James McAndrews Jr.: Courts of yesteryear operated with lightning speed

Even in the Modesto of a hundred years ago, crimes were poorly committed and for the dimmest of reasons. However, unlike today, the speed at which the criminals were put on trial was downright breathtaking.

It was near midnight on Sunday, July 5, 1914, when Clarence Hobron and Ira Cottner decided to go to the post office, where Hobron worked, to see if any new mail had been put into Cottner’s box. Located at 110 I St., the post office was a building big enough not only to accommodate the city’s mail transactions, but a newsstand could even fit in it. While looking at the box, Cottner and Hobron heard sounds that convinced them they weren’t alone in the building. They were certain someone was on the other side of the partition when they heard the loud crashing of glass.

Modesto police Officers Elliot and Wallace arrived at the scene and it didn’t take too long to figure out where the burglar was. The burglar left a long trail of blood behind him due to crashing through a plate glass window. The trail led police to The Swan Inn. Continuing to follow the blood, they went up the stairs and through the hallway until they came to the door of J. Walcott Jackson.

They found Jackson lying on his bed with a very bloody leg that he claimed he had gotten earlier in the evening. Jackson continued to claim the leg wound was “a superficial flesh wound” that had not been caused by diving through a pane of glass at the post office. In the meantime, the post office was inspected and it was discovered that several hundred letters had been opened and searched for money.

Jackson had run the newsstand in the post office until he had recently sold it, thus giving him a good idea of where to look in search for money. Jackson was searched and was found to be carrying a hundred dollars in gold and several dollars in bills. The Modesto Evening News also reported that along with the money was found “a communication ticket on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad with the terminus at Hoboken, New Jersey, showing that at some time he must have been living in the vicinity of New York.”

Postmaster Wade Howell arrived from Stockton the next day; after several hours of interrogation, Jackson’s story was in tatters. On July 6, he was sent by train to Stockton to be arraigned on federal charges. When Jackson couldn’t pay the $2,000 bail, he was sent from Stockton to the Alameda County jail to await his trail before a federal judge. Post office Inspector W.L. Madeira of San Francisco also came to Modesto to reward the police officers involved in the quick apprehension of the burglar. Madeira told the Evening News on July 8, 1914, that “in all his experience he had never seen a clearer case, and that it would be impossible for Jackson to overcome the evidence that has been gathered against him.”

The July 16, 1914, the Evening News summed up the Jackson case when it wrote that he “pleaded guilty before Judge Dooling in San Francisco yesterday and was sentenced to serve a year in the Alameda County Jail. Jackson had previously confessed to the federal officers.” It was at this point that Jackson “when sentenced yesterday as a post office robber, revealed himself as J. Walcott Jackson III, grandson of the deceased president of the Lackawanna railroad, remittance man and black sheep of a millionaire family.” Jackson committed his crime on the night of July 5-6, 1914, and was sentenced on July 16 of the same year.

The courts of a century ago operated with breathtaking speed.

This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 3:38 PM with the headline "James McAndrews Jr.: Courts of yesteryear operated with lightning speed."