CUFFS FOR THE KIMES BOYS

8/29/1926 - After a long week that has them honeymooning with their newly married wives in Arkansas, driving across Oklahoma, robbing two banks at the same time in the Sooner town of Covington, killing Deputy Sheriff Perry Chuculate at a roadblock near the town of Sallisaw, while also kidnapping the town's police chief, J.C. Woll, and a local farmer named Wesley Ross, the sibling criminal escapades of the Kimes Brother, George and Matt, come to an end in a hail of lawman lead at the home of a relative, Ben Pixley (the duo's mother's nephew).

Matt And His Wife, Bertha Opal (14)

George And His Wife, Flossie Fern (16)

Bred in poverty, the Arkansas natives' first known crime is rifling the candy counter of a little country store, and a taste for theft acquired, unwillingly to do the hard labor farming at the time takes, the youngsters begin stealing anything of value they can get their hands on, farm tools, guns, saddles, selling the booty, and then spending the cash received on themselves and family.  Moving up the criminal ladder (or down depending on your point of view), the brothers move on to stealing cars, cracking safes, and burglarizing businesses.  Garnering the attention of the authorities, the brothers are soon behind bars ... for awhile.  Freed after a short stint of incarceration, the boys soon put together a band of like-minded hooligans and begin daylight depredations of the regions financial institutions (and Matt escapes from jail for the first time).  Ready to join the ranks of Oklahoma killers like Bob Dalton, Bill Doolin, and Henry Starr, in July of 1926, George is twenty-two and Matt is twenty-one when they begin planning their two bank hit of Covington (selected for the banks being across the street from each other, its small population of about 4,000 souls, and that its town marshal, Herman Yost, never carries a gun).

Early Covington

On a warm summer Wednesday, six men (along with the Kimes Brothers, the criminal Brandon Brothers, Clyde and Roy, will also participate in the robbery), in a sedan and a blue Buick roadster rob Covington's two banks, the American State Bank and the Covington National Bank, of $9,033.38 in currency and coins ... one man stays with each car, one man covers the street, and three men plunder first one bank, then cross the dirt street and hit the other.  No weapons are pulled or pointed, and the only violence that takes place is when George Kimes kicks a confused elderly man in the rear end for not following directions.  Flight from town uncontested, the bandits split the proceeds of the job equally among themselves and then escape in two different directions ... the car with the Brandons heads for Joplin, Missouri, while the Kimes Brothers change rides, stealing a yellow Buick sedan, and head for their wives, 250 miles away in Van Buren, Arkansas.  A rough drive on back roads and gravel byways that will pass through the communities of Checotah, Webbers Falls, Sallisaw, and Ft. Smith before ending in Van Buren), Matt and George stop in Muskogee, Oklahoma at their aunt's and uncle's house, enjoying a hot meal, soothing baths, and a good night's sleep before filling the sedan up with gasoline the next morning ... and making the mistake that will soon get them caught. 

Yellow Buick Sedan

Paying for the gasoline they have bought to complete their journey, George will pull a roll of bills out of his pocket that will raise suspicions with the gas station attendant (Matt chastises his brother about the reckless display, but George is unconcerned as the twin bank robberies were the day before on the other side of the state).  Suspicions taken to the authorities, soon lawmen are looking for the sedan (bearing the license plate of a truck) in the region south of Muskogee.  Advised that trouble might be headed their way, Sallisaw Police Chief J. C. Woll sets up a roadblock on a hill four miles west of town that the outlaws will not see until they are right upon it ... a police car blocking the road with Woll and Deputy Sheriff Perry Levi Chuculate, supported by Deputy Sheriffs Bert Cotton and Dan Sharp, behind rocks, on either side of the road.  The plan to waylay the outlaws works perfectly with one huge exception ... the lawmen are horribly outgunned.  In the gun battle that takes place, Woll is buckshot wounded in the face and shoulder, Cotton is knocked unconscious by a round that grazes his temple, Sharp disengages and runs for help, and Chuculate is mortally wounded by a shot gun blast to the neck and a rifle slug that tears up his right lung (taken to the nearby St. John's Hospital in Fort Smith, he will die later that day at 5:50 in the afternoon ... buried on Sunday at the Sallisaw City Cemetery, the thirty-five-year-old lawman is survived by his wife, Ruby, two boys, Owen <13> and Odell <10>, a daughter, Opel <14>, both of his parents, three brothers, and two sisters).  Stolen sedan holed in the shootout (two wounds in the radiator and a flat tire), the Kimes boys take the police blocking vehicle, while kidnapping Woll and a passing farmer, Wesley Ross (to help with navigating the area), and flee into the Ozark Mountains.

Chuculate

Gravesite

State already buzzing looking for the Covington robbers, the intense ire of law enforcement grows even greater with the killing of Chuculate, and identification of the killers as the Kimes Brothers.  All wanting the Kimes arrest as a prize, shortly after the killing, six different posses are swarming the area ... two from Sallisaw, two from Van Buren, one from Fort Smith, and one organized by Creek County, Oklahoma.  Family members under observation (or outright arrest) and roads watched, it doesn't take long for the brothers to stumble into the trap being set.  Driving on back roads, but still headed towards their wives and family, the men abandon their captives about eight miles outside of Van Buren, then abandon the ride when it runs out of gas near the community of Chester and continue their journey on foot.  Shelter of family seemingly finally reached with their arrival at the home of Ben Pixley at 2:45 on Saturday morning, the weary brothers are instead confronted by three car loads of waiting lawmen.  Commanded to halt, the brothers ignore the order and run for the house as the posse, led by Sheriff A. D. Maxey, Lee Pollock (special agent for the Oklahoma Bankers Association), and A. B. Cooper (a representative of the William Burns Detective Agency in Oklahoma City), opens fire.  Downed into compliance, George is shot in both arms, while Matt is hit by buckshot in his right shoulder, along with pistol wounds to his left arm and shoulder (the wounds of both men will be tended to at the local jail by Dr. M. S. Dibrell).  Searched, the Covington money has gone missing, but the officers do confiscate from their captives six pistols, three automatic shotguns, and the rifle used in the Chuculate killing.

Van Buren, Arkansas - 1920s

Quickly put on trial for the killing of Chuculate, death penalty requested, both men are instead convicted of manslaughter (both men claim they were firing the rifle) ... George is sentenced to twenty-five years behind bars, while Matt receives a thirty-five year sentence.  Delivered to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester by early October, it is the end of the brothers criminal partnership, but not of the Kimes boy's crimes.  Filing for a second trial, Matt is broken out of the Sallisaw jail in November of 1926 by parties unknown and soon joins two other recent escapees, Ray Terrill (a train and bank robbing graduate of the Central Park Gang of Tulsa, Oklahoma that produces the notorious Barker Brothers and Volney Davis) and Elmer Inman (a crook who will also be an associate of Herman Barker and Wibur Underhill), in a new series of crimes that will include another double bank job, more murders and shootouts with authorities, his capture at the Grand Canyon in June of 1927, another prison escape in 1945, a final bank robbery in Morton, Texas, and his death in a hospital on December 14, 1945, after being hit while crossing a road in North Little Rock, Arkansas ... by a poultry truck.  He is forty-years-old at the time of his passing.  Meanwhile, George serves his sentence, escapes from prison in 1948 (walking away from his trustee job tending to the prison's bloodhounds), is back in captivity by June of 1941, before eventually being granted a parole on May 28, 1957.  Criminal acts behind him, he works as a logger, vacuum cleaner salesman, and on a turkey ranch in Idaho and California until his death from cancer in 1970.  George is sixty-five-years-old at his leaving.

Ray Terrill

Still Making The News In 1927

Matt Kimes - Arizona Arrest Photo