116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: Fairfax rail agent stops station robbery in 1896
Clothing worn by dead robber led to hideout near Amana
This Gazette drawing shows Frank Benedict, agent of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad company at Fairfax, who stopped two thieves from robbing the Fairfax train station Dec. 7, 1896. (Gazette archives)
This Gazette drawing shows Frank Wolf, one of two men who tried to rob Frank Benedict, agent of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad company at Fairfax on Dec. 7, 1896. The image was drawn after Wolf’s death. It was later discovered the man’s real name was Frank Loescher.
This Gazette drawing shows Henry Schultz, one of two men who tried to rob the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad station at Fairfax. He was captured Dec. 9, 1896, two days after the attempted robbery, at a shack about 3 miles north of the Amana Colonies that a gang of robbers was using as a hideout. (Gazette archives)
Railroad agent Frank Benedict put down his lantern and reached up to turn off the lamp on the platform of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. station in Fairfax at about 8:45 p.m. Dec. 7, 1896.
Suddenly, two armed men confronted him. One pointed a gun at him and ordered him to put up his hands. Instead, Benedict grabbed the man’s gun with his left hand, causing it to fire wildly. He simultaneously reached in his pocket for his own gun. He shot and killed the man who’d threatened him.
Benedict ran into the station’s waiting room as the other man began firing at him, putting two bullets in Benedict’s overcoat but missing the agent.
The outlaw then checked to see if his accomplice was alive. He wasn’t. He grabbed the dead man’s gun and ran away down the tracks.
Benedict headed into town to inform authorities.
Aftermath
Justice William Park, the elected peace officer and the acting coroner in Cedar Rapids, convened an inquest and ruled that Benedict had acted in self-defense and exonerated him from any blame.
On Dec. 8, Coroner John B. Turner’s office in Cedar Rapids was inundated with people all afternoon who wanted to see the dead man. No one recognized him or recalled seeing him before.
A sketch of the dead robber, drawn by The Gazette’s artist, ran in the paper, but still no one knew who he was.
The mystery, however, quickly unraveled.
This shack in the woods along the Iowa River in Monroe Township in Johnson County was where Henry Schultz was hiding out in December 1896 after the failed robbery of the Fairfax train station. (Gazette archives)
This drawing shows Frederick Wolf, the owner of the shack in the woods north of the Amana Colonies that was being used in 1896 as the hideout for a gang of robbers. (Gazette archives)
Amana arrest
Meanwhile, Amana City Marshal John Haas read a description of the clothing worn by the criminal and recalled similar clothing had been stolen from a worker at the Amana woolen mill.
The worker accompanied the marshal to Cedar Rapids, and the two identified the clothing as well as the dead desperado. He was Frank Wolf, son of Frederick Wolf, who ran a saloon 3 miles from Amana.
Justice Park said he would go to the shack and attempt to bring the escaped accomplice back to Cedar Rapids.
Park recruited a young man to accompany him to Iowa County on Dec. 9, where a known gang of outlaws hung out. On the way, they were joined by Robert Watson, a Milwaukee Road special agent.
The three men found Frederick Wolf’s remote 8-by-10-foot shack in a ravine near Walford. As they approached, the fugitive opened the door. While Agent Watson covered the suspect, Park searched the man and took his gun. The four men then returned to Cedar Rapids on the 9 a.m. train.
A crowd gathered at the Cedar Rapids depot to see the suspect returned, but officers removed him from the train at the Ninth Avenue crossing. He was identified as Henry Schultz, probably from Sterling, Ill. Schultz confessed to the attempted armed robbery.
Wolf’s body
That night, more information came to light about Wolf, the robber who had been shot and killed.
It was revealed a woman, who refused to give her name, identified the body. She was believed to be Wolf’s sister.
Wolf’s stepfather, Frederick Wolf, told authorities the brother and sister were the children of a woman he had met in his native Germany who had followed him to Iowa. Their real names, he said, were Frank and Blanche Loescher.
Wolf refused to claim the body of Frank, and it was interred in the potter’s field Dec. 10.
Amana gang
People in Amana and the surrounding countryside said Schultz and Frank Loescher/Wolf were members of a gang that had robbed people in the Amana Colonies for months.
When the members of the Amana community were at their communal dining hall, the gang would enter their homes and barns and steal household items and livestock. They would take the spoils to a fence in Cedar Rapids, then reconnoiter at the Wolf shack.
A Gazette reporter wrote Dec. 15 that the “whole ridge” around the shack “has a bad name, although here and there are families of good reputation, and who can find plenty of vouchers for their honorable lives.”
“But, as a whole, the neighborhood would be benefited by an inspection of deputy sheriffs and constables. The people of the Amana Colonies have been long suffering and certainly deserve all the protection from the raiders that Iowa and Johnson counties can give.”
Henry Schultz was found guilty of assault with intent to commit murder on Feb. 9, 1897. He was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor at the state penitentiary in Anamosa.
The artist
The drawings that illustrate this Time Machine were created by Cyrus Fosmire, the artist who worked for The Gazette from 1896 to 1903. You can read the Time Machine story about him here.
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