"Pal Shot At Him But Missed"

Dickinson, N.D., Jan. 6.—A peculiar chain of circumstances caused the arrest of Joe Reiser, wanted in Cando, N. D., for forging the name of Joe Fink to a $240 check and in Bozeman, Mont., for the murder of Fink. Two hours after his arrest Reiser called for Sheriff Geo. Brown and confessed to killing Fink in Salesville, Montana, December 23. Reiser had been in Dickinson several days first trying to get a check cashed at a local bank and then waiting until it should pass the Cando bank. Meantime he put up a hard luck story needing hospital treatment because of an injured arm and received a personal loan of $40.

The Cando bank passed the check but almost at once discovered the forgery and phoned the local bank not to turn over the cash. Just as Reiser was boarding a train for the east, officers received word to arrest him for the murder of Fink. A bank clerk located the man for the officers. Reiser told the sheriff he had never been in jail before and that he wanted to make a clean breast of it.

He and Fink had been chums all their lives, their families living together in Hungary; they came to St. Paul in 1902, and worked during harvest near Cando, going west to Missoula, Butte, and Bozeman, and then out in the country 20 miles to Salesville, where they were "baching" it while looking for work. The night of the tragedy, he said, they quarreled over the bed covers, Fink claiming Reiser had more than his share. The quarrel waxed furious, Reiser says, and Fink fired at him but missed; then Fink took an ax and struck him, injuring his arm. Reiser says he then got the axe and hit Fink over the head and killed him. He had receipts and papers belonging to Fink and two watches, two suits of clothes etc.

Reiser is about 38 and has a wife and child in Hungary.

Golden Valley Chronicle, 1/7/1916