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| Lobby of the City National Bank shortly after the robbery |
Clyde Willard, janitor at the City National
Bank in Clinton, showed up for work at around 6:30 on the morning of March 15,
1932. At that hour, he probably expected to have the place to himself.
Instead, he walked into a bank robbery.
Four men had gotten there ahead of him. Clifford
Edwards, 22; Earl Jeffries, 28; Lester Stanley, 22; and Eddie Morris, 19, came
armed and wearing hoods.
Willard became their first prisoner.
The problem was the vault. It was protected by a
time lock and wouldn’t open until 8:30, no matter how many guns they had. That
left them with two hours to kill and a bank that would soon start filling with
people.
Around 7 a.m., one of the gang took a position
near the front door. When an employee walked in, he ordered them to put their
hands up, then passed them off to another robber. Their hands were tied, and
they were taken to the directors’ room.
Then they waited for the next one.
It went on that way for nearly two hours. Before the morning was over, the gang had 38 people tied up and under guard.
Eddie Morris (pencil drawing after a photo in The Daily Times. March 16, 1932)
The dangerous part wasn’t getting into the bank.
It was sitting there, hoping nobody figured out that something was wrong.
They almost did.
Police officer Cyril Robb was outside the bank
while the robbery was underway. Edwards saw him through a window and pulled the
blind closed.
That was close enough. But then Robb ran into
Eddie Morris outside the bank and asked what he was doing hanging around.
“Waiting around for Cliff Edwards,” Morris told
him.
Robb told him to move along, and Morris walked
down to the corner. The officer went on his way, unaware that the man Morris
was waiting for was inside the bank with a gun and several dozen prisoners.
The gang went back to waiting for 8:30.
When the time lock finally released, they untied
cashiers O. P. Petty, John Nissen and H. E. Kramer. The three men were ordered
to open the inner doors of the vault.
Lester Stanley (Pencil drawing after a photo in The Daily Times. March 16, 1932)
Then the robbers started filling the pillowcase.
They took approximately $106,000, an enormous haul
for 1932 and what was described as the biggest bank robbery in Iowa history.
When they had what they wanted, they went out the back door and headed for the
getaway car.
Petty, Nissen and Kramer untied the other
prisoners as soon as the gang was gone. The alarm went out, and whatever
advantage the robbers had disappeared fast.
Police Chief James Sloppy and Sheriff E. R. Cooke
went after them.
The four men had spent hours getting into
position, collecting hostages, and waiting for the vault. Once they got
outside, they started making mistakes.
The getaway car belonged to Lester Stanley’s
brother.
Stanley had borrowed it from Ray Stanley, telling
him he wanted to take a ride in the country. After the robbery, the gang drove
toward Camanche, where Stanley and Edwards changed clothes. Then they drove to
a spot where they could get rid of the money until things cooled down.
That was the idea, anyway.
They weren’t starting from scratch in Clinton.
Edwards had an aunt in town, Gertrude Hill, and had been staying with her. He
had also been in trouble in Clinton before for writing bad checks.
Clifford Edwards (Pencil drawing after a photo in The Daily Times. March 16, 1932)
According to Morris, Edwards was the one who
planned the robbery. The gang had left Louisville around 3 p.m. on March 12 and
reached Clinton about three the next morning. They met at the Grand Pool Room
and spent a night sleeping in the Northwestern Depot. The next night, they
stayed at the Clinton Hotel.
They had guns enough for the job. Edwards carried
a nickel-plated .32 revolver. Stanley had a .25 automatic, while Jeffries
carried two handguns, a .32 long revolver and another blue-finished revolver.
What they didn’t have was much luck once they left
the bank.
They’d tossed their hoods out the car window as
they sped away. Near them the police found a hat with an address in the band.
It was Gertrude Hill’s.
Another hat carried a tag from a Louisville store.
Now the police had Clinton, Louisville, and Edwards all tied together, and the
getaway car wasn’t hard to trace either. It was recovered in Bettendorf.
The net around the four men tightened almost
immediately. Chief Sloppy and Sheriff Cooke coordinated the hunt, sending
officers into the towns and countryside around Clinton.
Earl Jeffries (Pencil drawing after a photo in The Daily Times. March 16, 1932)
The surviving accounts differ on the exact
sequence of the arrests, with Edwards reported in the Bettendorf area and other
reports placing Edwards and Morris walking near Princeton. Stanley was picked
up near the J. O. Shaff farm outside Shafton.
The details need sorting out, but the important
part doesn’t. They were caught in under six hours.
The biggest bank robbery in the state had barely
lasted until lunch.
The police had the robbers. Now they wanted the
$106,000. Most of it hadn’t gone very far.
It was hidden on a farm near Camanche owned by A.
P. Barker and E. L. Dannatt. John and Arvid Flood, who operated the farm, found
it near a line of brush. Only $165 was missing.
All four men confessed.
There was also reason to wonder whether Clinton
was their first bank job. Less than three weeks earlier, on February 29, four
men had robbed the Home Savings Bank in Davenport using much the same method.
In that robbery, four men hid inside the bank,
captured the janitor, and then grabbed employees as they arrived. They tied
them up and waited.
It sounded a lot like Clinton.
Authorities said the City National gang had worked
with “clock like precision,” as though they knew the bank’s routine before they
went inside. Somebody knew about the time lock, when the employees would
arrive, and understood that neutralizing those first people through the door
would give them control of the building.
For a while, it worked. By things fell apart
quickly. About 24 hours after the robbery, they were sentenced to life at the
state penitentiary in Anamosa.
They took the news strangely well.
The men laughed and joked while they waited for
the sentences to come down. Earl Jeffries shrugged his shoulders, gave a little
grin, and said, “It suits me if it suits them.”
Edwards seemed more irritated by the way the
robbery had gone than by the prospect of life in prison. He complained that
some of their guns hadn’t worked right. He wasn’t impressed with the safe man
either, saying that if somebody took 27 minutes to open a safe in Chicago, they
would have “bumped him off.”
He was also worried about cigarettes.
During the robbery, Edwards had told some of the
female employees that if he got caught, they should send him some. Afterward,
he asked the court to remind them. Then he asked a reporter to remind his
mother that he’d be needing cigarettes too.
Stanley had his own history. The previous May he
had been arrested for abusing his wife, Beatrice. Edwards had his bad checks.
These weren’t men who had arrived without names, connections, or baggage.
Still, for a few hours on March 15, they had
pulled it off. They took over a bank before daylight, held 38 people prisoner,
waited out the time lock and walked out the back door carrying $106,000 in a
pillowcase.
Then it all came apart.
A cop had stood outside while the robbery was
happening. Morris had practically told him who he was waiting for. The getaway
car belonged to Stanley’s brother. The gang left their hoods behind, along with
a hat carrying the address of Edwards’ aunt. They dumped almost all the money
near a patch of brush.
They got away with $106,000. But the next day,
they had life in the pen.
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