Prescott was aghast when the Yavapai County Treasurer, James P Storm, was found bound and gagged in the county’s vault by his daughter, who heard him kicking the vault door when she arrived for work there on the morning of November 9, 1904.
Storm explained that just before closing time, around 5 PM, two masked men entered, brandishing revolvers pointed directly at Storm’s head. They told Storm to throw up his hands. They then bound his hands and feet with baling wire, stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth, and pushed him into the vault. Then, according to Storm, they took roughly $15,000 (worth over $540,000 today); ransacked his office, and locked him in the vault. Storm spent the night occasionally kicking the vault door before his daughter rescued him after 16 hours. Storm was unable to give any description of the men.
“To say that a sensation has been caused by [the] disclosure in the county treasury would put it mildly,” the Arizona Republican described. “Nothing else has so excited Prescott since the great fire [four and a half years previous.]”
The loss of the money was bonded by 18 different individuals for $90,000 (over $3.5 million today). Storm was a democrat, but was well-enough trusted that several Republicans were among those who guaranteed the bond.
When a grand jury was immediately convened to investigate, the trouble began for John P Storm. “Many circumstances connected with the transaction did not harmonize with the story told by Storm,” the Tucson Citizen reported, “one in particular [was that] he had kicked on the door of the vault at intervals all night to attract attention to him.” The bondsmen tested this story by placing one of their own in the vault and had him kick on the door to hear the result. “The noise made by him attracted the attention of people clear across the plaza, who rushed to the courthouse, thinking the prisoners were trying to break jail.”
“Another circumstance which Storm was unable to explain satisfactorily was why he had the vault door open,” the paper continued, “particularly as he had just made his monthly settlement with the board of supervisors on the preceding day.” Most damning was the revelation that “the alleged shortage had existed in the office for some time.”
The grand jury returned four indictments against Storm. One was failure to care for public funds properly, another was improperly loaning money from the treasury, and two indictments for embezzlement.
A search for him ensued, and he was found at 1 AM in a restaurant, eating a late dinner with some friends. He was immediately escorted to jail.
The bondsmen employed an expert to go over the accounts, and he found the loss to be $13,000.
Storm turned over his property to the county, worth a little over $3000, and his office was declared vacant. Homer Wood was appointed to fill the remainder of the term by the Board of Supervisors.
On November 21st, Storm was released on a $20,000 bond.
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Indicted under Section 398 of the Penal Code of Arizona, for unlawfully appropriating to his own use, $15,316.53 of public monies on or around November 9, 1904, (which was just one of the four indictments brought by the grand jury). He was tried in December, and the jury was hung: 7 for conviction and 5 for acquittal. The prosecution was determined to try the case again.
Meanwhile, the bondsmen compromised with the Board of Supervisors, paying $10,000 of the money lost. It was reasoned that a court case could drag on, and the county would be without the funds for an indefinite time.
The second trial started May 8, 1905. Deputy Sheriff JD Carter testified for the prosecution, stating that he was inside the courthouse the greater part of the night and heard none of the cries that Storm claimed to make. The deputy also testified that he was in the hallway of the courthouse at the time the two robbers supposedly entered the office and did their deed. Carter neither saw nor heard anything of the alleged robbers.
The jury was out for 24 hours. The first ballot was 5 for conviction and 7 for acquittal. Eventually, Storm was found not guilty.
“Storm’s face lighted up with excitement and pleasure…shaking the hands of his counsel, and inviting the jury out for liquid refreshments,” the Weekly Journal-Miner noted. The paper went on to say that the overwhelming majority of people in Prescott thought Storm was guilty and were surprised by the verdict. District attorney Ellinwood vowed to bring Storm back to trial on one of the other grand jury indictments and hoped it would be tried in June. Indeed it was, but two years later, in 1907.
This trial was for violating the same statute as the first, but was for $1000 on or around April 10, 1903. This time the prosecution was successful. Storm was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to four years in the penitentiary. A motion for a new trial was denied, but after posting bail, he was free as the case went through appeal.
Storm’s attorneys eventually took the case to Arizona’s Supreme Court, arguing that the third trial was double jeopardy. The Court disagreed, noting it was an entirely different count, and on March 27, 1908, the Court handed down its decision. A motion was made for a rehearing, but a decision upon it was delayed until the fall session of the Court. In the meantime, the court invited Storm’s attorneys to “file additional authorities if they saw fit,” the Journal-Miner explained. Storm would remain free until the case was taken up in the fall term.
Before that fall term, however, the case was taken to the federal appeals court in California, which affirmed the conviction. “Not in the annals of criminal jurisprudence of Arizona has there been a case so bitterly contested as this,” the Journal-Miner propounded. “The long and futile fight of James P Storm…ought to convey a solemn and impressive lesson to all public officials. Every device known to the legal profession was employed to save Storm from paying the penalty of his crime, but in the end, justice was triumphant.”
But after less than a year in prison, nearly 600 people signed a petition asking for Storm’s pardon. The Arizona Republican explained: “Storm was a more or less ignorant frontiersman, of upright conduct previous to becoming county treasurer, and of generous instincts. To such a degree was his generosity a weakness that he was an ‘easy mark’ for men who posed as his friends. These men, in need of money and unable to borrow it at the banks or elsewhere, went to Storm and persuaded him to cash their worthless checks. They made him believe it was all right for him to take their checks and carry them as cash. Wasn’t the county protected by his bond? Weren’t the checks 'good,' insomuch as the makers were surely to take them up later on?”
Acting Governor George U Young agreed and gave Storm a pardon. “Facts which neither the grand jury which indicted him, the trial jury that convicted him, nor the court which sentenced him could consider under the law, were proper matters for the consideration of the executive…[which found] extenuating circumstances in other branches of the case,” the Republican continued. “Storm was one of the treasurers of the ‘old regime’ —the regime of the frontier period of Arizona—when custodians of public funds held loose notions of their obligations. He has served less than a year, to be sure. But for some men, confinement in the penitentiary for a single day is a punishment and a humiliation that would last through life. He is [now] old and broken in spirit. And the proclamation of the acting governor makes it plain that these considerations were also the influential factors with him in reaching a decision in the case.”
Storm quietly went back to work on his ranch near Jerome Junction. On February 17, 1932, he was accepted into the Arizona Pioneers’ Home, where he passed away on October 27, 1941, at the age of 88.
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SOURCES:
Arizona Republican, 11/10/1904, Pg. 1, Col. 7.
Arizona Republican, 11/21/1904, Pg. 1, Col. 1-2.
Tucson Citizen, 11/22/1904, Pg. 8, Col. 2.
Bisbee Daily Review, 11/22/1904, Pg. 1, Col. 3.
Coconino Sun,11/26/1904, Pg. 1, Col. 1.
Copper Era and Morenci Leader, 12/29/1904, Pg. 4, Col. 3.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 6/2/1909, Pg. 3, Col. 1-2.
Mohave Co. Miner, 3/4/1905, Pg. 4, Col. 3.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 5/3/1905, Pg. 8, Col. 4.
Bisbee Daily Review, 5/17/1905, Pg. 1, Col. 4.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 5/24/1905, Pg. 2, Col. 5.
IBID, Pg. 4, Col. 3.
Williams News, 5/27/1905, Pg. 1.
Arizona Daily Star, 5/28/1905, Pg. 3, Col. 3.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 6/2/1909, Pg. 3, Col. 1-2
Weekly Journal-Miner, 7/3/1907, Pg. 2, Col. 3.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 5/19/1909, Pg. 4, Col. 5-6.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 5/27/1908, Pg. 3, Col. 1.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 12/1/1909, Pg. 4, Col. 2.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 6/22/1910, Pg. 3, Col. 3-4.
Arizona Republican, 6/16/1910, Pg. 2, Col. 2.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/2/1921, Pg. 6, Col. 7
Arizona Republican, 10/28/1941, Pg. 4, Col. 4.
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