BANDIT GIRL AND MARRIED LOVER

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 96, 24 April 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

BANDIT GIRL AND MARRIED LOVER

partners in amazing career of crime

ROMANCE LED TO MURDER AND A MURDERER'S DEATH—THEFT AND BLOODSHED WAS THEIR SPECIALTY—DESPERATE CROSSCOUNTRY CHASE BY 'PLANES, POSSE OF POLICE AND PATROLMEN BEFORE CAPTURE—FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON TELLS THAT "MOTHER SHOT TWO COPS"—WOMAN'S IRON NERVE IN THE ELECTRIC CHAIR.

A firl of 22 and her Sunday school teacher lover, partners in a career of crime, have paid with their lives for murder. Their arrest followed a car and aeroplane chase by aimed men for hundreds of miles, a chase that ended in a pitched battle and their surrender. The central figures in this drama were pretty Irene Schroeder and Glenn Dague, both, of whom were found guilty of the murder of a policeman. Irene walked to her death in the electric chair unassisted. She was accompanied by the prison chaplain, who recited the 23rd Psalm. A dozen paces from the dread chair, the girl hesitated, but recovered herself at once, and walked on and sat down in the chair without wavering. Dague also took his fate calmly. The partners in this unusual criminal combination were brought together by chance. Glenn Dague, insurance agent and onetime motor salesman in Wheeling, West Virginia, and a married man, was driving along the street one day when he almost ran down a woman who appeared suddenly in front of his car. He jumped out, and the woman, who was Mrs. Irene Schroeder, staggered, scared, into his arms. That was the start of it. Dague took Irene home with him. It was not long before his wife was taking very second place in his thoughts. It was the start of a romance that developed with rapidity into a life of crime, that led eventually to cross-country flight, murder, a pitched battle, and ultimately death. Irene Schroeder was married, but her husband seems never to have entered into the picture. He was just somewhere. There was, however, hei little son, born when she was only seventeen, who made a third and passive partner in the combine. Left His Home and Family. Mrs. Dague was powerless to check her husband's infatuation for the pretty blonde, although she knew of the affair. And eventually the time came when Dague left his wife, home and family, and from that time he and Irene were as husband and wife, always together. Soon afterwards there arose some trouble between Glenn and his employers. There had been a time when he had been the best car salsman on their staff, but now his sales were dropping. One day Glenn took one of the firm's cars and failed-to return it. When the officers came after him, searching for the car, Dague was gone, and so, too, were Irene and the little boy, Donnie. Two days after Christmas, 1929, a ear drew up in front of a shop in Butler, in Pennsylvania, and inside were two men, a woman, and a little boy. The woman and the man at the wheel went into the store. The manager of the store turned from a customer he was serving, and started, for the woman who had just entered the shop calmly smoking a cigarette, held in her hand a revolver. Her companion was also armed. "Now, both of you get inty that back room," they said, "and get there quick, or . . . ." The manager and the customer went into the back room, quick. They were bound and gagged. Some time later the car drew away from the store. Inside were Irene and Glenn. Snuggling beside the woman was the little four-year-old boy. The man and the woman in the foreseats scanned the road eagerly as the car rolled along. All over the countryside the message was broadcast:— "Look out for blonde woman and male companion, driving motor car; wanted for shop hold-up in Butler." One of the officers told to keep watch for them was Corporal Brady Paul, who started for a road ambush. One or two cars came up, were halted, and allowed to proceed. Then suddenly, tearing along the road came the bandit car. In the front seat were a man and a woman. The patrolman pulled her up, and without any fuss the car stopped. Brady and a colleague approached. Plugged " Cop " Who Stopped Them. Then it happened. The cops noticed the guns in the hands of the man and the girl, but too late. There was a shot. One policeman was flung back wounded in the face, and Brady fell back writhing, with a slug in the stomach. " Tell the boys to get them," said Brady Paul as he died. " They sure got me." The bandit car sped on its course, but they knew inside, the car that to continue in the same auto would be suicide. Another car had to be found. Ray Horton, a business man, was driving down the main street of Newcastle when the bandit car flashed into the town and cut across, blocking his road. " I want your car, buddy," said the man who leaped out, and produced his gun. If you say a word," added a blonde wolnan, also gunned, "I'll plug you." Minutes later the teletype was flashing out another message—that the fugitives were now in a coupe. And then, in a pocket of the discarded car, the police found something that set the wires humming again. It was a little red book, and in it were names and addresses . . . Hours later, the police of Wheeling, West Virginia, were seeking two murderous and dangerous bandits. Glen Dague Was the man. Irene Schroeder was the woman. And while the officers hunted, a man lay on a pile of burlap sacks in a little obscure garage in Wheeling. A woman knelt beside him, mopping a wound on his oody with a piece of cloth. There was a stolen car there. Glen 'Dague was the man. Irene Schroeder was the woman. Brady Paul's bullets, fired as his life fled, had not been in vain. It was now a necessity that Dague's wounds should be attended. _ A little four-year-old boy looked on with little interest. " We'd better get out of here," Irene said. " Better wait till night now," said the man. " They may have found the book, and if they have they'll be looking for us down here." That night another car slipped out of the garage. A short time later it stopped at the home of one of Irene's relatives. Little Donnie ■""as carried in. Irene kissed him and said good-bye. Wanted for Murder. Meantime Donnie had been taken to the home of his grandfather, a fish pedlar named John Crawford, who lived in a frame erection near Bentwood. John Crawford knew the police were after his daughter. They had been to his house several times. hey had always said that they had wanted to question her, but John knew that the}' wanted her for murder, for the newspapers had said so. The father had hoped and prayed that the papers were wrong. He knew his girl was a bad Jot, but he hoped that she had not killed Brady Paul, as the papers said. He tried to hide Donnie. but it couldn't be done. Chief of Police Fred Frazisr, of Wheeling was a kindly man, but he took Donnie away. " Where's mother, Donnie? " he asked. Donnie looked up at him with something like pride in his eyes. " She's gone," he answered. "My mother shot two cops like you." That was how four-year-old Donnie, who knew little, clinched the case against his mother. "My mother," he had said, " shot two cops." He had seeu her. Prom West Virginia into Kentucky went Irene and Glenn, with Irene dressed in a 6uit_ of man's clothing, hiding her face. Their flight carried them into St. Louis. Patrolman William Keissling was just coing out on his .beat on the night Oi January 4, when ihe stopped to read, the newg bulletins on the station board. '"Wanted for murder," he read, "Irene Shroeder and Glenn Dague." For the said the notice, £650 would be Paid.

"Well," said the policeman to himself, "I'll just go along and get those two for that much." Just before midnight a dark car went the main section of the town. Keissling thought that one of the occupants of the car tried to duck as it went by, but he was not sure. Keissling commandeered another car and followed. Ten feet away from it he blew his whistle. The other car drew up. The policeman walked up to it. Out of it steppeu a man, and at first Keissling did not see the gun in his hand. "Get Up, Or I'll Kill You." There was a shot. Keissling dodged amazingly, and the slug that was intended for his heart ripped his coat eleeve. The policeman's own gun came out, and he grabbed the arm of the other man. The pair went down in the street. Two more shots sizzled through the atmosphere harmlessly. It seemed as though Keissling had got his man, when from the car came a voice—a woman's quie f , rasping voice, "Come on—get up or I'll kill you!" But the patrolman swung round behind the car, and for moments a most appalling three-cornered gun fight took place. Then suddenly the man and the woman leaped simultaneously into the car, which went humming away into the night. They were not copped—yet! Later they picked up another man named Wells. On the edge of the Arizona desert, at the town of Florence, they were confronted with the apparently impossible task of finding their way across the trackless wastes of sand. They decided on a daring move. Ruthlessly they kidnapped a deputy sheriff, a man named Wright, and forced him to lead them across the wilderness. _ The countryside, warned of their presence, was up in arms all around, and at a small town through which they passed they were seen and recognised by a posse of armed men searching for them. The posse opened fire, but the luck of the gud bandit and her lover held good. But Deputy Sheriff Wright was wounded, and without hesitation the two hurled his senseless 'body from thei.r speeding car and dashed on. ' Their career of violence was drawing to a close. Confronted with a river which the car -could not cross, thev were forced to abandon the machine which had served them so well. Made Rope of Their Clothing. All three, Wells, Dague and Mrs. Schroeber, tore off their clothing, And with 3t made a rope. With the aid of this Mrs. Schroeder was able to cross the river, and the men followed. The end was at hand. The posse, which had never given up the chase, had drawn up to them, and the three hunted bandits took refuge behind some rocks. , i For hours a pitched l>attle raged between the representatives of the law and those who had flouted it. Aeroplanes which had been called in 'to assist in the search and pursuit, were assembled and with these swooping and diving above them, the nerve of the girl, ruthless slayer• of a policeman and would-be killer of others, broke at last. With her collapse, the heart went from the otheis. J.ne) surrendered. "Iron Irene" To the Last. Without uttering a sound, and with a faint, wistful smile on her lips, Irene Schroeder died in the electric chair at Rockview Penitentiary, the first woman to be electrocuted in the history of Pennsylvania. She was followed to the chair by" Glenn Dague, her sweetheart and partner in crime. They paid the penalty for the shooting of Corporal Brady 1 aul, highway policeman. Attired in a gray, artificial silk smock with white collar and cuffs, she walked into the citadel of death.with a firm tread, and went without assistance to the chair. She was Iron Irene" to the end. Although a nurse in white broke down and wept, Irene did not shed a tear. As they adjusted the leather mask, with its slits at the eyes and mouth, Irene's lips seem to curl ever so slightly—a half-defiant final leer at the law and society. Irene's blanched countenance seemed to age years in the brief space of seconds from the time she shuffled to the big open door at the brilliantly illuminated death chamber until they strapped her in the weird contraption they call "the chair." A tomblike silence, almost terrifying m its oppressiveness, enveloped the room as the gaunt, hollow-eyed executioner, Robert W. Elliott, the same man who threw the switch on Ruth Snyder three years ago, crammed down the lever that sent 2000 volts of electricity shooting through the puppet-like form of the girl they called "Iron Irene." There was a sibilant hiss of high voltage, the low whirr and whine of electricity interspersed with a faint crackle and sputtering—the body lurched forward and the mad career of the small town waitress who turned "trigger woman." was at an end. A few minutes later —endless minutes they seemed to the little knot of witnesses who stood looking on with wrenched hearts—lrene's lover and partner in crime, Glenn Dague, 34 years old. a married man and father who gave up his home for an illicit romance, met death in the same manner. Dague, buoyed up by a suddenly acquired religious fervour, also died without uttering a syllable. The only emotion he displayed was a violent quivering of his eyelids.