68
THE GREEN BAG
"Governor Charles P. Johnson," said both men. They left and returned within the hour accompanied by Johnson. The latter sought to learn something from the prosecutor be fore advising them what to do, and plied Folk with a mass of questions. "I know what they want to tell me. If they do not voluntarily testify, I will drag it from them and then invoke the law against them also," Folk threatened. It is a posi tive fact that at this moment Folk did not have a single thing upon which to base any sort of a charge. But his smile was so con fident and his manner so convincing that Governor Johnson, one of the leading mem bers of the western bar, fell into the trap. "You had better tell it all," he told his clients. Turner and Stock, the millionaires, were taken before the high inquisition. Both made full confessions detailing how Charles Kratz, member of the Council, and John K. Murrell, agent for the Combine in the House had demanded $60,000 in the first, and $75,000 in the second instance for the pass age of the bill. They had put the money up and also had paid at the behest of Kratz, $9,000 to Emil Meysenburg, a broker, a member of the Council, to remove his ob jections to the bill in question. In the mat ter of Kratz, Stock stated that John G. Brinkmeyer was to act as the agent of Kratz and had been entrusted with the first key to the safe deposit box, Stock himself holding the second key. It took Folk two weeks to drag a confession from Brink meyer. Day after day he held out and de nied ever hearing about the boodle fund. In his case Folk's cardinal virtues, perse verance, determination and thoroughness asserted themselves. He never lost his temper with Brinkmeyer. His smile was continual, but time after time he confronted him with Stock and Turner, and in the end Brinkmeyer broke down and confessed. In dictments were voted against Charles Kratz, John K. Murrell, and Emil Meysenburg.
Then the Circuit Attorney beat the indict ments to court. He secured a writ impound ing all the money as evidence in the cases before the city knew a word about the in vestigation, and that writ still holds good. The indictments of Kratz, Murrell and Meysenburg was but the beginning of the boodle crusade. The drawing up of the in dictments was work of the utmost study, but between hours the strenuous Circuit Attorney found time to delve into the boodle conditions so that never a day passed for months without some surprise or other springing up. Harry A. Faulkner and Julius Lehmann, members of the House of Delegates, were indicted for perjury. Folk learned from Paul Reiss, an attorney, that these two men had approached Reiss with the unparalleled offer of making him at torney for the Combine in an effort to obtain the boodle money. So blast were the boodlers that they actually had the temerity to suggest a civil suit to determine the interest in the money. The combines had been re strained by the Supreme Court from pass ing the bill, but the members felt that they had earned the money because of their will ingness to pass the measure, and suit was threatened. Reiss testified. Lehmann and Faulkner attacked this evidence on the ground of privileged communication, but Folk beat the defense on law. "No com munication suggestive of the commission of a crime can' be termed privileged," he ar gued, and the courts sustained him. The indictment of Ellis Wainwright, a million aire brewer, and of Henry Nicolaus, his part ner in the brewing interests as well as in the Suburban railway, were next in order and then succeeded the recording of true bills against George J. Kobusch, a millionaire St. Louisan, and one against Robert M. Snyder, a wealthy promoter of Kansas City, who made his home in New York and whose business it appeared on trial was the de bauching of legislative bodies. These early indictments were startling to the public, but the general opinion was that
