Honoring Our Legacy; Inspiring Our Future

Introduction

Not all criminals directly attacked the mail by robbing stagecoaches or trains. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, extortion groups like the Black Hand Society terrorized hundreds of citizens with threatening letters that demanded payment—or else!

Frank Oldfield and the Black Hand Society

Considered one of the first organized crime rings, the Black Hand Society would send intimidating letters to wealthy businessmen threatening arson, kidnapping, and/or murder to extort ransom or “protection payments” out of their victims. During this time, many businesses were burned to the ground or blown up, and many victims were brutally beaten or murdered. Because these criminals perpetrated most of their crimes using the mail, Post Office inspectors had full jurisdiction over many investigations into the Black Hand Society. The letters were infamously signed with an anonymous ink-drawn human hand which gave the crime ring their nom de plume. By the end of their reign of terror, the Society reached from San Francisco to New York, and many places in between.

Post Office Inspector Frank Oldfield led the investigation into the Black Hand Society’s activities in Ohio. Oldfield successfully took down the Society’s primary faction, which stretched from Ohio to California.

But in 1909, the Society reemerged, posing as a group of fruit merchants. With evidence stacked against them, Oldfield arrested sixteen members of the society. On January 8, 1910, Oldfield received his own “Black Hand Letter” that stated if he continued the cases against the gang, Oldfield and another four federal officials would be “under sentence of death.” Undeterred by the threat, Oldfield continued his investigation. Oldfield’s tough, undaunted stance set a precedent: Would-be victims of the Black Hand Society stopped giving into intimidation and meeting the Society’s illegal demands. Today, letters that threaten and extort are still aggressively investigated by postal inspectors.(11)

The Yeggmen

Another notorious crime ring of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the “Yeggmen” — burglars and safecrackers widely known for using nitroglycerin or dynamite to blow open safes and then escape with large sums of money and mail. The term Yeggmen was coined by Pinkerton detectives after a thief sent $540 to the Pinkerton agency and signed the letter “John Yegg.”

At the same time organized crime rings were terrorizing the mail, the Rural Free Delivery (RFD) system launched. Prior to 1902, people living in rural areas had to retrieve their mail at distant Post Offices or pay private carriers for delivery. The RFD system created new routes for mail carriers to reach these rural areas.

Post Office Inspectors and Rural Free Delivery

Postal inspectors were critical to the success of the RFD system. The Post Office Department assigned inspectors to determine the practicality of various routes for the new service. However, there was push-back from the express companies being paid to deliver mail to rural communities. Ultimately, many of the opposing groups realized that RFD could be beneficial to business and began to stand with the farmers and rural towns lobbying for RFD outposts. The first phase of the RFD system began in West Virginia and steadily grew throughout the early 1900s. In 1916, The Rural Post Roads Act authorized federal funds to create rural post roads.(12)

While the RFD system was well underway, Postal Inspector John Clum was making his way through the wilds of Alaskan Territory to establish mail delivery. Clum had quite the career behind him when he was appointed a Post Office inspector. In 1874, he was named the Indian agent at the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, where he worked to keep the peace between Native Americans and western settlers. Clum established the first Tribal Police and Tribal Court and, through developing relationships with local tribes, was able to convince Apache leader Geronimo to surrender to the United States peacefully.

John Clum

After he resigned from his post, Clum became the Mayor of Tombstone, AZ, in 1881, and founded both the Tucson Citizen and Tombstone Epitaph newspapers. As a witness to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, he was the first journalist to report on the famous shootout. Eventually, he became close friends with Wyatt Earp and even served as a pall bearer at the legendary lawman’s funeral in 1929.

Clum was appointed Post Office inspector in 1898 and assigned to the Alaska Territory. Within his first year in Alaska, Clum traveled more than 8,000 miles and established Post Offices across the territory. He was known for carrying with him everything he needed to establish a working Post Office within days—stamps, money orders, mail bags, locks, and keys. Clum left Alaska in 1909 and spent the next several years touring the country and lecturing for the Southern Pacific Railroad until his retirement in 1920.(13)

William Kenyon and WWI Mail

During the First World War, Post Office inspectors like William Kenyon were vital to the success of military mail delivery. Kenyon continued the military mail delivery and money order systems established by David B. Parker during the Civil War. Eventually, these processes would lead to Army Post Offices (APOs).

Kenyon began his career as a Post Office inspector in 1906 in New Orleans. He was a top inspector during the height of organized crime rings like the Black Hand Society and Yeggmen. When World War I began, Kenyon was sent to France to help establish mail service for military branches in foreign territories. His primary goal was to create Post Offices and routes to occupying troops, requiring him to always stay one step ahead of military movement. After eight months in France, Kenyon had set up more than 30 APOs and mail systems. Once he returned to the states, he was drafted into the war but continued his role with APOs. After the armistice was signed, Kenyon became the Chief of the Army Postal Service in Germany.(14)

After WWI, Kenyon went back to his role as an inspector in New York. However, when the Second World War started, he was named the acting chief of the Army Postal Service and continued his vital work for military mail delivery. Today, Army Mail is still organized and distributed through the APO system developed by Kenyon.(15)

Charles Ponzi and the Ponzi Scheme

As WWI came to an end and the world was settling into a new era, Charles Ponzi was investigated by Post Office inspectors in one of the largest “pyramid schemes” in history. Ponzi had a history of criminal activity and spent many years in jail. Once released in 1919, Ponzi found work as a translator and became familiar with a little-used postal product, the International Reply Coupon (IRC), that would become the center of his famous scheme.

Markland was raised in Kentucky in a well-to-do family and was sent to the Maysville Academy in the Ohio Valley as a young boy. Here, he met his lifelong friend, Ulysses S. Grant, who would later help launch Markland’s successful career. Markland was appointed a special agent of the Post Office Department in 1861, and charged with investigating fraud, theft, and misconduct. It wasn’t long, however, before Markland’s responsibilities expanded to include establishing mail services to mobile Union troops without giving up the movement and location of soldiers to the Confederacy. Markland became a critical asset to Grant’s troops, attending meetings with President Lincoln and carrying that intelligence to the Union generals. His secrecy and bravery quickly earned him the honorary title of Colonel. No other special agent of the Post Office Department has had Markland’s breadth of civil and military authority during war.

Ponzi claimed that IRCs purchased in European nations were worth more in the U.S. than their original cost. He thought if he could find a way to purchase and then sell them at high volume, he would become rich. By promising high returns in short periods, he convinced a few investors to loan him the start-up funds for his new company, “Securities Exchange Company.”

Unfortunately, Ponzi never worked out a way to convert the IRCs into real money, and he was forced to pay off the early investors with the funds received from newer investors. Seeing what they thought was a return on investment, many investors took their earnings and reinvested. Before long, Ponzi was raking in more than $250,000 a day—almost $4 million today. Post Office inspectors warned investors not to throw in with Ponzi. Unfortunately, many ignored the inspectors’ warnings.(16)

By the end of the illegal scheme, Ponzi had accumulated more than $15 million, more than $240 million today. But the number of investors expecting a payout surpassed the number of new investors. The bottom tier of the pyramid collapsed, and Ponzi was revealed as a fraudster. Ponzi was quickly arrested. On November 1, 1920, he pled guilty to 86 counts of mail fraud and was sentenced to five years in federal prison for these crimes.(17)

Some of the most infamous mail robberies occurred in the 1920s. In 1921, Gerald Chapman, who later would become the first “Public Enemy #1,” and Dutch Anderson robbed a U.S. mail truck in New York City. They made off with more than $2 million (more than $35 million in today’s dollars), making it the largest U.S. robbery of the time.(18) After being arrested and tried in 1922 for the robbery, Chapman managed to escape authorities on two separate occasions. He was caught again in 1925 and sentenced to death by hanging on April 26, 1926.

The DeAutremont Brothers

Two years after the Chapman mail truck robbery, the DeAutremont brothers, Roy, Ray, and Hugh, robbed a mail train in Tunnel 13 on the Southern Pacific Railroad in southern Oregon. Their inexperience with explosives led to the death of four people, including a mail clerk.

The brothers managed to escape the crime scene and led Post Office inspectors on one of the longest and most expensive manhunts in U.S. history. Post Office inspectors caught up with the brothers in 1926. Hugh DeAutremont had made it as far as joining the Army under a fake name and was stationed in the Philippines. Handwriting experts discovered his enlistment forms matched the handwriting of letters sent prior to the robbery, and he was quickly located and extradited back to the United States. The other two brothers were in Ohio, working as farmers under different names. The three brothers were all tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for the robbery and the murders of a postal employee and three railway employees.(19)

The Rondout Robbery

The largest mail train robbery occurred in 1924 in Rondout, Illinois. The event sparked the 1998 movie “The Newton Boys” starring Matthew McConaughey.

On June 12, 1924, around 9:00 p.m., two men climbed aboard a train, forcing the engineer and firemen at gunpoint to stop the train. Four other co-conspirators were waiting at the stop point and climbed onto the train. After threatening the workers, the criminals made off with more than $2 million in cash, money orders, and mail. During the attack, one of the bandits left his position and ended up being shot five times by one of his co-conspirators. This mistake would lead Post Office inspectors to the six men responsible for the robbery, including one of their own, Post Office Inspector William J. Fahy.

Three of the culprits were quickly found by tracing the whereabouts of the wounded Willie Newton. Inspectors realized that the men responsible for the robbery had no experience robbing trains and started to suspect they had assistance from the inside which led them to Fahy.

Fahy was a highly respected inspector, but due to financial issues, fell in with “Big Tim” Murphy, a well-known criminal in the Chicago area. He provided the Newton Gang with the details needed to pull off the heist. Murphy was even the first one on the scene of the crime after it was reported, deflecting from his involvement. When the bandits were all arrested, they were quick to throw Fahy under the bus as the mastermind behind the crime. Fahy was arrested and claimed innocence, but the evidence was stacked against him. He was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.(20)

Send in the Marines

With the surge in mail-related crime during the 1920s, Postmaster General Will H. Hays requested additional assistance from the federal government. In response, President Warren G. Harding sent in the U.S. Marines to help protect mail cars.

With the added protection, incidences of mail car robberies quickly, and sharply, declined, and the Marines were recalled. But when the DeAutremonts and Newton Gangs attacked mail cars in 1923 and 1924, Postmaster General Hays made an additional request for assistance. In 1926, the Marines were once again deployed to protect the mail. Post Office inspectors then began to consider ways they could arm and protect the railways without military assistance. Marines were deployed for just over a year and then went back to normal duties.

Alvin Karpis and the Karpis Gang

Throughout the 1930s, organized crime rings learned the hard way not to test the strength of Post Office inspectors. In 1935, the Barker-Karpis gang, led by the infamous Alvin Karpis, boarded a passenger and mail train near Garrettsville, OH with the hopes of stealing large sums of money from the mail car. Armed with Thompson submachine guns (Tommy Guns), dynamite, and pistols, the men swarmed the platform, took hostages, and waited for the train to arrive.

As soon as the train approached the platform, Karpis threw a stick of dynamite into the mail car and threatened to detonate it if the clerks didn’t open the doors. Fearing for their lives and the safety of the hostages, the clerks obliged, allowing the thieves to take off with $34,000 in cash and $11,650 in bonds—over $1,000,000 today.

Inspectors joined with the FBI in their hunt for Karpis, who became Public Enemy No. 1. Six months later, Post Office inspectors and FBI agents tracked down Karpis and his accomplices in New Orleans. More than a dozen agents swarmed his car and took Karpis into custody. He would end up serving 26 years at Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco and then was transferred to Leavenworth Penitentiary when Alcatraz closed. Karpis was released on parole in 1969 and deported to Montreal, Canada.

Bureau of the Chief Inspector

By 1939, operations to investigate mail-related crimes had expanded to include more than 600 Post Office inspectors, and a new Bureau of the Chief Inspector. This new bureau was responsible for investigations of mail-related crime involving “finance and administration.” Prior to the formation of the Bureau of the Chief Inspector, special agents and Post Office inspectors reported to one of several assistant postmasters general or the Postmaster General himself.(21)

Forensics Developments

Just one year later, in 1940, the United States Postal Inspection Service opened the first federal law enforcement forensics laboratory in Washington, D.C. Today the primary forensics lab is located in Dulles, VA, with 19 additional satellite Digital Evidence locations throughout the U.S. Postal Inspection Service crime lab specialists are trained in all aspects of forensics including ballistic investigation, the examination of evidence from firearms and tool marks, mail bomb reconstruction, identifying narcotics, fingerprint analysis, video forensics, handwriting analysis, and counterfeit postage and fake money order examination.(22)

Fort Knox Gold

In 1941, the Postal Inspection Service and Railway Mail Service were responsible for shipping and guarding the transfer of gold to Fort Knox. Under their watch, approximately $9 billion in gold bullion was shipped as registered mail from the New York Assay Office to the new depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Postal inspectors provided security and management in a collaborative effort with local law enforcement, the U.S. Army, and U.S. Treasury Department.(23)

WWI War Mail

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entrance into World War 2, military mail services expanded to a point that it became difficult for mail to be delivered to all war fronts. More than 12 million service members were fighting at the time—almost 10-percent of the total U.S. population. Thousands of new routes and addresses were needed to ensure every service member received their mail.

With so many inspectors serving in the war effort, the Postal Inspection Service helped implement an agreement between the Postal Service and the War Department that defined the responsibilities of each organization in the handling of military mail during both peacetime and wartime conditions. This agreement resulted in 247 postal inspectors assigned to ensure a smooth delivery process for Army mail. Most of these postal inspectors were given officer status and assigned to oversee mail processing and delivery operations. .(24)

During wartime, the organization of mail became so efficient that even servicemen on the front lines were able to receive a regular schedule of mail. War mail service expanded to include mail delivery to the Navy and Marines under the FPO system (Fleet Post Office) with a naval Post Office aboard nearly every U.S. Navy ship, each with its own postal officer and postmark bearing the ship’s name.