From the Ipswich Tribune August 21, 1930 edition
SHERIFF CAPTURES CAR THIEVES AFTER CHASE
After out-distancing Verne Adkins, Aberdeen police officer, in a seven mile race out of Aberdeen, in which he was forced to give up the chase after being left behind, James Hill of Wichita, Kansas and Ira Penland of Arma, Illinois driving a 1930 Chevrolet sedan stolen from the streets of Aberdeen belonging to John Franks of Forbes, N.D. were apprehended at Ipswich last Saturday afternoon by Sheriff Geo. M. Engler following a race of more than two miles on the Yellowstone Trail.
Notified by the Aberdeen police department that the stolen car was headed west on the trail, Sheriff Engler, with Jack Smith as driver, drove east on the highway in search of the culprits. He met the oncoming thieves near the Bartholomew oil station. Quickly turning his car after they had sped past him, he started out in pursuit. He was forced to chase the car for a distance of more than two miles before he succeeded in overtaking it. Thrusting his revolver out the window of the car and commanding the men to stop he brought the stolen car to a halt and captured the two men. They were immediately brought back to Ipswich and held until the arrival of Aberdeen police officers.
The Aberdeen officers were notified at one and chief of police Ivan C. Meeks and officer Adkins came out and returned Hill and Penland to Aberdeen where they were placed in the city jail, awaiting their arraignment before the municipal court on a charge of car theft.
The chase began at 3:00 and a few minutes after 3:35 Sheriff Engler had the men in custody. At 6:20 Hill and Penland were safely locked up in the Aberdeen jail.
In explaining to the sheriff how they came to be in possession of the car, Hill and Penland gave a very flimsy story. According to their narrative they had ridden a short distance out of Aberdeen on a truck which turned off the highway. They had walked a short distance, they said, when they were picked up by a man driving the Chevrolet which they were driving when captured.
Two miles east of Ipswich the driver of the car got out and went on foot to a farm to visit a cousin instructing them to deliver the car at the first oil station on the right side of the road going into Mina, and to tell the station proprietor that the car belonged to a man names George Holt.
How the two men were to reach Mina by traveling west of Ipswich is a mystery, but that was where they were headed for, they claimed Penland in his conversation with Sheriff Engler, stated that four years ago he worked for Charles Schultz, a farmer living south of Mina.
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