20 Famous Bank Robbers And The Truth Behind Their Legends

Public Enemy No. 1, as the Feds referred to Midwestern bank robber John Dillinger, was able to escape from jail in Crown Point, Indiana, by using a fake gun made out of a piece of washboard and colored black with shoe polish. The movie scene of him saying, “We’re after the bank’s money, not yours” never appears in any transcript of his trials. He was finally ambushed and shot to death by Feds outside of Chicago’s Biograph Theater after an informant named Anna Sage, who was actually wearing an orange skirt rather than the red dress of legend, helped lure him there.

Jesse James was a Confederate guerrilla who helped lead the James-Younger Gang, along with his older brother Frank. It’s widely believed that he committed the country’s first daylight bank robbery in Liberty, Missouri, in 1866, but there’s no evidence he was ever in Liberty. The earliest documented bank robbery by a member of the James-Younger Gang was in Gallatin, Missouri, three years later. Despite the folklore, Jesse never doled out any stolen money to poor farmers. The gang member Robert Ford shot him dead on April 3, 1882, to collect a reward the governor had offered for James’s capture.

Willie Sutton, a New York bank robber known as “Willie the Actor” because he often disguised himself as a postal worker, a police officer, or a guard and entered a vault before the bank opened, stole an estimated $2 million in three decades without shooting anyone. A subway passenger identified him in Brooklyn, and he was arrested on February 18, 1952. It’s said he told his captors he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is,” though in his autobiography, he claims a reporter made up the quote.

Butch Cassidy, whose real name was Robert LeRoy Parker, began robbing banks, starting in Telluride, Colorado, and rode across Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nevada with his Wild Bunch gang. He didn’t shoot anyone much, kept fresh horses on hand along escape routes, and usually scouted his victims before stealing their money. When Pinkerton detectives got too close to the Wild Bunch, Cassidy headed to Bolivia, and most historians say he died in a 1908 gunfight with soldiers there. Others claim Cassidy faked his death and went back home.

Ned Kelly, whose family had immigrated from Ireland, was constantly harassed by the police. Along with his gang, he committed two robberies, one in Victoria, Australia, and one in New South Wales. At a bank in Jerilderie, Kelly’s men locked up the police and destroyed the mortgages on the place. Kelly dictated a manifesto to one of his men. The famous suit of iron armor was not made until the final siege at Glenrowan. Kelly was captured there and was hanged in Melbourne.

In the early 1930s, Lester Gillis, better known as Baby Face Nelson, was part of John Dillinger’s gang that roamed the Midwest, robbing banks with a pair of modified Thompson submachine guns. He didn’t become Public Enemy No. 1 until both Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd had been put in the ground. After killing FBI Special Agents Herman Hollis and Samuel Cowley in the Battle of Barrington, Illinois, Nelson died from his own wounds later that night, having killed more federal agents over his career than any other criminal of the era.

Influenced by his own traumatic experiences as an inmate of Texas prison camps, Clyde Barrow led the gang across Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri with his companion Bonnie Parker. He robbed small country banks, rural gas stations, and grocery stores. Instead of the big city raids, such as those pulled off by John Dillinger, Barrow preferred the back roads and V8 Fords for speed. According to FBI records, Bonnie drove the getaway car but never entered a bank armed or fired a shot. It took over 100 bullets from lawmen before they brought down Bonnie and Clyde.

Oklahoma bank robber Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd took to crime when his job on oil fields dried up. He committed dozens of bank robberies throughout Oklahoma and Ohio, and locals would regularly hide him from the police. Oklahoma folklore has him burning mortgages inside bank vaults so that farmers wouldn’t lose their land to foreclosure, but bank records from that time have no record of such an event. After Dillinger’s death, Floyd became the FBI’s new Public Enemy No. 1 until he was killed by federal agents in an Ohio cornfield.

Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as the “Sundance Kid,” got his moniker from his stint in the jail at Sundance, Wyo., and he was fellow outlaw Butch Cassidy’s most prominent associate and primary gunman in Cassidy’s gang, the Wild Bunch. Dime novels described him as a bloodthirsty murderer, but there’s no evidence that he ever killed someone while in the American West. He fled to Argentina and then Bolivia with a woman named Etta Place, who had nothing to do with the bank robberies. He and Cassidy are generally believed to have been shot and killed in 1908 in a shootout with Bolivian soldiers.

Alvin Karpis, a Canadian who served time in a Kansas prison with Fred Barker, directed many of the robberies that were attributed to the Barker-Karpis Gang, a loose confederation that operated mostly in the Middle West and the South. Fred Barker’s mother, Ma Barker, was little more than a cook and housekeeper for the group. When agents finally nabbed Karpis in New Orleans, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover flew to the city to take credit for the bust, but other agents say he waited until Karpis had been disarmed. Karpis spent 26 years in Alcatraz, longer than any other prisoner.

George Kelly, better known as Machine Gun Kelly, had his wife, Kathryn, to thank for persuading him to take up bank robbery in Texas and Mississippi by buying him a Thompson submachine gun. Kelly would brandish the weapon at the teller while Kathryn passed out spent shell casings to onlookers as mementos. But FBI records show Kelly never actually shot anyone. After the kidnapping of an oil tycoon, he found himself trapped in Memphis and surrendered without firing a single shot. It is said that his surrender cry of “Don’t shoot, G-Men” helped popularize the FBI’s enduring nickname, G-Men.

Herman Baron Lamm, a former officer of the Prussian Army, used military-style planning for bank robberies, a method later known as the Lamm Technique. His Midwest gang took over $1 million using floor plans, trial runs, and precise timing for their getaway routes. After one robbery in Clinton, Indiana, Lamm was pursued across several states before shooting himself near Sidell, Illinois. Lamm never met Dillinger, but two of his surviving men taught Dillinger his technique in prison.

Gerald Chapman called himself “Count Lonergan” and cased targets in tailored suits while posing as a wealthy British investor. In 1921, he masterminded a record $2.4 million robbery of a U.S. Mail truck in Manhattan, not a bank. After his escape from a federal prison in Atlanta, he went on to rob banks in Connecticut and Indiana. Newspapers and police dubbed Chapman “Public Enemy Number One,” years before the FBI did. He was hanged in Connecticut.

Paul Jaworski led his Detroit Flathead Gang across Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio, and he and his gang buried dynamite beneath a road near Pittsburgh. They set off the dynamite when a truck containing payroll money collected by a local bank drove over it. The armored truck was destroyed, and the men guarding it were injured. Jaworski escaped with more than $100,000. It was reportedly the first time that an armored truck was bombed in America. After being involved in a shootout in Detroit, he was captured and later executed in Pennsylvania.

After being shortchanged by the government over back wages, a former deputy U.S. marshal named Bob Dalton went on the run and formed the Dalton Gang. He traveled across Kansas and Indian Territory trying to make up for lost time compared to his legendary cousins, the James brothers. His most daring crime attempt included trying to rob two banks simultaneously in Coffeyville, Kansas. A bank official bought some time by telling Dalton and his men that the vault wasn’t open yet because it was time-locked. That gave townspeople the chance to arm themselves and besiege the buildings. Over the next 12 minutes, Dalton and three of his men were killed. Four town residents also died, and the gang left with no money.

Cole Younger, a former Confederate officer turned outlaw following the murder of his father, was a key member of the James-Younger Gang. At the time of their attempted bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, Cole Younger was shot 11 times by local citizens. While the James brothers had the opportunity to escape without Younger and his other injured gang members, Cole Younger chose to stay with his brother, Jim. Some accounts claim the gang split after a betrayal, but that loyalty, not any betrayal, was the real reason the gang split apart. After surviving his wounds, Cole Younger spent 25 years behind bars before finally getting paroled.

Frank James, Jesse’s older brother and another leader of the James-Younger Gang, had recited Shakespeare and Dickens around outlaw campfires. He participated in some of the most notorious robberies, including the ill-fated Northfield raid that brought the gang down. He surrendered to the governor of Missouri months after Jesse was shot. He was acquitted by sympathetic Southern juries of all charges of murder and robbery and spent not one day in jail. He worked as a shoe salesman until he died.

It was Harry Pierpont, a fellow convict, who introduced Dillinger to the bank-robbing techniques of the late Herman Lamm while they were both serving time in Indiana State Prison. After escaping himself, Pierpont helped Dillinger break out of the Lima, Ohio, jail, gunning down the local sheriff along the way. Both the FBI and the few remaining Dillinger Gang members have testified that it was Pierpont, not Dillinger, who selected their targets and directed the gunfire for what newspapers called the Dillinger Gang. He was killed in the Ohio electric chair.

Elmer McCurdy, an incompetent bank and train robber from Oklahoma, melted the vault door and the coins inside it because he used too much nitroglycerin to blow the safe. Lawmen shot and killed him, and no one claimed the body. An undertaker preserved the corpse in arsenic and displayed it, then sold it off to carnivals and haunted houses for the next 65 years. In 1976, a film crew shooting in a funhouse broke the “mannequin’s” arm and discovered real bone. The coroner agreed that this was indeed Elmer McCurdy, and he was properly laid to rest in Oklahoma.

Henry Starr, a Cherokee outlaw who took up robbing after a few brushes with federal lawmen, began robbing banks from horseback in the 1890s and is believed to be the first bank robber to have used a car for a getaway. After surviving being shot by a local teenager in a failed double robbery in Stroud, Oklahoma, he served his time in prison and starred as himself in a silent film reenacting the raid. Starr was killed during a robbery in Harrison, Arkansas. On his deathbed, Starr reportedly claimed to have robbed 21 banks, a number that matches old police files.

This content was created with the help of AI.