Stick em up 1940s gangster12/13/2023 “The fishing trips at Bennett Spring will long be remembered by the natives,” the Springfield Leader and Press reported. While Bash tried to keep a low profile, Chestnut enjoyed flashing money around town. They rented a cabin and spent a lot of time fishing at Bennett Spring State Park, which eventually got them snagged like largemouth bass. In Springfield, they traded in the blue sedan for a new car and then traded in that vehicle for yet another one. The robbers escaped to Missouri, eluding police with the aid of six sets of stolen license plates from multiple states. Everything went like clockwork except for their inability to access the bank’s time-locked safe. At the Brady Lake cottage, they plotted the Mogadore job between fishing trips. His fed-up wife, Velma, divorced him and took their two children to live in Missouri.īash recruited his pal Milton “Buck” Chestnut, an Illinois native, for a big score. He had served a couple of years at the Ohio Penitentiary after admitting in 1930 to stealing nearly 100 silver foxes and selling them to a Pennsylvania furrier. The Akron man, a former Goodyear factory worker, was a small-time criminal involved in selling bootleg liquor and fencing stolen property. Bash, 35, probably would have been flattered to know that authorities thought Dillinger was the culprit. Jones followed a lead that two fishermen matching the description of the Mogadore robbers had rented a Brady Lake cottage for 12 days before the heist.Īuthorities didn’t know that the robbers had already changed license plates to escape detection. “Everybody thought Dillinger had visited Akron when they heard about the Illinois license plates,” Portage County Sheriff LeRoy Jones later explained. Over a two-week span, robbers held up seven banks across Ohio, but officers didn’t know if the cases were related. Investigators immediately suspected that the gunmen belonged to the Chicago gang of John Dillinger, Public Enemy No. ![]() The loot would be worth over $76,000 today. Authorities put out an all-points bulletin for the two men in the blue car with Illinois plates.īank officials discovered the robbers had escaped with $3,686, including more than $2,900 in cash, $400 in silver coins and $250 in money orders. Shanafelt had called deputies after returning from the booster luncheon and finding the bank empty. The dazed victims began to walk back to Mogadore, but soon flagged down a motorist. “They didn’t seem to be the sort of men who would kill us for nothing.” “They acted kind of tough, but they had to do that, I guess,” he said. He couldn’t tell if they were familiar with the area. ![]() As we alighted, the older robber said: ‘If you identify us, you’ll be killed.’ ”Ībbott said the robbers hadn’t exchanged words with each other as they drove. ![]() “When we got to an out-of-the-way spot, they told us to get off. “They drove us down the road about a mile and a half, keeping us covered with guns all the time,” Adolph recalled. It was a strange sight as the automobile raced up the road at 60 mph with four kidnap victims hanging on for dear life.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |