I would find in his vault box a memorandum of his indebtedness to the bank. After that he devoted a couple of paragraphs to remarks on the relation of father and son. List Shows $1,000,000 "Owed." "I went right over to the bank that afternoon and opened the box. In the midst of the mass I found a long envelope addressed "Theodore Stensland.' Above the address was a notation in my father's handwriting: "The list of names in my own writing is taken from notes which Hering claims are my obligations.' "Below the address was this notation: "The little red memorandum book will show my indebtedness in December, 1901. This of course includes Frantzen's stealings.' Lists Do Not Agree. "I opened the envelope and found two sheets of paper. One was a list of notes in father's writing. The other was a list of notes in Hering's writing. Father's list totaled $1,003,000. Hering's list was not totaled, but it proved to be some $300.000 or $400,000 less than father's. There were lots of names on father's that were not on Hering's, and I didn't understand then and don't now the relation between the two lists." MAKES SHROUD; KILLS SELF.