Ash Grove Bank Robbery

I've seen it suggested a couple of different times on the Internet and elsewhere that Bonnie and Clyde either were involved or very well might have been involved in the robbery of the Ash Grove (MO) bank on January 12, 1933. While it's true that the Ash Grove bank was robbed on that date, it is virtually certain that Bonnie and Clyde had nothing to do with the caper.

Around noon on January 12, two unmasked men entered the Bank of Ash Grove, and one of them asked for change for a $5 bill. As the cashier turned to make the change, both bandits drew guns and ordered the cashier, J. H. Perryman, and his assistant, Nora Anglum, to throw up their hands. One man stood guard over the two bank officials while the other one scooped up all the cash he could find. The latter bandit then forced Perryman, at the point of a gun, to open the safe, and he cleaned it out, too. 

While Perryman was opening the safe, a customer, Perry Titus, started into the bank and, seeing what he thought were two other customers ahead of him in line, turned around and started back out. However, a third bandit, who had been keeping a watch from a getaway car, ordered him back into the bank and then followed him in. Announcing that he was Pretty Boy Floyd, this third robber seemed to be in charge. He tried to get the cashiers to come up with more money, but when they swore there wasn't any more, he told his sidekicks it was time to leave. 

Making off with about $3,000, the bandits dashed to the waiting getaway car and sped out of town to the south and then west, closely pursued by a posse of three citizens, who briefly exchanged gunfire with the robbers. The pursuers finally lost track of the bandits a few miles north of Mount Vernon. 

Several men were arrested for questioning in the immediate aftermath of the Ash Grove heist, but none of the first ones picked up were held very long. 

Bonnie and Clyde were never serious suspects in the crime, but their kidnapping of Springfield motorcycle cop Tom Persell later in January led indirectly to their name being falsely associated with the crime, because after Persell was released unharmed near Joplin, he came back to Springfield and told of his adventures with the notorious Barrow gang. One of the things he said was that the driver (later identified as Clyde Barrow) mentioned something about Ash Grove during the gang's pell-mell flight along the backroads from Springfield to Joplin. This was the first intimation that Bonnie and Clyde might have been involved in the Ash Grove robbery, and apparently a few historians and would-be historians have picked up on Persell's suggestion and run with it. 

The first serious suspect arrested for the Ash Grove holdup was Jack Allen (aka Paul Fitzgerald) who was nabbed in Oklahoma about the same time Bonnie and Clyde were taking Persell for his unsolicited ride. Allen was brought back to Springfield, where he was known to local law enforcement, and lodged in jail.

In mid-March, Allen and several other prisoners broke out of the Greene County Jail and stole an automobile to make their getaway in. He was recaptured a week later after a gun battle near Harrison, Arkansas. Charged with grand larceny, based on the theft of the car, he was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

A second suspect in the Ash Grove bank robbery, Roland "Screwdriver" Haley, was identified in early April. At the time he was being held in a Palestine, Texas, jail on a burglary and larceny charge. Two or three weeks later, he broke out of jail but, like Allen, was soon recaptured after a shootout. Brought back to Missouri in late May, he went on trial in early June for the Ash Grove robbery, was convicted, and was sentenced to 25 years in the pen. After his conviction, he admitted that he was the man who, during the Ash Grove robbery, had identified himself as Pretty Boy Floyd. 

As far as I know, no one else was ever charged in the Ash Grove bank robbery. So, the identity of the third bandit remains unknown, but one thing's pretty clear: it wasn't Clyde Barrow. It's almost equally certain that it wasn't Pretty Boy Floyd either.