The Sicilian Trunk Job
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2024
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 161 takes us on a trip across the Midwest from the Italian slums of Chicago, where a produce salesman meets a terrible fate at the hands of a countryman aboard a train to Pittsburgh where his body was found several days later. In this story, the police and the press work together to break down the brotherhood of silence and crack this horrible crime.
Culled from the historic pages of the Chicago Tribune, the Inter-Ocean, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and other newspapers of the era.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular.com |
| 0:03.0 | Mr.S.M. Jackson, Mr. S.M. Jackson, the express manager who left Chicago on Thursday on the train which brought the trunk through to the city, |
| 0:21.6 | said, quote, I was on the combination car when the trunk was put in at Chicago. |
| 0:26.6 | It was brought there by a laborer, an Italian as I thought, and he said, |
| 0:31.6 | that trunk has not clothing in it, as the weight is all in one end. |
| 0:36.6 | The man helped the baggage men to lift the trunk into the |
| 0:39.2 | car, and I helped the man on the car to put it up among the other baggage, noticing as I did so, |
| 0:45.3 | the stench that came from it. We, the baggage master, and I remarked each other, that would be a nice |
| 0:52.3 | way to handle a dead body, referring to the trunk. |
| 0:56.0 | I only came through to Fort Wayne and came through today. |
| 0:59.0 | This trunk is the same one I saw at Chicago and left on the train when I got off at Fort Wayne." |
| 1:05.0 | Unquote. |
| 1:07.0 | Baggage Master C.S. Jenkins said, quote, I myself took that trunk off the early train from Chicago yesterday morning. As I received it against my breast to lighten it to the trunk, an ungodly smell met my nostrils and I almost dropped it. I thought of the preller case and was going to say something about the trunk |
| 1:28.9 | when other baggage began to come off and I let it go for the moment. However, when the trunk |
| 1:34.8 | went down into the room, the smell was so strong that the boys put it out on the platform. |
| 1:41.3 | There it remained all day till late in the afternoon when one of the reporters of an afternoon |
| 1:47.0 | paper smelled it and recommended that it be burst open. At 3 o'clock, R.R. Bentley, our general |
| 1:54.1 | baggage agent came over and I called his attention to the smell and we talked about it and did nothing. After I got my |
| 2:02.3 | supper I was talking to my night man of the trunk and suddenly I concluded to open it. |
| 2:07.9 | I got a key and untying the rope soon had it open. The first sight staggered us all |
| 2:14.6 | but we sent for the corner and let it alone until he came the trunk |
| 2:19.8 | was well tacked and I never saw one more thoroughly tied up with ropes. True Crime Historian presents an eye for an eye, a special edition of yesterday's news exploring the criminal justice system at its most extreme, inflicting the death penalty. |
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