WAS A BAD MAN ONCE.
Former Stage Robber and Man Slayer
Passes Through City
A bad man from Texas was at the Union depot last night. His name was L. A. Potter. Today it will be changed to a number, for he will be enrolled at the federaly prison at Leavenworth, where he went to spend the balance of his life. Taciturn, morose, he sat apart from the twenty other prisoners who were being transferred in a prison car to the federal prison. All efforts to draw him into conversation failed. Twenty-five years ago Potter was a terror of the Texas plains and of the Panhandle country. He robbed stage coaches and he killed those who opposed him. He shot Hal Gosling, a deputy United States marshal, to death in 1885. He has spent twenty-two years in prison and will round out his life there for the crime.
In the same prison car, on the way to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, from the Illinois state prison at Chester, were thirteen others. James Ryan, a post-office robber, was one of them. He sent his regards to Chief Hayes.
Edward E. Watts, chief deputy United States marshall of the East district of Illinois, with six deputies, was in charge of the car. He left on the Missouri Pacific at 10:10 p.m., expecting to turn his charges over to the prison authourities before midnight.
