HE ROBBED EXPRESS WAGONS.
Young Man Stole a Wooden Leg and
Mother Goose Book.
Charged with systematically robbing delivery wagons of the local express offices, Frank Fleming, 25 years old, is being held at police headquarters for investigation. Arrested in the very act of looting a wagon of the United States Express Company in front of the Midland hotel on Walnut street yesterday afternoon, young Fleming has admitted to a series of similar thefts extending over a period of two weeks.
Among the thefts he is said to have admitted were the following: From the American Express Company tow separate packages containing a valuable suit of clothes and an overcoat; from the Pacific Express Company five separate packages taken within the past few days from wagons halted between Eleventh and Twelfth streets on Grand avenue; from the Adams Express Company, five separate packages, three of which were taken from wagons in front of the National Bank of Commerce; from a Wells-Fargo Express Company, a suit of clothes taken from a wagon in front of 813 Walnut last Saturday; from the United States Express Company, two packages, one Tuesday morning at Ninth and Walnut and the other yesterday morning from near Eleventh and Main streets.
Detectives J. F. Lyngar and Jack Farrel were detailed upon the case, and upon Fleming's description of his caches, managed to locate nearly all of the stolen property last night. A rather amusing side to the affair is that out of four packages taken at one time, one was found to contain a wooden leg being shipped for repairs; another a volume of "Mother Goose" poems; a third, fifty small wooden fox heads consigned to a furrier, and the last a Panama hat. Detectives Farrel and Lyngar recovered the wooden leg, which had been hidden in an alley near Twelfth and Main streets.
