Butterfield Bank Robbery

A few weeks ago, I remarked that Barry County, Missouri, experienced five bank robberies within the space of two years (actually 25 months) from the late 1910s to the early 1920s. I've written about all five of those bank robberies on this blog. However, I later discovered that there were actually six bank robberies in Barry County during the designated time period. The one that I initially overlooked was the robbery of the Farmer's Bank of Butterfield. Occurring in February 1921, it was third in chronological order of the six bank robberies.
About 1:00 or 1:30 in the afternoon of February 4, a lone bandit entered the Farmer's Bank and flourished a revolver, backing cashier Cass Jeffries and his 17-year-old daughter, Allene, against a wall with their hands up. The local railway station agent walked past the bank during the holdup, and Allene waved at him and pointed to the robber. Taking the cue, the agent hurried to a nearby hardware store and asked the loan of a revolver because the bank was being held up. The store employees didn't believe him and refused to lend him a weapon.
Meanwhile, inside the bank, the bandit ordered Cashier Jeffries to open the money tills, and Jeffries replied that he couldn't do so with his hands in the air. The robber told him he could lower one hand as long as he kept the other one up. Jeffries then lowered one of his hands and opened up the tills. The bandit began gathering up all the currency and silver he could lay his hands on and stuffing it in his pockets. When there was just some small change left, the cashier asked the bandit the leave the rest of the money so that he could use it to finish the day's business, and the robber complied with the request. He then ordered Jeffries and his daughter into the vault, slammed the door, and made his getaway.
However, he had neglected to lock the vault, and the two captives quickly made their escape and gave an alarm. Jeffries said that, even though the robber had his face covered, he recognized him as Homer Bayless, a young man who lived south of Butterfield in the Antioch neighborhood. A posse quickly organized and was soon on the trail of the bandit. The lawmen followed the fugitive to some woods at the edge of Butterfield and found that he had made his getaway in a hack he'd left hidden there.
The robber made his way to Cassville, where, it was later discovered, he used some of the ill-gotten loot to get a haircut and to pay off a debt. He then started toward Exeter and was overtaken and arrested on the road by three lawmen who had been on his trail since the robbery. The bandit proved to be Homer Bayless, just as the cashier had said. The son of well-known farmer A.P. Bayless, Homer was twenty-three years old, married, and had three little kids. He admitted that he'd planned to rob the Butterfield bank a couple of weeks earlier but had gotten cold feet. He said he robbed the bank because he was desperate for money to provide for his family. He said he owed money to the Exeter Bank and they were pressing him for payment. He was on his way there to pay the debt, he said, when he was arrested.
Later the same evening after his arrest, Bayless was released on bond put up by his father and other friends. According to the Cassville Republican, "the crime was a shock to the entire community for Homer was a young man well liked and he comes of one of the old and highly respected families."
When his case came up in Barry County Circuit Court in late March, Bayless pleaded guilty, was sentenced to fifteen years in the state penitentiary, and was promptly forwarded to the Jeff City facility. However, Governor Arthur Hyde commuted his sentence in the spring of 1924, and he was released after serving only slightly over three years of his assessed fifteen years. In 1930, Bayless was back living in Barry County with his wife and several more kids in addition to the three he had at the time of the Farmer's bank robbery. The family later moved to Idaho, where they lived at the time of the 1940 census. Homer's occupation was listed as a carpenter. He died in Idaho in 1982 at the age of 84, apparently having lived the life of a law-abiding citizen after his release from the Missouri State Prison.