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Alex Cabrero Reporting When Lynn Yeates became Box Elder's County's new sheriff earlier this month, he wanted to make sure the past came with him and it did, nearly a hundred pages of it.
Police stations and sheriff's offices have always kept all kinds of records of wanted criminals...
Sheriff Lynn Yeates: "I'll try to do it careful so I don't tear anything."
Lynn Yeates, though, has them all beat.
Sheriff Lynn Yeates, Box Elder County Sheriff's Office: "This is just a booklet I've had in my office for probably ten years."
Yeates became sheriff of Box Elder County earlier this month and the first thing he wanted to make sure of was that this booklet made it to his new office.
Sheriff Lynn Yeates: "This came with me. There's no if's, ands, or buts about that."
You see, on these pages are people like Frederick Schloer, Floyd Crawford and Mitchell Moissan. All of them criminals, all of them from the early 1900's.
Sheriff Lynn Yeates: "There's one for jail breaking and larceny."
These pages are full of old wanted posters in the county and wanted postcards when a photo wasn't available.
Sheriff Lynn Yeates: "All they have is the guy's name, and that's the whole attempt to locate broadcast, and it comes by mail."
Fingerprints didn't mean much either back then since there wasn't a database to compare them to, so on many of these old posters you'll find the Bertillion measurements.
Sheriff Lynn Yeates: "The French police had a clerk named Bertillion who developed a system of measurements for criminals, including height, weight, trunk, head length, head width, and so forth. And they used those measurements since they didn't have photography at that time to specifically identify the person."
Rewards also seemed lower back then.
Sheriff Lynn Yeates: "Fifty dollar reward for jail breaking."
Although adjusted for inflation, it'd be much more now. Some of the posters are hand written, some of them just words, but all of them have a place in law enforcement history, which the new sheriff in town isn't throwing away.
Sheriff Lynn Yeates: "It's kind of neat to be able to look at the history from that long ago."
Sheriff Yeates says he hasn't added anything to the pages of his book, but would one day like to find a better display so those who are interested in seeing the posters can have better access to them.
