1/22/1934 - In a month that will see the death of the Tristate Terror, Wilbur Underhill, after the 32-year-old killer is shot to pieces by law enforcement while honeymooning in Shawnee, Oklahoma, John Dillinger kill his first man (43-year-old East Chicago police officer William Patrick O'Malley) during an Indiana bank job, Bonnie & Clyde orchestrate the breakout of Joe Palmer, Henry Methvin, Hilton Bybee, and Raymond Hamilton from the barbaric confines of the Eastham, Texas prison farm that takes the life of 33-year-old guard Major Joseph Crowson, the Terror Gang of the Midwest (Harry Pierpont, Russell Clark, Charley Makely, and John Dillinger) broken up while vacationing in Arizona by members of the Tucson Police Department, the Barker-Karpis Gang, operating out of St. Paul, Minnesota, cripple a Northwest Airlines employee Roy McCord, believing he is a police officer and kidnap millionaire banker and beer brewer Edward Bremer for a ransom of $200,000, the bloody demise of 30-year-old outlaw Robert "Big Bob" Brady takes place on a Paola, Kansas farm when he tries to shoot it out with the police and his shotgun misfires.
Brady Wanted Poster
On the cusp of the Wild West era ending and the Depression years of public enemies in the 1920s and 1930s, as horse riding train robbers transition to car driving heist men, Robert "Big Bob" Brady is born in Oklahoma in 1904. Little is known about his younger years, such as his exact date of birth or where the birth took place, beyond that Brady is one-quarter full Choctaw Indian and that his father is shot and killed by a police officer in 1901. Growing up without a strong male presence in his life, it doesn't take much for Brady to fall in with the wrong crowd, and he is soon pulling an assortment of petty crimes in Oklahoma and Kansas. At the age of fifteen, Brady is behind bars on a five-year beef in Hutchinson, Kansas at the State Industrial Reformatory on charges of grand larceny. Learning the ins and outs of being a hard core thug (he will escape from jail for the first time in 1922), Brady is incarcerated next for being a forger, before graduating to the title of armed robber in 1925 and being imprisoned as such in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester. Free once more in 1931, he partners with fellow convict, Clarence "Buck" Adams, and on September 15, 1931, the pair hit the First National Bank of the little Panhandle town of Texhoma, Oklahoma (the town slops over the Oklahoma-Texas state border and there is also a Texhoma, Texas village) for a payday of $5,300 (worth $106,589.62 in 2023). Successful and flush with cash, the men decide to use some of their ill-gotten gains to fund an escape and vacation into southeastern New Mexico, visiting the caves of the Guadalupe Mountains' Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Unaware that an old nemesis from Oklahoma, Sheriff O.L. Clark, has used a handful of small clues to track the fugitives westward, eleven days after the bank job the men will be arrested in the parking lot of the national park.
State Industrial Reformatory
Behind The Walls
Brought to the county lockup in Amarillo, Texas, Brady is in escape mood, watching for the right time to make a break from the authorities. Choosing his moment poorly, a trait of far too many of the period's desperadoes, the black hair, brown eyed, 6'1" tall gunman makes his move shortly after arriving at the jail, but is spotted by a deputy that shoots the prisoner in the head, just above his left eye. A grievous wound that just misses hitting the outlaw's brain, Brady is rushed to nearby Epworth Hospital in Liberal, Kansas where he undergoes hours of surgery. For the rest of his life, Brady will have to wear glasses and he will be unable to completely close his left eye. The following month, just recovered from his near fatal escape attempt, found guilty of the Texhoma bank job and receiving a judgment of 35 years behind bars for the deed, Brady is transferred to the Oklahoma State Prison at McAlester to begin serving his sentence ... a period of time that will be decidedly shorter than three decades of incarceration.
Brady
Hiding among bags of clothing and bedding being removed from the prison, Brady escapes from McAlester on July 23, 1932. Free once more to pursue his chosen career as a robber, he immediately embarks on a five month crime spree that will find him helping himself to bank deposits in at least five states. Before his assault on the financial institutions of the southwestern United States though, Brady first makes a quick visit to Ada, Oklahoma to see his brother, who runs a real estate brokerage firm in the town. Brief reunion with his sibling completed, Brady then robs the local bank before heading east. Arriving in the small Missouri border town of El Dorado Springs, Brady pillages the local bank, before stealing a new car from an auto dealership in Liberal, Kansas on October 1, 1932. Moving westward again, the next day the bank robber joins forces with outlaw Frank Philpot and the pair take down the a bank in the town of Springer, New Mexico. The crime spree finally ends on December 20, 1932, when casing potential future heists, Brady is spotted by the authorities in Des Moines, Iowa and arrested carrying a .38 revolver and the stolen police badge of a Oklahoma deputy sheriff. Multiple cases pending, Brady is given to Kansas for prosecution, and when found guilty, is sentenced to life behind bars at the state prison in Lansing. Again, Brady immediately starts thinking about ways to escape from the penitentiary ... and he is not the only convict looking to get out of the prison before reaching the mandates of their sentencing.
El Dorado Springs, Missouri
Lansing Prison
One of the most infamous lockups of the Public Enemy period of the 1920s and 1930s, Lansing alma mater of the period includes some of the most notorious criminals in United States history, convicts that include future Public Enemy #1, bank robber and kidnapper Alvin "Old Creepy" Karpis, Karpis' cellmate, the murderous Freddy Barker, Arkansas bank robber Jim Clark (sentenced to the Lansing prison for a crime committed by the Barker-Karpis gang), Oklahoma bank robber and killer Ed "The Fox" Davis (also in prison for a job committed by the Barker-Karpis gang), professional gambler, murderer, and bank robber James Franklin "Frank" Sawyer (also falsely convicted of the Barker-Karpis Fort Scott bank robbery), bank and train robber Ethan Allen "Al" Spencer, and killer and robber Wilbur "The Tri-State Terror" Underhill Jr. At the top of Lansing's criminal food chain though is Harvey John Bailey, a bootlegger turned robber that will be credited with dozens of bank robberies between 1920 and 1932 that take in over $3,000,000 in stolen funds (the September 1930 robbery of the Lincoln, Nebraska National Bank by Bailey and his cohorts nets the criminals over $2,000,000) and leave the robber with the nickname, "The Dean of American Bank Robbers." Robert "Big Bob" Brady fits in quite nicely with Lansing's other losers.
Ed Davis
Jim Clark
Wilbur Underhill
Serving a life sentence, Underhill comes up with a plan to leave the prison, but realizes he will need other convicts such as himself to pull his plot off and he recruits Brady to help, Brady likes what he hears and involves Clark, Davis, and Sawyer in the escape, then goes after someone with money, weapons, and a support system outside the walls of the prison ... and so Harvey Bailey, recently arrested while golfing in Kansas City with bank robbers Thomas Holden, Francis Keating, Bernard Phillips, is brought aboard, and the plan becomes viable when Bailey gets bank robber and Leavenworth Prison escapee, Frank "Jelly" Nash, to smuggle four hand guns into the prison, hiding the weapons in a marked bale of hemp bound for Lansing's twine shop. Escapees armed with the Nash pistols, straight razors, and stabbing shivs, the men plan to kidnap the warden, Kirk Prather, and the guards protecting him, John Sherman and L.A. Laws, during a Memorial Day baseball game between American Legion Junior League teams from Topeka and Leavenworth and, then using their captives as bargaining chips, go over the prison's walls using a ladder Brady has commandeered from his kitchen job, and head for one of Bailey's many hideouts (Bailey and Brady have shot down Underhill's original idea of kidnapping the governor of Kansas' daughter, Margaret "Peggy Anne" Landon)
The Landon Family - Margaret Is At Far Left
Next To Her Father
Bailey
Armed and ready, on Tuesday, May 30, 1933, the six plotters gather near the backstop of prison's baseball field where they await the arrival of the warden. Beginning to become anxious when the fifth inning arrives and the warden isn't present, the men grow even tenser when the Prather arrives with the contest tied 2-2. As if perfectly timed, as Prather arrives near the escapees, a home run is hit and the crowd of 1,800 convicts rise to their feet and begin cheering ... and for a moment no one is paying any attention to the desperate men as Clark wraps a copper wire garrote around the warden's neck as Bailey puts a gun to the man's spine while telling him to do what he's told or he's a dead man. Meanwhile, the other members of the escape party get the drop on several guards. Underhill now holding the noose around Prather's throat, the convicts encounter their first difficulty of the crashout, the Brady ladder isn't where he left it. Moving forward anyway, the men make their way to Guard Tower #3, a post manned by a rookie guard. Prather is told to tell the guard to throw down his gun and his keys to the tower and does what the prisoners demand when Underhill tells Bailey to shoot one of the hostages. Key and gun sent down as requested, Underhill for his own amusement then forces the warden to do a little dance in front of the wall as a group of five convicts, Kenneth Conn, Lewis Bechtel, Billy Woods, Clifford Dopson, and Alva Payton, involved in a 1931 aborted breakout with Underhill, approach the maniac and ask if they can join in the escape. The more merrier, cannon fodder in case the guards start firing on the escapees, Underhill of course says yes to the request. Using the key the tower guard has provided, the men unlock the small door at the base of the tower and race up to the top of the wall just as ear splitting sirens of the prison beginning screaming. Taking hold of rope that is used to haul coal up cold guards, the men slide down the cord one at a time and in seconds the party and it's hostages are outside the prison. Splitting up once everyone is on the ground, Brady is part of the group that includes the six original plotters and their three hostages, the warden and two guards, Laws and Sherman. Making their way to a small garage adjacent to the prison where they steal the Dodge belonging to Prison Farm Superintendent W. W. Woodson. Loading up for flight, 47-year-old Bailey is struck just above the knee of his right leg by a .30 caliber rifle bullet from the weapon of guard John Stewart, who the convicts fire on and wound in turn. Leg splintered and bleeding profusely, Bailey is drug into the car, Prather is placed on the backseat floorboard, while the two guards a forced to stand on either side of the Dodge's running boards with straight razor pressed against their wrists. As Clark drives off, as if the escape hasn't had enough high drama already, Underhill gets the gun he has been threatening the warden with tangled in his shirt and the weapon goes off, shattering the car's back window and prompting Bailey to yell at his confederate, "God Damn it! Be careful you silly son-of-a-bitch" (the escape will be the second worst in Kansas penal history).
Warden Prather With Some Of The Weapons
Used In The Escape
Guard Tower #3 From Outside The Prison - Current
Driving on a gravel road several miles south of the prison in the direction of the community of Wallula, Clark turns on to a concrete highway just as the Dodge runs out of gas. Fortuitously for the desperadoes, moments later a 1932 Chevrolet driven by Ralph Pettijohn, that includes the man's wife, sister-in-law and niece pulls over to see if the men need assistance, a good Samaritan stop that gets Pettijohn and his family hauled out of their car and left by side of the road. Transfer to a new ride completed, with Davis now at the wheel, the Chevy moves across miles of dirt roads before crossing the Kansas River near the town of Linwood, before stopping for gas in the town of Eudora (paid for by a twenty dollar bill which Underhill produces). Shortly afterwards the group runs into a roadblock manned by Douglas County Deputy Sheriff Fred Vogler and two other men ... a short stop, the outlaws soon are back on their way after convincing Vogler and his men that there are three hostages to fear for if the escapees aren't given the road. Flight from Lansing continuing, Davis takes the getaway car over several hours of more dirt roads, skirting the towns of Garnett, Iola, and Erie on a zigzag route toward the Oklahoma border. Roughly fifteen miles north of the community of Parsons, Kansas, the Chevy begins to overheat and the convicts start looking for a new ride which they find in the car of dairy farmer Ed Clum (he is accompanied by his wife and a nine-year-old boy). A two-car caravan briefly, when the dairyman's car runs out of gas just east of Parsons, the Clum party is left in the middle of the road with words of wisdom to keep their mouths shut "or else they'll be sorry," while the outlaws enjoy a bottle of whiskey and a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes Sawyer has pilfered from the glovebox of the Clum car. Meanwhile, hundreds of law enforcement officers and vigilantes from Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma flood into the region, setting up roadblocks at a host of crossroads and bridges, and cruising over roadways seeking their prey, with all points bulletins being issued to police and sheriff's departments all over the country. Front page news across the country, residents throughout the region arm themselves and bolt their doors will the convicts are being hunted.
Bailey Fingerprints
Gas procured again in the town of Edna, at 7:45 in the evening, the Chevy suffers a flat tire just north of the town of Welch, Oklahoma. Sitting in the grass while Davis changes the tire, Underhill begins talking about bumping off the group's three hostages, but Bailey and Brady keep the trigger happy murderer in check until the warden and the two guards are finally released without being harmed as darkness falls near the crossroads settlement of Pyramid Corners (trudging the four miles back to town, the men will be given a lift to the community of Welch where the citizens give them a good meal and a passing motorist bound for Kansas City named Earl Barrett is hired to take the threesome back to Lansing ... lucky to be alive, Prather will soon be replaced as warden at Lansing by Lacy Simpson, he dies at the age of 56 in 1939 after suffering a massive heart attack ... only Sherman will require medical attention for knife wounds he received during the escape). While the Brady group disappears into Oklahoma's Cookson Hills (within days of the mass escape, Kansas Governor Alf Landon will sign an executive order that deducts six months off the sentence of every man at the Lansing prison that did not join the escapees), a haunt of outlaws dating back to the days of the James-Younger Gang, the second group of convicts highjack a blue model 77 Willys automobile and take Mrs. Milan Wood, her 17-year-old daughter Louise and a teenage friend of the woman hostage, drive 80 miles south of the prison and invade a family farm outside of Pleasanton, Kansas where the escapees dine on bacon and eggs before abandoning their hostages and disappearing. Adding to the confusion of two groups of prisoners escaping is the discovery of the body of murdered 41-year-old Chetopa Night Policeman Otto L. Durkee (both bands of escapees are in the area, but the killing to date is still unsolved ... Durkee will be survived by his wife, two children, his mother, four sisters, and a brother), the burglary of a ranch house outside the town of Centralia, Kansas, a supposed sighting of Wilbur Underhill in a Pawhuska, Oklahoma hardware store, a pair of convicted killers escaping from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, and six men robbing the Bank of Chelsea, Oklahoma of over $2,500 in cash. In Oklahoma, the Brady group separates with Bailey having his leg wound treated by 35-year-old divorcee named Hazel Jarrett Hudson in Oklahoma City, Underhill hiding out at an apartment in Oklahoma City or at various hiding places he has in the Cookson Hills, Brady and Clark renting a house in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and Frank Sawyer deciding to split from the group (a decision which gets him recaptured and quickly returned to prison).
Governor Landon
After a meeting at Bailey's apartment on the morning of June 15, 1933, the men, joined by local thugs Dewey Shipley and Jess Littrell, go over the final details of the bank heist they pull off the next day taking $29,000 in cash and bonds out of Black Rock, Arkansas' ... the first bank heist of the short-lived Bailey-Underhill Gang. Unfortunately for the men, on the 17th of the month, three unknown men shoot up a posse of law enforcement officers taking Frank "Jelly" Nash back to Leavenworth Penitentiary from his capture in Hot Springs, Arkansas, killing Kansas City police officers W. J. Grooms and Frank Hermanson, FBI Agent Raymond J. Caffrey, McAlester, Oklahoma Police Chief Otto Reed, and Nash himself, while wounding Federal Special Agent In Charge Reed Ernest Vetterli in the arm, and FBI Agent Francis Joseph "Joe" Lackey survives three bullet strikes to his back ... thirty seconds of criminal mayhem that will come to be known as the Kansas City Massacre. Known associates of Jelly Nash, and loose and in the area, Bailey and Underhill immediately become suspects in the killings, and Brady is identified by Vetterli as being one of the gunmen involved (Vetterli will later recant his identification of Brady as one of the killers). Enraged at being accused of a crime they didn't commit, manhunt heat already on the escapees, seeking to send their hunters after other prey, the men write a letter to the Daily Oklahoman of Oklahoma City, complete with signatures and fingerprints (Bailey will sign with an "X"), give a description of what they were up to in Black Rock the day before the massacre. The letter, postmarked from Coalgate, Oklahoma, does little to turn down the heat on the men.
Massacre
The Lansing gang makes its next public appearance on a hot Monday afternoon (7/3/1933) when a stolen tan colored two-door Ford V8 double parks at the side entrance of the First National Bank of Clinton, Oklahoma and disgorges five nattily dressed armed individuals (still favoring his wounded leg, Bailey will participate in the robbery by moving about during the heist using a wooden cane). Two of the men take up positions near the bank's pair of entrances, while the other three go inside and herd the dozen employees and customers into the rear office of Bank President F. H. Crow before forcing Cashier Sam Richart at gunpoint to place approximately $11,000 in cash and $400 in bonds in a large white cloth sack. Less than ten minutes later, the gang retreats to its getaway car and leaves town with 18-year-old Georgia Loving and 22-year-old Thelma Selle providing the crooks hostage cover from perches on the Ford's running boards (outside of town on a lonely stretch of Route 66, the two young women will be set free). A little over a month later (8/9/1933), at roughly 1:45 in the afternoon, Bailey, Clark, and Brady exit a stolen black Ford V8 Sedan with red-wall wheels belonging to Ben F. Wice of Muskogee and enter the Peoples National Bank in Kingfisher, Oklahoma ... Bailey (after inquiring about the cost of watermelons from a man selling the fruit outside the bank) takes up a position inside the front entrance, Clark places himself in the center of the bank's lobby, and Brady loots the cashier windows of roughly $6,000 in cash over the course of five minutes. Robbery completed, the robbers then exit the bank out of a side entrance, and using bank employees Burt Brigham, Virgil Francis, and Marion Mitchell as hostages, head out of town, dropping the unhurt employees at a small bridge spanning Uncle John's Creek before fleeing east on Highway 33 at a fast clip. By 3:00 in the afternoon, ten carloads of heavily armed officers and civilians led by Kingfisher County Sheriff Ed Martin are scouring the region for the bandits, while overhead, two lawmen search for the outlaws from a small airplane out of Enid, Oklahoma. The closest law enforcement comes to the outlaws is discovering the band's abandoned getaway car mired in the middle of the Cimarron River about nine miles northeast of Kingfisher.
Tucumcari, New Mexico
Kingfisher - 1910
Law enforcement's luck takes a decided turn for the better shortly after dawn on Saturday, August 12, 1933 when a raiding party of fourteen men (led by Federal Special Agent Gus T. "Buster" Jones, three Dallas FBI agents that include James "Doc" White and Biograph Theater shooter Charles Winstead, four Fort Worth detectives, four Dallas cops, Oklahoma City Deputy Sheriff Bill Eads, and kidnap victim Charles Urschel) sweeps down on the Paradise, Texas ranch of "Boss" Robert and Ora Shannon (the mother of the wife of bank robber and kidnapper George Kelly Barnes, aka "Machine Gun Kelly"), a lonely wind swept plain of dirt frequently used by Southwest outlaws as a hideout, looking for the individuals that weeks before kidnapped oil tycoon Charles Urschel from his home in Oklahoma City. Planning their next heist, the gang meets near Shawnee, Oklahoma to discuss the details of robbing Brainerd, Minnesota's bank, then meeting over, Bailey, Clark, and Brady head into Texas to return a machine gun Bailey has borrowed from Machine Gun Kelly, get some money Bailey is owed by Kelly, and to have a home cooked meal prepared by Ora Shannon. Business completed, Bailey decides to remain on the ranch for the rest of the evening to rest his still hurting wounded leg, while Brady and Adams go into Fort Worth to spend the night. The next morning, sleeping in his underwear on a cot on a porch at the back of the Shannon's ranch house, with a Winchester rifle and a Colt .45 revolver within reach, Bailey is woken by Jones' machine gun brushing Bailey's nose and the master robber is once more in custody (Kelly debt paid off by "Boss" Shannon in Urshel ransom money, Bailey will go on trial with the real perpetrators of the crime, be falsely found guilty, gets sentenced to life in prison, escapes his Dallas jail cell, is caught again within hours after crashing his getaway car on a rainy road near Ardmore, Oklahoma, and is sent away to the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island ... finally released from Federal detention in 1961, Bailey will be re-arrested immediately on old Kansas bank robbing charges and spends four more years behind bars ... eventually free in 1965, the master thief will settle in Joplin, Missouri where he marries Mary Farmer, the widow of conman and fellow Alcatraz inmate, Herbert "Deafy" Farmer, becomes a skilled cabinetmaker, and dies peacefully in bed from natural causes in March of 1979 at the age of 91). The Brainerd job off with Bailey's capture, the gang splits up ... Underhill and Davis go off on their own (Underhill will die at the age of 32 from mortal wounds he suffers at the hands of law enforcement during a shootout in Shawnee, Oklahoma on December 30, 1933 ... Davis goes on a one-man crime spree that nets him the assets he requires to move his operations to Los Angeles, California, there, following a store robbery and the kidnapping of the store's owner, he is arrested, goes on trial and found guilty, is sent to California's Folsom State Prison for life; serving out his sentence, now known by his fellow convicts as "Deafy" Davis, the Oklahoma thug participates in another crash-out that takes the lives of two prisoners, a guard, Officer Harry Martin, and the warden, Clarence Larkin, killings that Davis and four others are found guilty of and are executed for in the state's San Quentin gas chamber on December 16, 1938; at his death, Davis is 38), while Brady and Clark decide to take time off in Arizona vacationing with lady friends (Brady will be with his wife, Leona, Clark will have the companionship of his girlfriend, Goldie Johnson).
The Shannon Ranch House
Headlines
After The Underhill Shootout
Warden Clarence Larkin
Bored and low on money with their ladies involved in their vacationing, after two months in Arizona, Brady and Clark return to Oklahoma for another round of robberies, but without Bailey on board, things fall apart pretty rapidly. Resurfacing on Friday, October 6, 1933, in Oklahoma's Tillman County, Brady and Clark hit the bank of the town of Frederick, taking $5,000 in cash from the financial establishment, but in their hurry to make their getaway, leaving over $80,000 in the bank's vault and teller cages. Leaving Frederick with three hostages in tow, the robbers change to a second car and head toward New Mexico ... a locale that Brady still doesn't realize is not conducive to the outlaw's health. Unaware that law enforcement has found their Frederick getaway car and a map inside with their escape route to New Mexico marked, as the outlaws speed westward across Texas, the authorities call police in the "Land of Enchantment" and set up an ambush welcome for the thieves. Recognized in the small railroad town of Tucumcari, Clark surrenders when requested to (he will claim to be a traveling salesman named F. N. Atwood, while authorities will think he is Underhill, fingerprints uncovering his true identity, Clark , but Brady goes for his guns as usual and is wounded once more by the police (recovering in a local hospital, Brady will be visited in his room by Special Agent Reed Vetterli of the FBI, who upon seeing the outlaw in the flesh, changes his Kansas City Massacre identification of "Big Bob" as being one of the gunmen involved in the killings, and becomes convinced that misidentified Brady for "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Busted again, this time Brady is sent back to Kansas to finish out his life sentence, one the bandit will serve at the very familiar prison he has already escaped from once before.
Vetterli
Brady and Clark are both placed in solitary confinement upon their return to the confines of Lansing prison, but eventually released back into the general population and over a period of three months restrictions on their movements within the prison are lifted and the two get jobs in the institution's kitchen. A bad mistake thinking the men have been broken and no longer are a threat, on January 19, 1934, Brady, Clark, and five other convicts escape from a kitchen work detail. This time once the men are beyond the walls, Brady goes off on his own, while Clark teams with fellow escapee Frank Delmar (in the mini-crime spree the men initiate before being caught again, the duo kidnap schoolteacher Louis Dresser for his car, rob a bank in Goodland, Kansas on 2/9/1934 in a job in which Clark will be wounded by a police officer in both feet, rob a bank in Wetumka, Oklahoma on 5/9/1934, hit the same Kingfisher bank that the Bailey-Underhill Gang struck in 1933 on 5/31/1934, rob Crescent, Oklahoma's bank on 6/20/1934, relieve the bank of Oxford, Kansas of cash assets, and hit the same Clinton bank that the Lansing escapees robbed in 1933. A huge target on his back, Kansas will establish a special police unit to bring Clark to ground, which the group accomplishes on August 1, 1934, when the convict is recaptured in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Found guilty of federal bank robbing charges and sentenced to an additional 99 years behind bars, Clark will spend the next thirty-five years in prison, going from Leavenworth to Alcatraz to back to Leavenworth to back to Alcatraz and then back to Leavenworth before spending his last days as a convict at the federal prison located in Seagoville, Texas. Freed on December 9, 1969, Clark will spend several years doing cowboy work for local ranchers, before managing a commercial parking lot for a local bank until his death from old age that takes place on June 9, 1974 when the former bank robber is 72.). Splitting up a mistake, the group of men Brady is with can't find a getaway car and try to hoof it out of Kansas, walking backroads by night and hiding by day, a plan which works for three days. Hungry and not thinking properly, the men change things up on Monday, January 22, 1934, and continue their march in the daylight, a decision which leads to them being spotted by a farmer walking through a field. Notified shortly afterwards that the escapees have been seen near the town of Paola, Kansas. Authorities notified, a 40-man posse of law enforcement agents, national guardsmen, and local farmers led by Sheriff Joe Achey surround the convicts and three of the four escapees sensibly surrender, but not Brady.
Paola
Growling, "Let's fight," as Undersheriff Harvey Ray Liniger and Deputy Ed Schlotman come upon Brady, the convict turns the shotgun he has stolen from a farm on the two lawmen and pulls the trigger. Click, the old weapon misfires. Not given even a second to try and clear the weapon so he can fire again, Liniger and Schlotman open up on Brady with their revolvers, hitting the outlaw multiple fatal times. no more bank robberies or prison escapes for "Big Bob," the convict goes down and doesn't get back up, dead at the young age of only 30. A regional boogieman, afterwards, over 2,500 Oklahomans will be drawn to the local mortuary where Brady is being prepped for burial to see the infamous desperado. Not a good year for public enemies, with Underhill being one of the first to exit (1/6), before 1934 comes to an end, the Tri-State Terror and Big Bob will be joined in taking permanent dirt naps by kidnapper and killer Theodore "Handsome Jack" Klutas (1/7 ... age 34), robber Aussie Elliott (2/3 ... age 30), bank robber and killer Fred Samuel Goetz aka "Shotgun" George Ziegler (3/21 ... age 37), bank robber and killer Ford Allen Bradshaw (3/3 ... age 26), jug marker" Harold Eugene "Eddie" Green (4/10 ... age 35), robber and killer Clyde Chestnut Barrow (5/23 ... age 25), gun moll Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (5/23 ... age 23), bank robber and killer Thomas Leonard "Tommy" Carroll (6/7 ... age 33), bank robber and killer John "Red" Hamilton (4/26 ... age 34), bank robber and killer John Herbert "Jackrabbit" Dillinger (7/22 ... age 31), bank robber and killer Homer Virgil "Wayne" Van Meter (8/23 ... age 28), bank robber and killer Charles Omer Makley (9/22 ... age 44), bank robber and killer Harry "Pete" Pierpont (10/17 ... age 32), bank robber and killer Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd (10/22 ... age 30), and Lester Joseph Gillis aka "Baby Face" Nelson (11/27 ... age 25) ... a year made even worse if it extended into the first month of 1935 when Russell "Slim Gray" Gibson (1/8 ... age 32) has FBI agents in Chicago turn his bulletproof vest into a piece of metal Swiss cheese, Frederick George "Freddy" Barker (1/16 ... age 33) and his mother, Arizona Donnie Clark "Ma" Barker (1/16 ... age 61) are killed after getting into a fve hour shootout with the FBI in Ocklawaha, Florida.
Headlines
Bye-Bye Big Bob
