1911 BANK ROBBERY

Denison Bulletin – January 14, 1911

BANK BURGLARIZED

Dow City Bank Safe Blown and Robbers Got Away With $4,500 in Cash

Cashier Opened Bank Friday Morning Only to Find Safe Blown to Pieces.

The bank at Dow City was burglarized last Thursday night or Friday morning. The safe in the vault was blown open and it is said that the robbers got away with $4,500.

This job of burglary was the cleanest and slickest seen in these parts for many a day, and the robbers got away without leaving as much as a trail of gasoline smell from their auto.

When Banker Fishel opened the bank Friday morning he found the big iron door to the bank vault shattered and broken. Quickly peering inside the vault he there saw the safe a shattered wreck. The door of the safe had been blown completely off and against the vault door knocking that off. The cash that was in the safe when it was locked the night before was gone - $4,500 of good hard money and bills. In the side of the brick vault a great hole had been torn, and this showed where the robbers had crawled into the vault to work on the safe.

Barely visible, the Dow City bank at far right

The bank building is a small affair, probably 18 x 35 feet. The front part is used for the bank and counters and desks and a lobby for the use of the public, while the back ten feet of the building is divided off for a small back room on the north side and the brick vault on the south side. The robbers went to the back door, which they easily pried open, and then with a pick, a crowbar and a sledge which they had stolen from the Northwestern tool house, they soon knocked a hole from the little back room through the two feet of brick wall into the vault. The hole was big enough for a man to crawl in and out of without much trouble.

Robbers Used Nitro Glycerine.

Once inside the vault the robbers could work without fear of being heard or seen, and they evidently took their time to do a good job. The safe shows no indication of being drilled, but a lead pencil with some soap on it and a drinking glass with a little nitro glycerine in it, showed the next morning what had done the work of opening the safe. The soap had been used to make the cracks around the door air tight and to provide a trough or dam to make the glycerine run all through the cracks around the door. A fuse was then lighted and the robbers crawled out behind the city pump house that stands just south of the bank. The explosion was a dandy, but was muffled by the bank vault to such an extent that nobody else heard it – not even Mr. Blanding who lives right across the street. With the safe thus blown wide open the robbers quickly gathered up all the money in sight and then made their escape

It is surmised that the robbers came from Omaha or Sioux City. It is believed they came with an automobile and that they had the machine handy for their escape. But which way they went, how many of them there were, who they were, or anything else about them is unknown up to this time.

A Barricade for Defense

It was found the robbers had made themselves absolutely secure during their work by taking a lot of empty kerosene barrels from Wiggins' store and piling these along between the bank building and the big store. Two or three of these barrels were steel casks and these were piled along the side next to the street to make a good protection from bullets in case the robbers were attacked. It is thus seen that if they had been discovered there would have been a nasty fight, and perhaps somebody would have been killed, so it is fortunate they were permitted to make their getaway.

Sheriff Cummings was notified Friday morning and went immediately to the scene of the robbery, but he was unable to get any track of the robbers or find out anything that might lead to their discovery. Detectives were put to work in the cities, however, and it may be that later some clews will develop.

Mrs. Wood living over Brake's store now believes she heard these robbers going away in an automobile at about three o'clock in the morning. Other people now remember of hearing an automobile in different places, and Alfred Birkhofer thinks the men with this auto stopped at his place just west of Dow City the night before, asking the way into the town.

Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Birkhofer

The bank safe was completely ruined. The door is nothing but fragments of iron, while the frame of the safe is sprung and bent till it can never be used again. A safe expert at Dow City Sunday was looking at the safe where it stands on the Northwestern depot platform and said that it would be cheaper to dump the old safe into the river than to try to ship it and get even the price of the freight out of it.

The Bank Not Insured.

It was supposed that the bank had burglar insurance, as most banks have. It always had such insurance until recently the insurance expired on the McHenry's, who own this bank and one at Vail. They thought they would wait until the first of the year and then insure both banks at the same time. This makes the total loss fall on the owners of the bank, and also relieves the burglars of the bank insurance blood hounds who would otherwise be placed on their track.

The Dow City bank mystery will thus probably never be solved, unless by some fortunate circumstance the thieves give themselves away.