The Smartest Bank Robber, Part 2: Herman Lamm’s Last Heist

James “Oklahoma Jack” Clark, an escapee from the Kansas State Reformatory, was involved in the heist at the Tippecanoe Loan and Trust Company in Lafayette in 1927. He was linked to a $200,000 hijacking of a U.S. Mint armored car in Denver in 1922.

The rap sheet of Walter Dietrich (or Detrich or Detrick) included a 1925 robbery of a Los Angeles theater. He was being sought for the robbery of Procter & Gamble Soap’s St. Louis payroll in 1929.

G.W. “Dad” Landy, 71 years old, began his life of crime during the era of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Landy had been acquitted of robbing a bank in St. Bernice in Vermillion County, Ind., near the Illinois border.

The final member of the team was not experienced. The getaway driver, Edward “E. H.” Hunter, was a rumrunner in the Terre Haute area. Hunter had no criminal record, and the Clinton bank robbery was probably his first heist. It was definitely his last.

Most of you have awakened in Indiana on an icy cold December morning, but December 1930 was the coldest December since 1895. When Herman Lamm and his men awoke on the morning of Dec. 16, 1930, in their Danville, Ill., hotel, the temperature 45 miles east in Clinton was 14 degrees. It was partly cloudy with no snow — a fine day for robbing a bank.

Imagine you were John Moore, a shoe salesman who was a Clinton State Bank customer that morning. You know the bank opens at 8:30 a.m., and you have a deposit to make. You get to the bank at 8:50 a.m. — the only customer at that time — and begin conducting business with 26-year-old teller Lawrence Jackson.

As you’re talking, you see a shiny new black Buick stop across the street from the bank at a few minutes after 9 a.m. Three well-dressed men and a fourth dressed like a lumberjack get out of the car. Two come toward the bank from the southside and minutes later the other two enter from the north. All four brandish automatic revolvers.

The tallest of the men, the clear leader, shouts, “Achtung! Achtung! This is a hold up. Go to the back and lie down!” The oldest robber escorts you and the bank employees to the back and makes sure you follow orders.

Meanwhile, you are very sad to see two more customers walk into the bank. They are greeted by the robber in workman’s clothing and hurried to the back of the bank where they join you and the others on the floor. You know these men. One of them is C. N. Hawley, a telegraph operator, and the other is Harry Call, your insurance agent.

You see the leader walk over to you and the other folks lying on the floor, yank teller Jackson to his feet, and order him to open the vault. When Jackson says he can’t, the man hits him hard with the butt of his revolver, knocking him back to the floor. You feel like your stomach has turned to acid and is eating your throat. You can’t even try to help Jackson — you’re too afraid.

One of the older bankers exclaims, “No one here can open the vault.” You’re sure he’ll get the same treatment Jackson got. But no, the leader spares him. Jackson is able to open a small safe, which was where the money to be used for the day’s transactions is held. The robbers scoop up the money in the cash drawers and the safe. They leave as quickly as they came. As soon as the robbers hustle out the door, you pick yourself up off the floor. C. N. Hawley does the same and calls the Clinton police department.

You never want to see those men or the inside of a bank again.

Meanwhile, local barber Edward VanSickle, uses the big window in his shop as a vantage point to eye the shops along Main Street, including the bank. He notices two pairs of strangers enter the bank — not that big a deal. But every day he sees Harry Call walk to the bank to make a deposit and walk back again. On that day, he sees Harry walk to the bank, but he doesn’t see him walk back. What he does see is a big Buick double-parked in front of the bank.

Ed’s spine tingles. He recalls that two weeks earlier Farmers Bank in Frankfort, Ind., had been robbed — biggest Hoosier heist ever. “Something’s wrong,” he says to a pal who has stopped in to chew the fat — another regular event. Ed grabs and loads his shotgun and goes to take a look because he’s worried that Harry has gotten himself caught up in a bank robbery.

As Ed approaches the bank, the robbers pile into the Buick with bags of loot. The getaway route (i.e., “the git”) is to head south over to U.S. 41 and then to Terre Haute. Hunter starts to peel out, but he sees Ed, shotgun in hand, and makes a U-turn. The right front tire hits the curb, causing a blow-out loud enough to make everyone along the street look out their windows. Hunter keeps going — fast despite the flat — but now they need to change the git because of the U-turn. They head west then go north on U.S. 63.

Ed, a brave but cautious man, does not fire at the car because he can’t be sure that the bank was robbed. But a Clintonian who was trailing Ed, wondering why Ed had the gun, yells, “Bank robbers, bank robbers!” As Ed watches the Buick speed away, he decides to go ahead and shoot, but he forgets to lift the safety.

Two of Clinton’s six policeman are on duty when Hawley’s call comes in. Baby-faced police Chief Everett “Pete” Helms and grandfatherly looking Patrolman Walter Burnside, both in their 30s, jump into an Oldsmobile coupe on loan from the garage that is tuning up their police cruiser. Meanwhile, Hazel Haase, the head telephone operator, is alerting every police station in the communities through which the robbers might flee.

A car salesman named Charles Clark heading into Clinton sees a speeding Buick heading out of town. When Clark arrives at work at 9:30 AM, he tells what he saw to his boss, Ernest Boetto, a special deputy sheriff of both the Indiana Bankers’ Association and Vermillion County Sheriff Harry Newland. Boetto, a World War I sharp shooter, grabs a rifle, a .38 revolver, and a bag of shells. The two men take off in a high-powered Dodge sedan, Clark at the wheel.

Hunter stops the Buick on U.S. 63 near Summit Grove, and four of the gang change the tire. They see Helms and Burnside’s Oldsmobile approaching, and when it gets to what Lamm judges to be too close, two of his men fire at it with a pistol and submachine gun. Helms turns the Olds onto a side road. A bullet bounces off the door handle into Burnside’s Sam Brown police belt, bruising a rib.

Helms pulls over and sees Burnside has passed out. With a pistol Helms returns fire over the hood of the Oldsmobile. Farmer Harlow Frist hears the commotion and goes to a bluff overlooking the action. A stray bullet narrowly misses him as it passes through his coat. He talks to Helms then goes to his house to call for help.

With the tire changed, the bandits head down the road, but the new tire blows out after a mile, and Hunter pulls over into the yard of Thomas McWethy. Harlow Frist’s father, Jediah, happens to be coming down the road in his 1927 Buick. The bandits force him to stop, and he is gently pulled from the car and informed that it is being confiscated but he will be reimbursed. Jediah puts up a fuss, but Lamm gives him $500 in gold. The gang unloads Jediah’s bags of sugar and flour, replaces them with their guns and loot, and takes off.

Hunter finds that Jediah’s Buick has excellent acceleration but tops out at about 35 miles per hour. Harlow Frist had installed a governor under the gas pedal to keep his dad from driving at dangerous speeds.

The McWethys notify Hazel Haase on the switchboard regarding the bandits’ location and that they are heading west on Rte. 36, creating a call-to-arms for an additional crew of lawmen and volunteers. One was Joe Walker, a former deputy sheriff to Harry Newland and a member of the Indiana Bankers Detective Association. Walker has the flu but goes ahead and rounds up some armed men and joins the chase in a Ford touring car. Walker rides on the left running board.

Walker and his crew stop at intersection on Rte. 36 just south of Dana, Ind., to call Hazel for the latest on the robbers’ travels. As they finish the call, they see the Buick go past them west on 36. The Ford follows the Buick. Helms and Burnside in the Olds catch up with the Ford.

Burns cautions Walker, who is known for recklessness, to keep his distance from the Buick to avoid machine gun fire and because soon the robbers will encounter law enforcement going east on 36, sandwiching them between the two forces. Walker’s car takes the lead in the pursuit.

Meanwhile, the Baron realizes they need yet another vehicle to have any hope of escaping with the loot. Their opportunity to upgrade comes in the form of a Chevy Carmack cattle truck owned by Wells Gilbert and driven by his young assistant, Roy Gritten. The Buick pulls out in front of the Chevy truck, forcing it to stop. Lamm tells Gritten to hit the road, and Gritten takes off running. Gilbert refuses to get out of the car; Lamm throws him out.

Walker and company arrive at this moment, almost ramming the barricade made by the Buick and the Chevy. Lamm tells Gilbert to hide behind the back wheel of the truck. Silence overtakes the scene, like silence at sunrise before a major battle. Every single man knows that the action of just one of them would break the tense calm.

Walker walks out in the middle of the road toward the bandits with his pistol at the ready and orders them to surrender.

Shots ring out, pinging back and forth. Walker gets hit but fires off three shots before crawling behind the Ford. Then a team of horses pulling a wagon loaded with hogs enters the firing zone. Every man on both sides stops firing and then resumes when the wagon clears the zone. Walker later dies of his wounds.

Meanwhile, the gangsters move the loot into the back of the truck, and Lamm, Landy and Hunter jump in with it. Dietrich tries but fails to start the truck, so Lamm tells Gilbert to drive. Oklahoma Jack is up front with Dietrich.

Gilbert, at the insistence of the robbers, drives the truck harder and faster than it’s ever been driven. After a few miles, the truck starts to shake and can go no more. A Ford Model-A is coming south on the road, and the bandits wave it down. The driver, Fenton Williams, recognizes the truck and thinks Gilbert is waving him down.

After stopping, the sight of the robbers frightens Williams out of his skin. Lamm and his crew take over Williams’s Ford while he cowers in a ditch. They throw off the cover of the back of the Model-A so that Clark can protect their flank with the machine gun. Boetto in the Dodge has caught up with them. Lamm tells Gilbert to hide behind the tire of his truck as Hunter makes a U-turn in the Model-A so that they can continue to go north. As the Model-A makes the maneuver with Boetto’s rifle firing round after round into the vehicle, it stalls. Then the Ford takes off; the chase is back on.

By this time nearly one hundred vehicles and two hundred men are in the pursuit plus two airplanes on loan from the Indiana National Guard. And the Model-A is low on gas. Nevertheless, the goal of escaping the fire of Boetto’s rifle, which has a range longer than the machine gun’s range, takes precedence over fuel conservation.

The Ford speeds over 70 miles per hour through a flat, sparsely populated and largely treeless part of Illinois. The pursuers don’t lose sight of the robbers, but gunfire is sporadic. Boetto’s Dodge runs out of gas. He and Charlie Clark see bond salesman Winchester Rogers in his new Chrysler going the opposite direction and convince him to pick them up and join the chase.

The robbers pull into the driveway of Leo Moody’s farm, where Moody is slopping hogs. Moody refuses to give them the keys to his car until Lamm points a pistol at him. Moody says he will go in the house to get the keys. Inside he grabs his .22 rifle and calls the Sidell, Ill., police.

Moody comes out of the house shooting, but the robbers are already on the run by foot because the entire posse has arrived. Boetto has three rounds left in his rifle, and the first hits Hunter. Lamm, Landy and Clark, still with the machine gun, run across a pasture toward a cornfield. The second round hits Clark’s machine gun, disabling it and knocking it out of his hands. His last round hits dirt near Clark’s legs.

Dietrich hides in a shed Moody uses for storing coal and corn cobbs. The wounded Hunter crawls unnoticed into Moody’s hog house. Clark is spotted after he goes over a fence and back to the road. Chief Helms calls for his surrender, and Clark obliges, handing his gun to Burnside. Dietrich is found alive, having buried himself under corncobs; he also surrenders. Hunter is found alive but dies about two days later.

Helms finds Baron Lamm, so recently the mastermind of the crime of bank robbing, dying in the cornfield with a gunshot wound to the chest — some think it was suicide, some claim Boetto shot him; some speculate that Landy killed him.

Helms and Boetto find Landy unhurt some 50 feet from Lamm. They watch with fingers on their triggers as Landy raises his .38 revolver. He shoots himself in the head.

If you want to learn more about the Clinton bank robbery or about the robbers themselves, read the action-packed book “Herman ‘Baron’ Lamm, the Father of Modern Bank Robbery,” by Walter Mittelstaedt, or explore the newspapers of that time at the library or on the internet. Local papers covered the story in detail, but inconsistencies in participants’ accounts led me to include the ones that seemed most likely.

Next month’s article will focus on Indiana’s homegrown robbers and how Indiana and the United States began a concerted effort to combat bank robbery.