Another Southwest City Bank Robbery

   I wrote about the 1894 robbery of the Southwest City Bank by Bill Doolin and his gang in my book Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents and also had an article published about the event in Wild West Magazine, but the little town in the extreme southwest corner of Missouri has had at least two other bank robberies in its history.
   On December 16, 1932, about two o'clock in the afternoon, three heavily armed men came into the Cornerstone Bank in Southwest City, forced the cashier and his assistant into the vault, and locked it. The robbers, one of whom wore dark glasses while the other two were unmasked, then looted the tills of slightly over $600 before making their escape in a Desoto sedan. They were last seen heading west toward Grove, Oklahoma, but a pursuing posse lost track of the bandits and called off the chase.
   A week or so later, Everett Bailey of Joplin was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Southwest City holdup, and on December 26, he gave a written confession implicating himself and four other men in the crime. The other four were George Meyers, former manager and operator of the telephone exchange at Noel; Henry Stange, Joplin building contractor; 24-year-old Glen Rowe of Joplin; and Budge Duvall, also of Joplin. The next day, Meyers was arrested and lodged in jail at Pineville, where Bailey was already cooling his heels. Stange was taken into custody the same day and placed in the Newton County Jail at Neosho. Rowe and Duvall were captured near Riverton, Kansas, on December 28 and taken to the Joplin City Jail. Frank Rowe, Glen's father, was also arrested on suspicion. Five of the suspects signed confessions, with only Stange refusing to do so. According to the various confessions, Bailey and Duvall staged the actual robbery, while Glen Rowe waited in the getaway car. Meyers's home was used a staging point for the robbery, and the stick-up men returned there after the robbery. They ditched the bandit vehicle at the Meyers place and were driven to Joplin by Meyers. Stange and the elder Rowe allegedly helped plan the caper.
   On December 29, the suspects appeared in McDonald County Court, where the guilty pleas of Glen Rowe, Duvall, Meyers, and Bailey were accepted. Duvall, Rowe, and Meyers were sentenced to 25 years in the state pen, while Bailey, as the first to confess and the one who implicated the rest of the gang, got only 20 years. Stange pleaded not guilty and demanded a trial. Either Frank Rowe never confessed to begin with, as was previously reported, or else he recanted his confession, because he also pleaded not guilty and sought a trial. However, I can find no later information about his involvement in the crime or about a subsequent trial; so, I think the case against him must have been dropped, since he did not participate in or help plan the heist but only had knowledge of it.
   At his trial in early May 1933, Henry Stange was found guilty of being an accessory before the fact to the robbery, and he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
   Next week, I might write about the third Southwest City bank robbery.