A Plot to Steal the Remains of President Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln's Monument and Tomb; Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois.

Library of Congress

In the fall of 1876, just 11 years after his assassination, there was a plot to steal President Lincoln’s remains from Oak Ridge Cemetery and hold them ransom in the Indiana Dunes.

That October, a prominent engraver for Chicago counterfeiters named Benjamin Boyd was jailed at the nearby Joliet penitentiary. An Irish-American crime boss by the name of Jame "Big Jim" Kinealy relied on Boyd for his business and devised a plan for his release. Kinealy's scheme called for Lincoln’s body to be stolen from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois. The thieves would then take the President's remains over 200 miles to Indiana’s sand dune country. There, Lincoln’s remains would be hidden while the shifting sands would cover the grave-robbers' tracks. After the remains were hidden away, Boyd, the imprisoned engraver, would ransom them for his release, full pardon, and $200,000 (over $5.5 million today).

Crime boss Kinealy persuaded two of his men to carry out the scheme, Terrence Mullen and Jack Hughes. A third man, Lewis Swegles, joined them; but he was in fact an informant for the Secret Service, an agency created just over 10 years prior to combat counterfeiting. The Secret Service learned of this fantastic plot and decided to discuss the matter with Robert T. Lincoln, the former President only surviving son, since an investigation of this kind was not customarily performed by the Secret Service. It was decided that the Secret Service would need assistance in dealing with these grave robbers. Allan Pinkerton's Detective Agency was contacted. He assigned two men to help. With the aid of local police, Secret Service Operative Patrick D. Tyrrell laid out a plan to catch the robbers in the act. On the evening of November 6^th, 1876, they boarded the same train for Springfield that carried the thieves and their informant.

Jack Hughes (left) and Terrence Mullen (right).

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

The following day, November 7th, had been chosen for the heist. It was the day of the presidential election, which the thieves figured would help mask their crime. The first custodian of Lincoln's monument, John Power, was forewarned of the plot and aided Tyrrell's plans to catch the thieves in the act. That evening the grave-robbers broke into Lincoln’s tomb, opened the marble sarcophagus, and pulled out the President’s cedar casket while Swegles held the lantern. Mullen and Hughes directed Swegles to retrieve the wagon that Swegles pretended to have arranged. With Swegles safely removed from the tomb, the team of agents and detectives poured inside to find the disturbed tomb but no thieves. Mullen and Hughes had decided to await their wagon away from the monument at a tree down the hill. When they saw the shadows of 4-5 men enter Lincoln's monument, they knew their gig was up.

Custodian J. C. Power's illustration of the "Interior of the Catacomb, as the Thieves Left It."

John Carrol Power

Chaos ensued when a pistol from Tyrrell's team was accidentally discharged. Secret Service and Pinkerton detectives briefly exchanged fire with one another in the dark. During the confusion, Mullen and Hughes escaped. Ten days later they were tracked down back in Chicago where they were arrested at the Hub, a South Side saloon where the plot was first unveiled to the informant, Swegles.