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Dr. Diller meets "The prince of jail breakers"

This guy crawled through 5 miles of sewers

to break out of Leavenworth

 

Can you imagine crawling through five miles of sewers to break out of Leavenworth federal prison? Neither can we. 

But, the man with this first-hand sewer experience is the same man who escaped from the Ohio Penitentiary, the Illinois prison at Joliet and several other penal institutions in the United States.

 

The man was Clyde Stratton, alias the Duke, known to police as “the prince of jail breakers” and also “the best crook in America.”

 

The story you are about to read involves Dr. Weldon Diller, who for many years was a general practitioner in the community, who was never without a good story to tell.

 

And, this story was exceptional. It turns on that in late April of 1939, Dr. Diller was the attending physician at the death the Duke.

 

The May 4, 1939, Bluffton News tells about the prince of jail breakers final hours. The complete story follows. In addition, We’ve linked two other stories about the Duke, also found below.]



Click here to read this story from the Cincinnati Enquirer


Click here to read this story from 1930 printed in the Rock Island Argus


 

1 Comment


Thanks for this interesting tidbit Fred. What an amazing character! Just thinking about his exploits makes me break out! What national fraternity was he affiliated with! After that long sewer crawl I’m thinking Pigma Stye.

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