Lincoln's Grave Robbers

Lincoln’s Grave Robbers, which chronicles a successful undercover police operation to protect Abraham Lincoln’s body, also illustrates The Hazards of Police Work, especially with employing an agent who is less than honest. Though it highlights the courage and resourcefulness of the Secret Service in thwarting the robbery of Lincoln’s tomb, Sheinkin’s book does not ignore the inherent pitfalls of Patrick Tyrrell’s policework, which relied on a “roper:” an undercover informer who aided and facilitated the planning of the crime. Following the axiom that it takes a thief to catch a thief, Tyrrell recruited Lewis Swegles, a career criminal, to penetrate one of James Kennally’s coney rings and secretly report all of its movements to him. While none of Tyrrell’s detectives could have successfully played this role, Swegles had the perfect curriculum vitae; he had a long criminal history and a fluency in underworld methodology, both of which helped him win his new partners’ trust. As Tyrrell once noted, to catch criminals, you often have to get your “hands dirty.” The entire operation was dangerous from start to finish because if Swegles’s true role came to light, not only would the endeavor fail but Tyrrell would have compromised the life and safety of one of his men. Significantly, Swegles’s role was not simply to collect information but to aid the criminal conspiracy; that is, to do everything he could to help Hughes and Mullen succeed in their break-in, so that they could be caught in the act.

“Sting operations” of this sort always present difficulties in court, as the undercover agent—often a past criminal and a practiced deceiver—must convince the jury of the veracity of his testimony, without seeming too much a criminal himself. In Hughes and Mullen’s trial, some members of the jury became convinced that Swegles himself was the “brains” of the conspiracy to steal Lincoln’s body. The two would-be graverobbers did not strike the jury as being very intelligent, leading to doubts that they could have planned such an elaborate heist. Indeed, Swegles had given them useful suggestions and guidance throughout; so the jurors’ suspicions that he was the “brains” may not have been very far off. However, in the end, Hughes and Mullen were convicted, mostly due to their foolish attempt to buy an alibi. Nevertheless, criminal cases that rely on the testimony of undercover agents are risky and jeopardize the diligent policework and planning that goes into apprehending the criminals.

Policework often fails to produce the desired outcomes, despite the hard work of the detectives involved; in this case, Tyrrell’s careful planning still wasn’t sufficient to capture “Big Jim” Kennally, who was the kingpin of the operation. Ideally in a sting operation, the undercover agent enables the authorities to gather enough firsthand evidence of their own to build an airtight case, including eyewitness evidence. Tyrrell did just this in his ambush of Ben Boyd in 1875, using Boyd’s mentor Nat Kinsey as a roper. However, since Tyrrell and his detectives bungled the capture of Hughes and Mullen and could not even testify to seeing them at the scene of the crime, Lewis Swegles was forced into the role of star witness: Only he had seen them do anything illegal. Luckily, the two men soon testified against themselves, in the form of Mullen’s ill-advised letters to two cronies, begging them to furnish a concocted alibi for himself and Hughes. These two letters, which fell immediately into the hands of the police, constituted the most damning evidence at their trial, more so than that of the ex-con Swegles. Even so, the ringleader of the whole conspiracy—the counterfeiting mogul “Big Jim” Kennally—managed to escape arrest altogether, since he had minimal contact with Swegles, who could provide only hearsay evidence against him. Tyrrell’s roper operation, though months in the planning, netted only the “small fish,” and that only with some help from the perpetrators themselves. Still, it did manage to protect Lincoln’s remains, until they could be properly and securely buried, safe from any further desecrations.