Farmers Caught Chicken Thief

FARMERS CAUGHT CHICKEN THIEF

And Locked Him Up Over Night

CHICKENS IN BUGGY

Sons of Alex Frazier Trapped the Thief Who Plead Guilty Today

Northfield farmers caught a chicken thief Monday and held him until the officers arrived and brought him to this city.

Monday when two of the sons of Alex. Frazier were returning home they noticed a horse tied to a fnce nar Albert Groves' place. They drove up and down the road awhile but no one appearing they took the horse home and put it in the barn. In the buggy were a number of chickens. Some time later a man called at the barn to get the horse. They locked him up in a room until morning and sent for the officers. Albert Groves recognized some of the chickens as belonging to him.

Th prisoner gave his name as Charlie Williams but was recognized as a man who had worked for Mr. Frasier some thirteen years ago and was then known as Charles Palmer, a name he afterwards owned as his own.

Williams or Palmer protested his innocence of chicken stealing but after Prosecuting Attorney Duffy had questioned him, he plead guilty in Justice Doty's court and was sentenced to $20 fine and $6.83 costs or 60 days in jail.

Williams had been working near Ypsilanti. The horse he had belonged to the DeMosh livery and he claimed to b going out into the country to buy chickens. He formerly worked on the Tower farm near this city and was one of the three men whose companion made off with their money a year ago.

H acknowledged being out of prison on parole but said that he had never been sent up for stealing but a girl had him sent up.

A year or so ago most of the farmers of Northfield in the section where Williams was operating last night had had their chickens stolen and among them Mr. Frazier, which naturally aroused the suspicion of the Fraziers when they saw the horse tied to the fence.

"Butch" Ely went to prison for stealing chickens from a hen coop. Williams did not because he stole his chickens from the fence and not from a hen coop. The legislature discrimminates between the crime of taking chickens from a coop and from a fence, apparently with the idea of encouraging the building of chicken coops.