Chapter II — The Manhunt
The Hunt for William B. Tascott
1888 — Nationwide
A landlady's tip leads police to a prime suspect. A $22,000 reward is posted. Hundreds of men are arrested across the country. None of them are Tascott.
WANTED
William B. Tascott
"22 or 23 years of age, 5 feet 8 or 9 inches high, 140 pounds weight, slim built, very erect, full round face, heavy eyebrows, very fair complexion, dark brown hair, thin on top of head cut short, large blue eyes, small, thin, dark mustache — may be dyed."
Reward Offered
$22,000
$20,000 from Albert Snell (son of the victim) + $2,000 from Chicago Police. Later raised to $50,000 by Henrietta Snell.
Source: Murder by Gaslight — Robert Wilhelm, April 2019
The first break in the case came when Mrs. Ella S. Wicks, a lodging house landlady, reported that one of her tenants had what appeared to be stolen merchandise in his closet. The man, who gave his name as Mr. Scott, rented the room in January. In February he paid her a week's rent in advance, said he was going away for a few days, and left the day after the murder. Mrs. Wicks went into the room and found silverware, clothing, and pieces of jewelry believed to be stolen. None of the merchandise was from the Snell house, but among his possessions were fragments of a check stolen from Snell's office.
The description Mrs. Wicks gave matched that of a safe-cracker the police knew as Billy Gebright — actually an alias of William B. Tascott, the black sheep of a prominent Chicago family, who had a criminal record in cities further west. Claiming to have additional evidence against him, the police declared Tascott the suspected killer of Amos Snell and offered a $2,000 reward for his capture.
They had no photograph of Tascott, but they issued a description and distributed it nationwide. The police were confident that Tascott would be convicted when caught and that his capture was imminent.
With $22,000 at stake, the rest of the country was ready to take up the search. On February 18, a man matching Tascott's description was arrested in Los Angeles — it wasn't him. On February 23, he was arrested in Lebanon, Missouri — also not Tascott. At the same time, Tascott was seen in Louisville, Kentucky and Springfield, Illinois. In March he was seen in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Boulder, Minnesota. Oscar Garland, an escaped convict from Minnesota captured in Chicago, claimed to be the true killer of Amos Snell — the first of many false confessions.
By the end of 1888, Mrs. Henrietta Snell, fearing her husband's murder would be forgotten, increased the reward for his killer's capture to $50,000. According to the Daily Inter Ocean, this made the reward on Tascott's head "the largest amount ever offered for the capture of any human being in the world."
The sightings continued to widen. In February 1889, Tascott was seen in West Virginia. In June, a woman in San Francisco claimed she helped Tascott escape to China. Then sightings died down again.
"The largest amount ever offered for the capture of any human being in the world."