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| (Des Moines Tribune. March 25, 1919) |
For seven weeks, M. R. Pharmer was the victim. Then the police decided he might have helped plan the robbery.
Pharmer was assistant cashier at the Iowa State Bank in
downtown Des Moines. On the morning of March 25, 1919, two gunmen talked their
way through the bank’s locked door, pulled revolvers and forced Pharmer and two
other employees into a back room.
Minutes later, the gunmen were gone with a bag full of cash
and bonds.
The Des Moines Tribune put it across the top of the
front page:
BANK ROBBERS GET $20,000
Police searched Des Moines and the surrounding countryside,
questioned witnesses, checked automobiles, and chased suspects.
Nothing worked.
Three days after the robbery, the chief of detectives
admitted he had no fresh evidence. Two men had walked into a downtown bank in
broad daylight, taken a small fortune and disappeared.
Then, on May 12, the police arrested four people.
One was an alleged gunman. Another was suspected of driving
the getaway car. A third was a Des Moines woman whose home police believed had
been used to plan the robbery. The fourth was Pharmer.
The Tribune had a new headline:
OFFICERS CHARGE ROBBERY WAS “FRAMED” INSIDE BANK
The victim was now a suspect. And what had looked like a
quick, well-planned bank job was turning into something much bigger.
At about 8:30 on the morning of March 25, two men appeared
at the Iowa State Bank near Sixth and Locust streets. The doors were still
locked. They said they wanted to make a deposit.
Someone let them in.
The men made a show of doing business, then pulled their
guns.
Assistant cashier Pharmer, bookkeeper E. H. Hunter, and
another employee were ordered to put up their hands. The robbers forced them
into a restroom at the rear of the bank and locked the door.
Then they went for the money. Cash, government bonds, War
Savings Stamps, and other securities went into a blue kit bag. The robbers
walked out onto Locust Street, headed west, and cut north through the alley
between Sixth and Seventh streets.
A car was waiting near Grand Avenue. They got in and were
gone.
One man saw much of it happen without realizing what he was
watching.
Martin W. Brandlein, a recently discharged soldier who had
served overseas, was near the bank that morning. He saw two men emerge carrying
a sack, watched them walk about half a block and climb into an automobile.
The layout at the Iowa State Bank. (Des Moines Tribune. March 25, 1919)
Only after news of the robbery spread through Des Moines did he realize what he’d seen.
By then, the trail was cold.
Detectives checked automobile records and questioned
witnesses. They considered whether the robbers had switched cars after leaving
Des Moines. An abandoned automobile found roughly 100 miles from the city
became one possibility.
Another lead centered on a man named Holl Long. Detectives
questioned him, but Long cleared himself and was dropped as a suspect.
The theories came faster than the evidence. By March 28,
Chief of Detectives MacDonald was stumped.
“There is no use of trying to pull my leg for any
information,” he told reporters, “because I have been unable to secure any
myself.”
Four detectives were still working the case.
They had witnesses. They knew the robbers had used an automobile
and were carrying cash and securities that might be difficult to unload.
They still couldn’t find them.
Even the amount stolen was uncertain. The Tribune’s $20,000
headline was an early estimate. Other newspapers gave different numbers. A May
account put the loss at more than $42,000 in cash and Liberty bonds. Later
court proceedings produced still other totals.
An Iowa Supreme Court account listed about $2,300 in cash,
$1,100 in War Savings Stamps, $15,800 in government bonds and $5,000 in
waterworks bonds—roughly $24,200. Years later, an insurance case would
complicate the numbers again.
In March, none of that mattered much. A lot of money was
gone. So were the men who took it.
As the investigation dragged on, police became convinced the
robbery had been planned well in advance.
They were right about that much.
The two gunmen were Jack Keating and Robert Don Carlos.
Investigators eventually connected them to Floyd Patten and a Des Moines woman
named Lizzie Christie, who lived at 313 Ninth Street.
Christie knew both gunmen. She also knew Patten, the man
prosecutors would accuse of handling the getaway car. Keating later claimed
Christie had told him there was money at the Iowa State Bank that could be
taken and that arrangements had been made with people inside.
(Des Moines Tribune. May 14, 1919)
That last part would cause trouble for everyone.
Several of the people later tied to the robbery gathered for
breakfast on the morning of March 25. Accounts differed over who was there, but
Keating, Don Carlos, Patten, and Christie repeatedly appeared in testimony
about that morning.
The prosecution said the robbery was discussed there.
Keating and Don Carlos would enter the bank. Patten would
handle the automobile. The money would be divided afterward. According to
testimony, there would be five shares. Keating and Don Carlos would each get
one. Christie and Patten would split another. Two shares were supposedly
reserved for people inside the bank.
Patten obtained an automobile and positioned it near Grand
Avenue and the alley between Sixth and Seventh streets. That kept the car close
without leaving it directly outside the bank.
Keating and Don Carlos carried some money with them to make
their deposit story believable.
It worked.
They got through the door, pulled their revolvers and came
back out minutes later with the blue kit bag. They followed the alley to
Patten’s car and drove away. But they didn’t head straight for the state line.
They drove into the countryside outside Des Moines. At one
farm, they asked permission to take the automobile into a wooded area where they
divided the loot into five shares and burned some papers taken from the bank.
Then the men headed back toward Des Moines.
The getaway car developed trouble along the way, and a wheel
had to be changed. Patten made a telephone call, and arrangements were made to
meet others on the east side of the city. Keating and Don Carlos eventually
left for Missouri.
For weeks, police still seemed to be chasing shadows. Then
came the arrests.
On May 12, authorities announced they had Floyd Patten,
Robert Don Carlos, Lizzie Christie and M. R. Pharmer.
The Webster City Freeman said the arrests were
connected to the theft of more than $42,000 in cash and Liberty bonds. The Tribune
went for the more explosive angle. Police believed the robbery had been
“framed” inside the bank.
That theory put Pharmer in the middle of the case. The
gunmen had arrived before opening, talked their way through a locked door and
moved quickly once inside. Prosecutors now claimed part of the stolen money had
been intended for people connected to the bank.
Pharmer denied it.
Meanwhile, Christie’s home became another focus of the
investigation.
On May 14, the Tribune published a photograph of
Christie and the building at 313 Ninth Street. Police believed the robbery had
been planned there. They also thought some of the missing money might still be
hidden inside. Officers tore through the place, but found nothing.
But investigators were finding the people who had taken it.
Robert Don Carlos was arrested in Missouri and returned to
Iowa. On July 2, the 19-year-old pleaded guilty to the robbery. Judge Joseph E.
Meyer sentenced him to ten years at the state penitentiary in Fort Madison.
Other charges were dismissed.
Don Carlos talked. He implicated others and became a witness
for the prosecution.
Jack Keating was harder to hold. Newspapers reported that he
escaped authorities in Chicago, but he was eventually captured and also gave
investigators information about the robbery.
Now prosecutors had statements from both men who had walked
into the Iowa State Bank with guns.
That was useful. It was also a problem.
Keating and Don Carlos knew what happened because they had
done it. They also had every reason to make deals, minimize their own roles,
and point fingers at somebody else.
The strength of the cases against the others would depend on
what prosecutors could prove without them.
They had plenty against Floyd Patten. He went on trial in
October 1919.
Mrs. Don Carlos testified about the gathering on the morning
of the robbery. Other witnesses helped trace the automobile.
A streetcar employee saw a car coming from the alley near
Grand Avenue around the time of the holdup. Other testimony connected Patten to
obtaining and driving the getaway car.
Patten’s attorneys attacked statements made by the robbers
and accused investigators of using “third degree” methods to make Keating talk.
County Attorney A. G. Rippey denied it.
The jury apparently wasn’t troubled. On October 9, Floyd
Patten was found guilty of robbing the Iowa State Bank.
The case against Pharmer was another matter.
Don Carlos and Keating implicated him, and prosecutors
pointed to the two shares of the loot supposedly intended for people inside the
bank. But an accusation from two confessed bank robbers was one thing.
Proving it was another.
Pharmer denied involvement and was released on $10,000 bond
during the summer of 1919. The charge remained hanging over him until March
1920, nearly a year after the robbery.
Then he went to court.
The prosecution presented its evidence. Pharmer’s attorneys
asked Judge Meyer for a directed verdict. Meyer granted it.
The state had the accusations of Keating and Don Carlos.
What it didn’t have was enough independent evidence to corroborate their story
and tie Pharmer to the crime. After nearly a year, the assistant cashier was
free.
Lizzie Christie’s case was less straightforward.
She admitted knowing the people involved and acknowledged
that they had been at her place on the morning of the robbery. She denied
knowing that they intended to rob the Iowa State Bank.
Keating claimed Christie had discussed the bank beforehand
and talked about connections inside. Prosecutors accused her of helping plan
the robbery and expecting a share of the proceeds.
At her trial, the judge directed a verdict in her favor. The
state appealed. In 1922, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the directed verdict
had been an error.
Three years after Keating and Don Carlos walked into the
Iowa State Bank, the case was still moving through the courts.
So was the argument over the money.
The bank carried robbery insurance through the New Amsterdam
Casualty Company, with coverage up to $20,000.
The company didn’t simply write a check.
The bank and insurer fought over how much had actually been
stolen and where the cash and securities had been located inside the bank. The
distinction mattered under the terms of the policy.
The dispute eventually reached the federal court.
A jury found that $16,000 in cash and $6,000 in bonds had
been taken from the bank’s counters and cages. The bank recovered the full
$20,000 policy amount plus interest.
By then, the robbery itself was old news.
The two gunmen had been identified. Don Carlos had
confessed. Patten had been convicted. Christie had fought the state through the
courts.
And Pharmer—the man whose arrest had briefly transformed a
bank holdup into a sensational inside job—had been cleared.
That was the part of the story the first headline couldn’t
capture.
BANK ROBBERS GET $20,000 sounded
simple.
Two gunmen. A bag of money. A waiting car.
The robbery took minutes.
Untangling it took years.
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