Posts Tagged ‘Porsch’

11
Aug

Youthful Trio is Bound Over

   Posted by: admin    in Crime, Police court, theft

The Fort Dodge Messenger: Aug. 11, 1903

Youthful Trio is Bound Over

Three Boys, Youngest 7 and Oldest 12, Must Answer to Grand Jury

Enter Stores Sunday Evening

Earl Tennant, Harry Porsch and Arthur Hutchison, Ages 12, 9 and 7, Arrested for Entering Craft Hardware and Ertl Meat Market.

A record was set in the Webster county criminal court this morning when a 7-year-old boy was bound over to the grand jury. The youthful offender is Arthur Hutchison, who with Harry Porsch, aged 9, and Earl Tennant, aged 12, was arraigned before Justice Martin, charged with entering the Charles Craft hardware store and the Martin Ertl meat market. The defendants were bound over to the grand jury under $300 bonds, which was furnished by their parents.

The identity of the burglars was learned by tracing the possession of a pocket knife which was among the number stolen from the hardware store. A.H. Werner, employed at the Oakdale dairy, showed Marshal Welch a knife bearing the mark of the Craft Hardware company. The knife he said he had bought from a boy named Joe Rossing. Young Rossing when taken into custody by the police, said that he had been given the two knives by the three boys who were later arrested. One of the knives he had sold to Werner.

The arrest of Harry Porsch, Arthur Hutchison and Earl Tennant followed. After a number of questions had been asked they admitted that they had entered the stores and taken the money and the property. The police had some difficulty in locating the plunder as the stories told by the boys differed materially. Finally by the light of a lantern and under the guidance of the  youthful burglars, the police located two revolvers and twelve boxes of cartridges under a pile of lathes in the rear of the high school building, two buggy whips under a crossing on Tenth street and a number of knives  hidden in a barn at young Tennant’s home.

The substance of the story told by Arthur Hutchison, the most youthful of the trio, is as follows:

He met Harry Porsch and Earl Tennant at the base ball park Sunday afternoon. They were driving a horse which they said they had hired in the east part of town. They told him they had entered the meat market from the rear and taken $2.45 ($59 today) from the cash drawer, $1 ($24) of which they had paid for the hire of the horse. He accompanied them up town, and at 6 o’clock they again entered the building, he going with them. This time they went into the hardware store, and together with a third entrance carried away the revolvers, cartridges, knives, whips and about $6 ($144) from the cash drawer. The aggregate value of the goods stolen is about $24 ($575).

They entered by removing the boards from a cellar window on the east side of the building.

Young Porsch was employed by Ertl as delivery boy.

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