On the night of March 6, 1932, shortly after ten p.m., four young men held up the City Hall Drug Store in Springfield. Described as "narcotic addicts" in a local newspaper the next day, the four locked the employees and customers in the prescription room and made off with $150 in cash and an estimated $25 worth of narcotics. The four holdup men entered the store at the same time, three from the Boonville Avenue entrance and the fourth from Central Street. Three employees and at least four customers were in the store at the time, and the armed men herded them into the prescription room and then began rifling the drawers. At least one of the bandits had apparently scouted out the place, because he knew exactly where the money till was located.
The next day, before any solid leads in the drug store case could be developed, four robbers, believed to be the same four men, robbed the Bank of Republic in western Greene County. Three of the holdup men entered the bank on the late afternoon of March 7 with guns drawn and forced two employees and two customers into a rear room. Two other customers were ordered to stand at the rear of the bank near the rear room. Two of the three robbers looted the cash drawer and safe of over $1,200 while the third stood guard. The fourth accomplice waited nearby in a getaway car. A large quantity of adhesive tape had been taken in the drug store robbery, and the fact that the bank victims were bound with the same type of adhesive tape and the fact the description of the bank robbers matched that of the drug store holdup men led investigators to conclude that the same gang had pulled off both capers. The bank robbers made their getaway in a black coach with a Missouri license.
No suspects were publicly identified until the last day of March, when a man attempted to cash a money order at an Omaha (Nebraska) store, and the storeowner suspected it had been stolen from the Bank of Republic. Two policemen happened to be in the store trying on clothes, and they attempted to arrest the suspect after the storeowner notified them of his suspicions. The suspect pulled a gun and was fatally wounded when he attempted to shoot his way to freedom. Based on ID found on the man after he was brought down, he was tentatively identified as C. E. Darling, a resident of Pittsburg, Kansas, who had served two penitentiary terms. A sidekick who was with Darling in the Omaha store made his escape.
Another suspect, identified as Virgil Harris, was captured in Lincoln, Nebraska, about a week later after he, like Darling, attempted to cash a money order suspected of being taken from the Republic bank. Also like Darling, Harris was an ex-con, having been sentenced to prison from Greene County in 1927 on a charge of robbery and grand larceny. Near the same time as Harris's arrest, Paul King was identified as the man who'd been with Darling at the time he was shot and killed. Like Darling, King was from eastern Kansas, and he was thought to be the third Republic bank robber. A man thought to be the fourth robber was also known to police, but his identity was not immediately revealed.
Also an ex-convict, King was captured in North Carolina on April 12, along with his wife and her brother, Everett Collins. King admitted to being one of the Republic robbers, but Collins denied any involvement in the crime. The first three suspected robbers were all in the their mid-twenties, but Collins was only about 19. King's wife was not suspected in the Republic robbery, but authorities wanted to question her.
A day or two after King's capture, Elmer Boydston, 28, was captured in Kansas City, He admitted his part in the Republic robbery, and was promptly brought back to Greene County. Collins continued to deny involvement in the crime, and authorities were inclined to believe him. Boydston, who had been a barber in Kansas City until recently, said he and the three other suspects robbed the drug store in Springfield on March 6, drove to Joplin, and then came back the next day and robbed the Republic bank. With his confession, officials considered the case solved.
About the first of June 1932, Harris was convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to 50 years in prison. King and Boydston, both of whom had admitted their involvement in the crime, testified against the defendant. In return for their cooperation, King received only a 12-year sentence, and Boydston got 15 years. The Missouri Supreme Court later ordered a new trial in the Harris case. At his new trial in early 1934, Harris was again convicted, but this time he, too, received only a 12-year sentence.
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