tortable and told them so. They held a
hurried consultation and untied us event-
ually. About two hours before daylight
two of them went away, and they were
gone for about half an hour. They returned
with a speed boat and pulled up alongside
our boat. They took what gasoline and oil
we had in spare cans on deck, and they
took good care that we didn’t go on board
the speed boat. They then took the speed
boat away and the two men returned in the
rowboat after daylight. The whole four re-
mained on the Kayak until they saw the
Hadsell pull in sight. When the Hadsell
came in sight they hurriedly tied us up.
They told us to lay down in our bunks and
keep still. Two men got out on deck. One
lay down behind the hatch and the other
behind the gear chute. The other two re-
mained in the cabin. When the Hadsell
came within a short distance, say about
twenty-five feet, the man behind the gear
chute raised up, and with a carbine in his
hand shouted ‘Stick °em up’. Then the other
three men joined in and they seemed to be
very well armed. One man at least had two
rifles, and three of them I know had two
revolvers. cach besides rifles. They poured
volley after volley into the Hadse!l. All the
time they were shooting they kept hollering
for Davidson, on the Hadsell, to come out
of the cabin. I heard Ongstad, on the Had-
sell, holler to them to stop shooting, and
then one of the pirates yelled: ‘Bring that
boat over here, you son of a ———.’
Ongstad said he would bring the boat over
if he would stop shooting a minute. They
then placed the wounded man on our boat,
the Kayak, and proceeded away with the
Hadsell. After Davidson was put on our
boat the ringleader of the bunch came back
and said: ‘Oh, hell! He ain’t badly hurt.’
Ongstad then cut our hands free and we
proceeded over to the wharf at Bedwell
Harbour and inquired for medical aid. They
told us to go over to a retired doctor who
lived across the bay, and he told us to get
the wounded man on the Otter (which was
just pulling into the wharf then). In the
meantime the doctor had started his boat
up and got over to the Otter, and he advised
us not to move the man any more than
necessary, and the opinion was that our boat
was as fast as the Otter and we could either
get to Sidney or Ganges first. We started
off for Sidney, and midway between Pender
Island and Moresby Island the Otter gave
us a tow. Near Sidney, about a mile off,
the Otter let go and we proceeded into
Sidney.

“I didn’t see the speed boat these men
used, but I heard it come alongside. I could
not tell what kind of a motor was in it, but
it was muffled down very much and I could

tell that it was a high-speed motor.

“The four men were dirty and greasy,
and with at least ten days’ growth of beard
on their faces. I looked for scars or marks
on their hands, but their hands were so
dirty that none could be seen or discerned.
Whilst Martin was being tied up the biggest
member of the gang was careless enough to

Page Eight

let the mask drop from his face, and I got
a good view of his whole face.”

Hr-Jackers MEET NEMESIS IN B. C.

In this affair there was a wounded man
to be taken care of, and when the Kayak
put into Sidney, Vancouver Island, they had
to explain his presence to the police. As the
men were interrogated they revealed a
wealth of detail regarding rum-running
activities, and also told the story of the
hi-jacking of the Lillums. Carefully gather-
ing up the threads of evidence here and
there, the B. C. Police, under Commissioner
J. H. McMullin, were able to identify the
Eggers brothers and Kelly and Pfleuger with
both the Lillums and Hadsell jobs, and a
police dragnet caught big Kelly in its toils
two weeks later. A month later, Pfleuger
was caught in a Tacoma hideout. Both
were extradited to Canada and sentenced
to long terms in the New Westminster
penitentiary. The Eggers trio were harder
to find, but the chase was never relinquished.
Not even when, in September, 1924, the
liquor runner, Beryl G, was hi-jacked at
Sidney Island, the skipper and his son mur-
dered and the cargo stolen. Provincial Police
officers took this added mystery in their
stride, and after a continent-wide search
lasting a year and a half, the principals were
caught, one in New York and the other in
New Orleans. Returned to Canada, they
were tried, convicted and executed. A con-
federate in this diabolical killing was given
life imprisonment. The story is well cov-
ered in the Fifth issue of THE SHOULDER
Strap. But to return to the search for the
Eggers.

No trace of them was found until Novem-
ber, 1924, when Milo and Ariel were ar-
rested by the San Francisco police on charges
of highway robbery. They were held for
the Canadian authorities, and the tedious
process of international extradition con-
tinued for three months.

On the afternoon of January 28, 1925,
the brothers were taken from their cells in
San Francisco’s federal building, and in the
custody of Deputy U. S. Marshal Jack Don-
nelly were being escorted to the office of
U.S. Commissioner Krull for final hearing
before deportation. The trio had traversed
the long top floor corridor of the building
and Donnelly was walking down the stairs
with his charges when Milo Eggers stopped
to light a cigarette. As Milo faced the wall
to scratch the match, Donnelly stopped
behind him and Ariel stepped behind the
marshal. Perfectly timed for the occasion,
two men ran up the stairs, and as they
passed the marshal and his prisoners, one
of the strangers whipped a rubber ammonia-
filled ball from his pocket and squirted the
contents in Donnelly’s face. The second
stranger had drawn a revolver from his hip
pocket, and as the marshal, blinded by the
vitriolic discharge, slumped to the floor, the
roar of the gun echoed through the corridor.
The slug, intended for the marshal, missed
its mark and tore into Ariel Eggers’ stomach.
In the meantime Milo, without a backward
glance, sprinted down the stairs, one of the
strangers on each side of him. Ariel; groan-

ing with pain, rolled down the stairs, while
the marshal on his knees in the corridor
strove to clear his eyes of the acid. Gaining
the street entrance and pushing their way
through the sidewalk throng, Milo and
his companions leapt into a waiting auto-
mobile and whirled through San Francisco’s
crowded downtown streets to a successful
getaway.

KILLED BY BROTHER

When the story was pieced together there
was no doubt that the man who fired the
shot that killed Ariel Eggers was none other
than his own brother, Theodore. Theodore
had quit Puget Sound after the Hadsell job
and transferred his activities to the Bahamas,
running liquor to the Florida coast. At
Gun Cove, an old-time pirate lair, he shot
and killed the skipper of another rum boat.
Caught and convicted, he served time in
the Atlanta Penitentiary. Although the
B. C. authorities were acquainted with his
whereabouts and had a warrant for his
arrest, Theodore was released in some mys-
terious manner just before he could be
taken into custody for the crimes he had
committed in the northwest. The man who
used the ammonia was probably William
Barlow, Milo Eggers’ partner in a series of
California jewel robberies before the latter’s
arrest in San Francisco.

Another eight months passed before the
two remaining Eggers were heard of again.
Theodore was caught in Tacoma, Wash-
ington, but revealed nothing of his brother’s
whereabouts. He got six months in a
Tacoma gaol for aiding Milo’s escape in
San Francisco. Unidentified by the men he
had robbed on the Lillwms and Hadsell, he
was released at the finish of his sentence
and promptly departed for parts unknown.

But three days later an astute Tacoma
detective trailing Mrs. Erna Brown (sister
of the Eggers gang) and Dorothy Eggers
(Milo’s wife) became curious as to their
repeated visits to an uptown apartment
house. Communicating his suspicions to
his detective captain, a squad of twenty men
surrounded the building and found Milo
hidden in the basement. Returned to
Canada, he stood trial for participation in
the Hadsell hi-jacking, but, and it was a big
but, terror of the Eggers name had confused
the memory of the Crown’s rum-runner
witnesses. Although they had picked Milo
out of a Tacoma police line-up, their evi
dence at the Victoria Assize Court was
vague and indefinite. Given the benefit of
the doubt, Milo was acquitted and deported
back to the U. S. Within a week he was
in trouble with the Seattle police in con-
nection with the attempted hold-up of a
theatre box office in the Sound city.

A year later the body of Theodore

Eggers was found floating in the Pacific off
Pillar Point, California. His head, hands
and feet had been cut off, but the horse's
head tattooed on his chest made identifica’
tion possible. Suppos'tion was that Calt-
fornia rum runners, crossed up once too
often by Eggers, had taken terrible revenge
in gangland’s own style.

Old Theodore Eggers, father of the young

THE SHOULDER STRAP