Inside A Daring Iowa Bank Robbery That Almost Worked

Poke Wells

Poke Wells (Charles Knox Polk Wells) was one of those guys you didn’t want to mess around with. A Jesse Jams wannabe. Some say he was a friend of the James boys. Maybe even rode with them. But there’s no proof of that. What’s certain is that Poke robbed a few trains. Tried his luck at banks, and that’s where things went sideways.

He rode into Riverton, Iowa, on July 11, 1881. Before the day was over, his name was splashed across front pages all over the Midwest.

 

Poke’s autobiography said his partner was a man named Wilson. That might be, but early reports pointed to Bill Norris. That’s how outlaw stories go. People toss out names and wait to see what sticks. In the end, his partner’s name doesn’t change the story, other than he blamed the entire affair on him. “Wilson,” he said, “now insisted on being initiated as a bank or train robber.”

 

Poke and his partner didn’t rush in blind. They spent a day or two looking over the country around Riverton. They inspected horses owned by Mr. Parsley and Mr. Burks, thought better of buying them, then stole a pair from Mr. Anderson instead.

 The next day, they rode into town and hitched their horses at Snyder’s Blacksmith Shop. They walked into the Davies & Sexton Bank and asked cashier O.G. Sexton to cash a five-dollar note. When Sexton turned around, Poke shoved a Navy Colt in his face and told him to “Draw up his hands!”

Sheriff Samuel Chandler

One robber kept a gun trained on Sexton while the other climbed over the counter and scooped up the money from the till and the table. Then he shoved Sexton toward the safe and grabbed whatever he could reach.

 

It was over quickly. $4,700 gone.

 

When they finished, they dragged Sexton toward the back door, rushed outside, and left him behind. Seconds later, they were in the saddle and tearing out of town.

 

Thomas Thompson got off one shot as they fled. Some swore Wells was hit during the getaway. The St. Joseph Gazette was “quite certain” that Poke had not been shot at Riverton. He appeared in St. Joseph not long after the robbery, and he “was as sound as a dollar.” All Poke would say was that he’d been shot “up the country aways.”

 

Whatever the truth, Wells ended up at Hall’s Station laid up and hiding. A healthy outlaw could ride for days and vanish. A wounded one needed help, cover, and luck.

 

Sheriffs Dan Farrell and Samuel Chandler didn’t give him any of those things. They had men watching the rail depots and checking the roads. Nearby sheriffs followed rumors of strangers changing horses, a wounded man moving north, and travelers spending money too freely.

 

Sheriff Chandler tracked the bandits to Randolph, Wisconsin, in late February 1882.

 

Sheriff Farrell rode in for the capture. He found them running the Commercial Hotel, a combination hotel and saloon. Poke went by the name C.H. Warner; Norris called himself Frank Johnson.

Sheriff Dan Farrell

Poke pulled his pistol when Farrell walked in and released a barrage of bullets. One clipped Farrell in the hand and another in his right shoulder.

 

 The Nebraska City News said, “Farrell waltzed to the music and returned the fire.”

 

Farrell jumped up and knocked both of Wells’s pistols from his hands, then grabbed his throat and jabbed his revolver at Wells’s head. “Now I’ve got you,” he said. “Give up or I’ll settle your hash.”

 

Wells threw up his hands and surrendered. Then Farrell handcuffed Norris who was hiding behind a door, afraid to fight. 

 

That’s one story. Another account of the capture in the Grant County Witness said, “Both men were literally riddled with bullets. Wells received six, and Norris five balls.” That’s frontier journalism. If the story’s not gripping enough, just bloody it up a bit. Just goes to show the witness in this case wasn’t too reliable.

 

What’s certain is Wells came out of the fight shot in the chest and wrist and beaten around the head.

 

Another report described him lying on a cot under bloody bedclothes, smiling now and then whenever someone mentioned “a daring deed” from his past. One paper said he was thirty years old, all muscle, straight as an arrow, broad in the shoulders, with jet-black hair and black “kindly” eyes.

Poke Wells in Prison

Norris got rougher treatment in print. He was described as forty, sullen and morose, wrinkled, growling when he spoke, with “treacherous-looking eyes.”

 

Poke was hauled back to Iowa and charged with robbing the Riverton bank. He pleaded guilty to highway robbery and drew ten years in the Iowa State Penitentiary at Fort Madison. 

 

Bill Norris was charged for his part in the Winston train robbery.

 

Poke escaped from the Fort Madison prison in early May 1882. He was in the hospital with a prisoner named Fitzgerald and a hospital attendant named Cook. They chloroformed John Elder, the hospital guard, and broke through the iron roof covering. (Elder later died)

 

Then they overpowered a guard Ed Hoffman and dragged him to the roof. He sounded the alarm as soon as he was released. 

 

Fitzgerald was captured a few hours later. He’d been hiding in a barn about four miles from the prison. Wells and Cook were found hiding in John Stenger’s barn six miles from Keokuk on May 4. Stenger and his son took them prisoner at the end of two double-barreled shotguns.

 

Stenger noticed a disordered pile of straw while he was milking the cows, grabbed a pitchfork, and began poking around. When the two prisoners jumped up, he dropped the pitchfork and marched them out of the barn, thinking they were tramps.

 

Cook grabbed the pitchfork and went for him, but before he could do anything the younger Stenger leveled a shotgun at him. The two men threw up their hands and were taken prisoner. With the help of some neighbors, they returned them to the prison.

 

Stenger and his son received a $250 reward for the capture.

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