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It's logical to assume the Depression drove many men and women into lives of crime. Armed robberies were more frequent than ever, what with guns so easy to come by and automobiles a fast and often reliable way to escape the law.
The downside, for the robbers, was there was less money to steal. Robbers couldn't tell sometimes whether the banks they intended to rob would even be open, and if they were, they likely had little cash sitting around.
But robberies receiving a lot of publicity, and occasionally the amounts stolen seemed impressive, though at times the figures were guesswork or inflated.
A harsh reality would set in the next year when several robbers on the FBI's wanted list were gunned down by law enforcement officials, who had become better armed, better trained and better motivated.
In 1933 there were government-ordered bank holidays that temporarily closed banks across the country, but, by May, all the banks that were still in business were open.
It was the day before a different kind of holiday — Memorial Day — that officials of three banks wished they had kept their doors closed a while longer.
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Buffalo Courier Express, May 30
Bank Robberies Claim Three Lives
Associated Press
Three persons were killed and several others injured in three Monday morning bank holdups which netted little more than $20,000, almost $16,000 of which was recovered. The holdups occurred in Rensselaer, New York; Paris, Arkansas, and Culver, Indiana.
• Six men, armed with sub-machine guns, entered Rensselaer County Bank shortly before noon, lined customers and clerks against a wall, and looted the vaults.
However, a clerk had quietly touched a police alarm, summoning two detectives from headquarters, two blocks away. As the detectives entered the bank they were met with a wave of machine gun bullets and fell to the floor. Detective Charles A. Stevens died a few minutes later; his colleague, Frederick Rabe, was wounded. The robbers, who grabbed only $2,200, escaped in a waiting automobile.
• In Paris, Arkansas, two men, guns drawn, forced four clerks and three customers into a vault of the First National Bank. After taking all the cash in the tills and vault, they started for the door where they met and shot Dolph Guthrie, a teller, and Andy Connaughton, city marshal. A customer, standing on the sidewalk, tackled one bandit and held him while the second escaped. The amount of cash he obtained was undetermined. Guthrie died last night.
• Five men held up the State Exchange Bank in Culver, Indiana, and in an exciting gun battle with pursuers two of them were wounded and captured. The others escaped with $16,000.
Fleeing the bank the robbers carried with them two clerks, who were forced to hang on the running boards as shields against the fire from a cordon of cars filled with armed Culver citizens. Finally the bandit car slowed down and they were released, but the chase continued.
Oliver Schilling, son of the bank’s president, riding in one of the pursuing cars, pulled alongside the bandit automobile and started to fire. One of his bullets found its mark, striking the driver, and the car overturned. The wounded driver, who was said to be T. C. Teske of South Chicago, Illinois, was taken to a hospital seriously wounded.
Leaving their wounded companion behind, the other members of the holdup gang fled to a wooded section. The posse, armed with guns and ammunition supplied by the Culver Military Academy, raked the woods for two hours with gun fire and tear gas. One by one the men capitulated until five were captured, although one insisted he was a hitchhiker forced to accompany the robbers and had had no part in the holdup. Nearly all of the stolen money was found on one of the men. |
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The death toll increased to four when T. C. Teske, driver of the getaway car in Culver, Indiana, died of wounds inflicted during the chase by the son of the bank president.
For those too young to remember what it was like before the calendar was filled with three-day holiday weekends, Memorial Day used to be celebrated every year on May 30. In 1933, Memorial Day fell on a Tuesday, and it turned out to be a very violent holiday.
Nationally, the big Memorial Day story was an escape by 11 convicts during a baseball game at the Kansas State Prison in Lansing. But in the New York City area, several people were ducking bullets and wondering if their children and loved ones were safe.
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New York Sun, May 31
A wave of violent crime swept over New York last night, and when it receded in the early hours of today, four men were dead and six persons were wounded. None of the killers was caught; several of the crimes seemed so wanton that police could not even establish motives for them.
The most wholesale attempt at murder in the city has had in some time was at the Castle Cafe, 72 First Street, near First Avenue, where four gunmen walked in upon ten youths playing cards,, and opened fire with pistols. One man was killed, and five, including a 15-year-old boy called in from the sidewalk and shot presumably only because he was a witness to the gunmen’s arrival, were wounded. The killers escaped.
The most senseless killing occurred at Manhattan Beach, where two gunmen raided a parked automobile, shot a young man through the mouth and killed him when he objected to their language, threw his fiancée out of the car and drove away with it, only to abandon it a few blocks away. The killers did not even rob the couple in the car.
There was another shooting, in Long Island City. Two men interrupted a card game, and shot and severely wounded the proprietor. They were unknown to him, and he had no explanation of the affair. |
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There also were two killings in Harlem. One man was shot and fatally wounded in an altercation with three others in front of 3 West 118th Street. He died in Harlem Hospital with a bullet in his right chest.
And a twenty-seven year old man died in the same hospital after being stabbed in a card game dispute at 246 West 146th Street. The killer surrendered to police later in the evening.
Now it's back to bank and post office robberies. Here is merely a partial list, compiled from 1933 stories found in various New York State newspapers:
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January 3: Three unmasked bandits chalk up Indiana's first bank robbery of the year, hitting the Western State Bank of South Bend for $15,000. (The robbers would be captured on May 31. The leader of the gang was Daniel McGeoghegan, one of Chicago's most dangerous criminals, also wanted for the $60,000 robbery of the State Bank of Clearing, Illinois, in 1930, and the May 29 robbery of the State Exchange Bank in Culver, Indiana.)
January 11: Three robbers escape with an undetermined amount of cast from Sharon Center Bank in Ohio. Three weeks earlier, on December 21, 1932, the bank was robbed of $1,600, also by a trio of bandits.
January 12: Two gunmen force a car into a ditch near Valatie, New York, about 40 miles southeast of Albany. They rob two New York City dealers of $25,000 worth of furs and $230 in cash. The gunmen escape in a heavy sedan,, minus real light and license plate.
January 16: A pep talk by sales manager to 31 agents in a branch office of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in Chicago is interrupted by three bandits who enter with guns drawn. The robbers escape with $2,054 in cash.
February 9: Three men hold up the main Sacramento (CA) post office and escape with a registered mail pouch containing $325,000 in cash and bonds. (In September, United States Attorney H. H. McPike would say the hold-up was the work of a gang headed by Roger Touhy, by then under indictment for the kidnapping of William Hamm Jr.)
February 15: Bandits kidnap the cashier of the First National Bank of Ambler, Pennsylvania, hold him overnight, then force him to open the vault the next morning. After a running battle with Ambler police, the bandits escape with $37,000. But not for long:
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Buffalo Courier-Express, February 17, 1933
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — With machine guns blazing a staccato that still defiant pistols, the law yesterday caught up to the elusive Willie Ferguson bank robbery gang.
Last night Ferguson’s body was in the city morgue. Under arrest are the three men who earlier helped Ferguson kidnap the cashier of the First National Bank in suburban Ambler and flee with $37,230.
The three prisoners, survivors of an exciting gun battle, are being questioned about six additional bank robberies, three in southern New Jersey and three in Philadelphia.
The gang was cornered in a hideout less than an hour after racing from Ambler. Detectives had been laying in wait at the scene, unaware of the gang’s latest escapade.
A large sum of money, in two traveling bags, was found in the raided home in northwest Philadelphia. It was reported to total more than $50,000 and was believed by police to include the proceeds of several holdups.
Ferguson, a former convict, was killed by four machine gun bullets after he barricaded himself in a bathroom and elected to shoot it out.
Two women companions were arrested with the gang. A third woman, in another part of the house, was held for questioning.
The bank robbers had just returned to the house after holding captive all night Samuel Horst, 45, cashier of the bank, and his wife in their home. Horst, at pistol point, was forced to go to the bank and open the vault.
Detectives who had been trailing the gang as suspects had planned to make the capture last night, but when they arrived at the rendezvous they found the men had emerged. Sensing that they were going out on a job, the detectives decided to wait, hoping they would catch the men with the goods. They did.
The four had gone to the Horst home in Ambler late Wednesday night. They knocked on the front door and both Mr. and Mrs. Horst responded.
“As we opened the door,” said Horst, “we were greeted by four men with pistols. We were herded into the living room.”
The gang tied up Mrs. Horst and put her husband in handcuffs.
“They must have known the bank vault lock automatically opened at 6 a.m.,”’ Horst told police.
“About that time three of the thugs took me to an automobile and made me drive to the bank. They left the fourth man to stand guard over my wife.” |
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February 18: Four armed bandits rob the $5,600 payroll of the Hart Show Manufacturing Company in Chelsea, Massachusetts, but are captured ten minutes later by J. Harry Gearragh, a Revere policeman armed with a machine gun.
February 19: One bandit was wounded and captured, but another escaped after robbing the Arp State Bank in Texas, about 25 miles southeast of Tyler. About $1,400 was stolen, but approximately half of the money was recovered from the captured robber.
February 24: Five bandits armed with revolvers and sawed off shotguns held more than a dozen bank officials and customers at bay while they robbed the Dryades Street branch of the Canal Bank of Trust Company in New Orleans, making off with $10,000.
March 14: John Fitter, a Brooklyn butcher, was getting ready to go to his bank to deposit $1,125 in cash and checks, but two armed men saved him the trip when they visited his store and robbed him.
March 22: Six gunmen used nitroglycerin to blast their way into the vault at the Argo (Illinois) State bank. They took $3,000 in cash, $300 in gold, and the contents of 45 safety deposit boxes, including one that was leased to the local post office.
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Syracuse Journal, March 27
STRASBOURG, France (INS) — Executing a daring post office holdup, robbers escaped from here today with a haul valued at $1.2 million in postage stamps.
Police said the loot was an entire allotment of stamps destined for Alsace and Lorraine. According to police, the gang suspected of the robbery has specialized in post office robberies throughout France in recent years. Today’s haul as described as one of the biggest of its kind. |
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April 2: Bandits took $35,000 from a safe at a farmhouse near La Crosse, Virginia, killing three men in the process, and wounding a fourth. Among the dead was Benjamin L. Cannon, 77, owner of the farm.
April 14: Two masked bandits forced two priests at St. Edward's Catholic Church in Texarkana, Texas, to hand over money and sacred vessels valued at approximately $1,000. The vessels, usually kept in a vault, had been taken to the church for Easter services. The two priests were locked in a closet of the church until someone heard them pounding on the walls.
April 19: A man posing as a state bank examiner robbed the Syracuse (Indiana) State Bank of $3,500. Well, not many examiners enter a bank carrying a sawed-off shotgun. (Two months later Charles Hoeflinger, 49, was arrested in Michigan and charged with the Indiana bank robbery. He was found guilty on June 29 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.)
April 23: Two men wanted in connection with a Baltimore bank robbery beat a Maryland state trooper who had been following them, then abducted him and later threw him from a speeding vehicle. A motorcycle police also went after the men, but they overpowered him and forced him to take a ride.
April 27: Seven bank robbers and 14 car thefts are solved through the confession of 18-year-old Howard I. Kiel in Delphi, Indiana, arrested thanks to a letter sent to Sheriff Bert Clifton. The rest of the gang — John Stroh, 38; Louis R. Reece, 26, and Thomas Howard, 37 — are rounded up and arrested.
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Syracuse Journal, May 12
Things Didn't Go According to Plan
Two men and two women bandits made an unsuccessful attempt to hold up the Lucerne (Indiana) State Bank. One of the women had an automatic rifle and she fired it as the gang was leaving the bank empty-handed. Two women were wounded slightly, one of them in front of the bank, the other in the bedroom of her home near the bank. The two men fired guns inside the bank after a cashier ignored their command to stick up his hands. Instead the casher dove into the open vault, apparently closing it before the bandits could enter. |
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It would soon become known that the Lucerne, Indiana, fiasco was the work of the Barrow brothers, Buck and Clyde, along with Buck's wife, Blanche, and Clyde's girl friend, Bonnie Parker.
This was an interesting failure. Buck and Clyde Barrow sneaked into the bank the night before and greeted the manage when he arrived the next day. Things quickly fell apart and the brothers ran from the bank, into a car drive there in the morning by one of the women.
This is one of the few time it is known for certain that Bonnie Parker fired a weapon. Ironically, she was trying to frighten people, not wound them, as they drove out of town after inexplicably circling around the block during their escape.
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May 18: The proprietor of a cigar store that served as a Rochester (NY) postal substation is shot and killed after he breaks free after robbers bound his wrists with wire and rope. Edmund Van De Water tried to prevent the men from opening his safe. Apparently the men panicked, and left the dying Van De Water behind. His body is discovered later by a priest who entered the store to purchase stamps. When police arrive, they find the safe unlocked. Inside, untouched, is about $800 in cash, negotiable money orders and stamps
June 3: Two bandit gangs armed with machine guns simultaneously rob the only two banks in Cullom, Illinois. They escape after taking about $2,500 from each bank. The bandits fire about 50 shots on their way out of tow. Two citizens are slightly wounded. Two bank officials are forced to accompany them, but are released about two miles out of town.
June 3: Two bandits rob Marie Healy, 23, a Buffalo, New York, grocery clerk cashier, who was taking receipts to a bank. One of the bandits punched her and the other grabbed a bag containing $1,184. They drove away in a taxi cab.
June 16: Two bandits hold spectators in Bolivar, Missouri, at bay while they fill their car with gasoline. They are confronted by Sheriff Jack Killingsworth, who is forced into the car and taken out of town before he is released.
June 17: Five bandits make a late night raid on Lamont, Oklahoma, stealing the Citizens Bank safe and loading it onto a truck. The noisy crooks woke several citizens who gathered in their night clothes until their unwanted visitors drove away. Bank officials said the safe contained $3,500.
June 21: Three men steal a page from the Barrow Brothers playbook and hide all night in the New Carlisle (Ohio) National Bank. However, they are much more successful after they surprise bank employees in the morning and escape with $10,500 in cash.
June 26: Two would-be robbers pick on the wrong victim near Hot Springs, Arkansas. W. O. Westmoreland of Houston, Texas, was driving his wife into Fountain Lake, a summer resort, when he was approached and told to get out of his car. Westmoreland had a gun handy and used it, killing Nolan Brady and seriously wounding Clem Holman. Both men were former convicts.
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Not surprisingly, one of the year's bigger hauls came from a bank in New York City.
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Syracuse Journal, July 8
Fake Cop Leads Robbers
NEW YORK (INS) — Led by a man in a policeman’s uniform, five armed bandits today held up a branch of the Corn Exchanges Bank and Trust Company at Broadway and 110th Street and escaped with $20,000 to $30,000 in cash.
Four of the gang entered the bank shortly before 9 a.m., while the fifth remained at the wheel of an automobile. The fake cop, at the point of a revolver, forced assistant manager Miller of the bank too open a safe. When the robbers fled, the leader placed a gray coat over his police uniform. |
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July 10: Four men hold up the State Bank of Sandwich, Illinois, and escape with more than $4,000 in cash, but not before waging a gun battle with members of the Sandwich town guard. One robber was believed to have been wounded.
July 14: Bank Cashier Isaac McCarty of Altamont, Kansas, successfully shoots and kills a bank robber, but most likely still has some explaining to do with his wife:
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Syracuse Journal, July 14
Marksman Foils Two Robbers
ALTAMONT, Kansas (INS) — A banker with true aim today fired past his wife, who was being held as a shield, and instantly killed Kenneth Conn, escaped convict, who, with a companion, had attempted to hold up his bank.
The second bandit, Alvis Payton, also an escaped convict, was critically wounded by the banker, Isaac McCarty, cashier of the Labette County Bank here.
Both bandits escaped from the Kansas state prison in Lansing on Memorial Day.
McCarty saw the bandits drive up to the bank.
“Something about them aroused my suspicions when I first saw them,” McCarty said.
Leaving his father, A. H. McCarty, vice president; his wife, who is assistant cashier, and W. H. Grumheller, also an official in the bank, to wait on the two men, McCarty walked to the rear of the building where he obtained two guns. He then concealed himself on a stairway.
The bandits instructed the officials of the bank to stick up their hands. As the bandits reached for the money in the till, McCarty fired at them. |
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July 29: A Kansas City, Missouri, police sergeant wasn't so lucky after he followed a bandit who had just held up a business office downtown. Sergeant Morris Bigus drew his gun and confronted the bandit in a drug store and tried to apprehend him. There was a hand-to-hand struggle and somehow both men were fatally shot with the policeman's gun. The dead bandit also had a gun, but it had not been fired.
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Weir City, Kansas, isn't really a city. There probably were less than 600 residents in 1933. But you can't say it's a sleepy town, unless all those folks walking around in the wee small hours on August 2 were the living dead. Or maybe they just wanted to welcome some late-night bank robbers:
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Binghamton Press, August 2, 1933
COFFEYVILLE, Kansas (United Press) — Six bandits who robbed the Citizens Bank at Weir City, Kansas, today, after locking 22 persons in this city jail, were reported surrounded near here.
Details of the ambuscade, five miles south and two miles east of here, were meager. Sheriff Dave Hasenlaugh reported to the bank at Weir City that the bank’s safe was recovered intact.
The three-ton strong box was hoisted on a truck sometime between 12:30 and 4 a.m. by six masked men.
Three women and the town marshal were among those locked in the Weir City jail by the bandits, who captured all passersby who might have interrupted the robbery. None of the victims was injured.
The bandits pried open the front door of the bank. Their truck was equipped with a winch to hoist the three-ton safe.
E. J. Bennett, town marshal, making his hourly patrol, discovered the men at work, but was overpowered. Using his keys, the bandits took over the jail.
They next captured Miss Agnes Adams, night telephone operator, halting communication. She was locked in the jail.
Two sisters, Agnes and Vida Britton, returning from a trip to the Missouri Ozarks, were halted and locked up.
As the robbery progressed, the bandits took other early-morning passersby until the little jail was crowded with 22 persons. |
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The U. S. District Attorney at Kansas City claimed the unusual robbery was the work of the same gang that killed four officers, including a federal agent, at Union Station in Kansas City on June 17 — the infamous Kansas City Massacre. If so, the 22 persons locked in the Weir jail could consider themselves lucky. One of the robbers might have been Wilbur Underhill, one of the country's most notorious outlaws.
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August 5: Three armed men hold up the office of the New York Progressive Woodhell Company in Brooklyn shortly after a $6,000 payroll was delivered. They escape with $1,650 that had been nearly stacked on a desk, unaware that $4,350 had already been placed in a nearby safe.
August 24: Three men rob Arthur Schiffen's jewelry store on Broadway, taking 60 rings valued at $5,000 and leaving Schiffen bound and gagged on the floor.
August 30: Five machine gun-toting bandits rob a St. Paul, Minnesota, mail truck and escape with a $35,000 payroll. They shoot two policemen,, killing one of them.
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Syracuse Journal, September 12
Loot Bank of $10,000; Take Hostage
FARRELL, Pennsylvania (INS)— Seven heavily-armed men today invaded the Sol J. Gully state bank, a local private institution, looted it systematically of all the cash in sight, and fled, taking with them Carl Wild, 21, a watchmaker, as hostage.
Police said they believe the bandits mistook Wild for Guy Gully, son of the banker, whom police think was the intended victim of a kidnapping for ransom. A report received here after the robbery said Wild was dumped out of the car by the bandits in Youngstown, Ohio.
Gully was unable to estimate the amount of the loot, but said it might have been around $10,000. |
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What I find interesting about the next story is that an apparently well-organized gang could make such a stupid mistake in selecting its target. Also interesting are the items found afterward in their car. Tragically, they killed a policeman before they escaped.
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Troy Times, September 22
CHICAGO (AP)— Five machine gunners, laying a smoke screen, robbed four Federal Reserve Bank messengers of mail sacks in the heart of the financial district early today, and later killed a policeman as they wrecked their speeding car.
The bandits' loot was said to be worthless.
W. C. Bachman, cashier of the Federal Reserve Bank, said the bags contained "nothing but canceled checks, worthless to anyone but the banks."
Postal inspectors, city and state police joined in an effort to capture the daring band, and government criminologists studied the two automobiles abandoned by the robbers and the elaborate equipment for clues.
Suspicion focused on George "Machine Gun" Kelly and Verne Miller, Southwestern bandits. Highway maps well thumbed in the Texas-Oklahoma region were found in the bulletproof car that crashed a mile west of the Loop.
In the swift and daring execution of the robbery, police saw the expert hand of the notorious outlaws who seek defense funds for Harvey Bailey, on trial for kidnapping.
Shortly after midnight two cars drew up beside the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company on Jackson Boulevard. A pall of black smoke shot from the exhaust of the rear car, shielding the robbers.
So quickly was the robbery executed that the two bank guards had to opportunity to draw their weapons. They were disarmed, the bags snatched from the messengers and the robbers sped away, leaving one car behind.
At Halstead Street, the speeding car collided with another and overturned. As the bandits crawled from the wreck, two policemen ran up.
The bandits sprayed them with machine gun bullets, killing Patrolman Miles Cunningham. His companion, Morris Fitzgerald, ran for a police callbox and summoned help.
Commandeering a passing automobile, the gunmen fled to the south, again trading automobiles later.
In the abandoned car police found all the paraphernalia of a well-organized robbery gang. There were drums of machine gun ammunition, cartridges for revolvers and rifles, a blue dress, supposedly used for disguise. A can of liquid was believed to be fuel for the smoke screen. There were several extra sets of license plates from various states, presumably from stolen cars.
On the front seat was a first aid kit, containing anti-tetanus serum, iodine and bandages. |
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Syracuse American, September 24, 1933
STUTTGART, Arkansas, September 23 (INS) — A machine gun bandit who bragged he was Machine Gun Kelly, but who was identified from photographs as Wilbur Underhill, a cop killer, was sought today after robbing the People’s National Bank of $1,000.
The bandit stepped into the bank with two companions, and, waving a machine gun, shouted, “I’m Machine Gun Kelly. You’ve read about me.”
He ordered Mrs. Joan Morgan, an employee, to open the safe, but she protested she did not know the combination. He then scooped up about $1,000 from the teller’s cage and forced Mrs Morgan and other employees and a customer to his car.
The three bandits used the women as shields, making them stand on the running board to protect the bandits from bullets from any pursing officers. |
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September 25: Tony Darkopolous probably didn't get a letter of recommendation when he went looking for his next job. Darkopolous, working as a grocery store watchman in Salt Lake City, was asleep when three men entered and robbed his boss, C. C. Taylor, in an adjacent room. After the robbers escaped with $32.70, Taylor woke up his sleeping watchman. I think you can guess Taylor's first words.
September 25: Three bandits rob the Citizen Commercial Savings Bank of Flint, Michigan, and escape with an undisclosed amount of cash, but not before shooting and critically wounding a depositor, Irving Forigan, 50, operator of a malt shop. A young boy is fortunate. He playfully shouts at the bandits as they drive away, and one of them responds by firing his machine gun and shattering windows in an automotive showroom behind the youngster.
September 26: A bank teller, keeping his own pistol with him at a Chicago officer of the Bank of Nova Scotia, uses his weapon to shoot a robber and thwart a robbery that might have netted $15,000. A second robber scuffles with two other bank employees, but beat them on their heads with the butt of his revolver and escapes. The wounded man, shot through the neck, makes it as far as the street where he is caught by a traffic policeman.
October 1: Five bandits subdue the town's only policeman and rob the Pipestone, Minnesota, National Bank of $1,600, then use three women employees as shields when they flee in a large car.
October 3: Five bandits loot the vault of the First National Bank in St. Mary's, Ohio, and escape with $12,000. One of the robbers is identified as one of the ten convicts who escaped the Michigan City, Indiana, prison a week ago. (Another of the escapees, Joseph Jenkins, was cornered and fatally shot September 30 in an Indiana town with a memorable name — Beanblossom. Three suspicious, gun-carrying Beanblossom citizens confronting Jenkins, who chose to shoot it out.)
October 8: Mac Donahey, 25, of Youngstown, Ohio, is shot dead after he and two companions rob a cigar store in Akron of $107. They are confronted by two police detectives, who captured the other two men.
October 9: Shortly after midnight, the manager of the Palace theater in Worcester, Massachusetts, is abducted from his home, along with his wife, by two men who drive them to the theater where they capture the janitor and a police officer. Their target is $4,500 locked in the theater's safe, weekend receipts to be deposited in a bank later in the day. The two armed men force the manager to open the safe, then escape with the money after locking their captives in a closet.
November 10: Three bandits rob the First National Bank of Easton, Massachusetts, and escape with $20,000.
November 18: There is a shootout in the lobby of a Miami hotel when city detectives Robert L. Jester and Roy Hancock encounter two wanted bank robbers, apparently vacationing on the money they had stolen in Pennsylvania. Jester is dead, and so is Anthony Hanson, one of the robbers, downed by a bullet from Hancock's gun. The other robber, Leo Zalutesky (aka Frank Buck or Frank Beckwith), also is hit by a Hancock shot, but he flees the hotel, only to be captured an hour later.
December 19: Three men rob the First National Bank of Saint Charles, Missouri, of $6,500, and escape in a car driven by the fourth member of the gang.
December 20: Two armed men hide overnight in the Creve Coeur (Missouri) Farmers Bank, waiting for the arrival of cashier Robert F. Bloom at 8:15 a.m. The men force Bloom to open the vault, and take $4,000, locking the cashier in the vault when they make their escape. Bloom is freed by another bank employee a few minutes later.
December 20: Four bandits rob a bank in Hot Springs, North Carolina, getting away with $2,200 after exchanging shots with the cashier. No one is wounded, but the robbers lock three people, including one customer, in the bank vault.
December 27: Two bandits kidnap three persons to help them escape after robbing $41,000 from the First State Bank of Marlin, Texas.
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