The Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, W. Va.
Sunday Morning, September 15, 1912

SIDNA ALLEN AND WESLEY EDWARDS IN PRISON CELL

Love Affair of Younger Man Led to Their Arrest in Des Moines, Iowa.

INTENDED TO MARRY A MISS IROLER TONIGHT

Came to Virginia Month Ago to Visit Her and Detectives Then Got on His Trail—Both Express Willingness to Return and Face Trial and Sidna Allen Talks Freely of Recent Events.

Des Moines, Iowa, Sept. 14. —Sidna Allen, leader of the Allen clan which shot up the Carroll county court house at Hillsville, Va., March 14, killing Judge Massie and others, and his nephew, Wesley Edwards, tonight are manacled in cells in the city jail as the result of love affairs, which led the detectives to them. Both have announced their willingness to return home without requisition.

Edwards, for love of whom Miss Maude Iroler, of Mt. Airy, N. C., had innocently led the detectives to Des Moines, was captured tonight as he was returning to his boarding house after working all day with a paving gang. He tried to escape by crawling through the front end of the car when the officers caught him.

The arrest of Sidna Allen was affected earlier in the day.

A visit by Edwards to Miss Iroler, in her Virginia home about a month ago, and the accidental loss of a letter, put the detectives on the trail.

The fugitives had been in Des Moines since April 28. Allen went under the name of Tom Sayre and worked as a carpenter, and Edwards was known as Joe Jackson and was employed by the city paving gang. Allen was arrested at the home of John Cameron, where he and his nephew had been rooming, by Detectives Baldwin, Lucas and Mundy, of Roanoke. The arrest occurred a few minutes after Miss Iroler stepped into the Cameron home to meet Edwards, whom she was to wed tonight. Detective Lucas covered Allen with a revolver and asked him to surrender. Allen hesitated and then threw up his hands, remarking: “I guess, I’m your man.” Miss Iroler took the arrest of Allen and the capture of Edwards with little show concern.

Sidna Allen in his cell talked freely of the events of the last few months. He said he and Edwards remained in the mountain country in Virginia and North Carolina about a month after the tragedy and then got over in Kentucky, to Louisville. He doesn’t know why they came to Des Moines, unless it was because “I thought it would be safer here.” He said he would have given himself up long ago if he thought he would get a square deal.” “But see what they’ve done to Floyd, my brother, and Claude,” he concluded.

Allen denied that after the tragedy he had sent threats to the officers. “I was writing when the detectives came today,” he said. “I had heard that Wesley and his girl were to be married and she was coming here. If he hadn’t been a blamed fool and gone back to Virginia and dropped that letter we wouldn’t be in this fix tonight, I don’t blame the girl. I don’t know her, but her mother, Mrs. Frank Iroler, was once my sweetheart.” The two men were subjected to Bertillion measurements tonight.