Note: Most all of the citizens of Texas (in 1947) remember the sensational bank robbery at Cisco on December 23, 1927. Now, these many years later, the details of that exciting affair are shared by Presley Bryant in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Frontier Times takes the liberty to reproduce the story. – December 1947 – Frontier Times Magazine
Cisco, Dec. 22. – It was 20 years ago, a Friday afternoon, Dec. 23, 1927. It was a fair, cool day and people were cheerful and alert as they scurried about downtown, buying last-minute Christmas gifts and delicacies for the dinners they were to enjoy in their quiet homes on Sunday.
A false-whiskered Santa Claus was striding along the west side of Avenue D, the main business street and he caught the eye of 6-year-old Frances Blasingame, who was with her mother on the east side of the thoroughfare, across the street from the First National Bank. The child insisted that she wanted to talk to the red-coated mummer, and tugged at her mother’s hand. La Verne Comer, accompanied by a schoolmate, Emma May Robinson, 10, stepped into the restaurant, operated by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Corner, and announced that she was going to the bank to draw money from her account to buy some presents.
Woodrow Wilson Harris, 14, had driven his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Harris, from their home in Rising Star, to Cisco, and was eight or nine blocks down the street in the family’s sedan. Marion Cason, a Harvard student home on vacation, was chatting in the latter’s office with Alex Spears, cashier of the bank.
Back of the bank, in a building then leased by the government and used as a post office, W. B. Caldwell was busy, near an alley door, with his job of dispatching mail. Oscar Cliett, manager of the Radford Grocery Company, stepped into the bank to make a Christmas deposit for the young son of a friend, and drew a $5 bill from his pocketbook.
The Santa Claus walked into the bank, with two or three other men close beside him. Cliett walked to the cage, facing the door, where Jewell Poe, assistant cashier, was acting as teller, and laid the $5 bill on the counter. A moment later he was shoved aside by a man with a gun. The man leveled the pistol at Poe and ordered, “get ’em up”, while another man stood at the door, he too had a gun. There was a shifty third man who covered Poe, as the first went to the back of the bank, where two bookkeepers were working. The Santa Claus walked into Spears’ office.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Blasingame and little Frances had crossed the street and entered the bank, so had La Verne and Emma May. One of the bandits began herding the customers into the bookkeepers’ room, but Mrs. Blasingame refused to be hustled along. She broke out of the side door of the bank, into the alley where a large sedan was parked, headed toward the street, and across a vacant lot to the police station.
Breathless, she told G. E. (Bit) Bedford, 61, police chief, what she had seen. Bedford grabbed a shotgun. Swiftly the scene degenerated into confusion and violence. The Santa Claus marched Poe through Spears’ office and forced him to open the vault, while another of the robbers lined up Spears, Olson and Cliett against a wall. The Santa Claus produced a bag. Into it he stuffed $12,400 in currency and $150,000 in non-negotiable bonds. As he left the vault, a shot was fired. In a moment a full-blown battle was under way, as the bandits forced the people in the bank out of the back door and into the alley, using them as a screen, as they fired at Bedford, blazing away with his buckshot-loaded gun at the head of the alley and at George Carmichael, a 60-year old policeman, who was coming up from the rear.
The bandits were using the two little girls as their immediate screen. In the post office, Caldwell, a crack shot, reached for his Army style .45 Colt. R. L. Day, a cafe man, rushed up with a shotgun, but he could not release the safety catch. Caldwell peeped out of the loading platform door and fired a steel jacket bullet at the gasoline tank of the car, into which the bandits were forcing the two girls. The bullet ricocheted. Then firing at intervals when the people swirling about the car offered him a few inches of clearance, he put three bullets into a rear tire. One of the bandits was hit and went down. The others shoved him into the car. Bedford and Carmichael also went down. The car roared, but of the alley and turned right, racing toward the south end of town.
The bandits were Henry Helms, Louis E. Davis, Robert M. Hill and Marshall Ratliff. Ratliff wore the Santa Claus suit. They told La Verne and Emma May they, were going to take them along. They forced Emma May into the back seat with Ratliff. La Verne was in the front seat with Helms and Hill. Davis, severely wounded, was on the floor of the rear compartment.
As the car left the alley, one of the bandits shot back at Bedford. So fast was the sequence of events that the bullet-pierced tire had not yet gone flat. A posse instantly formed and gave chase, shooting. The robbers shot back, A bullet went through the robbers’ car, passing between La Verne’s arm and body.
The youth from Rising Star was driving toward town, about eight blocks from the bank, when he first saw the robber’s car. They had stopped it and as he drew close, Helms and Ratliff stepped into the street. Helms had two pistols, Ratliff a submachinegun. Woodrow Harris stopped. “Get out and make it darn quick,” Ratliff ordered. Mr. and Mrs. Harris alighted and went into a house nearby, but Woodrow stayed in the seat. He turned off the ignition and put the keys in his pocket.
The robbers began unloading their car. They transferred Davis and their gear to Harris’ car and Ratliff jerked Woodrow out of his seat and ordered him to stand with the two girls, who were then in the street. The posse men were rapidly over-hauling the robbers and when they discovered they could not start the Harris car, they dashed back to, their original getaway car, abandoning Davis and the bag with the bank’s currency and bonds. They forced the two girl hostages into their car. While this situation was developing, Woodrow took to his heels, under fire from both the robbers and the posse men, who thought he was one of the fugitives. He hid behind a barn, two blocks east of the scene, but later returned to his car and drove Davis to a Cisco hospital.
Despite the flat tire, which caused the big car to yaw badly, the robbers drove off at high speed to the Belt Line Road at the edge of town. They cut through a thicket, drove over a fence and stopped. They got out and ran, leaving the two girls, who were unharmed, to be found five minutes later by the pursuers.
Years later Hill signed an affidavit that but for Woodrow Harris, they would have escaped, but it was four days before Ratliff was shot down near South Bend after another stolen car had been halted in a road block; and a week before Helms and Hill, wounded and delirious, wandered into Graham and surrendered.
Of the bandit quartet, only Hill survived. He was sentenced at Eastland to 99 years in the penitentiary, checked in at Huntsville June 19, 1928, and released on a six-month reprieve June 30, 1942. In 1944 it was extended permanently.
Photos: Portal of Texas History.
This and many other stories are available at the Brownwood Public Library – Genealogy & Local History Branch at 213 S. Broadway. Volunteers from the Pecan Valley Genealogical Society are there to assist you in your family or local history research.
Clay Riley is a local historian and retired Aerospace Engineer that has been involved in the Historical and Genealogical Community of Brown County for over 20 years.
Should you have a comment, or a question that he may be able to answer in future columns, he can be reached at; pvgsbwd@gmail.com.
