A Midnight Murder in Davenport

James Gallagher

He didn’t see them coming until they were right on top of him.

October 30, 1915. Second and Fillmore Streets. Davenport, Iowa, after dark. A street corner that feels normal in daylight and ugly at night. Quiet. Empty. A little too much shadow.

James Gallagher came in from Ottumwa and ended up on that corner at the wrong time. Two men stepped out of the dark and closed the space between them fast. They weren’t there to talk.

There’d been two holdups in the past two days. Quick stickups. A hard voice, a gun in your ribs, a pocket turned inside out. The same story stayed the same: two men. One taller. One shorter. The short one with the nerve.

That night they picked Gallagher.

The smaller man pulled a .38. There was a flash, a crack, and it turned from robbery to murder in a heartbeat. Gallagher took a bullet through the right lung. He lurched forward.

He made it a few steps. Then he folded and hit the pavement.

The first man to reach him was J. M. Buzzard. Gallagher was still alive, but just barely. His breathing sounded wrong. Wet. Thin. Like something inside him had already broken loose.

Buzzard leaned down close. Gallagher’s eyes were open, but they weren’t focused.

“They’ve got me,” he said. And then he went quiet.

They rushed him to Mercy Hospital, but there wasn’t time. He died within half an hour.

The police did what they always do. Grabbed suspects. Rounded up drifters. Dragged in the usual names. For a few days, it looked like something might stick.

Then it didn’t. One by one they released them. No confession. No weapon. Just a dead man and blood on the pavement.

Gallagher described his attackers before he died.

Where James Gallagher was murdered 
at the corner of Fillmore and Second Streets

One was rather tall, wearing a soft hat. The other was shorter, wearing a cap. The smaller one carried the pistol. Age 22 or 23. Old enough to know what they were doing. Young enough to do it, anyway.

Two other victims from earlier holdups gave the same description. Davenport wasn’t looking at one bad incident. A pair of men were working the city like it belonged to them.

Then the story tilted toward the railroad tracks.

Police figured the killers didn’t hang around. The theory was they slipped out of town on the train that night, maybe the Golden State Limited on the Rock Island line, heading west at 12:20 a.m. Maybe they bought a ticket. Maybe they didn’t. Probably just walked down to the yard and jumped it like men who’d done it before.

The police weren’t sure. That was the problem. They weren’t sure of anything except the timing.

Someone said Gallagher had a lot of cash on him. Maybe the robbers knew it. Maybe this wasn’t random at all.

And then there was the reason he was in town.

His brother, Tom Gallagher, said Jim meant to catch a train and get out of town the previous night. He’d been hanging out at the Eagles Club, but left a little late. So he missed the train and was stuck in town for another day. That mixup put him in the wrong place at the wrong time, so maybe it was just bad luck.

If he’d left earlier, he might’ve made the platform. Instead, he wound up on the corner of Second and Fillmore. And that’s where Davenport’s run of holdups finally took a life.

The killers were never found. They disappeared into the dark, out past the yards, heading west or east, or—. All that stayed behind was the body, and James Gallagher’s last words.

“They’ve got me.”