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St. Louis, Dec. 12—In the United
States district court today Ben Kilpatrick, the
Montana train robber suspect, was sentenced by Judge
Adams to 15 years imprisonment in the State
penitentiary at Jefferson City, Mo.
The sentence followed a guilty
verdict finding the prisoner guilty of one of the
seventeen counts in the indictment against him.
Laura Bullion, indicted jointly with
Kilpatrick, was also found guilty on one county, but
was not sentenced.
Judge Adams announced that he did not
wish to send the two prisoner to the same
penitentiary and would defer sentence on the woman
until he ascertained whether it was within his
jurisdiction to send her to some penitentiary
outside of Missouri.
When the just had been selected, it
was announced that Kilpatrick confessed that he was
guilty as charged in the twelfth count of the
indictment of passing bank notes issued by the
secretary of the treasury, which had been altered,
up on Max Barnett, in the city of St. Louis. He also
announced that Miss Bullion pleased guilty as
charged in the thirteenth county of the indictment
of having in her possession altered bank notes.
Thereupon the court ordered the jury to retire. It
required less than fifteen minutes for the jury to
agree upon a verdict finding both defendants guilty.
Kilpatrick and the Bullion woman were
arrested in this city more than a month ago on
suspicion that they had something to do with the
holding up of the Great Northern train near Wagner,
Mont., last July, when between $80,000 and $100,000
of unsigned Helena National bank notes were stolen
from the express car. In their possession when
arrested was found about $10,000 worth of these
notes, some of which had the bank officials names
forged to them.
Another crime has been laid at the
door of Ben Kilpatrick. George S. Nixon, president
of a bank at Winnemucca, Nev., positively identified
Kilpatrick as one of the three men who, on September
19, 1900, entered the bank and at the muzzles of
revolvers forced Mr. Nixon to hand over $32,340 in
cash. |
