Dutch

Repository, The (Canton, OH)
Estimated printed pages: 5

November 14, 2004
Section: Main Story
Gunman killed in Canton in 20's has new home in Washington museum
TIM BOTOS
Repository staff writer
CANTON His body may be 114 years old, but Andy Dutch Kaplers soul died here long ago.
Dont shed a tear for Dutch. By all accounts, he got what he deserved. On his death certificate, his
occupation was listed as gunman. The nature of his business: Safecracker and murder. He was a
bad dude, even for the Roarin 20s.
This is a story of past and present. Its a tale of a fateful trip Dutch and his bandit friends made to
Stark County and the restless journeys Dutch made in death, leading him last year to his final
resting place at a Washington D.C. museum.
Like many professional criminals of his day, Dutch Kapler was known by plenty of aliases, including
Harry Harpert, Harry Hartman, William Martin and William Hoffman. Rumored to be the son of a
well-to-do Pittsburgh couple, Dutch first was arrested in 1909. He spent the next dozen years in
and out of prisons.
By 1922, hed hooked up with the notorious Jiggs Losteiner Gang of Cleveland. In January of
that year, Dutch and four gang members robbed a bank in Crafton, Pa. Dutch shot and killed a
teller; the gang made off with a bundle of loot.
Five months later, the law caught up with one of the gang. A man known by most as Oklahoma
Slim, was imprisoned, arrested on a burglary tools charge. There, he sat in the Stark County
Workhouse at Mahoning Road and Maple Street, site of the present-day dog warden.
Dutch and pals came here to break him out but by their own admission they made a tragic
mistake.
It was May 4, 1922, when Canton Police motorcycle officer John Wise saw a speeding car, referred
to as a machine in newspaper accounts, east of the city.
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This was the same year the American Professional Football Association was renamed the NFL. The
Palace Theatre wasnt open yet. Women only recently won the right to vote. The citys first traffic
light wasnt installed until a year later. And most roads outside the city limits were dirt.
Wise had no idea of the background of the four men in the car Kapler, Tommy Saxon, John
Stephens and Eddie Stephenson. All he knew was the car was speeding at 45 miles per hour.
He ordered the four to police headquarters. On the way there, they got the drop on officer Wise.
They overpowered, bound and gagged him and threw him into their car before speeding north on
Maple. Kapler would later admit the gang should have just paid the officer a $20 bribe and sent
him on his way.
A Bell Telephone linesman who saw the kidnapping followed the bandits car in his own. He
stopped from time to time, tapping into phone lines to update police on the location of the
bandits.
Police and a posse of civic activists quickly assembled and gave chase. Speeding north on
Middlebranch Avenue, then west on whats now Schneider Street, the bandits and pursuers traded
gunfire.
Ralph Hoffee, a member of the posse, was struck and killed. The bandits ditched their car and
headed south on to Obed Oberlins farm off of present-day 55th Street. They stopped in the barn
and dumped a handful of local maps, presumably their guides for getting out of the area after the
jail break.
With the posse in hot pursuit, the gang then ran toward a tree line, along the railroad tracks on
the farm. For at least an hour, they exchanged gunfire with the posse and police. By the time the
shoot-out ended, gang member Stephenson was dead. Another, Stephens, died a few hours later.
The shoot-out made local headlines for weeks. Oberlin charged gawkers 25 cents admission to his
farm for a first-hand look at the scene, but pledged half the proceeds to Hoffees widow. The
Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote an editorial, praising the work of the posse.
In part, it said:
The Losteiner gang comes to its logical end. Those who live by violence die by violence. Singly or
in small groups, the former lieutenants of Jiggs the gunman have fallen under the laws strong
arm. The battle of Oberlins farm writes finish to the career of a graceless a bunch of bandits as
the annals of crime reveal.
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In the coming weeks, the last two bandits died in the hospital, then known as Aultman Annex.
First, it was Saxon. Dutch, whod been shot in the head, was the last to die, on May 30.
Today, a crumbling, paint-peeled barn and outbuilding on Chuck Steins Plain Township property
are in the exact same place as when Dutch and his gang made their last stand nearby.
Through the years, old-timers have stopped at Steins place, once known as the Oberlin Farm.
Often, visitors remembered coming as children. As old men, theyd point out bullet holes in the
buildings, evidence they said, of the great shoot-out.
Stein said the holes are more imagination than fact.
But if they want to think theyre bullet holes; thats fine, he said.
Stein has researched the shoot-out at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus. He and his wife
embrace history. Their old farmhouse was built in the 1830s; antique farming tools hang on a
family room wall. But even they had no clue what became of Dutch Kapler.
Despite grilling from police, Dutch never told them anything about himself before he died. His body
was heavily embalmed, in reality mummified, at the former Hiller Funeral Parlor in Canton. Since no
relative claimed him, his mummy went on public display inside the parlor window on Tuscarawas
Street W.
The practice wasnt as outrageous as it may sound today. Among those embalmed in similar but
more complete fashion are Russian revolutionist Vladimir Lenin and Eva Peron of Argentina.
For several years at least, Dutchs body stayed there for all to see. That is, until the parlor sold it
to a San Francisco side show entrepreneur who charged customers for glimpses at the dead
bandit.
Its unclear where Dutch was before Lawrence Mooney of Virginia got possession of the mummy.
What is clear, is that he had it in the late 1970s. Mooney sold it in the early 1990s to Robert L.
White, a noted collector from Maryland.
At one time, White was believed to have the largest collection of John F. Kennedy memorabilia and
artifacts in the world. His collection also included Raymond Burrs 1961 Emmy Award as Perry
Mason, a 1939 Academy Award for cinematography to Wuthering Heights, Titanic memorabilia,
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and an endorsed presidential paycheck to Warren Harding.

White died at the age of 54 last year.
In December, the executor of his estate arranged for the transfer of Dutchs mummy to the
National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington D.C., on the campus of the Walter Reed
Army Medical Center.
The museum has nearly 25 million pieces in its collection, including Paul Reveres dental tools,
2,000 skeletal specimens of Civil War casualties, a piece of John Wilkes Booth's spine, microscope
slides of Ulysses S. Grant's tumor, mummified co-joined twins, P.T. Barnums hip bone, Gen.
Pershing's dentures and vases found at Hiroshima after the atomic attack.
Steven Solomon, a museum spokesman, said the museum was interested in the specimen not
because of Dutchs notoriety, but because its an example of early 20th Century preservation by
embalming.
Its part of the museums collection of specimens to document preservation of human tissue. A
head and torso of a Kentucky girl embalmed with an arsenic solution is on display now, so there
are no plans to exhibit Dutch.
For now at least, his final resting place is inside a wooden crate, stored in the museums
warehouse.
You can reach Repository writer Tim Botos at (330) 580-8333 or e-mail:
tim.botos@cantonrep.com
Copyright 2004, The Repository, All Rights Reserved.
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Repository, The (Canton, OH)

Estimated printed pages: 5

and an endorsed presidential paycheck to Warren Harding.

Copyright 2004, The Repository, All Rights Reserved.

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