Maniac Commands Police 70 Minutes

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 20, 1912:
With Dynamite He Rules Los Angeles Headquarters — Jail and Hospital Emptied.
STUNNED BY A DETECTIVE
Another Kicks Infernal Machine About and So Averts an Explosion — Crank Seeks Southern Pacific Victim.
    LOS ANGELES, Nov. 19.— Armed with an infernal machine containing enough dynamite to destroy a city block, a bottle of nitroglycerine, and a .45 calibre pistol a masked maniac took possession of the Central Police Station and held it for about seventy minutes, while hundreds of occupants of this building and others for blocks around sought safety in distance.
    When Detective James Hosick knocked the man unconscious with a leather "billy" after slipping up behind him, the fuse of the infernal machine was automatically ignited. Detective Samuel L. Browne grabbed the box with its fuse sharply spluttering and hurled it into the street. Sticks of high-power dynamite scattered over the pavement, while hundreds of spectators stood apparently paralyzed by fright. Through a freak of chance there was no explosion, and Browne continued kicking the sticks of dynamite and jumping on the fuse until he had broken the connection and extinguished the fire.
    Manacled to a cot in the receiving hospital to-night the would-be dynamiter, who has admitted he is Carl Warr, a laborer, is suffering with several severe scalp wounds, but the police surgeons say his injuries are not serious.
    Warr entered the outer office of Chief of Police Sebastian this forenoon. His face and head were completely covered with a grotesque mask and he carried in his arms a large box covered with cloth, which was strapped around his shoulders and resembled a small hand organ. First startled and then amused by the strange spectacle Police Sergt. R. C. Hilf, who suspected a practical Joke, asked the man what he wanted.
    "I've got enough dynamite in here to blow us all into eternity," he said, "and I want you to send for the highest official of the Southern Pacific Railroad."
    He rested the box on a filing cabinet, and Assistant District Attorney R. O. Graham, who was in the office, started Joking with him.
    "This is no joke," said Warr. "I mean business, and if you don't believe me try to take this away from me. My hand is fastened in this box, and if I pull it out — bang! — we all die."
    A hole had been cut in the box, and the occupants of the room saw that the man's left hand had been pushed through it. They began to realise that it was no joke.
    Warr then walked into the office of Police Secretary C. E. Snively, which opens into the private office of Chief Sebastian, and repeated his request that the head official of the Southern Pacific be summoned. Snively asked if he had any preference in the man he desired to blow up, and he replied that he only wanted the head man. Snively took down the telephone receiver and pretended to hold a conversation with Paul Shoup, General Manager of the Pacific Electric Company.
    "Mr. Shoup is busy, but he will be here in about fifteen minutes," said Snively.
    "Well, he'd better hurry," replied Warr, "I'm getting nervous."
    Meantime Chief Sebastian, who had held a brief conversation with the man and realized that he was in earnest, ordered the street roped off for a block either way, and took steps to have the 100 prisoners in the city jail removed. Upstairs in the building two courts were in session, and both rooms were crowded. A detective passed the word to a bailiff in Judge Chambers's court, and the bailiff whispered to the Judge.
    "Court's adjourned until 2 P. M. Clear the room," said the Judge promptly and there was a rush for the stairway. A similar scene was enacted in Justice Frederickson's court.
    There were not enough patrol wagons to remove the prisoners from the jail to the Doyle Heights prison, and two street cars were sent for. It was an orderly procedure, and the prisoners were soon on their way to the east side, guarded by the reserves. Ambulances removed the patients from the city emergency hospital just around the corner from the Chief's office. This institution was crowded with patients injured in last night's fire at the St. George Hotel.
    One of the spectators attracted to the scene was J. Randel a mining man from Chihuahua, Mexico. He shook hands with Warr, and asked if it was really dynamite in the box.
    "Yes, and it's 60 per cent. stuff, too," declared Warr.
    "I don't believe it You are bluffing," laughed Randel.
    Warr lifted the cloth cover of the box, which had a glass front, and drew out a stick of dynamite. Randel took it bit off a piece, and tasted it, miner fashion. He knew what it was, but dissembled.
    "That's not dynamite," he said contemptuously, "Somebody cheated you."
    "Light it and see," said Warr.
    Randel lighted a piece of the "giant" with a match. It burned briskly, and those who had hitherto clung to the joke made a hasty exit.
    As Warr had said his left hand was attached to the mechanism of the infernal machine, and its withdrawal ignited the fuse, but the quick work of Detective Browne prevented the sparks from reaching the explosive. There were sixty half sticks of dynamite, and an expert said it was 60 per cent. in strength, as the man had boasted.
    A San Diego detective said that Warr was in that city at the beginning of the I.W.W. outbreak last Spring, and was one of the men driven out of the city at that time, but the man denied that he was affiliated with any such organisation or that he had ever been in San Diego. A local official of the Industrial Workers of the World said he had never seen the man.
    Warr apparently had been brooding over the Southern Pacific shopmen's strike of more than a year ago, but denied that he had been employed by the company.
    "They brought a lot of scabs out here and they overrun the country, taking the jobs away from other men," he said "I wanted to see if the company wouldn't treat their men better. That was all I wanted."
    The infernal machine was an ingenious contrivance with a large number of springs, and a wire lever attached to the hammerlock of an old army rifle. Warr's hand was attached to the wire that led to this detonating device.
    Officers who searched Warr's house to-night found no explosives or anything that resembled infernal machines. There were however, all sorts of contrivances and devices, numberless gears and lever arrangements, indicating that he had given much time to the study of mechanics.
    The would-be dynamiter said at first that his name was Davis, but he was identified by tax receipts bearing his name found in his home. After much questioning by detectives he admitted that Warr was his name. He also said that more explosives were secreted in the vicinity of the house, and that when he recovered from his injuries he would take the police to the hiding place. He stole the dynamite from the powder house of a quarry at Bloomington, Cal., near Colton, having obtained an impression of the lock, and made keys which opened the building.