The fall of the year 1901 was remarkable for the number of bank robberies occurring in the States of Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota. The daring of the travelling bands of criminals, commonly known as "yeggmen," manifested itself in frequent and generally successful attempts on the vaults of various financial institutions. In Iowa alone there had been no fewer than thirteen robberies without a single arrest up to the date of the Greenville Bank case, which I am about to set forth.
On Saturday morning, November 16th, 1901, a Greenville business man, rising early, was attracted by a peculiar object lying in the middle of the main thoroughfare. Greenville, being only a small village of some three hundred people, possessed but one principal street, which ran through it from east to west. Upon approaching the object the man saw that it was the door of a bank-safe, and his surprise may be imagined when, looking about him, he discovered that the large glass front of the bank building near by was entirely shattered.
In a very few moments he had gathered an anxious crowd, and the more daring ventured into the ruined building. It then became apparent that the safe had been blown open by nitroglycerine and its precious contents carried away. On the bank counters were found a small dark lantern, two bars of soap, some chisels, and a silk handkerchief. The completeness of the job showed it to have been the work of persons who were either unacquainted with the terrific power of the explosive used, or of extraordinary daring and recklessness.
The cashier of the bank, Mr. E. B. Harrington, lost no time in reaching the local telephone office, from which point he immediately notified the sheriff of the county at Spencer, nine miles north, of the robbery, afterwards reporting it to the town marshals of all the surrounding towns.
While thus engaged an employé of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway arrived with the intelligence that the station tool-house had been broken open and a hand-car taken therefrom. The operators on the line at Spencer to the north, and at Sioux Rapids to the south, were at once called up, but both protested that no hand-car had passed their station at any hour of the night. The mystery was solved half an hour later by the discovery of a broken hand-car at the crossing of the Rock Island and Minneapolis and St. Louis roads, one mile south of the town. It was evident that the robbers, fleeing on the car, had met with an accident and had been forced to abandon it. The clue was serviceable, however, in that it pointed out the direction of the miscreants' escape, and the officials at Marathon, Laurens, and Albert City—towns in the general line of flight—were promptly advised to be on the alert to intercept all suspicious characters and hold them till examined.
At this juncture a young lady employed in the Spencer telephone exchange imparted the information that she had observed three nasty-looking strangers the night before eating a late supper at a Spencer restaurant. The restaurant proprietor corroborated this, and added that one of the men was of very dark complexion, and, in his judgment, was a mulatto.
The wires were again resorted to and neighbouring officials given the fresh information. At nine o'clock on the morning of the robbery the marshals of every place within a radius of forty miles were in possession of the facts, and had trusted deputies guarding all approaches to their respective towns. Assuming it to be a fact that the robbery had been committed by two white men and one black man, who were now travelling on foot in a south-easterly direction, it seemed but a question of hours before they would be halted by some one of the representatives of the law.
An hour passed by, then two, and a third. Not a word came from Marathon, the nearest town in the line of flight. It was impossible for the men to escape by train, as all depôts were under close surveillance; it was equally impossible to conceal themselves in a farming community so thickly inhabited as the one they were now traversing. It appeared inevitable, therefore, that their whereabouts must soon be reported.
Just before noon a farmer living five miles east of Sioux Rapids drove into that town and, upon being questioned, stated that he had given three strangers breakfast less than an hour before. He stated that one was a negro, and that all three were well armed and were apparently desperate characters. Upon being informed that the trio had burglarized the Greenville Bank, the farmer was considerably surprised, but was able to give a minute description of the robbers to the marshal.