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| The Get-a-way car. (The Sioux City Journal. October 2, 1929) |
On the morning of September 30, 1929, a masked man robbed a bank in Sioux Center, Iowa. A few hours later, he was dying on a farm outside Le Mars with a bullet through his head.
The
dead man was Rex Frokley, 38, and that’s what made the story strange. He wasn’t
a drifter or some hard case passing through northwest Iowa. Frokley was a Le
Mars business person, former radio station owner, college football player, husband,
and father.
He
was also an ordained minister.
The
newspapers went wild with it. One called him a “WEIRD THUG.” Another ran the
headline, “ORDAINED MINISTER TURNS BANK ROBBER, SHOOTS SELF WHEN TRACED THRU
AUTO.” The Independent Record called him “DR. JEKYLL & MR.
HYDE.”
It
wasn’t much of a stretch.
Frokley
had been born and raised near Kearney, Nebraska, and attended Western Union
College in Le Mars, where he played football. He was ordained in the
Evangelical Church, but had never held a regular pastorate. He filled pulpits
while in college and performed a few marriages.
Then
he went into business.
He was a former owner of the Le Mars radio station KWWC. He married twice and had two sons with his first wife. That marriage ended in divorce. A year before his death, he married one of the wealthiest women in Plymouth County.
By
September 1929, things weren’t so tidy. Frokley had been away from home for
about six weeks, living in a Sioux City apartment. He said it was for business.
Then
somebody robbed the Sioux Center bank.
The
robber wore a mask, carried a pistol, and cleaned out the currency drawer.
Newspaper accounts differ on exactly how much he took, but it was several
thousand dollars.
Rex Frokley. (The Sioux City Journal. October 2, 1929)
He got away, but made a fatal mistake. People noticed his car.
Two
Sioux County men, Ruben Roberts and Anton Sieperda, followed the suspected
getaway car toward Le Mars. The trail led to Frokley. Le Mars Police Chief
Frank Smith went to his house and questioned him.
Frokley
denied everything, saying he knew nothing about the robbery and had just
returned from visiting a tenant on one of his farms. Smith left, but Roberts
and Sieperda stayed behind and watched the house.
Frokley
slipped away and drove to a farm operated by one of his tenants, P. Dickman.
There, the story started coming apart fast. Frokley handed Dickman $360 and
said it had come from the Sioux Center bank. He told him he had done something
“terrible” and the money should be turned over to the men chasing him.
Then
he ran to the garage.
Before
his pursuers could get to him, Frokley shot himself through the head. He was
still alive when they reached him, but died shortly afterward.
Then
things got worse.
Police
started looking at old robberies. One stood out.
The
Orange City National Bank had been held up months earlier by a lone gunman who
escaped with roughly $6,000. The robbery had gone unsolved. Now investigators
had a dead suspect to show the witnesses.
Police Chief Frank Smith. (The Sioux City Journal. October 2, 1929)
Three Orange City bank officials — C. L. Parks, John Roghair, and William Muilenburg —identified Frokley as the robber.
That
changed the story. Maybe Rex Frokley hadn’t suddenly cracked and robbed one
bank. Maybe he’d been doing it for a while.
The
Independent Record ran “LINKED WITH OTHER CRIMES,” followed by “Frokley May
Have Been Guilty of Several Bank Robberies.” Another headline claimed a “LONG
LIST OF RAIDS” was being laid at his door.
Some
of that needs to be treated carefully. Frokley was dead. He couldn’t answer
accusations, and suspicion wasn’t proof. But the Orange City identification
gave police something more than gossip. Three men who had been there said
Frokley was the man.
That
left Le Mars with an ugly question.
Who
exactly was Rex Frokley?
There
was the college football player who became an ordained minister, filled church pulpits,
and performed marriages. There was the businessman who owned a radio station
and married into money. He lived well and moved among people who had no reason
to think they were dealing with an armed robber.
Then
there was the man in the mask.
That
man walked into banks with a pistol, took thousands of dollars and drove away.
If the Orange City witnesses were right, he’d done it before and gone home
afterward to resume his other life.
That’s
where the Jekyll-and-Hyde comparison worked. It wasn’t that Frokley had some
mysterious second personality. There’s no evidence of that. It was simpler and
probably stranger. He seems to have been living two lives, and was good enough
at keeping them apart that people didn’t see the second one until his car gave
him away.
His
last few hours showed both sides.
When
Chief Smith confronted him, Frokley stood in his own home and calmly denied
knowing anything about the robbery. Not long afterward, he was at a tenant’s
farm, handing over stolen money, admitting he had done something terrible.
Then
he put a pistol to his head.
Frokley
was buried back in Nebraska, where he had grown up, beside his first wife. He
left behind a widow, two sons, and a pile of questions that couldn’t be settled
after he was gone.
The
minister was a bank robber. The businessman may have been a serial bank robber.
The man who once stood in church pulpits ended his life in a farm garage while
vigilantes waited outside.
And
the whole thing came apart over a car.
Rex
Frokley’s two lives had survived for who knows how long. Once he robbed the
Sioux Center bank, they lasted about twenty more miles.
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