In addition to violence, Baby Face Nelson also robbed banks, completing his first job by the age of 21 years old. This article was published more than 7 years ago. This is a list of bank robberies, bank robbers and gangs involved in bank robberies . Victor Peirce, member of the Pettingill family. Bank of Australia robbery, 1828, 14,000 in promissory notes and coins. The first bank robbery in Denmark occurred August 18, 1913 in the bank Sparekassen for Kbenhavn og Omegn at sterbro in Copenhagen. WebIn 1987, Labh Singh (Sukhdev Singh Sukha) allegedly masterminded what was at that time the largest bank robbery in Indian history, netting almost 60 million (58 million rupees Kevin Plumer, Historicist: titillating and Terrorizing Toronto (Torontoist: September 2007). Wanting to avoid a shootout, he waited until he was sure everyone was asleep. 6 armed men stole a record $18.9 million in cash. They soon pulled off a series of robberies, including the biggest one in Toronto history. His means of robbing banks were never violent; in fact the machine gun he carried was empty. It was noted that he had a bewildered personality and often bullied children younger them him and as a teenager was constantly in trouble for petty theft and fighting. So many classic movies have been made with the premise of a bank robbery, many based on the jobs pulled from people on this list. Girls in the Gang, a musical written by Raymond Storey and Jon Roby, was based on the story of the Boyd gang. Teeth Whitening Tips For Guys Who Love Their Coffee and Cigars, Performance & Lather Review of Petal Pusher Fancies, Accessorize Right: Ideas for Both Mens Casual and Formal Looks, First Date Six Tips on Dressing to Impress, 5 Must Have Mens Accessories For Autumn 2013, Beyond the Bachelor Pad: Incorporating Masculine Design, From Pete Townsend To The Pope Dr Martens Boots, Why Every Man Should Own At Least One Suit. Is it strange that every time I walk into a bank I lightly case the joint? He robbed 30 banks before he drunkenly tried to recruit an accomplicewho turned him in to the police. Its funny how a lot of bank robbers never wear disguises anymore. Further investigation unveiled the connection between the gang and the whole crime scheme. Lists about bizarre real crime stories that are almost unbelievable - but are actually 100% true. They would escape and be pardoned after being recaptured and serving five years. 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His partner, old Howard Gault, got caught and told all. For example, in December 2011, he targeted a TD Canada Trust branch in Vaughan but fled after a female employee kicked him in the groin. Some of them got away with it, some of them got caught, but all of them tried to answer the question that most of us ask ourselves from time to time: "Could I get away with it?". The 15 Greatest Bank Robbers of All Time. 1 15 Bonnie and Clyde. Via fbi.gov. 2 14 J.L. Hunter Red Rountree. 3 13 Lester M. Gillis (Baby Face Nelson) 4 12 Charles Arthur Pretty Boy Floyd. 5 11 Henry Starr. More items After getting pinched for robbing a gas station, he met John Dillinger and others in prison who taught himthe trade, and then escaped prison to work with Dillinger and his associates. The robbers carefully laundered the money through property deals and phoney businesses. the United States government protested to the British authorities the raiders were arrested in Canada and the money seized. Brian Vale, Edwin Alonzo Boyd: the story of the notorious Boyd gang (Doubleday Canada Limited: 1997) 11. Their son had died years earlier in a car accident. Retired from the Bank of Canada, James is the author or co-author of three books dealing with some aspect of Canadian history. [9] Mitchell was arrested two years later. Willis Newton, the ringleader and a man who had spent many years robbing places with friends before enlisting his brothers, was sentenced to four years. There are many perks to the gangster lifestyle; long life expectancy isnt one of them. They were known for robbing banks in two minutes or less[1] and getting away with no trace. They used dynamite to blast a hole in the roof of the safe deposit vault at United California Bank and looted $30 million in cash and valuables. Between September 1949 and October 1951, Boyd pulled at least six bank heists. The 2005 Banco Central burglary in Fortaleza, Brazil, was once recognized by Guinness Book of World Records as the world's greatest bank robbery. Lesso was a talented musician who couldnt find work; he changed his name to Steve Suchan and became a bank robber. He was first released in 1962 but because of parole violations he was returned to prison for four more years and was released again in 1966. I keep telling myself that if I live to be old (over eighty) that would be a good time to try heroin or other drugs because, why not? Operating at first as a lone bandit, then later with a gang, Boyd committed several daring bank robberies in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most of them in the Toronto area. He was buried by Dillinger. Boyd was not involved in the homicide, but for his robberies and jail breaks he was sentenced on 16 October 1952 to life imprisonment. The robberies of the banks may have their origin almost a year earlier when a gang from the United States came up from North Dakota into Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Doc Newton spent six years in prison, while Jess Newton served nine months for the train robbery, while his brother Joe served one year. Whats So Cool About The North & South Poles? The other three, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson, were all killed before being captured. To me, its just natural, given that a. made Dillinger a priority and brought him down one night in Chicago by shooting him several times in front of a mob of people, as if Dillinger planned it himself. They burst into the security office and subdued the only guard on duty Christos Potamitis, by handcuffing him to a railing. Their fingerprint cards in the FBI Identification Division were flagged with red To support our blog and writers we put affiliate links and advertising on our page. The bank only had 2 employees. From 1974[1][2] to 1980, they robbed more than 140 banks and stole the equivalent of about $15 million Canadian dollars. Investigators recovered the burglars fingerprints in the dishwasher. Take a second to support CraigBaird on Patreon! Modern day pop culture has kept the tradition alive with movies such as Point Break, HEAT and Reservoir Dogs. Toronto Police Staff Inspector Mike Earl noted last year. Maybe its not balls; maybe cocky is the right word to describe him. It is not known if this is actually true regarding the name, or if OHara heard it second-hand from someone. Memories of a Life Behind Bars (1978). Two gang members entered the bank while the rest of the gang waited outside. [16] Boyd was transferred to the Canadian Provost Corps on July 27, 1942, because he was displeased with the army. But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and One difference of course is that he used a machine gun versus a bow and arrow. Retrieved Jan 20, 2010, at, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Historicist: Titillating and Terrorizing Toronto - Torontoist: Toronto News, Culture, Events, Photos, and Everything else", http://archives.cbc.ca/society/crime_justice/clips/2730/, CBC Digital Archives - Toronto's Infamous 'Boyd Gang', https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edwin_Alonzo_Boyd&oldid=1132671747, Canadian military personnel of World War II, Canadian prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment, Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Canada, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles needing additional references from July 2007, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from September 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 10 January 2023, at 00:31. While in prison, he met two other bank robbers. At the crack of dawn on March 15, 1952, the police crept inside the house and captured Boyd and his wife while they were still in bed. 15 Bonnie and Clyde. His brother Joe, charged in the same bank robbery, would serve 10 years. Pinkertons pursued them but they eluded the chase. Ex Bandit Boyd Calls For Police. After the loss of his beloved wife, he was left alone and aimless. Beginning in the 1930s, and in some cases even earlier in larger cities and towns, banks installed security mechanisms to protect themselves and their employees from robberies. By 1911, when the town itself moved, the bank moved into a 36 x 22 building. The bank had been operating in the community since 1910 when it was an independent bank situated in a small 12 x14 building on the north side of the tracks. Bank robbery is a federal crime in the United States, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation defines the act of robbery as taking or attempting to take property [7], They successfully completed a $750,000 gold heist in 1974 from the Ottawa airport. They got away with up to $50 million in gold, foreign currency, stocks, and jewels. He was struck in the head when arrested, resulting in brain damage but he would be sent to prison to serve his sentence. He is best known for his lingering death and secret burial after being mortally wounded during a Cassidy didnt need much, just his crew and a reputation that bled intimidation. Read more about this topic: List Of Bank Robbers And Robberies, In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the chteau, and while every village here contains at least several gentlemen or squires, there is but one to a seigniory.Henry David Thoreau (18171862), I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. According to Margaret OHara, who was a young girl in Moosomin at the time of the robbery, all the robbers were from the United States and were called The Norman Gang. In January of 1934 Hamilton and his crew robbed over $20,000 from a bank and gunned downed an officer. There has to be some disappointment that comes with getting caught because cameras picked up the license plate of a stolen getaway car. 5 Reasons Why You Should Grow A Moustache! Luke Elliott Sommer (born June 26, 1986, in Peachland, British Columbia) is a former United States Army Ranger and bank robber. Though fired, he had already provided the group with detailed floor plans of the facility, locations of cameras to avoid, and door keys to critical areas. The theft happened over the weekend and wasn't discovered until Monday morning. It took just about half an hour for the robbers to load millions of dollars into their truck, as Allen Pace knew which bags contained the highest denominations. Hunter "Red" Rountree robbed his first bank when he was 87 years old. Happy travels! On the night of Friday, September 12, 1997, Pace and five of his old friends got inside the facility by subduing the guards and slipping through the cameras unnoticed. The 15 Greatest Bank Robbers of All Time. famous canadian bank robbers April 5, 2021 Uncategorized The Central Bank of Iraq Robbery. A few days later, there was a violent bank robbery in West Hope, North Dakota where the town Marshall was killed. Neighbors of the rented house reported seeing the "workers" taking away vans full of material each day. Mikhaylich was known as the Holiday Bandit due his frequent robberies in late December. The wounded clerk raised the alarm. Unfortunately, the robbers had already left by this point. Sometimes you are born into the lifestyle, and for Lester M. Gillis that came at the tender age of 12 when he first shot someone with a gun. The first armed robbery of a bank in the United States. Gillis would become known as Baby Face Nelson and despite being very short (54) and small (133 lbs) he was a dangerous individual during the golden age of gangsters. He is believed to be operating alone because he has been seen with a police radio scanner, indicating he doesn't have an accomplice to monitor the police airwaves, said Detective Sergeant Mike Fleischaker of the York Regional Police Hold-Up Unit. Then he went inside, pulled out a handgun, locked the three staff members into the vault and made off with cash. Cassidy was the ring leader of the gang known as the Wild Bunch, a group of Wild West criminals that loved to stick up banks, rob trains and then (presumably) drink whiskey and fight in saloons. His father, Glover Boyd, joined the army in August 1915[2] and did not return home from the war until a few years later. He would simply slide a piece of paper with the word ROBBERY on it to the teller. He joined up with Willis would continue robbing banks over the next few years with several other men. William L. Carlisie. Regardless, some of them found more success than others, however, all of them eventually were caught and persecuted. WebThe Stopwatch Gang was a group of three Canadians, Paddy Mitchell, Lionel Wright, and Stephen Reid, who made a living robbing banks in the United States and Canada. The Iraqi leader and Dictator Saddam Hussein arranged the heist. Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government. Edwin Alonzo Boyd (April 2, 1914 May 17, 2002) was a Canadian bank robber and leader of the Boyd Gang. Willis Newton, the oldest of the brothers, farmed until he was arrested for stealing cotton with his brother Doc in 1909 and sentenced to two years in prison. Nearly $2 million of stolen cash is still missing to this day. So, lets move over to Moosomin and the robbery that happened there on the same day. The pursuit included the local militia who killed or captured the remaining members of the gang. In Saskatchewan, few crimes are as famous as the 1922 bank robberies in Ceylon and Moosomin. Most of the crazy bank robberiesin movies are dramatic and dangerous, with guns and threats of violence. He was released on day parole in February 2014. Whether armed with guns, coordinated with a gang or using explosives, anything was on the table if it meant leaving the building with bags of money. They could have probably run away with the cash, but they got greedy and tried to perpetrate a similar heist in Ohio. Traveling A Well Worn Path The Oldest Roads In The World, Map of Essaouira For Extreme Sport Lovers, New To Canada? Ross made details of the robbery public Friday as the Canadian Bankers Association announced it had raised to $100,000 the reward for tips leading to the capture of the Vaulter. While Boyd and his partner were robbing banks, another more violent gang was also doing the same thing. Unfortunately for Rountree he got caught each time he robbed a bank and ended up doing 12 years in prison where he eventually died. Have You Ever Considered The History Of The Table? He died in prison in 2004. Police were able to locate the robbers' hideout two months later by tracking their mobile calls. Eventually someone caught on, but talk about not being able to keep a good man (or bad man) down. Is it strange that every time I walk into a bank I lightly case the joint? The surveillance footage was issued worldwide via news channels, giving Martinez instant bank robber street cred as well as notoriety she probably didnt want. $1 million was recovered from a closet at the home of Papadakiss in-laws. [18] Boyd was officially discharged from the war effort on May 24, 1945, 16 days after Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) May 8, 1945. Boyd, under the name John, went to Victoria, British Columbia, where he drove a bus for disabled people and after divorcing Doreen married a disabled woman whom he met on the bus. M. Lamb and B. Pearson, The Boyd Gang (1976). After ten days, men were seen at a barn in the Don Valley[22] and all members of the Boyd Gang, except Edwin Boyd himself, were captured without incident. This list may not reflect recent changes . [3][5][11] In 1999, Reid re-offended and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Emma Boss, who was the switchboard operator at the telephone office next to the bank, was awoken by a. According to Willis Newton, the brothers "took in more money than It seemed, they were under the command of Bennett Young, a former member of Morgans Raiders who had escaped to Canada. Rountreehad a grudge against banks after a loan nearly drove him to bankruptcy in his business-owner days, so he decided he would rob one. 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