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| The infernal machine packed enough power to destroy an entire house |
It was a marriage made just south of hell.
Nettie Schwab married Jerome Hoot secretly in
Kansas City on January 25, 1899. When she woke up on the second day of her
honeymoon, she found him bending over her, holding a handkerchief close to her
face. Was it drenched with chloroform? She found a bottle hidden in his
belongings the next day. Nettie kept her mouth shut about the incident, but
kept a close watch on him afterward.
Another time, Hoot tried to drug her with a
tablet, but she spit it out when he wasn’t watching.
The entire time they were in Kansas City, Hoot
pestered her to sign her property over to him because he could manage her
finances better.
When she didn’t give in, he threw his hands up
in the air and suggested a separation. If they couldn’t pull together on
something so simple, they might as well go their own way.
Hoot was on the road traveling most of the time
they were married, or at least he said he was. Nettie wasn’t sure.
She went home alone after the honeymoon. Hoot
came home a few weeks later, and then he was gone again. He came back for one
day in March, then he was back on the road.
They met in Dubuque in June and cruised down
the Mississippi River on a houseboat. A few hours later, as they were passing
through Sabula, Jerome Hoot talked about separating again.
Nettie got off the boat at Clinton and returned
to Waterloo. She didn’t know or care what happened to her husband.
Jerome Hoot returned to Waterloo on August 10, 1899. He stayed just long enough to collect some of his belongings, then disappeared. Nettie hadn’t seen him since.
Hoot sent his wife two letters and a package
after they separated.
The first letter arrived in April and was
written on stationery from the Hotel Morrison in Chicago. Hoot said he planned
to travel down the Mississippi and contemplated writing an article on house
boating. The letter was signed “J.W.”
The second letter, postmarked from Chicago, was
addressed to “Mr. Jerome Hoot. Waterloo, Iowa.” The writing was small and
cramped. Experts suggested that the writer tried to disguise their handwriting.
It read:
“Dear
Jerome—You will get all your presents to me by express today. Goodbye. TAB”
Mrs. Hoot opened the letter, as she did with
most of her husband’s correspondence. She didn’t know what to make of the
letter and set it aside. Later, an express driver delivered the promised
package.
Something about it appeared strange, but Mrs.
Hoot couldn’t put her finger on it. The package was wrapped in heavy manila
paper and strung tight with twine.
“The infernal machine...was cunningly contrived
to excite the curiosity and wonder of the recipient,” wrote the reporter for The
Courier. “It was made of some hard white wood, which had been stained to
represent walnut and highly polished throughout. The nail holes even had been
closed up with putty and stained and polished.”
Mrs. Hoot pulled on what appeared to be a
drawer. There was a sharp explosion, and then the room filled with smoke. She
quickly dropped the package and ran out the door, screaming for help.
Police officer Schultz was the first officer to
respond. The report of an explosion didn’t seem to bother him. He carried the
infernal machine to the station house, where it was carefully locked away until
detectives could deactivate or explode it.
When they retrieved it the following day, the
police were unsure how to disarm the device, so they took it to the east end of
the Chicago Great Western bridge for examination. They attached a 30-foot-long
rope to the drawer and then gave it a tug after concealing themselves behind an
embankment.
Jerome Hoot
The device emitted a fierce red flame that shot several feet into the air.
The explosion sent shockwaves through the city.
The concussion blew out windows in nearby buildings and was heard over six
miles away. Farmer Francis Ritter heard the blast and rushed into town to find
the source of the noise, as did many of his neighbors.
Detectives said if it had exploded in Mrs.
Hoot’s hands, “she would have been blown to atoms, every person in the house
killed and nothing but a hole left in the ground where the house stood.”
The wrapping paper used to package the infernal
device provided an important clue to its origin. The stamp showed it was picked
up in Chicago by an employee of the United States Express Company named Dolan,
carrier number 912.
Detectives
figured Hoot married his wife for her money. He’d started grubbing for her
money on their honeymoon, demanding she sign her property over to him. The only
concession Nettie had made was to sign over a $1,000 insurance policy. That
didn’t satisfy Hoot, so he left her.
The Waterloo Courier explained
it as a case of greed gone wild. They suggested Hoot would have appeared
briefly at his wife’s funeral. And “perhaps mourned a few short days until he
came into possession of his legal share of her property and the money on the
insurance policy. Then he would have departed, and no one would have been the
wiser.”
Sheriff W. M. Law had little to go on. So, he
traveled to Chicago searching for his man, but unfortunately, the express
company could not say where the package was picked up.
Reporters speculated that the mysterious TAB
referred to in the letter was Abbie Vorce, an intimate friend of Jerome Hoot
who lived in Chicago. Sheriff Law interviewed her and collected writing
samples, then just as quickly ruled her out. The writing style was like the
letters addressed to Hoot, but did not match. Besides, intuition told him she
wasn’t the guy.
On November 3, The Courier reported Hoot
was engaged to a woman from Clarksville when he married Nettie Schwab. When the
girl came into a sizable amount of money, Hoot urged her to push up the wedding
date and sign everything over to him. But she transferred most of her property to
her brother. And just like that, Jerome Hoot dropped out of the picture. Shortly
after that, he married Nettie Schwab.
It also came out that Hoot had a relationship
with another TAB, Miss Tabby Preston of southern Illinois. Preston ran away to
Chicago with Hoot the previous year and had disappeared. Was she the mysterious
TAB referred to in the letter? Detectives couldn’t locate her, so Tabby Preston
became another dead end.
Meanwhile, County Attorney Reed became obsessed
with the case. He spent a week in Omaha attempting to track down Jerome Hoot.
And while he didn’t locate Hoot, he uncovered several vital clues.
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| Nettie Hoot |
Reed learned Hoot stayed at the Great Western Hotel from September 11 to October 25 and hired a cabinetmaker who crafted the box that housed the infernal machine. In addition, Reed secured a duplicate box for evidence.
The cabinetmaker, Adolph Crouse, said Hoot
first visited his store in mid-October. He provided the specifications for the
box. They haggled a bit, then settled on one dollar.
Hoot was somewhat secretive, said Crouse. He
refused to give his name or say how he planned to use the box, but he said if
things worked out, he planned to order 100 more.
Hoot also visited several matrimonial shops in
Omaha, passing himself off as a single man searching for a wealthy widow. That
led detectives to speculate if the scheme to eliminate his wife had worked; it
might have led to a rash of infernal machines hitting the mail.
At about that same time, Sheriff Law learned
Hoot purchased dynamite at a Des Moines hardware store on October 26, 1899. Apparently, he was price conscious. The first time
Hoot visited the store, he complained that they charged more than in Omaha.
However, he must have gotten over it quickly because he returned a short while
later and purchased the explosives. The shopkeeper said he stashed the dynamite
in a leather pouch.
Jerome Hoot would probably never have been
caught; except he transferred money from his bank in Dubuque to his boarding
house in New Orleans. That transfer left a paper trail for detectives that put
him behind bars. Hoot brushed off the slip up, saying he intended to turn
himself over to the grand jury in Black Hawk County after Mardi Gras. But there
was no proof of that.
New Orleans police arrested Jerome Hoot on
January 26, 1900. Sheriff W. M. Law and his son, Deputy Richard Law, left for
New Orleans a few days later.
On the trip back, Hoot admitted he was in
Chicago at the time the device was mailed. He didn’t know anymore “about the
affair than he read in the newspapers.” Perhaps some unknown enemy sent the
box, hoping he would open it. But he was in the dark on who might have sent it
or why?
Hoot “is not worried in the least over his
arrest,” reported The Times-Picayune. “He would rather go back without
trouble and prove his innocence in quick time.”
That may or may not have been the case.
Detectives Kerwin and Littleton, who picked Hoot up in New Orleans, said he was
getting ready to board a ship for South America when they found him.
The case was pretty much still up in the air
after Hoot’s return to Waterloo.
If Hoot was the dynamiter, he didn’t act like
it. Instead, he took a “rather humorous” view of the situation. A reporter for The
Courier said Hoot laughed it off as a misunderstanding.
When Hoot shook hands with the reporter, he
cautioned him not to shake too hard. He might “jar” the handcuffs off.
The grand jury quickly indicted Hoot on two
counts—attempted murder and throwing dynamite into a building intending to
destroy it.
Jerome Hoot’s trial opened on November 7, 1900.
The Courier reported Hoot made a
“very neat and tasty appearance” in the courtroom. The 39-year-old stood six
feet tall with an athletic build, had steel-blue eyes, curly dark brown hair,
and a reddish mustache. His black suit fit his “well-developed figure” nicely.
The Hoot verdict. (The Courier. Npvember 14, 1900)
He appeared confident, but the prosecution’s evidence fell into place so quickly, it seemed like an open and shut case against Jerome Hoot.
Nettie Hoot was the first witness to take the
stand. She told jurors she married Jerome Hoot secretly in Kansas City on
January 25, 1899. The couple lived together on and off for several months, but
eventually went their separate ways. She couldn’t handle all his pestering
about transferring her assets to him. Finally, she returned to Waterloo, and he
stayed in Chicago.
Her husband sent a conciliatory letter in June,
inviting her to join him on a river cruise. Nettie met him at Dubuque. By the
time they got to Clinton, some sixty miles away, her husband returned to his
old ways. He kept demanding she sign her assets over to him, so she returned
home.
Hoot made another appearance in Waterloo on
August 10, 1899. He stayed just long enough to collect some of his belongings,
mainly music. She hadn’t seen him since.
Nettie admitted she knew the letters, and the
package was addressed to her husband—not her. Still, they piqued her “woman’s
curiosity, so she opened them. Besides, she frequently opened mail addressed to
her husband. Then, if it seemed important, she forwarded it to him.
George Kennedy testified he arrived at Nettie
Hoot’s home at about 5 p.m. He assisted Officer Schultz in carrying the
infernal machine to the police station, where they locked it in a metal ballot
box. Then, he gave the key to the mayor for safekeeping.
Kennedy, Officer Schultz, and J. C. Hartman
took the device to the C. G. W. Railway bridge the following day. Mr. Hartman
attached a thirty-foot coil of rope to the drawer on the box. After they took
cover behind the embankment, Hartman tugged on the rope and exploded the
device.
He was fifteen feet away when the device went
off. The other two men were further away. He estimated roughly a twenty-second
delay between when he pulled on the rope and when the device exploded. He had
trouble hearing for several days afterward.
The chambermaid at the Great Western Hotel in
Omaha, Ella Pierson, confirmed she saw a cabinet like the one described in
Hoot’s room. The only difference was that the one in Hoot’s room was “more
polished” than the duplicate the prosecution showed her.
Adolph Crouse, the Omaha cabinetmaker,
explained how he created the box that housed the infernal machine. It was 12 x
8 x 4 and took him about a day to make. Hoot paid him one dollar for his
efforts.
And Percy Perkins, the owner of Perkins Bros.
Hardware Store in Des Moines, testified that his store sold Hoot ten half-pound
sticks of dynamite. He knew Hoot from when he attended classes at Drake
University. However, Hoot did not use his real name when he purchased the
dynamite. It was a longer name; he didn’t understand.
The defense did what it could to refute the
evidence.
They introduced several handwriting experts who
testified that the letters and the package received by Nettie Hoot were not
written by Jerome Hoot. After that, Charles Mullan, the defense attorney, moved
to request the court to order the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.
The package was addressed to Jerome Hoot, not
Nettie Hoot. The delivery company unlawfully delivered it to the wrong person,
and Nettie Hoot unlawfully received it. She knew it was addressed to another
person, explained Mullan. She had no right to open it.
The charge was assault with intent to commit
murder, emphasized Mullan. However, the evidence did not show the defendant was
guilty of trying to murder his wife. The sender did not address the package to
Nettie Hoot. She was not injured by the explosion, so no assault was committed.
Mullan also contended that the Iowa courts had no jurisdiction because the
package was delivered to the United States Express Company in Illinois.
And while not admitting that Jerome Hoot mailed
the package, Mullan said Hoot had a “perfect right to ship the box to himself
and that this act was in itself an innocent act.”
As a result, the court should direct the jury
to return a verdict of not guilty.
Judge Blair quickly overruled the motion,
saying the only motion he could consider was jurisdiction. And he was confident
that the courts of Iowa had jurisdiction in the case.
The jury deliberated for seven hours before
returning a guilty verdict against Jerome Hoot for sending an infernal machine
with the intent to murder.
Judge Blair sentenced Jerome Hoot to ten years
in the Anamosa Prison, the maximum sentence possible under the charges he was
indicted on. Attorney Charles W. Mullan moved for a new trial, but Judge Blair
denied it.
From all accounts, Hoot was a
model prisoner during his stay at the Anamosa Prison. He taught music classes,
played the organ during church services, and helped wherever he could. Jerome
Hoot was released on February 27, 1907, after serving seven years.
Not long after that, The Courier reported
Hoot was enjoying a successful career in the Detroit music industry. Three
years later, they noted he had just returned from a tour around the world,
visiting Australia, New Zealand, England, Italy, and the Middle East.
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