At 10 p.m. on October 18, 1854, in a grocery store in a dark street in Hamilton, Canada, the owner of the shop, John Nels, was waiting for a friend to make an appointment.
At this time, there was a knock on the door, and Nels thought that the person who was waiting was coming, so he got up and opened the door without thinking. What Neils didn't expect was that instead of friends, there were four strange men standing outside the door.
In the middle of the night, four strange men knocked on the door, and the experienced Nels, who suddenly felt that the visitor was not good, turned his head and ran to the room, and took out a handful of left *** in the drawer
Seeing this, the man at the head also quickly took out his gun and shot Nels, and "bang" was two shots, and Nels fell to the ground and died.
The gunfire woke up Nels' family, and the four gangsters immediately took control of Nels' family and coerced them to hand over the money. It's just that there is not much cash at Nels' house, and the helpless gang leader can only take a gold watch from Nels, and then the four people escape.
Speaking of which, this is the first robbery and murder of 4 gangsters, no experience, it is inevitable to be a little panicked, before that, they were just doing some stealing chickens and dogs in the area of Lake Ontario.
However, no one thought that the pursuit of the gang leader William Townsend put ** in an embarrassing situation, this person not only came out of nowhere, but also played ** around in the future, and was called a legendary prisoner who could never be caught, and the escape experience was more exciting than the movie.
William Townsend was originally from England, the family was an ancestral carpenter, and in 1812 the family moved to Black Rock, a shipbuilding town in New York State, USA.
Later, the head of the family, Robert Townsend, married a local woman named Mary Anna, and in 1828 gave birth to William Townsend, the hero of our story today.
After William's birth, the Robert family immigrated to settle near the Welland River in Ontario, Canada. William did not learn from a young age, and his father Robert was very distressed about this son, and his desire to let him inherit the family craft was impossible to realize, so in 1841, Robert sent his son to a ship called "Mohawk" and became a sailor.
When Robert was alive, William was quite restrained, until after Robert's death in 1846, William, who was not controlled by his father, completely let go, and he began to change jobs unscrupulously, and finally simply stopped being a crew member and started cross-industry job hopping.
After a long time, William found that these legitimate jobs were not only hard and did not make much money, but he observed that the thugs on the streets, who were usually idle and idle, seemed to have a very good life.
William was depressed, so he wanted to see what these people were fed on. After this inquiry, I learned that these people belonged to a pickpocket group and usually specialized in petty theft. William felt that the job was good, easy and fast, so he also joined the gang and embarked on the road of professional pickpocket.
At first, William was still more cautious, and he and his gang members generally only operated around Lake Ontario in Hamilton, Canada, and did some petty theft. But after a long time, William began to be uneasy with the status quo, he saw that some other gangs were doing more serious things, but they were not caught by the police, so William thought of taking risks and doing big things.
So there was the robbery of the Nels' grocery store mentioned at the beginning, originally William just wanted to rob the money, but he killed someone for the first time, and William could only take the road of escape.
After shooting and killing Nels, William hurriedly ran with his men to a small town called Cayuga to take refuge. Early the next morning, local villagers noticed that the four people were suspicious, so they reported to the police station that four suspicious people had boarded a train to Buffalo in the United States at the nearby Canfield station.
Cayuga** immediately contacted the Buffalo Police Department in the United States in an attempt to wipe out William's gang. Subsequently, the Buffalo Police Department conducted a carpet search of the local station and hotel, but after several days, no trace of the gang was found.
How could it be that no one could be found? This brings us to William's counter-reconnaissance capabilities. It turned out that William had already guessed that the villagers would report them, so he got off the train after only one stop, and then turned back to Canada and hid, causing Buffalo to fall into the air. This is the first time that William has been planted with him.
After all, it took money to escape, and it didn't take long for William to make ends meet, and then he thought of the gold watch he had taken from Nils, so he decided to take a risk and find a place to use it.
But what William didn't know was that their wanted portraits had been quickly plastered all over the streets after the crime, so when William took the watch to a pawnshop in St. Catherine, east of Hamilton, he was immediately recognized by the pawnshop owner.
The boss pretended to talk to William** while asking someone to secretly inform **. William was so easy to catch, he immediately noticed something unusual, took the opportunity to sneak out of the pawnshop, and after a fierce battle broke out with the ** who happened to arrive, he magically escaped from the ** encirclement again.
William's escape again was not all by chance, the reason why she ran to St. Catherine's pawnshop was because it was a port city, and the pawnshop was on the edge of the port, and if there was a disturbance, she could get out immediately.
As William expected, when ** came to arrest him, he immediately fled to a cargo ship bound for Oswego, USA. Like last time, ** also rushed to lay out in the port of Oswego before William, who knew that it was also empty again.
William once again resorted to a plan of attack, and after the ship had set sail, he jumped off the boat without anyone noticing, swam back to shore, and then disguised himself as a woman and went to hide in a relative's house.
It is said that William is difficult to arrest, but his gang of men are not so resourceful, and soon the other three people involved in the case, Bruce, Kings, and Bryson, were arrested.
In April 1855, the trio were tried in Cayuga, and although they were accomplices, they were still sentenced to be hanged, but Bryson, the third of the three, was smarter than the other two, and as soon as the verdict was handed down, he made a request to be turned into a tainted witness, and the sentence was successfully commuted from hanging to life.
William hid in a relative's house for a few months, and found that no one came to arrest him, so he inevitably swelled a little, and felt that ** was nothing more than that, so he continued his escape journey again.
However, the gold watch was not sold, and the priority was to make some money, and William came to the banks of the Welland River and robbed a farmer named Robinson. This Robinson is not a mortal either, as soon as William finished grabbing on the front foot, he followed William on the back foot, and when he found William's residence, he turned around and reported the crime to a police officer named Charles Rich.
The two came to the hotel and saw William standing in the lobby, and Officer Charles quietly walked behind William, then put his hand on his shoulder and shouted, "You're **." ”
But the next scene scared everyone present, only to see William suddenly pull out a pistol, turn around and shoot Charles, and Charles was killed on the spot. William quickly escaped from the hotel, boarded a train bound for Woodstock, Canada, and escaped under his nose for the third time.
At the same time, Woodstock** also got the news and sent four police officers and a prison guard to wait at the train station. After the train arrived at the station, the five people quickly rushed up, searching for William's traces from carriage to carriage.
After looking for a long time, the prison guard found a man who looked very similar to William, but he couldn't be sure that this person was William, because this person was well-dressed, and his words and deeds looked like a gentleman, not at all like a fugitive, so he stared at the man for a while and didn't dare to make a move.
At this moment, the man in the car spoke.
Hello officer, do you think I look a lot like wanted criminal William Townfind? ”
yes, I think you're William Townsend. The prison guard replied.
Haha, I've been caught once today, but alas, I'm really not him. “
The prison guard didn't dare to do it casually, so he called the other 4 police officers, and just as the 4 people were talking, the prison guard found the man getting out of the car and standing on the platform.
Look, it's him. ”
The 4 people fixed their eyes, and the other party really looked like William, but they felt that something was wrong, and the person in front of them looked like a person from high society.
However, after several police officers deliberated, they decided to detain the man first, so they approached the man and said:
I'm sorry sir, but we may have to detain you for a while and check your identity. “
I'm afraid it won't work, I still have important things to do. The man replied.
Don't worry, it won't take much of your time, there will be someone on the next train who can confirm your identity. “
At this moment, the train that was originally on the station started slowly, and when the last carriage of the train passed by the man, the man suddenly ran up, jumped on the train, and once again left the police officers behind, leaving only the five police officers on the platform dumbfounded.
That's right, this man is none other than William Townsend.
Since William's fourth escape this time, there has been no news of him for a long time.
Time flies, and 2 years have passed.
On the afternoon of April 11, 1857, in a bar in Cleveland, USA, because there were no customers, the owner Jack Lees was sitting in a chair in a daze, when two people came in through the door, one tugging at the collar of the other.
Jack recognized one of them at a glance as a train conductor, a regular bar patron, and the man he was holding in his hand was a fare evader.
The passenger had not a penny on him and could not pay 3$5 ticket, so he took out a left *** and handed it to the conductor to deduct. The conductor is not stupid either, after all, this pistol is much more than 3$5, and in order to prevent the man from repenting, the conductor dragged him to the bar and asked Jack to be a witness.
Jack was dumbfounded when he saw the fare evader man, this person was so similar to William, the fugitive wanted by ** a few years ago, so he looked for an opportunity to stabilize the fare evader man and asked the staff to notify **.
Then ** arrived, and the fare evader man was arrested by ** in this way, ** firmly believed that the fare evader man was the legendary fugitive William Townsend who played ** in the palm of his hand.
Do you think William was just tied up? That would be too much to underestimate William, and the next plot is the climax.
* The news of the capture of William Townsend quickly spread throughout the United States and Canada, and because of William's notoriety, many people came to ** and found William's friends to testify, but strange things happened.
Not only did the man who was arrested deny that he was William Townsend, but even many people who knew William even thought that the man he caught was not William at all. According to the man's claims, his name was Robert McHenry, the son of a weaver in Glasgow, Scotland.
While in custody in the United States, McHenry wrote a letter to reporters refuting the claim that he was William. William has never read any books since he was a child, but McHenry's letter is written with sincerity and brilliance.
Soon, around whether Robert McHenry was William Townsend or not, an absurd trial of the century was staged.
On September 27, 1857, McHenry was extradited to Cayuga, Canada, for trial. Regarding his true identity, there is a debate between the two sides, one side believes that McHenry is William's disguise, and the other side believes that McHenry only looks like William, not William, and the two sides are deadlocked.
The impact of the case was very great, and some people even saw business opportunities from it, opened the market, and bet on whether McHenry was William, and the people involved in the bet not only included ordinary people, but also many witnesses, and even some people participated in the jury of the trial, which was unprecedented.
On the day of the trial, there were more than 100 people sitting in the witness stand, all of whom were William Townsend relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and members of criminal gangs, but strangely, as in the United States, these groups of relatives and friends were also very divided.
The first wave of witnesses called were Augustus Nels and Lucy Humphrey, the brother and sister-in-law of the victim, John Nels, both witnesses on the night of the crime. However, because William was disguised at the time of the crime, the two could not be sure that the person in the dock was William.
The second witness is named Bryson, who is an accomplice who committed the crime with William and was arrested and turned into a tainted witness. Bryson insisted that McHenry was William.
The third witness was Mrs. Hatch, a neighbor of William's family, who had grown up watching William, and whom he also believed to be William. Mrs. Hatch told the judge that although William had never read, it was not unusual for the boy to be a clever boy and a quick learner of anything, and to write brilliant letters.
Next, some said that it was William's, and some said that it was not William's, and the trial lasted for 3 days without a result. On the last day of the trial, William's family and friends testified that the defendant was not William.
The witness, Ezra Smith, claimed to have known William for 15 years, William's eyes were black, but the defendant McHenry had blue eyes, not to mention that he did not admit that he was William, even if he admitted that he was William, Smith did not believe it.
The jury deliberated for another seven hours, seven of whom found the defendants guilty, four acquitted, and one uncertain, but in the end they could not reach a unanimous opinion, and the judge had no choice but to dismiss the jury and retry it six months later.
The second trial, which began on March 26, 1858, was no different from the first, with the prosecution pushing out one person who identified William Townsend and the defense pushing out one person who opposed him.
This time, after nine days of court debate, the final defendant was identified as Robert McHenry and acquitted.
This is the end of the case, after McHenry was released, he disappeared from the world, and there was no trace of him on the rivers and lakes.
Whether McHenry was William or not, although the court procedurally ruled that he was not, the result was obvious. I have to say that William Townfard's escape experience is more exciting than the movie.