Pro Bono - Chapter 2

Pro Bono

Chapter Two

The Murders

It was a cold Monday evening at the KMTV newsroom in Omaha, Nebraska and the reports that typically fed their telecasts were as flat and frigid as the snow-covered plains outside. There had been
no extreme weather, no upcoming events, and nothing affecting the farming community, which were the usual news items in this typically bucolic part of the country. With the holidays over, it was going to be more of the same until spring thawed the stillness of the news.

The reporters often filled the time learning how to use the motion picture cameras they had only recently received. The cameras were a necessity for television news, which was typically not regarded with the same prestige as the well-established print media. If the local station hoped to compete with the newspapers, it would have to give the public what still photographs and typed words could not. But with no news stories in motion, nothing could be filmed.

The slow Monday ended and the executives went home. The few remaining technicians and reporters scrabbled together whatever they could to fill news stories that night. In the meantime, the station
gave way to the Huntley-Brinkley report out of New York and Washington. It was a slow news day for them as well. The local Unitarian congregation was kicking off a fund drive to build a new church, the national debt was nearing $280 billion, and their lead in for the evening was “World’s Greatest Cartoons.”

Mark Gautier, alone in a dark control room upstairs from the bright lights of the studio, turned the volume of the television up to tune out the buzzing of the machines behind him. They were supposed
to bring in information, but now they were only causing a useless racket.

Then he noticed a lot of chatter coming from the police radio on the shelves above the TV. It was unusual to hear much more than an occasional smattering of reports referring to domestic disputes and traffic problems coming from the box. What he heard now caused Mark to get to his feet and grab a pencil. He wrote what he heard: “Be on the lookout for a 1949 black Ford. Nebraska license
number 2-15628. Radiator grille missing. No hubcaps. Believed to be driven by Charles Starkweather, a white male, nineteen years old, feet 5 inches tall, 140 pounds, dark red hair, green eyes. Believed to be wearing blue jeans and black leather jacket. Wanted by Lincoln police for questioning in homicide. Officers were warned to approach with caution. Starkweather was believed to be armed and presumed dangerous.

“Starkweather is believed to be accompanied by Caril Fugate, fourteen years old, female, white, 5 feet 1 inch tall, 105 pounds, dark brown hair, blue eyes, sometimes wears glasses. Usually wears hair
in ponytail, appears to be about eighteen years old. Believed wearing blue jeans and blouse or sweater. May be wearing medium-blue parka.”

It was 5:43 pm, January 27, 1958.

* * *

John McArthur heard the news report on the radio in his office the next day. He was a news junky, often listening to what was happening while at work, only to come home to watch a more in depth
recap of the day’s events on television. This time it was the opposite way around. There had been sketchy information about a triple homicide the night before, and now they had further information about it on the radio. A 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old boyfriend had disappeared, her family was discovered murdered, the parents’ bodies left in a chicken shack behind their home, and a baby’s body was in the outhouse; its head had been crushed by a rifle.

The sheer audacity of the murders was shocking enough to catch anyone’s attention and everyone turned on their radios and televisions to learn what was happening.

John didn’t have to turn far to reach his radio. Only a short swivel brought his legs into contact with a wall, or filing cabinet, or some other piece of furniture. Though John was a thin man, even his
gaunt frame barely fit through the narrow passage into his office. If a drawer was open, he had to duck under or climb over it. If his partner Merril Reller wanted inside the office, it became a back and forth dance for one to enter and the other to leave. A chair rested outside the doorway because when clients came to visit they had to sit outside the office looking in.

The report on the radio was interrupted by a break in the case.

The police had surrounded a farmhouse near Bennet, approximately 20 miles east of Lincoln, where Charlie was believed to be holed up. His car was parked in front, and no one answered a call to come out, not even the farmer who owned the property. A small army of police officials slowly moved in on the home, guns drawn.

* * *

Blackie Roberts and Dick Trembath, two of the reporters for KMTV, stood in the still, gelid air beside their car at the Meyer farm outside of Bennet. They had rushed from Omaha, more than sixty miles away, to film the capture of the two fugitives for KMTV.

Before them, the police formed a wide perimeter around the house, and waited for the dispersal of tear gas before moving in.

Scattered among the men in uniform were farmers with shotguns, eager to see the young murderer captured or killed. They knew that August Meyer, the man who owned the farm, would never
willingly aid a killer, even though Charlie had been a friend of August for years.

August, who was seventy, had allowed Charlie to hunt on his farm from time to time. He had seen Caril whenever Charlie brought her with him, but he barely knew her. Now no one could discern what was going on inside; if the two were preparing an ambush, or if they would surrender as soon as it got hot.

“How come all the local people?” Blackie asked one of the sheriff’s men. “Did you form a posse?”

“No, that’s something else,” came the reply. “They were just in the area and came over to help.”

“What else is going on?”

“A couple of teen-agers from Bennet were reported missing last night and the neighbors have been out looking for them.”

A patrol car engine roared to life. It was the signal. “Let’s move out!” someone shouted. “Spread out and stay low!”

The police car moved forward, and the men in uniform surged ahead. When the car rumbled into place in front of the house, it stopped. The men got out of the car and took cover behind the doors.

A loudspeaker squealed to life. “This is the police! We know you’re in there! We’ll give you five minutes to come out of there with your hands in the air!” They were met by silence, and police answered with the loud cocking of their guns.

A half dozen troopers ran as they spread out across the front lawn keeping low, carrying their stubby, wide barreled guns. Half way to the house they dove to the ground. A white flash trailed from one of
the men, and a moment later a window crashed. A thin trail of smoke slowly began to snake its way out of the hole as the farmhouse filled with tear gas.

The troopers charged the home from every direction. The front door was kicked open, and as the smoke poured out, they rushed in, guns at the ready.

One man called out from the back of the house. It was not what they expected, not a shout at Charlie to drop his weapon, or a signal to tell the others where he was, but a genuine scream of disgust.

The man who had called out was at the doorway of a small, white shed attached to the back of the house. Inside was the body of August Meyer. There was no sign of struggle, no visible bullet
wound. The only evidence of his death was a thin layer of blood peeking out from under him.

Blackie Roberts, who had followed the police inside, now shot a whole roll of film for the news. This was certainly a change from their usual photographs of placid pastures and town meetings. He just
had to get past the crowd of police huddling around the house.

August’s brother was among the officers outside. One of the policemen who had seen the body confirmed what they had found.

“Oh my god,” was all he could say.

Dick Trembath, also outside, walked down the lane to take photographs of Starkweather’s car, which was stuck in the mud just down the street. There was nothing unusual about it, except that
Charlie had collected tires in the backseat.

As Dick was returning to the Meyer place, he was approached by a farmer who asked where he could find a policeman. There were plenty available, which Dick pointed out, and he asked the perplexed
man what was happening. The man waved him off and continued toward an officer. Dick stood close enough to hear, but not so close to scare them away.

The man’s name was Everette Broening. The night before he had heard a car accelerate at high speed around 10 pm. The next morning, after hearing about the missing teenagers, he had found a pile
of school books along the side of the road a few miles up. All Dick heard him tell the officer after that was, “They’re in the storm cellar.”

* * *

The police stood on the pale, frozen ground surrounding the cement entrance of the storm cellar a couple miles from the Meyer residence. One civilian stepped up to the entrance, looked down
inside, then covered his mouth and turned quickly away, his shoulders heaving.

Dick tried to make his way to the doorway to get a photograph.

He was stopped by a trooper a foot taller than him. “Come on, I’ve got a job to do,” Dick said.
“You don’t want any pictures of what’s down there,” the man told him gravely.

The two teenagers who had been reported missing the night before, Robert Jensen and Carol King, lay at the bottom of the cellar.

The girl was naked, her body lying zig zagged across the floor, her breasts and groin fully exposed, her face as contorted as her body. Her blue jeans were bunched at her feet around her white bobby socks.

One arm, still attached to the sleeve of her jacket, was wrapped around her back, while the other arm reached down to her knee as if making one last attempt at modesty. Her small hand rested in the fold of her leg. A blood stain led out of her buttocks and trailed down her thigh where she had been raped, and then stabbed. Her body was on top of her boyfriend, Robert. A pool of their mixed blood ran down the floor away from them.

Lancaster County Attorney Elmer Scheele soon filed first degree murder charges against Charlie Starkweather. After what they had seen of the King girl, there was reason to believe Fugate was
probably dead as well, and they expected to find her body dumped along the side of the road.

Neighbors were warned, posses were formed, and farmers from across the area converged on the narrow, unpaved main street of Bennet, a town of 490 people 18 miles southeast of the capital city of
Lincoln, where the primary police headquarters was set up. The search centered around a line of police headlights and moved out from there into the dark, vast reaches of the nearby farmland. The heavily armed men stretched out into the night, some almost shooting one another as they spotted shapes in the dark. One officer was fired at when he tried to approach a farmhouse to warn the residents about Starkweather. It appeared they already knew, so he continued on to the next house.

Back at the KMTV newsroom, Ninette Beaver, a junior reporter, speculated that Charlie could have gone to the closest major town, Lincoln. “I doubt that,” Mark Gautier told her as he got his jacket to leave. “If he’s not holed up somewhere around Bennet, he’s probably made it out of the state by now.”

“Good lord, I hope so,” Ninette said. Her sister Joanne lived in Lincoln, and if Starkweather was going there, who knew what would happen. She waited for Mark to leave, then quickly called Joanne.

* * *

County Attorney Elmer Scheele had to duck his head slightly as he entered the magniloquent home of C. Lauer and Clara Ward. He was often the tallest man in any room. Though thin and introverted,
his presence was imposing, and his gaze through his black, horn rimmed glasses was focused and intimidating.

The murder spree had gone from bad to worse. Only one day earlier Scheele and the Nebraska police had thought they had Charlie pinned down in a farmhouse, only to find its owner dead inside the
house. And then they had found two teenagers brutally murdered, their bodies left locked in a storm cellar near a school. Never in the history of Nebraska had there been such a chain of killings, and now it had moved from the scattered small communities of the rural farmland into the more densely populated city of Lincoln. And even more disturbing, it had come to the upscale neighborhood near the country club.

Lincoln was a conglomeration of many small communities that had grown together over the decades. The resulting contrast in wealth and class was visible as one passed from the less developed north side of “O” Street to the more affluent south side of town, where the houses were larger, and the vast yards stretched out greener. For this type of bloodshed to enter any part of Lincoln was shocking enough. For it to enter the home of such a prominent figurehead was downright unthinkable.

Yet there was Mr. Ward, a well respected businessman, president of Capitol Steel Works, and a friend of the most influential people in the state, just inside of his front door, dead from a shot at point blank range with a shotgun. The last person to see him alive, in fact, was his close friend, Nebraska Governor Victor Anderson. Lauer Ward's wife Clara was found dead upstairs, a knife sticking out of her back, and their maid, Lillian Fencl, was found with her hands and feet bound, a gag in her mouth, and a knife embedded in her torso.

Scheele was a professional at hiding his feelings, but outrage was beginning to boil over as the pressure was building. Charlie had eluded every road block and patrol that was out to stop him, and now he had to be stopped before panic spread. Something else disturbed him; a smell overwhelming the second floor of the house. It was more than the stench of death, which Elmer was used to. When he followed it to its source, where the odor was strongest, he found the body of Mrs. Ward, bound and gagged and lying dead between the two beds.

Then he identified the aroma. It was perfume. Someone had tried to cover the smell of death by pouring it all over the room.  Mrs. Ward’s drawers and closets had been ransacked.  Women’s clothes were scattered all over the place, as if someone had been shopping and had left the discarded apparel behind. Among them was Carol King’s jacket. Elmer was incensed. Up to this point he had
been expecting to find Caril Fugate’s body in a ditch somewhere. But now it was clear. She was alive. And she was traveling as Charlie’s companion.

Outside, Merle Karnopp, the county sheriff, was talking to reporters. “Well, since discovering the last three bodies, which makes a total of nine that we know of so far, Mayor Martin and I have made
an appeal for all adjoining counties, including Omaha, to send all available help they can to Lincoln. It is our opinion that the car is still in this vicinity. We know he has been for the last three days, and we want to cover Lincoln block to block.”

* * *

James McArthur was a junior in high school at Union College Academy, a small Seventh-day Adventist school of about eighty to a hundred students that was squeezed into the fourth floor of the Union College Administration Building. The lower grades had not been allowed to recess because of fear that Starkweather was in the vicinity.

Now that Charlie was known to be in Lincoln, the school immediately sent all of the students home. Lines of cars driven by armed parents appeared at Lincoln’s schools. At Lincoln High School, one student was almost lynched when his bright red hair caused him to be mistaken for the murdering
teenager. Inside homes, children were told a key word that, if the parents spoke it, would mean that they were to run and hide.

At Whittier Jr. High School, students raided Caril Fugate’s locker and kept her possessions as souvenirs. Few had ever paid any attention to this tiny, reticent girl, but now dozens of students grappled over who would walk away with her belongings now that she was an infamous fugitive. Many who had ignored her before now made claims to have known her well, and claimed that she had always been a trouble maker.

James and his little sister Linda piled into John’s truck and they headed home through the madness. Along the way they witnessed stores closing, people getting into their homes and bolting the doors,
some boarding their windows. Lincoln had been a town where few ever bothered to lock their doors, but now the entire city was digging in as if under siege. Police from Omaha and the surrounding
communities converged on the capital city. Even the National Guard was called in by Governor Anderson after he learned that his good friend had been murdered. Soldiers piled out of their armored vehicles and marched in formation through the empty streets of downtown.

A posse was called for at the courthouse, and so many people showed up that some had to be turned away. Those who left mostly went to gun stores, which sold out within an hour. Small groups of
private citizens spread into Lincoln neighborhoods to search for Starkweather and almost shot each other. Armed civilians subjected individuals who drove cars similar to the one Charlie was now driving to repeated searches.

Reports of Starkweather sightings rolled in from places as near as the county courthouse in Lincoln to as far as the western end of Kansas.

In one small Kansas town, police were rushed to the airport for reasons they could not be told. Some thought they were being sent to capture Starkweather, and they pulled their guns to be ready. When
the airplane landed, they found that it was President Eisenhower, who was flying in to Kansas City for the funeral of his brother Arthur, but had been diverted to the smaller airport due to bad weather.

The sightings the police took most seriously were those of the Ward car with a single teenage occupant. This led many to believe Starkweather was now alone, and a new search began for the body of Caril Fugate.

One reporter for the local newspaper, the Lincoln Journal, appeared at the office while he was supposed to be shadowing police officers. When asked why he was there, he said, “Just look at me!”

He was red headed and had a freckled face. Worse yet, he drove a Packard, just like the one Starkweather was reportedly driving. “I’m double parked and I’m not going out there,” he said.

John Jr. drove his brother James and sister Linda home from school as fast as he could. Once there, James turned on the news to watch the chaos. The rest of his other brothers and sisters trickled
home rapidly after that, all of them sent home from school, and their mother, Ruby, didn’t allow anyone to go outside the rest of the day while she waited anxiously for her husband to come home. John returned late in the afternoon and joined James at the television, watching the historic chaos.
KFOR, a Lincoln radio station, reported that Starkweather had been seen at Capitol Steel Works, the company where Lauer Ward had been the president, but it was an incorrect report by the Associated
Press who had misinterpreted the events of the day. It was easy to do.

New information was coming in so quickly it was hard to know what was fact and what was gossip. The news team had to not only keep track of new stories, but also corrections to previous ones. It was
especially difficult for a continuity writer such as Joanne Young to keep track of the most recent information. She was juggling correcting copy with answering the flood of calls from reporters all over the world who wanted to know more about what was happening.

KFOR was pre-empting every show they had, and using the radio not only for information to the public, but also to give police as much information as was coming to them. This wasn't the usual job
for the press, but this incident was different, more terrifying. Their evening radio announcer, Bob Asky, had come in the night before after having visited the Fugate house where he saw the three bodies of Caril's family. All he could say was "it was really bad." The next morning, when the Wards were found dead in their own home and chaos gripped the city, the president of the radio station arrived at work with a gun, and ordered the doors locked.

Joanne had a personal connection to the danger. The husband of a good friend of hers, Robert Colvert, had been murdered the month before, and Charlie had been a lead suspect; and now her cousin, Chuck Green, a stocky, red headed teenager, was somewhere out there in the city, a target for citizens mad with fear. A police car pulled him over, and to make sure they knew he wasn't Starkweather, he jumped out of the car and announced, "It's not me!"

Newspapers, long the reliable source of information for the people of Nebraska, could not keep up with what was happening.

Bodies were appearing three at a time in a seemingly random pattern. No one knew where or when Starkweather would strike next. Lincoln had two papers, one in the morning, the Star, and one in the evening, the Journal, and each had to keep adjusting and updating their headlines as new stories developed.

Police, meanwhile, were trying to decide what leads to follow.

A series of reports arrived throughout the day that a couple matching the descriptions of Caril and Charlie were spotted driving northwest along Highway 60 through the Sandhills of Nebraska towards
Wyoming. Though these reports were numerous, the police disregarded them, and set up roadblocks south of Lincoln to prevent the couple from escaping into Kansas.

Ninette Beaver was one of the people bringing some semblance of order to the chaos in the KMTV newsroom. Although she was in the relative safety of Omaha, 50 miles removed from the action, her
sister Joanne was in the middle of it.

Joanne had described over the phone what was happening in Lincoln to Ninette. She had been stopped by a man with a shotgun on her way to teaching dance class. She thought it was Starkweather as he leaned down and checked out her car. When it was over she rushed home and locked the doors. Ninette got goose bumps as her sister told her the story.

Ninette and the others in the KMTV office tried to keep up with the quickly changing information. There were reports that Charlie was alone, reports that Caril was with him, and reports that Caril was dead. As the news came across the wire, Ninette delivered it to her boss, Floyd Kalber, and others who then reported it on the air.

Ninette was only supposed to be at KMTV on a temporary basis, and now she was in the middle of a major event. A full blown panic had caught the attention of an entire nation. Soon, even news stations in Europe began covering the story.

At 2:30 p.m. on January 29th, Ninette took a call from Blackie Roberts, one of their reporters chasing the story, still in the field after no sleep for two days. He told her that Elmer Scheele’s office was
filing first-degree murder charges against both Charlie and Caril.

“He’s charging the girl, too?” Ninette asked.

“That’s it,” Blackie told her.

“Hang on, the bell’s ringing,” Ninette told him, and she turned to the Teletype machine. Floyd jumped out of his chair and joined her.

DOUGLAS, WYO., JAN. 29 (AP) – CHARLES STARKWEATHER, 19, RUNTY NEBRASKA GUNMAN SOUGHT IN NINE SLAYINGS, WAS CAPTURED TODAY IN THE BADLANDS NEAR THIS WYOMING COWTOWN.

Everyone began moving. The story had moved to Wyoming, and they couldn’t be the only station without footage.

Then the Teletype machine interrupted them again:

A TENTH MURDER VICTIM WAS FOUND NOT FAR FROM WHERE STARKWEATHER WAS CAPTURED.
THE DEAD MAN WAS MERLE COLLISON, 37-YEAR OLD GREAT FALLS, MONT., SHOE SALESMAN.
WITH STARKWEATHER WAS CARIL FUGATE, THE 14-YEAR-OLD GIRL WHO FLED WITH HIM FROM LINCOLN, NEB., WHERE POLICE SAID HE KILLED NINE PEOPLE. INCLUDED AMONG THE VICTIMS WERE CARIL’S PARENTS.
THE TWO TEENAGERS WERE RUN TO EARTH IN RUGGED COUNTRY WHERE OLD WEST GUNMEN OFTEN HOLED UP.
THE GIRL WAS ALMOST HYSTERICAL AND RAN FLEEING TO DEPUTY SHERIFF BILL ROMER CRYING OUT HER FEAR STARKWEATHER WOULD KILL HER.
SHE WAS IN A STATE OF SHOCK SHORTLY AFTERWARD.
ROMER SAID SHE SCREAMED TO HIM: “HE’S COMING TO KILL ME. HE’S CRAZY. HE JUST KILLED A MAN.”

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The Great Heist - Chapter 1

The Great Heist

It was a bright, warm, early autumn day on September 17, 1930 in the heart of Lincoln, Nebraska’s downtown business district when a blue-black Buick Master Six sedan with yellow wire wheels halted suddenly in front of the Lincoln National Bank on the northwest corner of 12th and O Streets. It looked like a police car, and most people who saw it thought the men inside were law officers.

It was 10:02 in the morning. The bank had just opened two minutes earlier, though employees had been in the offices since eight. One man remained at the wheel while the other five leapt out of the car and swiftly rushed into the Ganter Building in which the bank took up the first floor. The car’s engine continued to run; they wouldn’t be long.

The men wore dark business suits and carried red and white sacks in one hand and firearms in the other. They wore no masks. None were locals, and wouldn’t be known to the residents.

Inside the bank, they immediately ordered everyone to lie down on the ground. The majority of the people in the bank were employees, but about a dozen customers had gotten in early when the doors first opened and were spread throughout the lobby. Everyone hesitated at the sound of the command, uncertain the men were serious. Some thought this might be a practical joke. Others were just too shocked to fully comprehend what was happening. This sort of thing didn’t occur in a small town like theirs, or so they thought.

One of the bandits approached Assistant Cashier J.T. Shields and the employee next to him, Phil Hall. Hall chastised the man for disturbing business, and the bandit knocked him over the head with his gun. Immediately, everyone dropped to the floor.

One of the men approached the teller cages and bashed his way in through the cage door, forcing the employees to the floor. To show how serious they were, they smashed two other employees over the head, W.E. Barkley and Marie Becker.

Having control of the lobby, one of the men exited the building and went to the street corner, his gun, larger than most of the others’, swinging below his jacket, partially concealed.

The men inside were efficient, moving quickly through the bank like military personnel on a well-coordinated mission. Each man had his own assignment. None of them needed instructions; it had all been choreographed before the morning had begun.

Only one of the men gave occasional orders, the one standing guard at the front door. He told the others to move on to each part of the plan, and made a few adjustments along the way.

They knew the layout of the bank, even the back rooms and hallways where only employees were allowed. The bandits found all the personnel in their offices and had them go out into the lobby and lay on the ground where they could be watched.

No one had time to go for a phone except for one employee, Hazel Jones, whose job it was to run the switchboard. One of the bandits clearly knew her position and was on her before she could say anything on the phone. Speaking of the robbery later, she said:

I thought it was a joke but it was no joke… I was sitting clear back where I couldn’t see and I was busy with my work. The one who got me off the switchboard had a gun that he put in my face and got me off the telephone and on the floor.

One of the men hurried to the lower level where four bookkeepers were working. One of the bookkeepers, Sterling Glover, remembered the incident later:

The first thing we knew there was someone standing there pointing a gun at us and told us to put our hands up and we thought it was a joke, but when we saw the gun, we knew it wasn’t a joke. He herded the four of us up stairs and made us lay down at the nearest place. They told us to keep our heads down.

W. A. Selleck, the bank president, came out of his office to find the dramatic scene unfolding in his lobby. He, too, thought it was a joke. He had recently had a birthday, and he thought friends had hired actors to pretend like there was a hold-up. He went to the robbers, telling them it was a fun gag, but they needed to open the bank to real customers. One of the robbers informed him that this was not a hoax, and he needed to get on the ground. Not believing him, Selleck continued toward the robber, smiling, and commending him on his realistic performance. The robber beat him across the face, sending Selleck to the ground, then hit him two more times to prove how serious he was.

By now, everyone was face down on the marble floor of the lobby. The bandits had the bank entirely secured within the first minute of having entered. The leader at the door threatened to shoot anyone who tried to get up. Another walked among the people occasionally cursing at them and acting like he was going to shoot someone.

They were now ready for phase two, but they seemed to be missing a key component; someone who was supposed to be among the captives but wasn’t. “Where’s Leinberger!” one of the men shouted.
H.E. Leinberger was the assistant cashier, the only one with the keys to the inner vault door during business hours. Once the time lock kicked in at 10 am, only Leinberger had access to it. The employees were surprised to hear the bank robbers say their assistant cashier’s name, as only someone familiar with bank policy would be aware of this information.

E.H. Luikart, vice president of the bank, told the robbers that Leinberger was away from the bank on business. Assuming why they wanted Leinberger, Luikart continued to explain that no one else could get past the heavy vault door into the safe. This proved a tricky situation for both the robbers and their captives. If they became furious over the matter, this could become a hostage situation, or they may simply kill everyone in the bank out of pure spite.

The robbers didn’t believe Luikart, and continued to search for Leinberger, but he was nowhere to be found. The assistant cashier had indeed left on business before the bank had opened.
During the confusion, one woman managed to slip away from the robbers’ sights, found a side door, and got out.

All was quiet outside, as if nothing wrong was happening in the world. People were casually going about their daily business. There was even a patrolman, Elmer Beals, who was wandering the area with no idea what was going on. It had all happened so fast, after all. Barely three minutes had passed since the robbery had begun.

The woman who had escaped spotted the car still idling at the curb. The driver had not seen her; neither had the lookout who was maneuvering between the corner and the front door. Whenever someone came close to the entrance, the gangster just inside opened the door and showed his gun, and the lookout stepped up behind the person and forced them inside, adding them to the pool of hostages. The escaped woman made her way across the street, and to safety.

Another woman, Mrs. Hugh Werner, was approaching the door when she saw what was happening to others who approached. She backed away. The man at the door and the one outside told her to come back. She hurried faster. The lookout threatened her, and Mrs. Warner sprinted across 12th Street. The men continued to shout after her as she weaved through traffic and hopped onto the sidewalk on the other side. She didn’t look back, and she didn’t listen to the men; she just burst into Crancer’s Radio Store and told E.W. Wolfenbarger, an employee, to call the police. He peered through the window, saw what she was talking about, and made the call.

Sergeant Frank Towle was working the desk at the downtown police department. They were used to getting calls for bar brawls, reckless teenagers disturbing the peace, or the occasional violation of the Volstead Act. Big city crimes were hundreds of miles away. Officers carried little more than pistols. There wasn’t even a police academy. Joseph T. Carroll, who later served as chief of police, recalled of the time:

There was not much training. You were assigned and you worked under the direction and supervision of a seasoned police officer. They gave us a .38 revolver. The foot patrolman carried a night club and handcuffs.

The voice on the phone said to Sergeant Towle, “For god’s sake, come to 12th and O!”

“Where?” Sergeant Towle asked.

“Hurry to 12th and O. There’s a robbery!”

Believing it was a prank call, Sergeant Towle hung up on the man. But he sent two officers to check out the situation, if for no other reason than to catch the pranksters. The officers he sent were Peter Meyers, a juvenile officer barely over the age of the young hooligans he was used to dealing with, and Forrest Schappaugh, a man with a little more experience. They would naturally have taken the department’s one and only squad car, but it wasn’t working that morning, so Schappaugh took the motorcycle, and Meyers went on foot.

Back at the radio store, Wolfenbarger stepped out onto the street and told the gangster at the corner that he had called the police. The man waited for him to come close, then grabbed him and shoved him into the front of the bank. Inside, another gangster grabbed him and forced him to lie face down on the floor with the others. Finished with his heroics, Wolfenbarger did as he was told.

When Officer Schappaugh arrived at the bank, he saw the lookout on the corner first. He pointed his motorcycle at the man and approached to question him. The man revealed the long, metallic object he had been holding partially under his jacket. It was a Thompson submachine gun, something they didn’t see in this area of the country very often. The man motioned with the gun, indicating for Schappaugh to leave, and said, “Just keep moving.”

Schappaugh had only his .38, no match for the well armed criminal, not to mention those fortified inside the bank. So without a word, he turned his motorcycle and continued down the road.

Several other people who parked their cars in front of the bank were approached by the same man with the Tommy gun who ordered them to stay in their cars and threatened to shoot them if they tried to drive away.

Inside, the robbers had accepted that the assistant cashier was gone, but did not accept that they couldn’t get into the vault. Vice President Luikart sent Florence Zeiser, assistant trust officer, and Sterling Glover, a bookkeeper, to the bank vault to show the bandits that the vault could not be opened by anyone present in the bank. While two of the robbers followed Zeiser and Glover, the others covered the people in the lobby, and looted the teller windows and cashier drawers, scooping piles of cash into their sacks. Several witnesses later described these sacks as pillow cases, but they were actually bags with hoops on the end to make them easier to seal.

Zeiser and Glover led the two bandits to the vault, though it seemed the bandits already knew the way. The outer door of the vault was open, but the inner door directly into the safe, the one with the time lock, was closed. Zeiser had been in the safe earlier, before the bank had opened and the time lock was set to seal the safe off at 10 am. By now the lock would be in place and there was no way to get inside. She pushed down on the dial used to open the safe to show the men that it wouldn’t budge, but to her surprise, the dial spun, and the door swung wide open. The time lock had somehow been disabled, or had never been activated in the first place.

Without hesitation, the robbers rushed in and began taking everything they could. There was approximately half a million dollars worth of securities, and some silver, which they stuffed into their bags. Glover later recalled of the incident:

[The men] stuffed everything in a bag something like material pillows were made out of. There wasn’t too much cash in the vault, mostly silver. They asked [Miss Zeiser] to open the cash vault and she said she didn’t know the combination. One fellow ordered, “Well, shoot her.”

Outside, the young officer, Peter Meyers, approached the lookout on foot. The lookout let him get close before he quietly revealed his Thompson and muttered, “Scram.” Meyers, entirely unarmed, backed off and walked away.

Now with suspicious eyes watching, the lookout called into the bank for the others to hurry up. Inside, the gangster at the door told the rest of them that it was time to go. Everyone scraped the last of the money and securities into their bags.

In the vault, the robber who was about to shoot Ms. Zeiser instead told her to lie on the ground. She did as he said, and the robbers took what they had and hurried out.

Back at the station, Schappaugh hopped off the motorcycle and rushed inside, telling the department the bank robbery was real, and they needed a lot of backup. He had not been able to call this in since he had no radio on his motorcycle.

Every available officer hopped into two of the civilian cars and they hurried down to the bank, uncertain how they would handle heavily armed gangsters with only their .38 revolvers.

They returned within five minutes of Schappaugh having been there, but the bank robbers were gone.

They had emerged from the bank soon after Meyers’ appearance, four of them with bulging bags on their backs, the other two waving their Thompson sub-machine guns in the air to intimidate bystanders. In their hurry out the door, they had bypassed $200,000 in liberty bonds which had been removed earlier from the vault sitting on a cart in the lobby. As they exited, one of the gangsters was overheard saying to the others, “That’s another good job well done.”

The first bandit to the car jumped into the back and the others threw their bags in to him. Then two of the men climbed into the back, two climbed into jump seats, and the man who had been guarding the door of the bank climbed into the front of the car. It was all done with militaristic efficiency and incredible celerity.

As they drove, the man in the front passenger seat rested his Thompson against the window, warning off anyone who might approach. They reached a red light at the intersection of 12th and O and stopped, as if they weren’t running from anyone. They calmly turned right onto O Street, and began blaring a police siren they had. Everyone in their way pulled off to the side as they raced down the town’s most populated street. A block or two down the road, they turned again, and disappeared.

The entire operation had taken no more than eight minutes from beginning to end.

The officers immediately fanned out to find them. The public was alerted, and everyone was on the lookout for a rogue police car, black or dark blue Buick, probably heading south out of town since that was the direction of the nearest state border. The vehicle had Iowa license plates, which should make the car slightly more conspicuous.

Several sightings of the car came from the surrounding area, including reports from in town that had it traveling north, south, east, and west. Witnesses in the nearby town of Kramer, west of Lincoln, reported seeing a car with a police siren racing through town, then turning south. A contradictory report had it in Waverly, east of Lincoln, turning north. One report had it being stopped by a flat tire east of town on O Street. There, the men were helped by a farmer who admired their fancy machine guns which they claimed were hunting rifles. Another report had the car being swallowed up by a truck just a block away from the bank. Another report claimed they had gotten to Milan, Missouri, and had continued on to the Ozarks. And yet another had them in a car accident in Beatrice, and more reports had them in the towns of Tobias and Fairbury, both just west of Beatrice. Other reports had them traveling north toward Omaha, south toward Kansas, and west, near Kearney.

The hunt continued throughout the day. Two airplanes were dispatched to search the flat open prairies for the car. Authorities in every town along the Platte and Missouri rivers were called out to block the bridges, which created un-crossable borders to the east and west. Police in every town within 200 miles of Lincoln were alerted. But as the sun set and night fell, it became clear the bank robbers had gotten away.

The bankers spent the rest of the day tallying up the damage. The gangsters had gotten away with $2,775,395.12, the largest amount of any bank robbery in the history of the world.

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Two Gun Hart - Prologue

Two Gun Hart

Prologue

Four men sat drinking and gambling at a lone, oak table in the lobby of the only hotel in Walthill, Nebraska. It was a small crossroads town left over from the old west. The hotel had once been its brothel complete with an overhanging balcony where the ladies plied their trade. The town sat within the borders of the Omaha Indian Reservation, a train stop from which to transport corn to Sioux City, and little had ever happened since its construction. It was primarily a place for white and Indian farmers to congregate, purchase supplies, and socialize before returning to their farms and ranches in the surrounding hills of northeastern Nebraska.

There was little to do in this quiescent section of the prairie, which made gathering at the hotel to gamble and buy drinks a popular pastime, despite the fact that both were illegal. Anti-gambling laws had never been heavily enforced, and went primarily unnoticed by the populace, who saw it as a common entertainment. In most places imbibing alcohol was not itself illegal. The recent passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, backed by the passage of the Volstead Act to enforce it, had outlawed the manufacture, transportation, and selling of alcohol. It said nothing of its consumption.

However, laws on Indian reservations had gone farther, prohibiting consumption of alcohol within reservation borders. Ever since the introduction of alcohol into their cultures, many American Indian tribes struggled with alcoholism, and the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment had inspired a movement to dry up their populations. While most of the rest of the country regarded Prohibition as government overreach, it was a godsend for Indians who desperately needed to overcome what was, in effect, a cultural illness.

These restrictions caused people in the area who wanted to drink to look upon bootleggers, who transported alcohol, and moonshiners, who manufactured it on nearby ranches and farms, as heroes. They were willing to pay many times the amount they had previously paid for a single glass of beer or flask of whiskey. Oftentimes it was not clear what they were drinking. The concoctions moonshiners put together barely resembled beverages before Prohibition when it had been regulated. Now a drink could be almost anything. Thus it was often dangerous, not only because it was illegal, but the homemade alcohol sometimes resulted in a poisonous mix.

But such dangers didn’t stop men from gathering at the hotel and partaking of what the moonshiners smuggled in from stills they had hidden in the fields and ravines outside of town, or what bootleggers had driven in from distant regions. Purchases were discreet, but drinking was in the open. The law seemed far away and they would have plenty of warning if they saw those who enforced it coming.

So the four men who were gambling did as men always did at the Walthill Hotel, they sat their glasses on the table where everyone could see, making no attempt to hide what they were doing.

One of the men, who had a thick-set jaw and wide nose and wearing dusty overalls, was new to town. He was a migrant worker, like so many who had come through the area. The northbound train out of Omaha passed by on its way to Homer, and then on to Sioux City, Iowa, where a lot of drifters traveled to work. Though clearly a white man, the stranger’s skin had an olive complexion, something he explained as evidence of his Indian heritage and his constant work outdoors. Aside from clarifying this one mystery, he spoke little, mostly listening and watching the others at the table and studying them.

The others, men who knew one another, talked about their lives their families, eventually turning to the subject of the drink they were sharing. The one who had made it disclosed its name, what was in it, and how he had brewed it.

The stranger in the dusty overalls abruptly stood. “You’re all under arrest,” he said sternly enough for them to know he wasn’t kidding.

They looked at him surprised, but no one moved. Something in his voice made it clear he was not to be trifled with, and they knew they were going to jail. He might even be armed, and none of them wanted to get into a gunfight. Everyone in Nebraska had heard of the notorious lawman, a master of disguise who carried two pistols and could outshoot anyone. It was obvious to all the people in the room, who were now staring at him, that this was that famous Prohibition officer.

Then the man said something strange. “Now I know who all of you are, and where you all live, so don’t you go anywhere or I’ll go find you. I’m going to be right back, so stay here.” Then he left the room and walked up the stairs and out of sight.

The three men sat dumbfounded at the table, unguarded and unwatched. Others in the room who were not under arrest stared at the men to see what they would do. Aside from looking at each other, none of them moved. Where would they go? They knew the stranger was probably telling the truth. There weren’t many places to hide, and he likely did know where they lived, especially after they had been talking for some time. He had listened to their entire conversation and knew everything about the booze that was being made and consumed in town. They didn’t want any more trouble, so none of them tried to escape. None of them even budged from their seats. They just waited in the uncomfortable silence.

They were still seated when they heard footsteps on the mahogany stairs again, this time much thicker than before, sounding almost like a hammer coming down on each step accompanied by a faint clang. A pair of cowboy boots complete with spurs and embossed with a heart appeared, followed by white pants, a white button-down shirt, and finally, a tall ten gallon cowboy hat. Strapped to his waist were two ivory-handled six shooters. He looked like he had walked straight out of a silent western movie. This was the man they suspected; this was “Two Gun” Hart.

Little did anyone know that Officer Hart kept a secret bigger than anyone could imagine. His real name was Vincenzo Capone, and his brother Al was the most infamous criminal in the world.

If you'd like to learn more about Two Gun Hart or read the entire book, go to: http://www.bandwagononline.com/Two-Gun-Hart.html