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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (June 13, 1915)
The Omaha Sunday Bee Magazine Page ; Nw Chapter Jtrs Jumririn if in tleien Dietz, Eleven Year-Old Daughter of the Outlaw, Parleying with the Sheriff Under a Flag of Truce Jut Before Her Father Surrendered JOHN P.' DIETZ, lumber-Jack, home steader and wootiaman, of Winter, Wisconsin, became famous aome ten years ago because of the remarkable debt he waged against powerful lumber Interests, who, be claimed, were op pressing him. Dletz la a curious surrlral of the old-time pioneer. The trouble first arose In 1904, when pletx's wife acquired a tract of land at Winter, on the Thornapple Rlrer. Rest ing on this land and crossing the river -was Cameron Dam, which had long been used by the lumbermen to raise the water of the river to a sufficient height to enable them to float their logs from the forests to the mills below. Diets believed that be was entitled to compensation for the use of the river flowing by his land and notified the Chip pewa Lumber and Boom Company, whose men were about; to float millions ef feet of pine logs down the river that they could not do so unless they p&ld Urn for the privilege. The company appealed to the courts. They obtained aa Injunction. Diets vaded service. Successive attempts were made to serve Diets, but he defeated them all. Diets became known throughout the r.-inntrv tha "nutlaw nf Cameron Dim" After three or four years of deadly war tare the lumber Interests capitulated. The trouble would probably have ended tkere, but In 1910 Diets got Into an al tercation with a man at a primary elec tion and In the scuffle which ensued a peacemaker named llorel was shot and slightly wounded. A warrant charging him with assault with Intent to kill waa Issued and Sheriff 'Mike Madden prepared to serve It. . A terrific battle ensued. Over a thou sand shots were fired. One of the deputies was killed and Diets and his son Leslie were moulded. Realizing at length that his tight was a hopeless one and fearing to risk the lives of his family by fur ther hostilities, Diets decided to sur render. Handing a sheet to Helen, his deven-year-old daughter, he sent her out The Strange Story of the Petitions for the Outlaw's Pardon A HALF-STARVED and rain-soaked man fell from exhaustion in Co loulal Park. New York City, a few weeks ago and fractured his skull, lie waa taken unconscious to the Wash ington Heights Hospital The only clue to the man's Identity at that time were two stiff-covered note books found In the pockets of his tat tered clothes. On the Inside front cover of each of these books waa pasted a slip sf paper bearing the following typewrit ten words: , "A petition for the pardon of John r. Diet, known as the outlaw. of Cameron Dam, for defending his family and property. LESLIE E. DIETZ. "Cameron Dam, Wis." . Both books were filled with elgna turea, about eight to the page. There were some l.OUO of them In each of the books. How Psychology Explains the Strange Delusion of "Leslie Dietz" ByDr.A.K.Vandegrlft, the Distinguished Psychologist. THE case of the man calling himself Leslie Diets belongs to a well known group of psychological phe nomena, and Is also one of the rarest forms of Us own group. ( There can be no question that this man. whoever he ts, thinks himself Lealle Diets and actually thinks ss he would If he really were Leslie Diets. In other words, he haa no conscious memories of any past except (hat which he has Invented on the line of Ihe Diets hallucination. He Is In a ii ream. But with this difference Uat t.e U a conscious moving agent who, while keeping the tlluKlonary framework of Ms cream intact, direct a It according o his own will. v --SM v H-VV. 'A'h :! .in . - , ,7. r. i ?. to the 8her!ff to announce his willingness to surrender. Diets, Mrs. Diets, and Leslie were ar rested, Indicted and tried for the murdet of the Deputy, but only Diets was found guilty. He was sentenced to life Im prisonment, the death penalty not pre vailing in Wisconsin. Last December, Governor McGevern commuted Dlstx's term to life Imprison-. merit. Under the parole law, DlstS may now bo released In four years. The Gov ernor's action was largely Influenced by the receipt of petitions signed by nun- . dreds of thousands of names which came from every State In the Union. The strange origin of these petitions has Just been revealed and is told here for the first time. r ' "X' w.v" - 1 . When the patient recovered conscious ness he told the hoepital authorities that he was Leslie Diets, of Winter, Wis., son of the famous outlaw of Cam eron Dam. For the past twenty-five montha he had been engaged in secur ing signatures to a petition for the par don of his father. From State to State he had tramped, enduring all sorts of privations and covering over 12,000 miles on foot In the course of his pil grimage. So Intent was the pilgrim on his nils Ion that for daya he went without proper food, and starvation, combined with his exertions, often weakened him to such an extent that he dropped in his tracks. That was how he had come to ' fall' In Colonial Park. The story the patient told was so pathetic and so convincing that most of the newspapers throughout the country printed a sympathetic account of the ao cldent which had befallen the pilgrim from Wisconsin, whose filial labors, It For the explanation of this strange case let us go back to one of the earliest manifestations of the same complex In childhood. Many children gifted with Imagination Invite punishment for lying when they are not consciously lying at all. A child will invent aome wonder ful Invention and he will then tell hla parents that he has actually gone through thle adventure. He will hear of some thing which Inflames his childish lmag ftiatlon and he wtll promptly claim to have seen or to have been a part of this same happening. The child really be lieves what he saya. His visualization U so perfect that he actually confuses real ity with the unreal. Another manifestation ts the very ex traordinary one that all psychologist and criminologists know. This Is U.e or fie Uuraw of L How a Self -Sacrificing and Honest Impostor Collected a Million Names for the Pardon of the Famous John Dietz, Saving Him from Life Imprisonment and How Psychology Explains His Delusion and Labors h ;r i w v"; " ' ' ' ' t ' ' ... ' . - .... .jWn : ire: :- rv '' was found, had already resulted In the commutation of the outlaw's sentence from life Imprisonment to twenty years, and who was continuing his arduous task In the hope of securing his father's Im mediate release. These etoriee were read with Interest In Wisconsin, where the adventures of the Diets family were part ef the his tory of the State, and word was at once sent to New York that Leslie Dietz, aon of the outlaw, la now engaged In run ning a grocery store at Mayvilla, Wte.; that he had never made any attempt to aecure the pardon of Me father by peti tion; that. In fact, he had never been further east than Michigan In his life, and that the man In the Waahlngton Helghte Hospital claiming to be Lealle Dietz must therefore be either a delibe rate Impostor or suffering from a mental delusion. When this startling Information waa received the "Leslie Diets" at the hos pital wss further Interrogated, and here is the story he told: "So they say I am an impostor that I am not Leslie Diets, aon of John F. Diets, the outlaw, of Cameron Dam. at all! "If I am an impostor, I am certainly the most unusual Impostor ever dis self accusation of perfectly Innocent people whenever any. crime whose ele ments are adapted to Impress the Imag ination of these particular people, occurs. Every magistrate knows that following any particularly atrocious murder men and women will write letters accusing themselves of the crime. In many cases men, and Voinen. too, have actually ap peared before the police and given them selves up as the alayers. These people . go Into voluminous detail as to Just how and why they did the murder. They actually -believe that they are the crim inals. Even when confronted, with the absolute facts that they could not pos sibly have been at the scene of the murder at the time it was dne. they atlll persist in their self-accusations and Immediately Invent plausible esplana 0 Oopyrirfat. 1111, by the Star Company. if v v ar . John W. Diets, the ' Outlaw, and His Son, the Real Leslie Dietz, Photographed After Their . Arrest In 1910, and Below the Cabin In Which They Defied the Authorities for Six Years. covered, for no one haa ever suggested how I could possibly benefit by repre senting myself as the son of a convicted murderer and working for his pardon as I have 'done these past twenty-five montha. v "During- those twenty-five months f ' have had some pretty rough experiences. I have gone without food for days. I have slept in the snow when the tempera ture was 10 degrees below zero. 1 have " worn out twenty-two pairs of shoes, and for days at a time have walked bare foot until I could earn enough by odd Jobs to buy shoe leather. "In aome cities that I have gone through I have been arrested aa a tramp and a vagrant but. "for the moat part, my mis sion has secured me against such mis fortunes. When I started on my errand 1 weighed 170 pounds. To-day I weighs only 135. "I have been through nearly every State In the Union. "I was born In Green Bay, Wis., forty- . nine years ago. I waa about four years . old when my father built his log cabin at Cameron Dam on 160 acrea which be had acquired In the regular way. "My father Is now seventy-six years old. I have had only one brother and one sister. My brother Is Clarence Dietz, now tlona. It has been noted that always In such cases the subject Is hazy as to the real circumstances of his life. These people are not liars; they actu ally believe In what they say. This man Leslie Dietz waa a lumber Jack. He may bave come from the aame locality aa the real Diets. He may not. Dut all his experiencea in life, without doubt, ran along the actual everyday life experiences of Diets. He had lived In the aame kind of surroundings he had fought the aame kind cf fight, and. no doubt, be had seen and sympathised with he struggles of the later day pioneers against the great lumber lntereitta When he either heard, or was told, of Dlets's fight aad imprisonment It aroused In his mind all his own sleeping griev ances. He may have started la by say- Ureat Brtuta Rights Reserve ameron twenty-six years old, and my sister ,1s Maria, now twenty-two. "I married Kate Flnnegan and had two children, Johnny and Mary, sometimes called Mabel. The youngsters were killed In a fight with the sheriff's posse in 190S. My wife died In Winter, In 1909. "Our trouble with the lumber interests grew out of their efforts to con 11 scats our dam. When they found that my father would not submit they did every thing they could to force us out. "Father. "mother and I were all tried to-' gether after we had been in Jail about 110 days. Only father was convicted. He is now a Federal prisoner at Waupon. . Wis., because the man he shot during the raid on our cabja in 1910 was standing on the Vederal Indian Reservation at the time. "I have already sent 15 petitions from each of the various States I have visited to President Wilson. I addressed them to Carl Schultz, a Washington lawyer. Of course, they reached the President, be cause they bore results." The startling discrepancies between this story and the facta as ascertained from various reliable sources may now be referred to. In the first place, the warden of Wau pon prison declares that Diets is not and never haa been a Federal prisoner. Hence, President Wilson has no power to pardon him. Secondly, John F. Dietz, the outlaw, Is not more than fifty yeara old; whereas, the New York "Leslie Dietz" says he Is seventy-six. Thirdly, the outlaw had six children; namely, Leslie, Clarence, Myra, Helen, John and a baby. Fourthly, the real Leslie Dietz Is only twenty-four years old to-day, whereas the man in New York says he is forty-nine.' Fifthly, the real Leslie Diets was un questionably In Mayville, Wis., when his namesake was lying unconscious In! a New York hospital. Sixthly, when shown a photograph of the Diets family, a day or two after he . had told the foregoing story, the New York Leslie Diets said that a child of twelve or thereabouts who. In fact, is Helen Dietz, daughter of the outlaw, was Clara Diets, his own daughter, although a day or two before he had said his own daughter was named Mary or Mabel. Seventhly, lnveatigation in Washington failed to reveal any Carl Schultz, a law yer. When Interrogated further as to this, uie New York Leslie Dietz explained that Schultz, whom he now referred to as John Schultz, was In reality a Wisconsin lawyer, having an office in Madison or Wlsoonsln, but that he was frequently in Washington. When reminded that previ ously he had said the lawyer's name was Carl, whereaa now he gave it as John, he explained that the man's name was really John Carl Schultz. A dozen more serious discrepancies of this character pointed conclusively to the fact that this man whose efforts have al ready resulted In the commutation of the famoua outlaw's sentence, and whose con tinued work may bring about the man's earlier release, Is not Leslie Diets at all. The fact that he actually believes him self Leslie Diets and that under that personality he secured a commutation of sentence for the man he may never have seen pre sents one of the most striking phenomena ever brought to the attention of psychologists. How they explain It la told here. A petition for; the Pardon of Joiin e. Delta. Known as the Outlaw of. Cameron. Dam, V for defending his family and property. . Wit. Sig. "Lealle Dietz" Who Believe He Is Whose Strange Story Is Told of His Ing to himself: "What would I have done If I had been In Dlets's place?" or he may have said: "What would I have done It I were Leslie Dietz V In minds of this character, the atep from thinking what he would have done If he had been In Leslie Dlets's place to actually believ ing himself In Leslie Dlets's place, ts a small one. Suddenly be found himself saying, perhapa with surprise at first: "Why. I AM Leslie Dietz." The obses sion waa now complete. The actual facts of his past would begiu to fade from his life. Every day he would feel himself more and more to be Leslie Diets, and his mind would busy It self building up all kinds of details to support Its own Illusion. As this new structure of personality arose hla oldtf one diminished la exact proportion. V J? f u If ' - uazasRSUtaXuiN the Son or the famous Outlaw and Here, and a Photograph of One Petitions. . This man, whoever he Is, became to all ' Intents and purposes the son of the out law of Cameron Dam, wandering about the country, suffering hunger, thirst and other privations In a pilgrimage to save his father. And so intense was big belief In himself that he has Impressed It upon everyone he has met, and haa actually through his hallucinations done the thing that the outlaw'a owp son could not do have hla father'a eentence commuted from life imprisonment to a short term cf years. Undoubtedly here we have one of the' strangest phenomena of the human mind. It parallels . In Its workings out the gigantic effote of the "inspired" delo sionlsts who have assumed other per sonalities and changed the desUniesoi the world scores of times. 4