A few minutes before 6 o’clock Thursday night, as I was cruising near the corner of Kimbrough avenue and St. Louis street. I noticed suspicious actions of three persons in a V-8 model Ford coach. A girl was riding in the front seat with two men and they looked as if they were trying to spot a car. They slowed down near a car with a Washington license which was parked in front of the Shrine Mosque, but continued west on St. Louis street. A short time later I saw the machine turn east on Mitchell street, in the rear of the Mosque. Becoming suspicious I rode there and turned off my lights and a few minutes later they returned and went north over the Benton avenue viaduct. I pulled up beside the machine and ordered the driver to stop, but he declared that he didn’t have any brakes. At the end of the viaduct, he turned east on Pine street and stopped and I noticed that the girl had got into the back seat of the car. Her arm was laying on the back of the seat and she had something in her hand. But I didn’t know until later that it was a .45 Army automatic. As I pulled up beside the machine, the driver stepped out with a sawed-off automatic shotgun in his hand and ordered me to hold up my hands and step into the car. He jerked my gun out of the holster and threw it to his companion in the front seat. As I get in the front seat, the man with the gun swung around and shouted to a boy across the street, get the hell out of here and as he got into the machine I thought I saw the boy run down an alley. The driver was the only person who talked for a time and he was quite profane. He asked me if I didn’t know better than to stop a car with an out-of-state license and I told him that that was what I was getting paid for. He then told me I would have to show him the way out of town. I told him to turn off Pine street on Washington Avenue. We drove to Center Street and from there to National avenue. We left National Avenue at Division Street and went to Glenstone. They appeared unacquainted with the streets. We turned on Highway 66 toward St. Louis, but the driver asked me if there wasn’t a road to cut across and hit near Joplin and I told him there was. He then ordered the girl to look at a map, meanwhile turning back to Glenstone. We drove about a mile further and they ordered me to get into the rear seat where they covered me with a blanket. The girl held her pistol on me and we drove up to a filling station and the gasoline tank was filled. After leaving the filling station they told me to climb over into the front seat again and I did, breaking one of their suit cases in doing so. I also saw a veritable arsenal, bigger than the one at the police station on the floor of the car when I climbed over. There were two rifles, two automatic shotguns, a Thompson sub-machine gun and a number of pistols, including mine. Red-haired and freckled, the girl I sat beside for such short time was red-haired and not the least bit beautiful. She weighed about 110 pounds, was freckled, as red-haired girls often are, and was wearing a dark coat and sort of a turban-like hat on the side of her head. Another suspicious thing about them, was the great amount of money I saw in the back of the car. There were several sacks of coins and I sat on two, which were under the blanket. There also was a bag in the front seat, which I thought contained some money. Just before we got to Crystal Cave, we turned onto the Pleasant Hope road and the driver batted along on that rough, winding road about 50 miles an hour. The driver seemed to be the leader and he ordered the girl, whom he invariably addressed as "Hon" or "Babe" to look at the road map and tell him which highways they were near. The other fellow, a silent sort of a chap, addressed the girl as "Sis" and she called him "Bud". After leaving Pleasant Hope, we hit Highway No. 13, somewhere between Brighton and Bolivar. We rode on about two miles and turned on another rough country lane. I don’t believe we drove more than 15 miles on the highway. The roads we traveled were muddy, but the driver hit about 50 miles an hour all along. We passed through the edge of Morrisville and near Greenfield we met a car which we apparently crowded into a ditch. The lights on our car weren’t so good and I think that was what caused the driver to nearly hit the other machine. Near Greenfield they asked me how I happened to stop them and whether I had seen them fooling around the car and I told them that I just stopped them to investigate their licenses. That was my only alibi. They then told me that they had stolen a car at Springfield Thursday afternoon, and according to the description and license number they gave, it was the one taken from M. Kerr, a brown Ford V-8. But they said they ditched the machine out in the country and told me it was near a cemetery, probably out Campbell Avenue and Mount Vernon they said. They put me back in the rear seat when we neared Golden City and while we were parked at a garage there to get some gasoline, a night watchman came by and flashed his light over the car. The driver got out and the man in the car said, "Look at that Hoosier". He laughed and I peeped out from under the blanket and saw the watchman, but he went on without looking in the machine. It would probably have been too bad if he had tried to investigate. From Golden City we went to another country road and came out on a highway. I saw a sign which said 7 miles to Jasper and 8 miles to Lamar. They knew all about the country around there and they dodged from one country road to another until we came to the residential district of Carthage. There they indicated they were looking for a car to steal and they drove around awhile and finally the driver asked the girl, Hon, do you think there are any cars we can get at Webb City? She answered in the affirmative and they struck out across another country road and finally we came to the residential area of Webb City. The man who wasn’t driving got out twice there, but apparently was unable to get a machine and finally we went to Oronogo. The driver said, Hon, we know where there’s a Buick here, don’t we? They seemed to know where they were going, but when they stopped, I saw a Chevrolet coach in front of a house. Neither of the men got out and pretty soon they continued driving. While in Oronogo the men kept talking about a gun battle and returning fire and I asked, did they shoot at you? One of the men said, yes, some monkey in the bank took a shot at us. We left town and the next time I recognized my surroundings we were in a residential section of Joplin the Roanoke district, I believe. There was a party going on at one house and the man who wasn’t driving got out and tried to get into five cars, which he classed as sorry because he couldn’t start them. He opened a LaSalle sedan on one corner, but he couldn’t find the switch. After that, he tried several more machines, but the girl claimed she saw a woman watching him out of a window and advised the driver to scram before police appeared. We returned to Oronogo and as we drove up the main street, one of the men said, There’s the bank all lit up. The men seemed to have a mania for V-8 Fords and I believe they were trying to steal the other cars just to get batteries for their machine. The driver returned to where the Chevrolet was parked, which had not been molested the first time and he stopped his machine and got out, but found it was locked. He disappeared a short time. When he came back he said he had located a T-model Ford in a garage. Taking the Tommy Gun and a pair of pliers, he went away again and was gone about 15 minutes. When he returned, he had a old battery, which was a sorry looking thing. He set it on the running board and started off. It fell off once and we went back after it. After driving several miles, we stopped and I held the light while the driver took the floorboards out of the car and prepared to put in the stolen battery. The other fellow stood behind me and the girl stayed in the car. I helped with the pliers after he got the battery placed. I then took the light and walked around behind the machine, with the second man, hoping to get a look at the license tags, but they were so mud-spashed I saw only the first three numerals. They were 406___. I had opened a package of cigarettes when I got into the car and after smoking theirs, my companions began to mooch mine. The girl who was as profane as her companions, simply ate fags. The driver didn’t smoke. After throwing the old battery away, we turned the car around and drove about 6 or 7 miles past some intersection. The driver then said, Did you see that intersection? and at an affirmative answer, he continued We’re going to dump you here. You walk to that intersection, turn right and you’ll come to a filling station and tourist camp. You can get a telephone there. They let me out at 12:30. I looked at my watch, but when I asked for my gun, the driver refused and said You’re lucky as it is. I walked about 8 miles, but it seemed like a hundred before I got to the camp. There I called Joplin police and they sent a car after me. While I was talking with the tourist camp owner and his wife, they told me my former companions had held up the Bank of Oronogo recently. During our drive, I noticed they also avoided Ash Grove, Stockton and Lamar, and the driver once said about Ash Grove, I had plenty of trouble there once. At Joplin I called Desk Sergeant, Henry Gardner and talked to Ruel Wommack, assistant Chief of Police here. Chief Wommack, Chief of Detectives Al Sampey and my wife drove to Joplin after me. I had arrived in Joplin about 2 o’clock. The driver, who talked the most, seemed to be a foreigner of some sort. He was swarthy and appeared to be about 26 years old. He wore a tan hat and a dark suit. He weighed about 140 pounds. The other man was stocky built and seemed younger. He weighed about 160 pounds and was wearing a dark overcoat and suit. He also had on a dark hat. The little bit he talked about, was the Tommy gun of which he was quite proud. He said he had stolen it in Ohio. He also asked me about the speed of the police cars and whether the police and sheriff had machine guns in their arsenals. What I told them didn’t help a bit. |
