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| Jerry Nepovin |
At 10:15 on the morning of May 8, 1928,
two young men entered the Swisher Trust & Savings Bank. They carried guns
but didn’t bother with masks. Both wore overalls and blue denim jackets. They
were in their twenties, about five feet eight inches , 150 pounds. One was
dark-complexioned, the other light.
The robbers ordered assistant cashier
Jerry Bys and customer J. Doskocil to turn around and put up their hands. Then
they tied them up.
One robber stayed with Doskocil while the
other forced Bys to explain how to open the safe. When it was over, $2,017 was
gone.
Outside, two young women were sitting in a
parked car. Instead of walking out, the robbers waited inside the bank until
the women drove away. Then they emerged, climbed into an old red Marmon, and
headed out of Swisher.
It should have been the beginning of their
escape. Instead, the car began to fall apart.
The Marmon was an old touring car. A 1921 model
with yellow wheels and a broken rear window patched with dark material. Part of
the license plate had been painted over. It was about the worst getaway car two
bank robbers could have chosen.
And people noticed it.
A farmer north of Swisher saw a car
matching the description heading toward Cedar Rapids. Other witnesses saw it
too.
Within minutes of the robbery, eastern
Iowa was looking for the old red Marmon.
Sheriffs, deputies, police officers, and
state agents spread out across the countryside. Roads around Cedar Rapids and
Iowa City were watched. Officers in eight counties were alerted. Deputies were
posted along likely escape routes through places such as Ely, Fairfax, and
Solon.
Somehow, the robbers slipped through.
Their names were Jerry Nepovin and Joe Hadrava.
But Swisher wasn’t the beginning. Six
weeks earlier, three young men had walked into another Iowa bank.
At about 10 o’clock on the morning of
March 23, three unmasked men entered the State Bank of Palo, about ten miles
northwest of Cedar Rapids.
Cashier J. W. McClintock was alone.
The men forced him to the floor and bound
his hands and feet. One robber stood over him with a gun while the other two
went through the bank.
They took about $2,500.
Outside, their automobile was waiting with
the motor running. The three men climbed in and headed north.
McClintock struggled with the ropes and
freed himself. He telephoned the authorities, and another eastern Iowa manhunt
began.
Sheriff Harry Manchester and his deputies
headed toward Palo. Posses watched the roads. Officers believed the robbers
were traveling north toward Waterloo.
They even searched from the air.
Cedar Rapids aviator Walter J. Barngrover
took McClintock up in an airplane and flew north over the countryside while the
cashier searched the roads below for the getaway car.
They found nothing.
Nepovin said the idea of robbing Palo had
originated with a man known as “Red” Duffy of Dixon, Illinois, someone he and
Hadrava had known while in jail after an earlier bank robbery. There was also
talk of stealing guns from an armory for the job.
Those details suggested that Palo and
Swisher might not have represented the beginning of Nepovin and Hadrava’s
criminal careers.
Joe Hadrava
Nepovin and Hadrava headed north through Waterloo and kept going until they reached Winnipeg, Canada.
They had escaped. More importantly, they
had money. About $2,000 of the Palo loot.
For two young bank robbers who had just
slipped through an Iowa manhunt, Canada offered an obvious possibility. They
could disappear, keep moving, and put hundreds of miles between themselves and
Palo.
Instead, they went gambling.
Months later, sitting in the Iowa State
Penitentiary at Fort Madison, Nepovin told a reporter that he and Hadrava had
tried to be careful. They checked into a hotel but worried that suddenly
spending large amounts of cash would make people suspicious. They paid their
hotel expenses from money other than the bank loot and tried not to attract
attention.
Then Nepovin discovered a poker game in
the hotel parlor. Hadrava wasn’t enthusiastic. Nepovin sat down anyway.
He began winning.
Around two in the morning, Nepovin was up
about $250. He had three aces and a pair. Aces full. Another player kept
raising. Nepovin raised back.
The pot grew.
When they showed their cards, Nepovin put
down his full house. The other man had a royal flush. Or, in Nepovin’s case, a
royal bust.
The newspapers turned the poker game into
a morality tale. The robbers had escaped Iowa only to have their stolen money
swallowed by Winnipeg card tables and nightlife. Whatever the exact accounting,
Nepovin admitted having had a good time in Canada.
Maybe too good a time.
The Palo money ran out. Nepovin and
Hadrava tried to find work. According to the confession, they couldn’t.
That left them with a problem.
They were fugitives in another country with
little money, and there weren’t many legitimate ways for two wanted bank
robbers to replenish their finances.
So they went back to Iowa. For a moment,
they considered surrendering. Then they changed their minds and decided to rob
another bank.
They chose Swisher.
By then there was a third man with them, a
27-year-old Canadian named Wilfred Perron.
Perron’s exact role in the robberies differed
from Nepovin and Hadrava’s, and the early newspaper accounts weren’t always
clear about it.
But on May 8, Nepovin and Hadrava walked
into the Swisher Trust and Savings Bank.
This time they took $2,017.
And once again, they got away. For the
second time in less than two months, eastern Iowa had armed bank robbers on the
loose.
The fugitives headed away from Swisher,
but the old red Marmon didn’t cooperate. The car had been spotted almost
immediately, even as it was falling apart. A connecting rod burned out.
The men had to improvise.
They changed cars and disappeared into the
countryside. At some point, Nepovin, Hadrava, and Perron camped along the Iowa
River. They abandoned an automobile and went into the timber, watching to see
whether officers were guarding it.
That night they slept in a quarry near
Otis. Eventually, they returned to the automobile and drove away.
Wilfred Perron
For a while, it looked as though they might escape again.
They had robbed Palo, made it all the way
to Canada, returned to Iowa and robbed Swisher. They knew how to hide. They
knew how to move. And twice they had got through the first frantic hours after
a bank robbery without being caught.
Perron bought a sedan and registered it at
the courthouse. He met Nepovin and Hadrava at their hiding place, and the three
started for Dallas.
They never made it out of Iowa. At Belle
Plaine, the car ran out of gas. They stopped at a filling station operated by
Frank Wheeler. Wheeler didn’t like something about them.
Maybe it was the car. Maybe it was their
appearance. Or maybe three nervous young men passing through Belle Plaine
didn’t look right after newspapers and police had spent weeks warning eastern
Iowa about bank robbers.
Whatever Wheeler saw, it was enough. He
notified the authorities.
Officers closed in.
This time there was no chase through the
countryside and no shootout. The three men were arrested without a shot being
fired. Inside their automobile, officers found about $1,400.
Now that the police had the men they had
been hunting, the story moved very fast.
Nepovin and Hadrava confessed to the Palo
and Swisher robberies. They told officers about their movements after the
crimes, the trip to Canada, and their return to Iowa.
Then they went to court.
Within twelve hours of their capture,
Jerry Nepovin and Joe Hadrava had gone from fugitives on an Iowa highway to
convicted bank robbers, sentenced to life in the state penitentiary at Fort
Madison.
The next day’s newspaper didn’t bother
with subtlety. Across the top of the front page, in enormous type, the Evening
Gazette announced:
2 BANK BANDITS GET LIFE TERMS
There was something almost absurd about
the speed of it. Two men could rob a bank, flee to another country, gamble away
the proceeds, come back, rob another bank, hide in the timber, sleep in a
quarry and start for Texas. But once the police had them, it took less than a
day to send them away for life.
The arrests also allowed investigators to
work backward through the two robberies. Palo and Swisher had followed much the
same pattern: young men walking into small-town banks without masks, tying up
the people inside, taking the cash, and trusting that a fast car and open Iowa
roads would be enough to get them away.
Twice, it worked.
After Palo, officers covered the roads and
even searched from an airplane. After Swisher, witnesses gave police
descriptions of the robbers and their battered red Marmon. Sheriffs and
deputies spread across eastern Iowa.
Nepovin and Hadrava still escaped.
That may have been the worst thing that
could have happened to them. Because after Palo and Swisher, Nepovin and
Hadrava had reason to believe they were good at this.
What they couldn’t beat was themselves.
After Palo, they spent the money. Then
they came back.
There were other questions, too.
Who was Wilfred Perron, and when had he
joined them? What had Nepovin and Hadrava done before Palo? How much of the
story they told the police after their capture was true? And how many other
robberies might be connected to them?
By December, none of that seemed to
interest Nepovin as much as the poker game. He was in Fort Madison by then,
serving a life sentence, when he told the story of Winnipeg.
He remembered sitting at the table. Making
big bets. Winning. And he remembered the hand. Three aces and a pair. For a
moment, it must have looked unbeatable. Then the other player turned over a
royal flush.
It would make a neat ending to say that
was the hand that sent Jerry Nepovin back to Iowa and eventually to prison.
Real life was messier. There was Palo,
Canada, the money they spent. The decision to return. Then Swisher. The old
Marmon. The hiding place along the river. The quarry. The car. The road toward
Belle Plaine.
And finally, an empty gas tank.
That may be the most fitting part of the story.
Nepovin and Hadrava escaped posses and
roadblocks, crossed an international border, came back to Iowa, robbed another
bank, and slipped into the timber while officers searched for them.
They were planning to make it all the way
to Dallas. Instead, they ran out of gas in Belle Plaine.
Frank Wheeler became suspicious.
The police came.
And twelve hours later, the two bank
robbers who couldn’t stay gone were on their way to prison for life.
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