THE LEAD BELT NEWS, Flat River, Missouri, 
Published July 23, 1923.

SUSPECTS ARRESTED ON ROBBERY CHARGE

Clarence Griffith, about twenty years of age, and Carl Jones, an older man, both of Knob Lick, were arrested last Saturday 'forenoon by officers from the sheriff's office at the home of Jones in Knob Lick and were placed in jail at Farmington on a charge of holding up James Phillips and robbing him of $85 Friday night. Both men were taken before a justice of the peace and were held under bonds of $1500 each. They are still in the county jail because of their inability to fill the required bond.

According to the story told by Phillips, who is a bachelor and lives on the farm alone, the location being about four miles North of Knob Lick, he was awakened at a time which he estimates to have been about two o'clock Saturday morning by someone knocking at his door and calling. Upon going to the door, one of the two persons there asked him the way to the river, which information he furnished them. Phillips according to friends and acquaintances was in the habit of carrying currency on his person in a pocket of his shirt. He had this shirt on at the time. Having given his callers the information they requested, one of them asked him if he had anything to drink. He said that he did not. They then asked him if he wanted a drink, and he said that he did not and attempted to close the door. One of the men blocked the door with his foot and procured a flashlight by the light of which Phillips discovered that he was covered with a revolver. He has positively identified Griffith as the party who first held the gun on him, and Jones as the larger man who stood back behind him. Griffith then turned the weapon over to his companion who held Phillips at the door, while Griffith went to the bedside and searched his trousers. From this source he procured $5.10 in change, dropping two five-cent pieces of that amount on the floor. He then went directly to Phillips, without hesitation, and, without searching any other part of his clothing, obtained four twenty-dollar gold certificates which he had in his shirt. 

Prosecuting Attorney Lee F. Kinder was notified of the robbery early Saturday morning and had officers arrest the two accused men on the strength of Phillips' statement. When the parties left the Phillips place, they took six bottles of home brew which he had there. Five of these bottles were found empty when the men were arrested and the sixth was in a bucket of water being cooled off. Footprints of the two were found to fit those at the scene of the robbery and the tires of their machine were found to leave an exact duplication of the tread marks there. They both deny the charge. Jones is at present out on bond under nine charges of bootlegging held against him by the Washington County authorities.