Chapter 49
-- Compiled by the Cumberland Women's Club
and Published by the Cumberland Advocate
1874-1974
(used by permission of the Cumberland Advocate)
Donated by Linda Mott
Please
Note: This page is information intense! Please be patient
while some portions are
loading -- it will be worth
your wait! Thank you.
The Bank Robbery
August 24, 1931--probably the most startling thing that has happened in Cumberland in many moons took place Monday morning at about 11:00 AM when four men entered the State Bank and at the point of guns held up the entire force, escaping with about $8,000.
Miss
Eleanor Miller was told to get down on the
floor. Covering F.W. Miller,
A.H.
Miller and
Lewis
Benjamin, the holdup men went into the vault
and scooped up the cash. They ordered A.H. Miller to open the safe as they
stood over him with a gun. A customer in the bank, G.G.
Hodgkin and a stenographer, Miss
Evelyn Morey, were also ordered to lie down.
A fifth
gangster
remained at the wheel of a Chrysler Sedan parked in front of the bank (with
a machine gun in the rear.) While this was going on Milton
Hunnicutt, at work in the back room, got out
and gave the alarm. Assistant cashier, Ernie
Miller, happened to be on the street and helped
spread the news. Deputy Sheriff H.L.Myers
jumped into his car and was joined by George
Poukey,
both armed with Colt 40s, and drove up past the bank. They fired several
shots at the car while it was standing in front of Ellenson
Drug Store, and the bandits shot at them eight
times. One bullet broke a window in the Service
Print Shop, another made a hole in the glass
of a window of the flat above the Hayes
plumbing establishment and a third hit one of the piers in the Kuenzli
Brothers Service Station. Two bullets entered
the auto of Frank Triebel,
one passed through Ernie Miller's truck and the back of E.A.
Wright's car. Bullets also broke the glass
in the Ellenson Drug Store and Gaerth's Bakery.
As they sped away W.N. Fuller
took five shots at it with his automatic pistol. Jack
Nelson, from behind an auto, fired twice with
a rifle, and Postmaster W.C. McMahon
also shot at them. It was believed that one of the occupants was hit. Deputy
Myers and Poukey trailed them for awhile but lost them. Sheriff
Zean Douglas came from Barron and traced the
car north to highway 70. George Johnston
followed the car in from Sand Lake before the robbery and remembered the
license number. The loss to the bank was fully covered by insurance. It
was suspected by the detectives for the insurance company that the leaders
of this gang are two convicts from Levenworth sent up for murder, whom
it was strongly suspected had done a number of jobs of the kind and have
their hiding place somewhere in northern Wisconsin.
Thanks for stopping by!
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
to