Dubuque Rail Yards
Dubuque, IA
Dubuque County
April 14, 1893
Early on the morning of Friday, April 14, 1893, Milwaukee Road policemen Henry Talcott, 39, and Theodore “Jake” Frith, 36, were searching the Dubuque rail yards at 19th Street for men who had robbed train passengers.
About 2:15 a.m., they discovered three men, later described as “tramps,” sleeping inside a coach and tried to arrest them.
There was a terrible struggle. Shots were heard by passengers in other cars, followed by the sound of a window breaking. Witnesses saw three men fleeing the coach.
Milwaukee Road emblem
The engineer of the switch engine stopped and stepped down just in time to catch Jake Frith as he fell dead — shot in the neck and back.
Talcott, wounded above the left eye, was found barely alive on the platform. He communicated through sign language that he and Frith were shot by three men.
Inside the blood-splattered passenger coach was broken glass, .38 caliber bullets that were “battered” on their tips, and a blue steel .38 caliber revolver covered with blood.
A hotel clerk came forward claiming that two nights before he confiscated a similar gun from a guest named Leonard Haley, removed “battered bullets” from it, and gave it back the next morning. The clerk identified the weapon found in the train car as the one he took from Haley.
The search was on for the shooters.
A few days later, 24-year-old Leonard W. “Leon” Haley and Hugh Robbard, 42, were arrested on a rural road in Delaware County. When they were detained and told they matched descriptions of the Railroad Police shooters, Leonard Haley anxiously inquired if both officers were dead, seeming to implicate himself.
The men were held at Greeley before being brought back to Dubuque, where they were identified by witnesses as two of the men seen fleeing the shootings.
Haley and Robbard gave conflicting stories concerning their whereabouts at the time of the murders.
Robbard, Haley, and a third man — James “The Omaha Kid” Kent — were indicted for the murders of Henry Talcott and Jake Frith as well as for the robberies of David McDonald on Washington Street in Dubuque; of Ed H. Jones, a boy who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad; and of an aged Mrs. Everett in her home a few nights before the murders.
An angry crowd gathered at the jail and the Sheriff placed guards around the building, letting no one into the yard.
Robbard, who was born in 1851 in Missouri, had most recently lived in Chicago.
Little was known about the man who called himself Leonard W. Haley, including his real name. He was believed to be born in 1869 in Indiana and was said to have “high connections” in Chicago.
He also had a mysterious appearance: one eye was completely black and without expression.
Six railroad detectives hunted James Kent for weeks without locating him. Kent’s brother claimed he was in Omaha and wanted to turn State’s witness in exchange for immunity. However, when Kent failed to materialize, rumors surfaced that he escaped the United States on a boat to Australia.
Haley’s lawyer argued unsuccessfully for a change of venue, claiming a conspiracy among Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad workers to lynch Robbard and Haley should they escape conviction.
Robbard’s sister, a Mrs. Mullett from Chicago, came with her small boy to visit him in jail before the arraignment. Already tearful, Mrs. Mullett became agitated in the courtroom and was being helped to an anteroom when she collapsed into the Sheriff’s arms in a dead faint just as she passed the Judge’s bench.
Haley and Frith were tried separately.
Robbard was convicted of the Talcott and Frith murders in December 1893 and Haley in February 1894; both were sentenced to life in prison.
During Haley’s trial, Robbard was brought into court to testify. As he was escorted through the corridor in shackles, 34-year-old May Fanning, a widow employed in the Sheriff’s Office, rushed towards him and kissed him, giving him a bank note, a basket of fruit, and a note to “My Dear Hugh” from “Your Loving May” that said she was a friend who would never forsake him.
Haley, too, had many fans, as described by the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette:
“This murderer has also captured the hearts of several foolish girls, and today appeared in court dressed to kill. The audience, which every day fills the court to suffocation, is made up largely of romantic maidens, but yesterday’s incident [with May Fanning] has determined the high school principal to withdraw his class in civil government from the galleries.”
Both men began serving their sentences at Anamosa but were later transferred to Fort Madison.
Throughout the years, Haley and Robbard unwaveringly protested their innocence. Many thought the evidence used to convict them was only circumstantial.
Haley continued to appeal his conviction, without results. In 1896, he was described by the Dubuque Daily Herald as “a [prison] machinist and in good health.”
In 1900, Dubuque County Sheriff James L. Conlin visited all the men held at Anamosa who were from Dubuque. Conlin reported to local newspapers that Haley was the foreman of the prison printing office and that Robbard was “broken in health and unable to do manual labor” and believed he would never be free again.
In December 1906, a Robert S. Rose of Chicago announced that if Haley could be released, he had a job for him at a school for shorthand, a skill the convict learned in prison.
In an act of Executive Clemency just before he left office in January 1925, Iowa Governor Nathan E. Kendall pardoned both Haley and Robbard after 31 years of imprisonment.
Robbard, who was then 73 and described by the Waterloo Evening Courier as “friendless, feeble and broken in spirit,” chose to stay in prison because he had nowhere else to go.
However, Leon Haley — then 55 — told newspapers he was moving to Texas to take up the profession of writing.
Henry Talcott was born in Iowa in 1854. Little is known about him other than in 1892 he lived at 260 Garfield Avenue in Dubuque.
Theodore “Jake” Frith was born in New York in 1857 to English immigrants Amelia Bawden and Thomas Edwin Frith. He had eight siblings: Thomas E., Jr., Cornelia, Sarah, William B., Amelia S., Nelson Franklin, Eugene Elson, and Martha Frith.
In his younger years, Jake Frith worked as an ale bottler. About 1880, he married Lillian “Lilly” Janeth and they made their home in Dubuque. He was survived by his wife and four young children — Lilly, Harry, Myrtle, and Catherine “Katy” Frith.
Questions and information about the unsolved 1894 murders of Railroad Policemen Henry Talcott and Theodore “Jake” Frith should be directed to the Dubuque Police Department at 563-589-4410 or to Iowa Cold Cases through the Contact form.
Copyright 2012 Iowa Cold Cases, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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