Gainesville Bank Robbery

On Tuesday afternoon, August 25, 1931, three men held up the Bank of Gainesville (MO). One man stayed outside in the getaway car while two others entered the bank. Neither was masked, but one wore dark glasses while the other had on a fake mustache. One of the bandits held the cashier and two other people at gunpoint while the second man rifled the tills and the vault for all the loot he could find, which amounted to about $4,000 in cash and over $20,000 in non-negotiable securities. Before making their getaway, the robbers, even though they knew the vault could be unlocked from the inside, forced the cashier and the two bystanders into the vault and told them to stay there for a few minutes. 

The getaway car, a new brown Ford coupe, roared west out of town toward Theodosia. A hastily formed posse gave chase in several different vehicles, but the bandits kept throwing out roofing nails causing the pursuers to puncture their tires. The final pursuit car was forced to call off the chase late in the afternoon near Forsyth after it, too, suffered punctured tires. It was learned at Forsyth (or that vicinity) that another car, containing two women, had met up with the getaway car and aided in the escape.

Around September 1, Charles Quick, a former resident of Protem, was arrested in Seminole, Oklahoma, as a suspect in the Gainesville heist. He was extradited to Missouri.

On the evening of September 2, Oliver Hart of near Protem, his wife, Burr Davidson of Kissee Mills, and his wife were also arrested in connection with the Gainesville bank robbery. Charges against the two women were later dismissed, and the case against Charles Quick was also not pursued, apparently because he'd been mistakenly identified as a participant in the crime when, in fact, it was one or two of his brothers who were allegedly involved. 

Hart and Davidson's joint trial at Gainesville in May 1932 on charges of bank robbery ended in a hung jury, and they were released pending another trial.

In June of 1932, just a month or so after his trial had ended, Hart was shot and killed on the streets of Protem by Edgar Blankenship, a former deputy sheriff of Taney County and a former friend of Hart. The two men had recently had a falling out, though, and Blankenship came to Protem with a rifle about noon on the fateful day and started firing as soon as he saw Hart. Blankenship, as a Taney County deputy, had aided in Hart's arrest, and this was apparently at least partly the source of the dispute between the two men. Hart had reportedly threatened Blankenship, telling him he was a dead man. At any rate, the ex-deputy was acquitted of murder in the Hart killing.

Meanwhile, two Quick brothers, Joe and George, were arrested in Joplin in May of 1933 on charges of robbing the Gainesville bank. They were brought back to Ozark County, but I have not traced what happened to them after that.