A poster, hanging in police departments, bureaus of identification and sheriffs' offices all over the country, has now been removed from its place of prominence on thousands of walls.
George "Dutch" Anderson is dead. The murderer, safe blower, all-around bandit, pickpocket, forger, bank burglar and thief has committed his last crime. For two days the wires hummed with the news of his death and the identification of the body that was lying in the morgue at Muskegon, Michigan.
Anderson was engaged in the business of passing counterfeit money when death came. He had been flooding Michigan with bogus twenty-dollar bills, passing from town to town unknown, though his picture was hanging in nearly every police department.
Two weeks before his death, he passed one of the bills to a drug-store clerk in Flint.
In Muskegon, Anderson tried the same trick at the Colonial Cafe. He bought a box of candy, gave a twenty-dollar bill and took the change. Immediately after his departure, the cashier re-examined the bill and, suspicious, sent her brother to the bank across the street. The bill was declared counterfeit.
Chief Hansen detailed Charles Hammond to pick the man up. Accompanied by Engalls, the cashier's brother, Hammond sought the man whom he supposed was guilty only of this single crime. Among the crowds, Engalls saw and pointed out the man who had given the counterfeit bill to his sister.
Hammond told Anderson to accompany him to the station. Anderson walked along peacefully at the officer's side until he was nearing the city hall where the police station is located. Then he slipped the revolver from his pocket and fired.
The first two shots went wild. Then Anderson broke away and ran into an alley at the rear of the city hall. Hammond followed in the face of gunfire and, as he grabbed Anderson, the bandit turned and fired at close range. The bullet went through Hammond's lung and liver.
Wounded, Hammond still had enough fight in him to battle with the bandit and finally he wrested the revolver from Anderson and fired a shot into the bandit's body, severing the main artery from the heart. The two men sank down together.
Patrolman Thompson, attracted by the shots, came running into the alley. "Get him! He got me!" cried Hammond.
Hammond, assisted by two policemen, walked to the station and turned the bandit's gun over to the chief. He was then taken to the hospital where, two hours later, he died.
The gunman's body meanwhile had been removed to the morgue. Finger prints were taken by Lieutenant Roy Ferris and, early the next morning, Lieutenant Ferris identified the dead man as the notorious Anderson. Later, the identification was confirmed by the State Identification Bureau.
Anderson, whose name according to police records was really Brown, was forty-two when he died. He was first arrested twenty-three years ago for petty larceny. Subsequently, he served terms in the Missouri State Penitentiary and the Joliet, Illinois, Penitentiary, for forgery and robbery. Convicted in 1916 of forgery in New York, he was sent to Auburn Penitentiary.
It was here he met Gerald Chapman, who also had a long police record. The million-dollar mail truck robbery in 1919 involved both Chapman and Anderson and, through the testimony of a chauffeur, both were convicted and sent to Atlanta.
After a year in the prison, Chapman made his famous escape. A few months later, Anderson escaped by burrowing his way under the walls. While a nation-wide search was in progress, the New Britain police officer was murdered in January, 1924. Anderson was not connected with this, and neither Anderson nor Chapman was heard of until Chapman's arrest in Muncie.
At Chapman's trial in Connecticut, the Ben Hances of Muncie, Indiana, gave testimony against Chapman. Shortly afterwards, this couple was killed by an unseen hand and blame was fixed on "Dutch" Anderson, who either wished to revenge himself on the farmers for their part in the Chapman trial, or because he feared they might give out information regarding his own movements.
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