F.J. Thrun: Thrun found?

Continued from previous week

“Thrun is found,” the front page of the March 7, 1893, The Daily Northwestern stated.

“A dispatch from Chicago this morning to The Northwestern states that Ferdinand Jules Thrun, the man who disappeared from Romeo, Wis., last October, and who was supposed to have perished at the time of the burning of his home, has been arrested,” the front-page story stated.

In addition to the strange story swirling around the death, it had also been discovered that Thrun sent his chest of tools to Milwaukee shortly before the fire.

“The first matter to arouse the hope of Thrun being alive occurred about three days after the burning, when a Chicago Herald of Oct. 28 was found in a barn close by the Thrun residence at Romeo. Thrun was known to have bought such a paper when at Spencer, and the detectives took this as conclusive evidence that Thrun had slept in the barn after the burning of his home,” the article said.

“On Dec. 23, 1892, the first clue to his whereabouts was obtained when it was discovered that he was in hiding in the extreme north of Wisconsin, and that part of the state was carefully guarded, but as if by magic, the missing Thrun was again missing.

“After this, he was traced to Chicago and has been shadowed ever since.”

Within a couple of weeks after being located and arrested, even more strange stories developed involving the once-missing man.

“It seems that there have been so many plots and counter plots developed in this Thrun case that some people had even imagined that the insurance companies had produced a live man to take the place of a dead one, even as the Thrun conspiracy had produced the bones of a dead man to take the place of a live one,” a follow-up by The Northwestern stated.

But, it was Thrun himself.

Thrun claimed that efforts to defraud the insurance companies were instigated by others and that he “was simply to play the dead man and they were to get the insurance on his life and divide it up.”

He stated that he was first hidden away in Colby for eight weeks, later taking a train to Chicago and was finally sent to New Orleans.

But, according to the story, there was a plot within a plot and the men that Thrun said were co-conspirators decided to give him up for the reward money.
But, according to the article, Thrun and his wife had a scheme of their own and had plans to run off with the money.

Thrun pleaded guilty to being a conspirator to the crime in Marathon County Court, but was later given his freedom when his three alleged co-conspirators were acquitted.

It took the jury nearly 26 hours to return a verdict of not guilty for the three.
Thrun could not be sentenced, because there were no co-conspirators.

The sensationalized story was later dramatized in real life stage dramas.

Conclusion in next week’s edition