I. Murder On The Riverfront
Noble Shepard was a 28 year old glassblower from Illinois. He left his wife and migrated to the riverside near downtown St Louis, where he holed up in a tent. 100 yards away, Tom and Lizzie Morton lived on a flatboat tied to shore. Tom was a good looking man of “slight frame,” who wanted to roam. He joined a small circus and met Lizzie Leahy in Alton, Illinois. Abandoning the circus, the two went off on a flatboat and tied up at the foot of Potomac Street. Tom found work as a machinist with Barr Department Store. Lizzie made her living doing needlework. Two months into their stay, they met Noble Shepard.
Three area boys ran errands and carried beer and whisky to the boat. They said the pair “were always fussing.” She didn’t like seeing him drink and swear.
Tom and Lizzie hired Shepard to fix the roof of their leaky shanty. On Christmas Eve, Lizzie sent one of the boys to Shepard’s tent, where the two men were allegedly drinking, to tell Tom to come home.
A day earlier Tom returned to his boat after work and found Shepard with Lizzie. A quarrel ensued and Shepard left the boat. Now he met Tom, induced him to his tent, and brutally murdered him with a hatchet and hammer. He buried the body in the river bank, then proceeded to the boat where he mortally wounded Lizzie, attempting to implicate Tom in her murder.
Lizzie Morton was found on her “shanty boat” with her skull crushed on Christmas Day, 1894. Police discovered Tom’s body four days later, buried in a shallow grave about 100 feet from Shepard’s tent. The corpse had a hole in its throat and its skull beaten in, Shepard, already arrested in Lizzie’s assault, confessed to Morton’s murder. (1,2)
It seemed from the evidence that someone may have struck Lizzie in the back of the head with the blunt end of a hatchet while she slept. It was amazing that she could communicate, let alone continue to live. Dr Marks at City Hospital said she must have been struck several times.
In an antemortem statement, Lizzie charged Shepard with the crime. She died 28 days later.
Noble Shepard was a hard case. In the morgue, he laughed at the sight of the woman he killed. In jail he wrote sixty stanzas of morbid poetry about his victims. One of Shepard’s lines was “Lizzie cried, ‘Poor Morton’s dead,’ Then I hit her on the head.” The murderer strove to be the big man of the jailhouse. He never feigned insanity, or innocence, but regaled prisoners with how he made off with Lizzie’s charms, and how she loved him while Tom supported her.
During the afternoon of February 25, 1895, Shepard finished sawing a 1½ inch round bar from his cell door, and attempted to escape. Jailer Kraemer and several guards caught him before he could get anywhere more interesting. (3)
At noon on May 16, 1895, a small ceremony marked the transfer of jail keys from retiring Jailer Joseph Kraemer, to Louis ‘Butch’ Wagner. The new jailer was a large, tough hard-drinking German. He stood 5 feet 8 inches in height, but weighed 210 pounds. The Globe-Democrat wrote that he had a “generous paunch and legs built to support a piano.” It considered him to be docile and manageable as a two year old bull, and “one for whom thinking was a tedious operation.” (26) A butcher from South St Louis, he was much involved in Ninth Ward politics. City jailer was a patronage job, and Wagner had no particular experience in running a jail. His first act was to hire his nephew, William, to be his deputy and clerk.
Several prisoners attempting to take advantage of the changeover sought to create trouble, but guards soon quelled a small riot and an attempted escape. Wagner was taking over a jail population of 250 restless men and women. (4)
Noble Shepard was dubbed “The coolest man in court” by the Post-Dispatch, when his murder trial began in November of 1895. He expressed nothing but indifference during grisly depictions of the murders he committed with a hatchet in one hand and a hammer in the other. Having confessed multiple times, a jury promptly convicted him of first degree murder and sentenced Shepard to hang. (5)
On February 20, 1896, similarly doomed murderer James Fitzgerald was led to the gallows behind the city jail. When the sheriff sprung the trap door, Fitzgerald fell through the hole, and the hemp rope yanked taut, strained, then broke, dropping the condemned man eight feet to the floor below. He hit feet first, then fell backwards, the floor delivering a sharp blow to the back of his head. Hurt but conscious, gasping and choking, deputies carried Fitzgerald to the morgue and revived him. Meanwhile, others feverishly repaired the scaffold apparatus. Then they propped him up on the trap and hung him again, this time to its intended effect.
Noble Shepard occupied a cell overlooking the gallows, and observed everything through his small window. He was not amused. When asked by a reporter if he had watched, Shepard repeated sarcastically “Did I see de hangin’? Well, if you want to know, ask somebody else. It’s none of yer funerals whether I saw de man strung up or not. I cud a’ seen it if I wanted to, an’ I cud a’ missed it, too.” The Post-Dispatch noted that his features were ghastly. “His lips trembled and altogether he was in a state of the most abject fear.” (6)
II. Calendar Says It’s Time to Go
At about 4am on the morning of June 22, 1896, Noble Shepard escaped the city jail at the Four Courts. He had not yet been hanged due to an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court. Shepard was granted a respite pending disposition of the case by the court, but a death watch on his cell was scheduled to begin in two days, indicating his execution was very near.
Shepard occupied a cell on the ground floor near the center of the jail’s half-dome, in cell 33. Two doors over, in cell 35, sat millionaire murderer Arthur Duestrow. Between the cells and the outer wall was a passage ten feet wide, called the bull ring. This passage led along the cells in the shape of a crescent, so when standing at either end, one couldn’t see the middle. Two guards were supposed to patrol the bull ring constantly, day and night. The rear of the cells opened into the bull ring, and the front into the inside court. Each set of steel doors had a woven steel grating halfway from the top and below that point to the bottom was a heavy steel plate. At the lower part of the plate in the center was another plate of steel bolted over an opening about one square foot. The small plate had 12 heavy steel bolts clinched on the inside of the cells, the plate being on the outside. The entire door hung about three inches from the stone floor. Removing this plate, Shepard escaped his cell and was in the bull ring.
The sewer pipe draining the jail lay in the ground 12 feet beneath the stone floor of the bull ring and curved along its full length. It was 30 inches wide and three feet high. About 10 feet from Shepard’s cell was a manhole to that sewer, and the pipe at that point was tapped by another sewer leading through the southern wall of the jail, into the main buried beneath Spruce Street.
A catastrophic tornado three weeks earlier left several of the sewer lines under the jail clogged. Jailer Wagner set a force of hired plumbers to repair it. They dug a ditch and found the clay pipe in irreparable condition. The jailer decided to have the sewer line relaid and his crew unearthed it to the manhole. From that point, they created an opening under the jail wall, continuing their ditch across the jail yard. This left an unprotected opening through the manhole to the sewer, and on to the inside jail yard.
While the men worked, Shepard began methodical labor toward his escape. He somehow obtained a fine-toothed steel saw, and set to cutting the rivets that held the steel plate covering the small opening near the floor. While the sewer workers worked, he sawed, and their noise neatly covered his.
The guards walking their rounds at 3am noted nothing unusual. There were four on duty; two in the court and two in the bull ring. From his bunk, Shepard saw the guards pass by his cell, disappearing in opposite directions toward the far ends of the bullring.
On his hands and knees, the inmate pushed the little steel plate away. He crawled with great difficulty through the aperture and into the bull ring. Shepard took care to replace the steel plate behind him, propping it in place with two pieces of flagstone from the sewer rubble.
With a leap the prisoner was into the manhole, wriggling a very tight twenty feet through the sewer to the jail yard. There, he removed an outer set of clothes, and ran, hatless and shoeless, to the southwestern corner of the jail yard. It was a 50 foot run to the scaffold he was to be hung from. He ascended the steps to the platform, and swung from the scaffold to the roof of the morgue, then dropped twelve feet down to Spruce Street
Where he went from there was anyone’s guess.
It was 5am when the guards noticed he was gone. In his bed was a dummy, constructed from a chip basket and blanket.
Jailer Wagner was summoned and appeared dumbstruck on arrival. “Inform the police at once. I would rather have lost five other prisoners than Shepard.” He announced new precautions and increased the guard, but the city didn’t sleep well, knowing that a proven and desperate psychopathic killer was on the loose, somewhere in their midst. (7)
The Post-Dispatch had no special love for Jailer Louis ‘Butch’ Wagner. A day after the jailbreak, it jabbed at him with some doggerel:
“Noble Shepard flew the coop, leaving Louie in the soup.”
“Gott in Himmel! Holy schmoke! Nobel Shepard’s chain has broke!”
Louie gasped and wept a spell, gazing on the vacant cell.”
“Cheeminey, but I’m sick! Now der people all will kick.” (8)
There were plenty of suspected inside conspirators for Shepard’s escape, due to poor relations between Wagner and his guards. One had been discharged a month before, and another was unsuccessfully terminated several weeks earlier. Other prime suspects included the dozen or so men working on the sewers. Shepard frequently stood at his window, talking and joking with them.
He got assistance from someone, as it would have been impossible to tell whether the path to the jail yard was clear unless he was so informed. To obtain a tool to saw through steel rivets, and so successfully vanish also indicated some outside collaboration. (9, 10)
City police were certain Noble Shepard received his tools through the mail, somehow evading any scrutiny by Jailer Wagner. In fact, letters were now being intercepted, addressed to a jail bird crony of Shepard’s. These hid various items of contraband that might be used to break out. Chief of Police Desmond wanted to allow this second inmate to carry out his escape scheme, in hopes of capturing his confederates on the outside.
In the few days since Shepard’s escape, the prisoner received 11 small packages. Concealed contents included a steel plate, two darning needles, a knife, a dose of morphine, a greasy rag, and a rosary. The accompanying letters were opened with steam and read, then resealed and passed to the prisoner.
One missive containing a cartridge which exploded in the post office stamp cancelling machine. It gave the nearest postal clerk a close call, as the bullet whizzed by his head and lodged in the office wall. It was this package, sent two days after Shepard’s escape, that first alerted authorities to the fact that something was amiss.
Police were convinced that Shepard received his tools in the mail, and that those same persons were now ‘burdening the mails with contraband for his chum.” This unidentified inmate was supposed to escape with Shepard, but balked when the opportunity arose. Police and postal employees were now working together to find and confirm contents of all mail to the jail.
Nothing came of the police operation, but it was one more stinging indictment of Butch Wagners lax oversight at the jail. (11)
Three weeks after Shepard’s escape, on a Tuesday evening in mid-July, plumbers worked in the bull ring at the very spot Shepard escaped through. That day, all the sewers leading from the structure were complete and reconnection to the big main was the only job left to be done. Late in the afternoon, six plumbers set about this task. The main sewer came up from the jail yard, ending inside the bull ring about 12 feet below the cement floor. That floor had been cut away, leaving an opening about 25 feet long, and six feet across.
As the men eased into the trench and leaned against the pipe, pushing it into the newly exposed big sewer opening, a rush of over 2,000 rats overwhelmed them. A battle of extermination began.
The workmen had only the tools they carried. One fought them with a riveting hammer while his legs were being gnawed. Others beat a hasty retreat for the floor above, with angry sewer rats clinging to them. The men waged a fighting retreat, and when all were safely above deck again, they threw chunks of concrete into the sward, crushing many of the rats. The army of rodents, alert to their peril, ran into the sewer leading under the jail.
Oddly enough, it was on account of the rats that it became necessary to repair the sewers. Numbers of them packed into the lines and died during the tornado. Their bodies choked the smaller sewer mains, and needed to be removed.
None of the plumbers were injured beyond repair. The bites they suffered were cauterized to prevent blood poisoning, and Jailer Wagner exclaimed that measures would be taken to exterminate his new rodent prisoners. (12)
III. The Jailer Faces The Music
The St Louis City Jail was a function of the Board of Charity Commissioners. The group was dismayed to learn that Wagner had no intention of resigning as overseer of the city jail. They strove to have him removed, and constantly criticized his behavior and performance. The board interpreted public clamor regarding the jailer to be criticism of them, the body overseeing all superintendents of city institutions.
An indication of the strength of their dislike was the comparative non-comment regarding Nick Karr, who supervised the city workhouse, where incarcerated debtors were often beaten and flogged. He was never so much as reprimanded by the board.
Wagner was censured by a grand jury investigating the escape of Noble Shepard and other recently publicized problems in the jail. Before the charity board could take any action, Judge Valliant of the civil court overruled a decision of the board to release another city official from his position supervising the House of Refuge juvenile detention facility. This setback caused them to adopt a cautious attitude toward removing another city official.
Mayor Walbridge had been conspicuously quiet regarding Jailer Wagner and his arraignment by the grand jury. The report forwarded to him by that jury was a repeat of the severe reprimand Wagner received from the Charity Commissioners, and yet the mayor had nothing to say. The commissioners advised him that a person chosen at random from the streets of St Louis would make a better jailer than Louis Wagner, who was accused of everything from selling pies and running other concessions, to stringing prisoners up by the wrists in the jail’s dungeon. Walbridge took no action, and the commissioners were not eager to incur his displeasure by doing something reflecting poorly on the chief executive. Wagner was also a key fund-raiser for and backer of the mayor in the city’s Ninth Ward, so enjoyed some insulation.
His removal was further complicated by the near surety that Wagner’s guards would not testify against him, because Wagner would remove them if the charges failed to remove him. If they did manage to get him relieved of duty, the next appointed jailer would quickly install his own friends, so it was not a good bet either way for the commission to depend on jailhouse employees.
The Post-Dispatch, sharing the commission’s frustration, opined “Louie Wagner has the public right where he wants it. Why should he resign?” (13)
Jailer ‘Butch’ Wagner was calling for the keys to the jail yard and blamed day guard Paddy Grady for the escape of Noble Shepard. “His eyes bulged out and his frame shook” as he swung his arms in the air and yelled at the clerk in Chief Harrigan’s office at the Four Courts. “I am the jailer, and I have charge of all these premises.”
Wagner heard that Grady, father to a great many boys, had taken the patrol wagon to a store to pick up baseballs. When Wagner learned of the balls, he called for a ‘divy’ and Grady protested that he didn’t have enough for each of his kids. ‘Butch’ asked if Grady meant to lie to him, and Grady replied, ‘call me a liar and I’ll break your face.’ Signal officer Murphy broke up the confrontation. Butch yelled about Grady dumping his rubbish in the jail yard, and threatened to fine him. He then demanded the keys. A crowd gathered, expecting a fight. The jailer backed down, but shook his fist and threatened to have Grady fired as he walked away. He then demanded the keys from the desk clerk, who refused to relinquish them. Wagner stormed over to Chief Desmond’s office, calling for the keys, until persuaded to go home for the night.
The keys he wanted opened a door to the yard where the patrol wagon drivers threw their refuse. Butch said from here on, they would have to put their trash on the sidewalk. (14)
For a jail house reeling in disarray, the final straw came soon. Three career criminals from the Irish Kerry Patch district, ’Skippy’ Rohan, ‘Buck’ O’Malley and ‘Sport’ Heffernan, residents at the city jail, were determined to relocate to friendlier spaces. Rohan was in for murder, and the other two for larceny. O’Malley was a jail trusty, with the privilege of an unlocked cell until dark. Rohan also roomed with a trusty.
On the afternoon of August 30,1897, another prisoner feigned a seizure at the far end of the jail yard. Guards, assuming it was a fight, converged on the spot, while O’Malley, near the guard’s desk at other end, pocketed the jail door keys. Minutes later, recess ended; but before the cells were locked for the evening, the three climbed their doors to the top of the jail, and slid down steam pipes to the bull ring.
Using their stolen keys, they unlocked the big steel door and ran across the jail yard into Jailer Wagner’s house, where his wife and daughter sat at a table. They sprinted past, broke out a window, and dropped to Spruce Street below. Jumping aboard a wagon, they commanded the boy driving it to “Whip up!” and disappeared. Wagner had been attending an ethnic festival in a city park when this occurred. Indeed, the jail guards were first alerted to the escape from people on the streets who observed the fleeing prisoners. Butch Wagner hurried back, incensed at his guards. He immediately suspended three of them, hollering, “You fellows are not fit to watch hogs.” (27)
Within a week, ten charges were filed against Jailer ‘Butch’ Wagner by the Charity Commission. He faced a summons by that board in mid-September of 1897. The jailer was arraigned on charges of official misconduct by unanimous vote of the commission, and invited to disprove the charges. They were not trivial grievances:
Charge No 1: Habitual drunkenness since appointment to jailer.
Charge No 2: Failure to pay all fees, emoluments and perquisites received, to the city treasurer. Jailer Wagner was entitled only to his salary of $1,500 per year but collected $1.00 per week dues from each day guard and 15% of the proceeds for luxuries (like pies) sold to the prisoners.
Charge No 3: Neglect of duty.
Charge No 4: Permitted his guards to exact illegal fees from prisoners. Wagner, along with his day guards, was engaged in the selling of tobacco, chewing gum, molasses, pies, apples and other supplies to prisoners for their own exclusive profit. They also sold “to prisoners the privilege of changing cells, freedom of the yard, jobs like beating blankets, cleaning floors, barbering, waiting at or selling food from the guard’s table, and acting as doctor.”
Charge No 5: Failed to prevent oppression by guards of prisoners. The form of corporal punishment for jailhouse offenses was largely left to the mercy or imagination of the guards.
Charge No 7: Permitted Noble Shepard and three others to escape jail.
Charge No 8: “The barber shop is illegal and should not exist.” Wagner maintained the shop for his own profit inside the jail. The barbering was done for a price by prisoners in his custody, and with supplies paid for by the city. An unusual incentive for good grooming was that every prisoner paying for a haircut or shave was given freedom of the yard for the day. (15, 18)
Judge William Zachritz presided over the arraignment of Jailer Louis Wagner. He first heard an appeal for delay, to decide whether a writ of habeas corpus should be issued, allowing jail inmates to testify before the commission. Zachritz also considered whether during reading of the charge to the grand jury, he should include instructions to investigate the commission’s list of charges and bring indictments against those found responsible. The attorney for Wagner announced he would apply to the courts for a writ of prohibition against one commissioner who held a position with both the state and the city, as his state position required him to relinquish his city one. Zachritz decided to withhold decision on the writ of habeas corpus until disposition of the writ of prohibition was learned.
Into this Wagnerian drama, Judge Zachritz took advantage of the presence of the grand jury to make an announcement of his own. He observed that on August 30, 1897, another “of the periodical jail escapes, to which the public have long ago become accustomed occurred, whereby three of the most desperate criminals in jail made their escape without much apparent difficulty.”
He noted that the jail was a reasonably good one when properly guarded, but every jailer for years had allowed prisoners to walk out. The escapes invariably involved the most dangerous and desperate of the inmates, and could only reflect one of two conditions; that of gross ineptitude, or corruption.
Zachritz wanted it stopped, and charged the grand jury to fully investigate the most recent escape, determine its causes and return indictments against “all jail officers, be they high or low, whom you find on evidence to have violated any criminal statute, and make a full report in writing of the result of your investigation.” (16)
In the circuit court, friendly defense witnesses testified to Wagner’s sobriety, the ease with which he could be found, and his maintenance of discipline at the jail.
A jail guard told of prisoners being punished by whipping in the dungeon for fighting. One said, “By damn, the prisoners would punish the guards if the guards did not punish them.”
Another guard cited a case of an inmate in jail for murder, who tried shamming insanity by refusing to eat. The prisoner was whipped in the dungeon and force fed two eggs and a pint of milk through a stomach tube. He then became docile. This guard also related the most recent escape of three inmates from the ceilings of their cells.
Wagner’s sobriety was unquestioned by his guards, but his methods of discipline were considered harsh. They deemed this logical, as jail was a dangerous place for everyone. A collection of daggers, saws, knives and slingshots, found in cells was produced. If a prisoner was caught with them he was punished, and punishment was considered prudent. (17)
Nevertheless, by unanimous vote of the Board of Charity Commissioners, Butch Wagner was found guilty of misconduct in office, neglect of duty and incompetence. On the bright side, he was found not guilty of the charge of habitual drunkenness. Newly elected mayor Henry Ziegenhein was notified to appoint a successor to Wagner.
Wagner was not held responsible for the escape of Noble Shepard, but was found unanimously guilty of negligence in the escapes of Rohan, O’Malley and Heffernan.
Former Mayor Walbridge, who originally appointed Wagner, testified to ordering that Wagner stop selling supplies and privileges in the jail. His order was obeyed, but days later the prisoners petitioned him to restore the right to buy supplies from the guards. He then reestablished Wagner’s power to sell supplies. He said he never realized the guards were profiting from this activity.
Jailer Wagner took the stand, chewing gum constantly, and showing considerable strain. The big man testified for four hours in his “earnest, bluff German manner.” He admitted knowing the jail ‘pool’ existed, but denied ever making a penny from it, or ‘skimming the pool’ by taking $1 a week from the guards. He claimed to know nothing about stringing up prisoners or beating them. He laid the blame for much mismanagement on the guards, who he was foolish to trust.
There was an emphasis put on the contrast between treatment of prisoners in the city jail to that of prisoners in the city workhouse. Wagner’s attorney said if the board wanted to investigate brutality, it should go to the workhouse and see how a six pound ball and chain was riveted by a blacksmith to the ankles of each prisoner, then worn day and night for as long as he remained there. (18)
IV. Aftermath Of A Hot Time In The City Jail
Recently deposed city jailer Louis Wagner was quoted in November of 1897 as saying, “I’ve had enough of politics for the present and I intend to work for making money.” He was going back to the butcher craft he plied before becoming a Ninth Ward hotshot and city jailer. He found self-forgiveness easy, as he “had as much trouble as a man could have, and none of it was caused by any fault of mine. That I drink beer was the main charge against me. I was brought up on beer. I always drink it when I want to, and will keep on drinking it.”
Wagner complained of being told by the commission that the trial was only a formality; a few questions and then back to work. But the lately righteous Louis Wagner would have none of it, rejecting the appearance of a “coat of whitewash.” He wanted a full and thorough investigation.
And what of the whole affair? Julius ‘Butch’ Wagner was dismissed and returned to the life of a butcher in December, 1897. “Here I am, out of a job and looking for a place to hang out my butcher sign.” Thus ended the case of the entrepreneurial jailer. (19)
Henry Ziegenhein (1845-1910) was a mayor that enjoyed winging it during speeches. Informal to a fault, he was known to address groups of Elks or Masons and tell them to “ring him up” if they got into any police trouble while in town. When campaigning, he was unpredictable, and no one knew if they might be next to suffer a jab or a joke from the mayor.
During a speech on behalf of the party ticket in St Louis’ Ninth Ward, he was asked a question by Wagner, who was on the outs with Ziegenhein at the time. “You’ve got a short memory, Butch Wagner,” exclaimed the mayor, pointing his finger at him. “You must have forgotten the time when you were jailer and all the papers hammered at you for letting Noble Shepard get away. You weren’t going to meetings and interrupting speakers then, Butch. No, sir. Why, Butch, you were so scared that you were having night sweats in the daytime.” (20)
Thirty years after the killings of Thomas Morton and Lizzie Leahy on the banks of the Mississippi, Governor Hyde in Jefferson City received a letter purporting to be from Noble Shepard. He hadn’t been heard from since breaking jail in 1896, and his trail had long since grown cold, then forgotten. Shepard wrote:
“ I escaped from the St Louis jail in 1896 while under sentence of death for murder. I’m now old and feeble and will give myself up if you promise not to hang me. I’m willing to go to the penitentiary. Put a notice in the St Louis Post-Dispatch with your promise, and I’ll give myself up to anybody you mention in the notice. Yours truly, Noble Shepard”
The governor made no promises, but suggested to the paper that he surrender himself, in the assurance that he would receive “full consideration.” Hyde also had the handwriting checked against Shepard’s. It appeared genuine.
A second letter arrived a week later for Governor Hyde. Both had St. Louis postmarks. This one was pitiful by comparison, as it appeared that Shepard finally came to grips with the downside of spending one’s youth on the lam:
“I saw your reply to my letter and I think it would be dangerous to give myself up. It would be almost suicide on my part, as I have no friends or money to help me. I would never have escaped if I got a term in the penitentiary. But just before I escaped I saw a man named Fitzgerald hanged, and I made up my mind that hanging was not right. This will close my case —no hard feelings on my part. Yours truly Noble Shepard”
The escape led to a severe censure of his jailer Louis Wagner . This condemnation extended to Mayor Walbridge, who first appointed Wagner. The matter was a main theme of that year’s local political campaign. Walbridge himself bowed out of the mayoral race.(22)
V. Epilogue
In 1930, workmen excavating for new St. Louis Police Department buildings at 12th and Spruce Streets uncovered the old brick lined jail sewer. This dredged up memories from three decades earlier. At the time of Shepard’s escape, there were 36 men in the jail, either convicted of, or awaiting trial for murder. The day after James Fitzgerald’s execution, all expressed their opposition to capital punishment.
The gruesome spectacle of the botched hanging rendered it both “feasible and desirable” for the next man in line at the gallows to make a break-out. The highly motivated double murderer Noble Shepard managed a tough wriggle through a narrow pipe leading to the yard. He climbed the very scaffold from which he was to be hanged, leaped to the roof of the morgue, where doctors were to sign his death certificate, and dropped from there to an arguable freedom. (23,24)
After 1897, Louis ‘Butch’ Wagner found it difficult to make a decent go of things on his own. He took another city job, making $1.50 per day as a rail inspector for the city streetcar system. There is no record of him ever again supervising anyone, following his role as city jailer.
William ‘Skippy’ Rohan enjoyed a long career as a malfeasant gangster and prison inmate. He spent time in some notable institutions, including Joliet and Sing Sing. As crime became better organized, he joined the infamous Irish gang Egan’s Rats in St Louis. In 1914, Rohan married and reformed after 22 years spent largely in jail or prison. Suspected of turning snitch, he was shot five times in the back one night as he stood at John Egan’s bar, The body was dragged through the doorway and left in the street. No one ever faced trial for his killing in 1916, the same year the jail at the Four Courts Building in St. Louis was condemned for demolition.
The Noble Shepard case bobbed up from time to time. In 1932, thirty-six years after his escape from jail, a person claiming to be a witness from his trial offered to come forward and offer new testimony that might exonerate Shepard. He said he had held back information to protect someone, but wrote that he would be “at liberty to talk now, hoping that Noble Shepard is still alive.”
There was no reply from the mayor, the courts, or Noble Shepard, who was never heard from again. (25)
Bibliography
The citations are from various St Louis Globe-Democrat, St Louis Post-Dispatch, and St Louis Star newspapers, courtesy of Newspapers.com
1. Martin’s Husband Still Avoids Police Globe-Democrat Dec 27,1894 Page 4
2. He Was Killed Post-Dispatch December 29,1894; Page 1,2
3. Cut Through An Iron Bar Globe-Democrat February 26, 1895; Page 9
4. Changes At The Jail Globe-Democrat May 16,1895; Page 11
5. Neither Fears Nor Repents Post Dispatch November 20, 1895; Page 1
6. Noble Shepard Saw It Post-Dispatch February 20,1896; Page 3
7. Noble Shepard Breaks Jail Globe-Democrat June 23, 1896; Page 12
8. When Shepard Fled Post-Dispatch June 23 1896; Page 10
9. Noble Shepard Has Escaped Post-Dispatch June 22,1896; Page 1,3
10. Noble Shepard’s Escape Globe-Democrat June 25, 1896; Page 12
11. Tools Sent In The Mail Post-Dispatch July 2,1896; Page 12
12. Fought Rats In A Sewer Post-Dispatch July 15, 1896; Page 3
13. Can’t Get Rid Of Butch Wagner Post-Dispatch August 5,1896; Page 8
14. Has His War Paint On Globe-Democrat June 26, 1897 Page 7
15. Charges Against Wagner Post-Dispatch September 8,1897 Page 10
16. Wagner’s Trial Postponed Globe-Democrat September 14,1897; Page 14
17. Butch Wagner’s Defense Globe-Democrat September 24,1897 Page 12
18. Butch Wagner Removed Globe-Democrat September 25, 1897 Page 16
19. Wouldn’t Be Whitewashed Post-Dispatch November 17,1897; Page 7
20. Ziegenhein Invented New Disease for Wagner Post-Dispatch March 13, 1910; Page 13
21. Escaped Slayer Ready To Give Up, Letter States Post-Dispatch October 2 1924; Page 3
22. Noble Shepard Again Writes To Governor Post-Dispatch October 12 1924; Page 3
23. Sewer Used By Murderer In Escape Uncovered St Louis Post-Dispatch August 13,1930
24.Tunnel Murderer Escaped In 1894 Unearthed Post-Dispatch July 13,1927; Page 1
25. Offers To Help Killer Who Broke Jail Here In 1896 St Louis Star April 27,1932; Page 6
26. “Butch” Wagner – Keeper Of The Jail Globe-Democrat September 5, 1897; Page 19
27. Desperate Criminals Escape Globe-Democrat August 31, 1897; Page 12
