Yukon 1914; Brooklyn 1934

Of all the hard-bitten crew that hung around the Alaskan gold camps a generation ago, none was more celebrated than "Sweet Marie'' Schmidt. She did not pretend to be in the same class with Mollie Walsh, the Wonder Girl of White Pass Trail, who ran a beanery and was sworn to be as morally clean as the snow that fell on her tent. Sweet Marie was a dance hall girl and prettier than most. When she lifted her plaintive voice in song, she could coax more nuggets out of sourdoughs in one night than Deadeye Olga, Yukon Lucy or Moosehide Kate could in a month.

In the spring of 1914, the year the Alaska Railroad was begun. Frank Adams, John Holmberg and Tom Jensen loaded up with salt pork, coffee and flour at Fort Yukon and went prospecting up the Yukon River. They took Sweet Marie along for company. Folks around Fort Yukon learned that they had made a fairly good strike. Then word came in that the prospectors had fallen to quarreling. Next thing heard was that Tom Jensen had killed Adams, Holmberg and the Schmidt woman and run off with a poke worth some $18,000.

The law traced Tom Jensen down to Seattle, heard that he had raffled off a nugget bracelet belonging to Sweet Marie on the boat, had cashed the gold dust at the Seattle assay office. His trail led down to San Francisco, across through Texas, faded in New Jersey.

Fortnight ago. Brooklyn police picked up a drunk who gave his name as Tom Jensen. He said he was a Danish seaman. While he was serving his ten days in jail, his fingerprints were sent to the Department of Justice's division of criminal identification in Washington. When he was let out, he was promptly clapped back in again, at the request of the Federal Government, as a fugitive from justice.

Day before Jensen's hearing, a Klondike oldtimer named Frank Ely ("Happy Kid") Allen, appeared at Magistrate Malbin's office, said he would like to be in court next day.

Fans droned listlessly in the court room next day as Magistrate Malbin directed Jensen to choose a seat among 40 spectators, called Happy Kid Allen into the chamber.

"Did you know Thomas Jensen in Alaska?" asked the judge.

"Yep! We called him Blueberry Tommy."

"What was his occupation?"

"His occupation? Well, he was mostly a dog musher. He picked blueberries and killed caribou."

"Would you know the man if you saw him today?"

Happy Kid Allen searched every face. After five thoughtful minutes his eyes riveted on Jensen. Pointing at him. Allen firmly declared: "He's Blueberry Tom. the dog musher."

What the Government could do with "Blueberry Tom," the dog musher, if it was indeed he, remained a problem. The body of neither Frank Adams nor John Holmberg has ever been found to provide a corpus delicti for a murder charge. Some Indians buried Sweet Marie Schmidt in a sandy grave, but a flood came and washed her body away long ago.

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