Harry Harris was a 44-year-old White/Caucasian man serving as sheriff of St. Croix County, Wisconsin, when a routine law-enforcement trip turned deadly on June 18, 1904. Harris had boarded a train bound for Elroy, Wisconsin, where he intended to take custody of a suspect connected to a robbery. During the journey through Eau Claire County, he recognized another man believed to have taken part in the same crime. Contemporary reports connected the men to a robbery in the Roberts area.
Rather than waiting until reaching his destination, Harris attempted to confront and arrest the man aboard the train.
The encounter unfolded aboard an eastbound passenger train near Fall Creek. When Harris approached the suspected robber, the man drew a revolver and opened fire. Harris was struck three times and died almost immediately. The gunman escaped from the train and fled into the surrounding countryside, leaving authorities with a murdered county sheriff and an armed fugitive who was believed to be extremely dangerous. Early newspaper reports identified the fleeing man as "John Smith," although that name would not prove to be the identity ultimately associated with Harris's killer.
The shooting triggered an extraordinary manhunt across western Wisconsin. Officers, local citizens and organized posses searched the country around Eau Claire, Augusta and neighboring communities, while authorities tried to anticipate the fugitive's route south. Reports circulated that the wanted man was traveling on horseback and had taken horses from farmers at gunpoint while attempting to stay ahead of his pursuers. At one point searchers believed they had nearly surrounded him between Merrillan and Black River Falls, and a pursuer reportedly fired at the fleeing man but missed. Despite the large number of people involved, the suspect repeatedly slipped through the search lines.
Police detained several men during the hunt because they resembled the description of Harris's killer. One man giving his name as Will Smith was arrested after getting off a freight train in the Wisconsin railroad yards, while authorities in La Crosse held a man named George Johnson for questioning until an officer from St. Croix County could examine him. Another suspect was traced into woods near Augusta but escaped. These arrests and detentions reflected the uncertainty surrounding the killer's identity in the days immediately after the murder; the surviving accounts do not establish that any of these men was the person who shot Harris.
Investigators also had reason to believe the fugitive was connected to violence far beyond Wisconsin. The man suspected of killing Harris was reportedly wanted in connection with the May 1904 killing of Havre, Montana, Policeman Fred Stevens. Contemporary reports therefore portrayed Harris's killer not simply as a robbery suspect fleeing one crime, but as a heavily armed fugitive who may already have killed a law-enforcement officer before reaching Wisconsin.
The break in Harris's case came months later and through another killing. In September 1904, a man using the name William Myers was involved in a violent confrontation in Thomson, Illinois. Wayland F. Bennett, president of the Thomson village board, was shot and killed while helping authorities attempt to arrest Myers following criminal activity in the community. Myers was wounded during the pursuit and taken into custody. Subsequent investigation established that the prisoner was actually Herbert Sheridan, a Michigan native who had been living under an assumed name.
In January 1905, Sheridan pleaded guilty in Illinois to murdering Bennett. Contemporary reporting stated that Sheridan, who had used the alias William Myers, was then identified as the same man who had killed Sheriff Harry Harris in Wisconsin while resisting arrest. Sheridan was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor in the Illinois penitentiary. Later law-enforcement memorial records likewise identify the man convicted of the Illinois killing as Harris's killer and report that he served a life sentence at the Joliet Penitentiary, where he eventually died.
The historical record available online does not indicate that Sheridan was separately brought back to Wisconsin for a trial or conviction specifically for Harris's murder. His life sentence resulted from the Illinois prosecution for Bennett's killing, while the identification of Sheridan as Harris's killer effectively resolved the question of who had fired the fatal shots aboard the train. Harris was buried at Baldwin, Wisconsin, with members of organizations including the Elks and Odd Fellows participating in the funeral observances. He left behind his wife and two sons, ending a law-enforcement career in a confrontation that began with an effort to apprehend a robbery suspect and developed into one of the region's most intensive manhunts of the period.
