AGENCY: Ogden (Utah). Ogden Police Department
SERIES: 4101
TITLE: Joseph Henry Martin investigative files
DATES: ca. 1911-1913.
ARRANGEMENT: Numerically by document number.
DESCRIPTION: This series contains 24 - 11" x 14" glass plate negative images of documents used in a police investigation of Joseph Henry Martin on suspicion of assault, robbery, and extortion. The documents include letters that reveal attempts by a criminal ring to extort money from various Ogden residents, including George W. Culver, Mrs. Ralph Bristol, Mrs. McClaren Boyle, Mrs. Thomas D. Dee, and Mrs. David Eccles. The anonymous letters are signed using the name of Jim Pender, a detective with the Ogden City Police Department, and the name "The Tall and Short Man". Along with these letters are several documents known to be in the handwriting of Joseph Henry Martin, including some writing samples apparently done at the request of the police on Police Department letterhead. Several of the negatives show the known or "standard" handwriting side-by-side with "disputed" writing from the extortion letters. Each page of the documents was numbered before being photographed. Some of the documents in the series are only partial and many numbers in the document sequence are missing. Some negatives also have stickers with numbers on them that don't correspond with the document numbers. The other negatives may have had numbered stickers on them, but the stickers have fallen off over time.
Joseph Henry Martin was tried in the 2nd District Court for Weber County for assault with a deadly weapon, after David Edwards, a Pinkerton detective working on the case, was shot in an encounter with the extortion ring. Martin was convicted in 1914 and sentenced to the Utah State Prison for five years. He was subsequently tried in the same court and convicted in 1915 on charges of robbery and given a life sentence. Two pages of the extortion letters are marked as court exhibits, but many of the documents in this series were likely used in both trials. Exhibits S-1 through S-12, along with exhibits 8 through 13, 22, 23, 35, 37, 38, and others were introduced as exhibits in the robbery case (see Series 1485, Motion and order files, case 2928). Handwriting experts were brought in from out of state to testify in both cases. In the assault case the judge subpoenaed specific documents found in this series (see Series 6954, Criminal case files, case 861). A newspaper account of the first trial states that the handwriting expert had made photographic copies of the handwriting examples (Deseret News, 24 Mar. 1914) and another newspaper report notes that during the second trial photographic copies of the documents were given to the attorneys and the jury for examination (Deseret News, 30 Nov. 1915). The negatives in this series were presumably used to make the photographic copies mentioned in the newspapers.
RETENTION
DISPOSITION
RETENTION AND DISPOSITION AUTHORIZATION
These records are in Archives' permanent custody.
FORMAT MANAGEMENT
Photo negatives: Retain in State Archives permanently with authority to weed.
APPRAISAL
Historical
This series has permanent historical value as documentation of a high-profile criminal investigation undertaken by the Ogden City Police Department, revealing details of the case and the methods used by law enforcement in the early twentieth century.
PRIMARY DESIGNATION
Public