Three Burglars taken by Maxwell Posse

ROTHROCK, LINK, TROUP, HARRISON, THOMPSON, SMITH

Posted By: Deborah Gilbert (email)
Date: 9/13/2016 at 10:11:41

Maxwell Book: 1883-1983
(Items from the Maxwell Tribune)

02 Mar 1922

Last Thursday about 9:30 Marshal Jess Rothrock received a telephone call from Toledo advising him that three men, suspected of having robbed a store at Toledo early that morning, were on a west bound freight train which would stop at Maxwell for water. Within the half hour following he received five other calls from Tama, Toledo and Ferguson, at which latter place the trio had been routed from the train but succeeded in getting on again. When the train was heading into Maxwell, Rothrock and Messrs. W. F. Link and Walter Troup were in waiting and rode back on the engine, which came to the tank for water. As they neared the train the tree men left a box car in which they had been riding and started to run across the meadow to the south, in the direction of the tile factory. The posse immediately gave chase, but as they were in a plowed field the men gained on them and were nearing the ravine which they evidently counted on as a hiding place or possible avenue of escape. Messrs. Rothrock and Troup fired a shot each in the direction of the men, who immediately stopped and gave themselves up. They were brought to town and placed in the 'coop' and the Tama county authorities notified by wire of their capture. In the afternoon, Sheriff Harrison, of Tama county, Marshal Thompson, of Toledo, and Mr. Smith, whose store was burglarized, drove to Maxwell and the latter identified the clothing which the men wore as his property.