About 1:30 in the afternoon of July 26, 1926, two young men in a 1926 Ford touring car stopped in front of the Crisp Prairie Bank of Dadeville (MO) after making several passes up and down the street in front of the bank. The taller of the two men got out of the vehicle and entered the bank. In the bank at the time were longtime banker Charley Landers, one customer, and the customer's small son. Brandishing a revolver, the tall bandit ordered all three of them into the vault.
Instead of entering the vault as ordered, Landers started toward the door of a small office at the back of the bank, and the would-be robber shot him twice in the back, once before he entered the little room and again after he'd passed through the door. Landers staggered through the room and out a rear door, where he fell to the ground.
The bandit, with the revolver still in his hand, backed out of the bank without taking any money. He walked to the waiting Ford and got in, and the vehicle headed east out of town.
Taken to a hospital in Springfield, Landers lived long enough to give a description of the man who shot him, but he died later that same evening. A large reward was offered for the apprehension of the man who killed Landers, and at least four separate men were arrested on suspicion over the next few months, but each was soon released for lack of evidence and the inability of Dadeville townspeople to identify them.
Another man was arrested on suspicion two or three years later, but he also was released after he was brought to Dadeville and people who had seen Landers's killer said he was not the man. Interest in the crime gradually waned after that, and, as far as I've been able to determine, no one was ever prosecuted for the murder of Charley Landers.
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