KRIS KRINGLE ROBS A BANK AND KILLS A PAIR OF COPS

12/23/1927 - One of the most infamous crimes in Texas history takes place in the town of Cisco, when local outlaw Marshall Ratliff and some of his bandit buddies decide to procure some spending money for the holidays by robbing the local bank.

                         
                                      Ratliff

Known to residents of Cisco, for a disguise, twenty-four-year-old Ratliff borrows a Santa Claus suit from Mrs. Midge Tellet, the woman who runs the Wichita Falls boarding house the outlaw has been living in, steals a getaway car in Fort Worth, and along with his robber partners, ex-cons Henry Helms (thirty-two), Robert Hill (twenty-one), and Helms' relative, Louis Davis (twenty-two), proceeds to the First National Bank for what is hoped to be a large cash withdrawal.

 
First National Bank of Cisco, Texas

Dropped off a few blocks from the bank, Ratliff walks the streets as Santa, amusing downtown shoppers and drawing a small crowd of children, several of whom eventually follow the outlaw into the bank, and inside with his partners, everyone quickly discovers the man inside the red and white costume is not a jolly St. Nick.  Pistols covering the patrons of the bank, Santa pulls out a large sack from beneath his disguise and begins stuffing it with cash from the teller stations and vault.  The costume both an excellent disguise but also a magnet for happy holiday celebrants, it proves to be a negative when Mrs. B. P. Blassengame and her six-year-old daughter enter the establishment in hopes of spending a few quality moments with Kris Kringle ... instead they discover that the bank is being robbed, and exiting from a side door in the bookkeeping office, Blassengame runs a block to the police department where she notifies Police Chief George Edward "Bit" Bedford that a crime is taking place in his town.

                                                       
                                                          Bedford

Grabbing weapons, six-foot-four, two-hundred-twenty-pound Bedford and officers R.T. Redies and George Carmichael make their way at a trot to the First National and take up positions around the bank.  Armed and ready, when one of the crooks inside fires through a window of the bank, a gun battle breaks out between the bandits, members of the police force, and locals who have run to a nearby hardware store and armed themselves with weapons seeking the $5,000 reward the Texas Bankers Association is offering to anyone who shoots and kills a bank robber.  Bullets flying everywhere (over two hundred are said to be fired during this portion of the robbery), in the hailstorm of slugs outlaw Davis is hit seriously several times and bandit Ratliff is wounded in the leg and jaw, while bank president Alex Spears is shot in the face, local grocer Oscar Clitt is hit in the foot, and Marlon Olson, a college student home on Christmas vacation from Harvard is struck in the thigh.  Sensing they will be turned into Swiss cheese if they step outside without cover, the gang gathers a group of hostages as shields, including twelve-year-old Laverne Corner and ten-year-old Emma May Robertson, and forces their way into the alley containing their getaway car, a dark blue Buick ... action that results in more woundings of outlaws and citizens alike.  And in the alley, lawmen Carmichael and Bedford both go down trying unsuccessfully to keep the outlaws away from their vehicle ... sixty-year-old Bedford, a peace officer for over twenty-five-years dies from five wounds, and though he fights for life, Carmichael dies of his wounds on January 17th.  They do not go to their graves alone though!

                                      
                                                            Carmichael

Fleeing in their car, which now sports a bullet punctured flat tire with a mob of angry citizens following them, on the edge of town the idiot crooks discover that the car they had stolen earlier is now almost out of gasoline (full when they left Fort Worth the night before, no one has refilled the vehicle upon reaching Cisco).  Stopping to find other transportation, the outlaws next commandeer the Oldsmobile of fourteen-year-old Woody Harris (who is accompanied by his Christmas shopping parents and grandparents).  Transferring money and weapons, the gang is ready to continue their escape, but discover young Harris has pulled a fast one, giving up his car, but keeping its keys when he and his family run off.  Back again in their original car as they begin taking fire from townspeople once more (Hill is hit in the arm during this exchange of bullets), the bandits leave behind in the Harris Oldsmobile their unconscious partner, Louis Davis ... and proving they are mental midgets, the loot they have taken from the bank ... $12,400 in cash and $150,000 in security bonds.  Captured a few moments later, Davis will die later that night at a local hospital.

                                             
                                              Davis about to adios

The outlaws' car soon breaks down and the men flee into the wilderness of the region ... and in a bit of good news for the town of Cisco, the two little girls are found unhurt in the backseat of the Buick and returned to their parents.  Outrage spreading like a wildfire, a huge manhunt for the murderers soon begins, the largest in Texas history.  In the following days of Christmas Eve, Christmas, and beyond, the flight and pursuit includes the outlaws' kidnapping of Carl Wylie, who they force to drive them around until his car breaks down, the theft of another car and its abandonment, the bandits walking through icy and sleeting conditions, a thwarted ambush of the men by Sheriff Foster of Young County as the group tries to flee across the Brazos River, another car chase, a shootout in a field orchestrated by future Texas Ranger Cy Bradford who repeatedly loading and firing a double-barrel shotgun, wounds all three crooks (Hill and Helms will escape into the brush) and brings down Ratliff ... and a finale in which the last two bank robbers, cold, tired, and starving, walk into the town of Graham on December 30th and give themselves up.     

                          
                           Posse outside the Graham jail celebrating the
                           capture of the Santa Claus bank robbers

Fugitives in custody, Hill will be sentenced to ninety-nine-years in prison, Helms will roast in the state's electric chair, and Ratliff, sentenced to death, will feign insanity, kill one of his guards trying to escape, and be lynched by the upset citizens of Eastland County in November of 1929.  


12/23/1927 - Cisco, Texas

With the human toll that the Santa Claus Bank Robbery and its aftermath take, it is little wonder that the crime is still remembered and considered one of the most infamous moments in the state of Texas' bloody history.

CRAZY LARRY GETS DRUNK

12/18/1932 - Celebrating his cut of the Third Northwestern National bank job that took place two days before in which he machine gunned to death two Minneapolis police officers, on Sunday morning Barker-Karpis gang member Larry DeVol is so stewed on the massive slugs of whiskey he has been drinking that he walks into the wrong unit at the Annbee Arms Apartments on 928 Grand Avenue in St. Paul.

                        
                              DeVol and Karpis after 1930 arrest

Instead of his own apartment, #206, the killer has entered the unit of Associated Press wire service telegraph operator Haskett Burton just as he is discussing the recent bloody robbery with friends around his bridge table.  Confronted by a disheveled stranger who stumbles about the apartment ranting and raving, Burton and friends manage to push the drunk outside, but not before DeVol pulls a pistol and waves it in the telegrapher's face, threatening to shoot him.  Not the type to allow himself to be cowed in his own abode, Burton calls the cops and reports the incident.  Sent to investigate, officers George Hammergren and Harley Kast arrest the man they find ... and then discover they've hooked a very big fish in the world of crime.

                        

Searching the apartment of the drunk, the officers find packages of money taken in the Third Northwestern National robbery and a .45 automatic used in the crime.  Fingerprinted and then questioned when he finally becomes sober, the St. Paul police have accidentally made a captive of kill crazy crook Larry DeVol ... a maniac wanted for the deaths of two businessmen in Oklahoma, the double murder of a sheriff and marshal in Iowa, a homicide in Tulsa, the killing of a Missouri policeman, and the two fatalities he had perpetrated only a couple of days before.

       

Caught, DeVol will plead guilty to the killings of officers Evans and Gorski and in January of 1933 the outlaw is sentenced to life in the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater.  There his criminal career does not end however.  Conning the medical staff of the prison with ravings about guards trying to kill him with poison gas, DeVol will be transferred to the St. Peter Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where in 1936 he leads a breakout of fifteen other unstables, and when loose once more, quickly returns to his robbing and killing ways before being shot to death in a gun battle with police in Enid, Oklahoma.

                        Getting what he'd given so many times
                                 

NOT THE BRIGHTEST LIGHT BULBS

12/19/1931 - Lingering about town because they plan on robbing the local bank, not thinking properly, two days after robbing the C. C. McCallon clothing store of West Plains, Missouri of $2,000 in socks, ties, gloves, sweaters, and shirts of the latest fashions, now dapperly dressed bandits Freddy Barker and Alvin "Creepy" Karpis (Karpis will always claim "Lapland Willie" Weaver is the actual party involved, but the FBI fingers the creepy one) decide their blue Desoto sedan is in need of tire repairs (a car registered under Karpis' real name).

   

Pulling into the West Plains garage of the Davidson Motor Company at around 9:00 in the morning, Barker and Karpis request the repair of two leaky tires.  Unbeknownst to the outlaws, as the men await the fix, snoopy garage owner Carac Davidson has noticed that his newest customers are wearing clothing that looks like the description of the merchandise stolen from McCallon's on the 17th, and are driving a car that leaves tracks similar to the marks left behind McCallon's the night the robbery of the store occurred.  Junior Sherlock time, slipping quietly out of his place of business, Davidson finds Sheriff C. Roy Kelly just leaving the post office across the street and tries to convince the lawman that he should question the suspect men.  Grabbing his weapon from the back seat of his car, Kelly unfortunately decides the story McCallon is telling does warrant investigation and he crosses East Main Street and enters the garage.  Unaware he is about to encounter two budding public enemies, Kelly puts on a friendly smile and opens the Desoto's door to conduct his interview ... and is instantly welcomed by one of the men emptying his pistol at him, fatally so, at point-blank range.

                          
                                       Karpis

Kelly takes two rounds to the chest and is hit two more times in his left arm ... and is dead at the age of only forty-six, leaving behind a wife.

                                       
                                                          Barker

Vacating the scene of their latest crime, one gunman flees on foot, running out of the garage and vanishing down an alley next to the auto repair business (all that will be left behind from the killers' visit to West Plains will be a red scarf).  The other, still in the Desoto, roars onto the street, hitting a curb during his exit so hard that the back door pops open for a moment, then he too vanishes.  In the manhunt that takes place led by M. C. Stephens, the men are eventually tracked to a farm near Thayer, Missouri that has been rented by a Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Dunlop.  Arriving at the farm a posse finds the acreage abandoned and they also discover that while Arthur Dunlop is a real name of an elderly lovesick drunk, Mrs. Arthur Dunlop is an alias ... the latest alias of a woman born Arizona Donnie Clark, who upon getting married and birthing a murderous set of brothers, becomes known to history as the infamous "Ma" Barker.

                           
                                                     Dunlop and Ma

Gone, the killing of Kelly ends the group's use of the farm as a base for crimes in Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas ... Karpis, Freddy, and the Dunlops have pulled up stakes and headed north for the more healthy climes to be found under the protection of the underworld figures and corrupt police force of St. Paul, Minnesota.  No more burglaries of clothing stores and Mom-and-Pop shops are in their future for in St. Paul the outlaws will meet master criminals Harvey Bailey, Frank Nash, Francis Keating, and Tommy Holden and enter the big leagues of armed robbery and kidnapping ... and there, in 1932, they will also murder Ma's paramour, Mr. Dunlop, when they think his drunken babblings have reached the wrong ears and resulted in a police raid on one of their hangouts.  But that is a story for another time ...

  

BANK ROBBING, BARKER STYLE

12/16/1932 - The state of Minnesota endures another bloody day in it's history thanks again to the exceeding itchy trigger fingers of the Barker-Karpis Gang.  Seeking a big payday and a jolt of outlaw adrenaline, the gang picks as it's target the Third Northwestern National Bank of Minneapolis ... an establishment most robbers would ignore due to its location on a busy downtown street, the fact that the building is a triangle with entrances on two different streets,  the structure has huge windows through which activities inside can be observed, the intersection in front is a regular stop for a streetcar, and the bank is alarm connected to a nearby police station.  Negatives all to a raid, none of the constraints to thievery will dissuade the bandits in the least.

 
                              The bank shortly after it's robbery

A band constantly in flux due to deaths, arrests, woundings, and the nature of each job, for the Third Northwestern National the raiding group of outlaws consists of master thief Alvin Karpis, recent parolee Doc Barker, Doc's murderous brother Freddy, another recent parolee and Doc prison buddy, Volney Davis, killer Larry "The Chopper" DeVol, lawman turned crook Verne Miller, Oklahoma State Penitentiary graduate William "Lapland Willie" Weaver, and bandit Jess Doyle.  All come to the heist armed with an array of machine guns and .45 automatic pistols modified to accept large-capacity ammo clips.

                        
                               Young punks - DeVol (l) and Karpis (r)

Responsibilities divided, part of the gang enters the bank from Central Avenue, another group goes inside by way of the Hennepin Avenue doors, the driver of the gang's getaway Lincoln waits in the car with it's engine running, and Larry Devol stands outside as a guard with his machine gun.  With the standard refrain "This is a stick-up!" the robbery begins and both bookkeeper Earl Patch and bank teller Paul Hesselroth quickly react by triggering silent alarms.  Hesselroth also tries to delay the robbery until the police arrive by claiming he can't open the door to the bank's vault ... a story he soon changes when Miller begins beating him about the head with his pistol.

             
                                                  Miller

Teller cages and vault looted, the gang grabs $22,000 in cash and $100,000 in securities, but the handful of minutes it takes to collect the booty is just long enough for the police to arrive.  On their way back to the station for their roll call and quitting time of 2:40 in the afternoon, officers Ira Evans and Leo Gorski rush to the bank down Central Avenue ... and from a distance of only fifteen feet are greeted by DeVol unleashing his full fifty slug machine gun drum into the men and their car (blowing out plate glass windows, the bandits inside the bank also open up on the policemen).  Neither officer gets out of the car or gets a shot off ... thirty-nine-year-old Evans, an eight year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department is hit by ten rounds and killed instantly, while thirty-eight-year-old Gorski, also an eight year veteran of the force, despite the best medical help the city can offer, dies forty-eight hours later at a local hospital.

                            
                                               Evans                   Gorski
  
                                             Some of the damaged windows

For Devol, the murders are the fifth and sixth times he has killed since beginning his criminal car

Leaving the bank, the gang limps away in their getaway car (a tire and rim of the Lincoln are destroyed), a vehicle that they themselves have shot up accidentally firing wildly at the policemen that DeVol has killed, but damage to the Lincoln is a contingency they have planned for and they head for St. Paul's Como Park where they have alternate transportation awaiting in the form of a stolen green Chevrolet.  Arriving at the park around 3:00 in the afternoon they begin transferring into the other car, including changing its license plates, activities that unfortunately draw the attention of Oscar Erickson and his friend Arthur Zachman, two young men searching for customers for the Christmas wreaths they are selling from their car.  For Erickson, his first day at the new job will also be his last.

         
                                                       Como Park

Slowing as they come upon the bandits, Erickson's eyes linger on the group too long, and Freddy Barker, believing Erickson is trying to take down the license plate number of the gang's new ride to give to the police, shouts, "Get going or else!"  It is a warning Erickson never has a chance to respond to for only a second after it is given, Barker fires his machine gun into the Chevrolet coupe of the salesmen.  Struck in the head by a .45 slug, though the uninjured Zachman is able to drive his friend to a nearby police station for medical attention, Erickson dies of an acute cerebral hemorrhage the next morning.  One robbery, three deaths ... the Barker-Karpis gang in action, circa 1932 ... public enemies indeed!

                                     
                                  Fred Barker

CLYDE KILLS AGAIN

1/6/1933 - Tragedy strikes at the Dallas home of Lillian McBride when Clyde Barrow walks into a police ambush set up to capture Texas bank robber Odell Chambless.

                           
                                                  Clyde Barrow
                                        
                                                  Chambless

Hoping to spring his partner Raymond Hamilton from police custody, earlier in the week Clyde has given Hamilton's sister, Lillian McBride, a radio with hacksaws inside for McBride to give to her brother.  On the night of the 6th, Clyde returns to the shack house McBride lives in to see if his gift to his friend has been delivered.  Unfortunately though, for a chance at a lighter sentence, West Dallas thief Les Stewart has told authorities that fugitive bank robber Chambless, wanted for a heist the previous year in Fort Worth and also an associate of Raymond Hamilton, is a frequent visitor to McBride's home causing a posse to put a stakeout on the place.

                        
                                                 Raymond Hamilton

Authorized by newly elected Dallas County Sheriff Richard "Smoot" Schmid, at 11:00 in the evening Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney W. T. Evans, Special Ranger J. F. Van Noy, Dallas Deputy Sheriff Fred Bradberry, and Fort Worth Detectives Dusty Rhodes and Malcolm Davis arrive at the McBride residence to set up their ambush ... Bradberry, Evans, and Van Noy take up positions in the small front room of the darkened house, while Rhodes and Davis wait outside on the back porch.

              
                                                 Schmid in the dark suit

Shortly after midnight, a Ford V-8 coupe with its lights off drives slowly past the house on North Winnetka, turns at the corner, quietly returns, and parks ... inside are Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and new gang member W.D. Jones.  Alert for danger, Clyde gets out of the car carrying a shotgun at his side and walks toward the front porch, but before he can arrive, he is greeted from inside by a scream from Hamilton's youngest sister, Maggie Farris.  Warned that all is not right, Clyde instantly brings up his shotgun and blasts in the front window of the home, causing the lawmen on its other side to throw themselves to the floor.  Finding his first shot has jammed the shotgun, the outlaw then backs away from the porch as he draws the spent cartridge out of the breech of his weapon and reloads ... just as fifty-one-year-old Davis, responding to the gunfire at the front of the house, runs around to the front yard and finds himself only inches away from Clyde ... a recipe for disaster.  And disaster it is for Clyde does not hesitate for even a split second in shooting Davis at point-blank range, blowing an instantly fatal buckshot hole in the lawman's chest.

                                      

At this point Rhodes arrives from the back and begins shooting, the three lawmen in the house rise and beginning shooting, and from the Ford, Jones begins sending return gunfire at McBride's home.  In the ensuing mayhem of noise and slugs, Clyde takes off and begins running between houses, while Bonnie, seeing the direction in which Clyde is sprinting, pulls away from the curb at tire screeching speed and eventually picks up her boyfriend on nearby Eagle Ford Road.  

                            
                      Re-enactment of the crime ... hatted man is Chief
                                of Detectives Bill Decker in the role of Clyde

Gone in seconds, Clyde has killed for the second time in the short span of only two weeks ... Davis is the fifth murder the outlaw has been involved in ... and it will not be his last.

           
                                       Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow

THE ALCATRAZ SWIM CLUB IS CREATED

12/16/1937 - After months of planning and labor, the day finally arrives in which convict buddies Ralph Roe (prisoner AZ-260) and Theodore Cole (prisoner AZ-258) decide to become the first men to test the vulnerability of their supposed escape proof home ... challenging the bars, walls, and water of the Federal penitentiary located on Alcatraz Island.

                          
                                                      Alcatraz

Theodore Cole is a twenty-five-year-old felon from Oklahoma with burglary, armed robbery, kidnapping, murder and two escape incidents on a record that began when he was fourteen ... he is serving a 50-year sentence.  Ralph Roe is a thirty-two-year-old criminal also from Oklahoma with a resume that includes grand larceny, theft, harboring a fugitive, auto theft, armed robbery, burglary, and kidnapping ... he is serving a 99-year sentence.  Both men are extremely bad apples!   

                      
                                             Roe                                      Cole

Serving out their terms quietly, both with jobs in the prison's Model Shop, Cole with a position as a janitor and Roe with work converting used tires into rubber floor mats, sometime in 1936 the men discover a flaw in their confinement ... the bars in the windows where they work are not made of tool-proof steel and can be parted.  Creating a make-shift saw, the men soon beginning carving away at a special window they have selected for their escape every moment they are not under observation by a guard, covering up their work from discovery with a camouflage mixture of paint chips and putty.  Bars finally cut, the men then wait for an essential element of their plan that they know will arrive sooner or later ... the dense fog San Francisco is notorious for having and in December of 1937, the thick grey cloak they need to leave the island arrives.

                      
                                     Alcatraz Model Shop

A deterrent to escapes, a count of the men working in the Model Shop is made every thirty minutes, and when Officer Joseph Steele makes his rounds at 1:00 in the afternoon, all prisoners are accounted for.  As soon as the officers leaves however, Roe and Cole make their move for freedom ... the cut bars are dislodged, the men climb through a 8 and 3/4 by 8 and 3/4 inches hole, drop five feet to the ground, use a twenty-four-inch Stillson wrench to twist off a padlock on a gate leading through a fence topped by five feet of barbed wire, drop twelve feet from a cliff on to a beach covered in car tires discarded by the Mat Shop, and then vanish into the waters of San Francisco Bay, never to be seen again, both drowning victims of a 7-9 knot ebb tide that is thought to have carried the men out into the Pacific ... at least that is the official story. 

                           
                                                       Cole rap sheet
                                    
                                                     Roe rap sheet

Missed when the count is next taken at 1:30, a massive search of both the island, the waters ringing Alcatraz, and potential landing sights takes place ... and a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of the men is offered.  Nothing comes of any of it though and when an inmate testifies that he had seen the men floundering in the water, Alcatraz officials and FBI personnel determine the men are dead.  But are they?  The active investigation of the missing men is not discontinued until September of 1974, and over the years there will be reported sightings of the escapees in a North Bergen, New Jersey bar, by a cab driver in Seminole, Oklahoma who claims he gave the outlaws a ride, by a bartender in Petaluma, by two hitchhikers in Tulsa who will identify the men from photos they are shown by police, Warden Johnston will receive a postcard from Colorado signed T. Cole, an inmate will receive a letter with the code the convicts had agreed to send if they successfully escaped that posits "business is good," and in 1941, the San Francisco Chronicle will run a story stating that the men are living in South America.  Did they drown or make it to shore?  To this day no one can say with 100% certainty what happened to Cole and Roe ... and the ghosts of the island aren't talking!

                               

A BIG SCORE IN DENVER

12/18/1922 - At 10:40 on a chilly December morning, one of the most notorious crimes in Colorado history takes place outside the Denver Mint.

                           
                                       U.S. Mint - Denver, Colorado

Most noted for creating coins for the government, the Mint's vaults, located on Colfax Avenue in the Mile High City, also serve as protected storage for any overflow of currency from the small Federal Reserve Bank in the Interstate Trust Building, nearby at 16th and Lawrence ... an added function of the establishment that has somehow become known to a deadly group of professional bank robbers.  A job planned down to the second (a trademark of German bandit Herman Lamm and his proteges, Harvey Bailey and Eddie Bentz), just as $200,000 in ten, eighteen inch long, eight pound packages of five dollar bills has finished being loaded into a mesh-wire cage on the back of the bank's pickup truck for transfer, and the Mint guards have gone back inside their building, a curtained black Buick touring car pulls up and disgorges three black-masked men.  The robbery is on!

                          
                                                Bailey

"Hands Up!"  Two bandits armed with shotguns take up positions behind telephone poles and begin firing when their order is not immediately complied with, while the third outlaw, armed with a pistol, moves the money packages to the gang's getaway car (a fourth outlaw stays behind the wheel of the vehicle and in some accounts there is a fifth bandit).  The gunfire of the crooks is in turn answered by the truck's bank guards and by government agents within the Mint ... a bullet melee that lasts all of ninety seconds, one of which is fatal for sixty-four-year-old Special Officer Charles T. Linton of the Federal Reserve, who takes a point-blank shotgun blast to the chest in the exchange of gunfire (prior to his employment with the Reserve, Linton is a member of the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office for over twenty-six years, the veteran lawman leaves behind a wife and two sons).  Heist complete, the Buick roars away down Colfax with one outlaw bleeding from a hand wound as he continues to fire his shotgun from the running board of the fleeing car, while another hit thief slumps over in his seat.  A truck is sideswiped leaving the scene of the crime, but the Buick is not harmed enough to stop its flight and the gang soon vanishes into downtown Denver, their escape a success despite Colorado immediately beginning the biggest manhunt in the state's history (it is believed the robbers flee to St. Paul, Minnesota).

                                               
                                                       Linton

Eighteen days later, the bloody getaway car is found in a residential garage at 1631 Gilpin Street ... found containing the frozen corpse of the only participant in the robbery to ever be officially identified, thirty-six-year-old outlaw Nicolas "Chaw Jimmie" Trainor (on parole from the Nebraska State Penitentiary), dead from a massive shotgun wound to the bandit's jaw.  In February of 1923 another discover in the case is made when Secret Service agents raiding a bandit hideout in Minnesota locate $80,000 of cash from the robbery, and an additional $73,000 of bonds taken in a raid on a Walnut Hills, Ohio bank ... loot thought to be in the region for underworld laundering by the criminal kingpin of the region, Daniel "Dapper Dan" Hogan.

                        
                                                      Dapper Dan

Federal authorities will announce the crime has been solved in 1925, but no details about any of the participants are released, and in 1934, Denver Police Chief A. T. Clark claims five men and two women were responsible for the robbery, all stated as being dead or already serving life terms in prison, but again no names or details of the bloody day in front of the Denver Mint are provided to the public.  Other than for Trainor, who the men in the masks were remains a mystery to this day! 

                                        
                                                  Next day headlines

UNDERHILL, UNDERGROUND

12/30/1933 - The honeymoon of Wilbur Underhill, known as the "Tri-State Terror" and "Mad Dog" to authorities, comes to an abrupt and bloody end when a posse made up of federal, county, and city law officers finds the robber and multiple murderer enjoying newly married bliss at a rented cottage in Shawnee, Oklahoma (paid for by loot the outlaw has robbed on his November 18th wedding day from a bank in Frankfort, Kentucky, and a Coalgate, Oklahoma bank plundered on December 13th).

                                     
                                                        Underhill

Tipped off that Underhill, his new bride Hazel Jarrett Hudson (a sister of the outlaw Jarrett Brothers), bandit Ralph Roe, and Roe's girlfriend Eva May Nichols are staying in the small house located at 606 West Dewey Street, an arrest party led by Federal Special Agent Ralph Colvin takes up positions around the clapboard structure in the foggy dark of cold early winter morning ... a raiding party of fifteen men heavily armed with shot guns, machine guns, tear gas rifles, and pistols.  Sneaking up to a bedroom window at the back of the building to determine if their quarry is present, the team of Colvin and Oklahoma City Detective Clarence Hurt spot Underhill in long underwear standing at the foot of a bed his wife is sitting upon just as a neighborhood dog begins barking, causing the outlaw to look out the window.  "This is the law Wilbur.  Stick 'em up!" Hurt yells, and for a moment it appears the bandit is going to comply, but as he begins to raise his arms, Underhill instead quickly whirls around and grabs a specially modified automatic Luger pistol attached to a 31-slug magazine from a nightstand ... then all hell breaks loose.

Hurt responds by firing a tear gas canister into Underhill's chest, knocking the bandit down for a moment, Colvin follows that action up as chemical fumes cloud the room by emptying the clip of his machine gun through the window in three bursts of bullets that hole walls, destroy furniture, shatter a mirror, and chase the outlaw into the bathroom where he returns fire as his wife lies screaming on the floor.  Better safe than sorry, the other officers about the building hear the crash of gunfire and also trigger their own weapons at the house, causing the cottage to shake (over two hundred rounds will smash into the fragile building).  In the barrage that takes place, Roe, sleeping in an adjacent bedroom to Underhill is hit by wounding .45 rounds in his left arm and shoulder, but his girlfriend Nichols is hit even harder.  Jumping out of bed screaming hysterically, the crazed women runs toward the front door and is hit twice in the stomach by machine gun slugs, falls, gets up, runs out the door and goes down again in the muddy front yard when another burst of gunfire hits her in the foot.  She does not get up from her second fall and will eventually die from her wounds at the town's nearby Municipal Hospital.

                                     
                                                         Ralph Roe

The next to tempt Fate going out the front door is Underhill who is equally unlucky.  Hit by numerous rounds fired by the four officers watching the front of the property, the outlaw, wearing only socks and his underwear, crashes to the ground in puddle of mud making his exit.  Prey down, the men move warily forward to place their victim in custody ... but are shocked anyway when the bandit suddenly leaps up and runs into the darkness between two neighboring houses.  Meanwhile, responding to the firing at the front of the house, Colvin and Shawnee Night Chief Frank Byrant leave the backyard and almost run into Underhill as the outlaw makes his exit ... and are surprised that he does not go down when they empty their machine guns at the fleeing killer.

                        
                                 Underhill after an earlier encounter with the law

Gunfire over, Roe surrenders, crawling out of the front door where Oklahoma County Deputy Sheriff George Kerr handcuffs the wounded desperado and then arranges for his transportation to same hospital to which his girlfriend has been taken (Underhill's wife is arrested too, somehow managing to survive the gun battle unscathed).  But it is Tri-State Terror that the posse really wants and soon a house-to-house sweep of Shawnee begins with an additional twenty-four law officers joining in the search for the outlaw, along with bloodhounds from the state prison at McAlester.  The animals however are not needed, for shortly after 7:00 in the morning, R. A. Owens, the manager of a second hand furniture store, calls police headquarters to tell the authorities that a man in only his underwear has broken into the business at 509 East Main Street.  Target located once more, in two cars a six-man posse rushes to the store and finds Underhill laying helpless on a blood-soaked bed, his empty Luger on the floor beside him ... despite suffering from shotgun wounds peppering his body and .45 slugs hitting him in the head, right arm, back, and right leg, with the top of his left ear shot off, the almost naked outlaw has run sixteen blocks through the night's cold in a desperate, but vain attempt to escape his pursuers.  Another temporary patient for the hospital, Underhill is too far gone to save and finally succumbs to his many wounds on the 6th of January at 11:42 in the evening ... his last words are alleged to be, "Tell the boys I'm coming home."

                                
                               "Mad Dog" Underhill

Back at the scene of the gun battle, law enforcement agents find $5,300 in negotiable bonds from Underhill's Frankfort bank job, enough ammunition to start a small war, a Luger with a folding stock, two .45 automatic Colt pistols, a .38 revolver, and in the car parked in the cottage's garage, a .30-.30 rifle, a sawed off Winchester .12 gauge pump action shotgun, a double-barreled shotgun pistol, and a tin pail full of roofing nails suitable for giving flat tires to any pursuit vehicles that might be chasing the bandit ... evidence that a true "mad dog" criminal has finally been put down!

A POINTLESS CHRISTMAS KILLING

12/25/1932 - While making a quick visit to Dallas on Christmas Eve, Clyde Barrow is talked into taking on a new partner in his assorted criminal activities, sixteen-year-old family friend William Daniel "W.D." Jones, who has been hero worshiping the outlaw for months .

                           
                                           Teenage menace Jones

Not waiting to break his new associate in slowly, the next day as a form of initiation, Clyde, with Bonnie waiting in their car, takes Jones into a Temple, Texas grocery store to rob the place.  Jones freezes however at the reality of armed robbery (his prior offenses have been petty thefts and stealing unoccupied cars).  Returning to their vehicle, Clyde is merciless in his browbeating of the wannabe bad boy, so harsh that Jones asks to be taken back home ... a suggestion Clyde takes very poorly, stating that if Jones wants to go home he'll have to steal a car to get there in ... a car Clyde will select.

     
                              Clyde and some of his equipment

Unhappy with his failed protege, to embarrass Jones, Clyde selects a Model A Ford roadster he spies as Bonnie drives the streets of Temple ... a car extremely difficult to start, requiring the driver to along with turning the ignition key, pull out the choke while at the same time using both feet to press down on the accelerator and clutch pedals.  Sure enough, Jones fails to start the car and Clyde takes his place behind the wheel to show the floundering rookie how a real thief operates.

                              
                                                      Jones in 1934

Unfortunately, all the commotion brought on by trying to start the vehicle by this time has drawn the attention of the Christmas celebrating family the Ford actually belongs to ... the family of twenty-seven-year-old Doyle Johnson, the new father of a baby girl.  Seeing two men in the car, Henry Krauser, Johnson's father-in-law, Krauser's son Clarence, and Johnson's wife rush on to the front yard demanding to know what the two men are up to.  Clyde responds by jumping out of the car and brandishing his .45 revolver at the group, saying he will fire on the first person who moves forward.  With the family cowed, he then jumps back into the vehicle and again begins playing with the ignition of the Ford.  

                                       
                                               Jones and Barrow - 1933

It is tragically at this point that Johnson wakes up from the nap he has been taking in a very Grinchy and belligerent mood.  As Bonnie pulls up next to the roadster in the gang's speedy Ford V-8 and demands that the men abandon their car theft, Johnson, trying to protect his ride, runs outside, reaches through the driver side window and grabs Clyde around the neck.  "Get back man or I'll kill you!"  Johnson ignores the warning from the oulaw begins strangling Clyde, and sure enough, the bandit brings his weapon up and fires several rounds into his assailant, the mortal slug a bullet that severs Johnson's spinal column.  Free of the grip around his neck, Clyde roars down the street in the Model A, followed closely by Bonnie.

     
                                                                Clyde Barrow

It is the fourth murder Clyde participates in (his first is the killing of the man who rapes him while he is at Texas' infamous Eastham Prison Farm ... a twenty-nine-year-old convict serving ninety-nine years for a variety of crimes named Ed Crowder who will have his head bashed in by a lead pipe) and its utter pointlessness is immediately on display ... only a few blocks away Clyde ditches the vehicle he has killed to steal and the men vanish in the Ford V-8 driven by Bonnie (and there will be no more discussions about Jones leaving, with his involvement in the killing he is now well past saying goodbye and going home).  A menace to citizens and lawmen alike, the desperado is all of twenty-two-years-old when he takes Johnson's life ... and only two weeks away from murder number five, the shotgun killing of Fort Worth Deputy Malcom Davis.

             
                                  On the road - W.D. Jones and Bonnie Parker