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Omaha railroad history includes two great train robberies

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They were the great train robberies of Omaha and Council Bluffs.

Either heist would make for a great movie. One had South Omaha schoolchildren finding the robbers’ roost and the school’s janitors the stash. The other was the biggest mail-train robbery in the United States at the time.

It was a Saturday night in May 1909. The Union Pacific’s Overland Limited passenger train, which had a mail car, was eastbound to the old Union Station. The railroad was using its relatively new Lane Cut-Off, which Interstate 80 now follows between I-480 and I-680.

As the train was approaching 42nd Street in the still-existing deep cut, five bandits stopped it. Two went to the engine cab to control the fireman and engineer and others entered the mail car. When a mail clerk handed one of them a mail sack, which contained nothing of value, the bandit tossed it aside and said, “Hell, I don’t want that sack. Where’s the Reno sack?”

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How did he know among the seven pouches taken by his gang that some had originated in Reno, Nevada? None were destined for Omaha. There were three Omaha and Ogden, Utah, pouches destined for New York City, Washington and Chicago. The two Reno pouches were for Chicago and New York. There were two Pocatello and Portland pouches for Chicago and that city’s northwest terminal.

Most of the passengers were unaware of the robbery. The conductor had gone toward the engine as soon as the train stopped, but “You’ve come far enough and better go back,’’ shouted one of the bandits. He fired a warning shot in the direction of the conductor, who retreated. The conductor then maintained calm by instructing the brakeman and porters that if asked, they were to tell the passengers that the train was tied up by a switch engine.

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John P. Maurer, however, was in the observation car and was wise to the unexpected stop. Having $486 on him, he jumped off the train and hid in the weeds until daylight and the sheriff took him into town.

Several days later, Brown Park School students John Krolik and John Swoboda and 19-year-old Frank Kudrna separately found revolvers in a gulch near the school at 19th and U streets. Police found more evidence. They hid into the night and captured three of the five suspects when they returned to their lair.

The next afternoon in the school attic, janitors John Vavra and A.R. Bentz found six large and two small mail sacks and other items stolen in the robbery. Since the haul had been less than $1,000, the bandits likely needed a place to stash the evidence.

Those convicted of the robbery were Frank Grigware, Donald W. Woods, Fred Torgensen, Lawrence F. Golden and Bill Matthews. In 2014, the Spokane Spokesman-Review wrote that the five man all had ties to Spokane. They moved as a group to Hot Springs, Arkansas; Memphis; and Kansas City. Golden, Torgensen and Woods often disappeared, and their absences coincided with train robberies. Their last move together was to Omaha just weeks before the train robbery.

Golden was four years into a life sentence when he was exonerated. President Wilson pardoned him. Grigwar escaped from federal prison in Leavenworth in 1910 in a jail break that used a hijacked supply train. He avoided capture until 1934, when he was arrested in Alberta for poaching while using the alias of Jim Fahey. The FBI’s new international fingerprint exchange turned up a match. But he never was extradited, and he became a school board chairman and a small-town mayor before his death in 1977 at 91.

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As for the Brown Park preteen sleuths, John Krolik, John Swoboda, Harry Whitaker, John Patach and Anton Kubat (the last three had found an electric flash lantern tied to the crime) received rewards of $2,000 apiece. Krolik also was paid $131 to travel to Boise to assist in the identification of Matthews.

Eleven years after the Union Pacific robbery, four men between 17 and 23 from Council Bluffs (and five persons who were accused of being accessories) engaged in a mail-car heist that eventually was reported as $3.5 million.

At 6 p.m. Nov. 13, 1920, train number eight moved eastward between the Union Pacific Transfer and the Burlington Station six blocks away. As the train moved slowly through the transfer, three men in work clothes climbed on. Mearl Phillips, 20, a mail piler for the Burlington, knew the engineer, Alonzo Quinby of Creston, Iowa, and entered the cab to start a diversion conversation. Fred Poffenberger, 19, and Orville Phillips, 19, and Mearl’s brother, entered a storage mail car that had 130 sacks. Behind that car was one occupied by mail clerks.

The getaway driver, in a stolen car, was Keith Collins, 23. Poffenberger and the younger Phillips tossed out sacks, which Collins gathered up. The total reached 10 by the time the train reached the station and Collins picked up the two men. But he missed one of the sacks, which railyard workers spotted. That’s how the robbery was discovered as the train continued toward Chicago.

That night, the loot of securities (possibly including $500,000 in easily negotiable Liberty bonds) and $50,000 in 50 packages of $10 bills was divvied up. Collins kept five sacks and $25,000. The remaining four sacks and the other $25,000 went to the other three men. The Phillips brothers’ sacks were said to contain more than $432,000 in canceled securities. No one but Collins knew what his sacks held.

They were skittish. They hoped for a few hundred dollars and hit a jackpot. They were desperate to hide the loot. A pack of $20s was dug up in a chicken yard. A handful of diamonds was found in a corner of an old kitchen because the men didn’t recognize their value. Money was stashed in an old churn covered over with hog’s lard, a secret hiding place under a stairway and in the manger of an old stable.

The engineer had a hunch Mearl Phillips had diverted his attention for a reason and when the train reached Creston, Quinby told a Burlington special agent, “You get Mearl Phillips. He knows all about that robbery.”

As most of the very amateurish gang was ratting out each other, Collins left town and a national manhunt began. He turned up at the home of an uncle near Westville, Oklahoma, two weeks after the robbery. His $25,000 was in a frying pan in his Council Bluffs home.

Collins went to federal prison on a 25-year sentence. Poffenberger got 20 years, Orville Phillips 13. Eventually all but $2,565 of the $50,000 was recovered. None of the stolen securities turned up and many likely were burned.

As for the Liberty bonds, lore has it that they were thrown off the old Douglas Street bridge into the Missouri River.

12 Nebraska outlaws and their stories

James Butler Hickok (later Wild Bill)

James Butler Hickok was working as a stock tender at a stage station in Rock Creek, Nebraska, in 1861, according to history.com. Outlaw David McCanles teased Hickok about his girlish features, and Hickok in response courted the mistress of McCanles. 

In July 1861, an angry McCanles, his young son and two friends came to the Rock Creek station. McCanles "threatened to drag 'Duck Bill' outside and give him a thrashing. Demonstrating remarkable coolness for a 24-year-old who had never been involved in a gunfight, Hickok replied, 'There will be one less son-of-a-bitch when you try that'," the history.com article says.

McCanles was killed, and his two friends died of their wounds later. Hickok later came to be known as Wild Bill.

LegendsofAmerica.com

Barker gang

The notorious Ma Barker gang pulled one of their biggest jobs in Nebraska. From a column in the Journal Star from Nebraska historian Jim McKee: On April 4, 1933, Fred Barker, Arthur “Doc” Barker, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, Earl Christman, Jesse Doyle, Volney Davis, Frank “Jelly” Nash and Eddie Green pulled up to the east side of the Fairbury bank. A black Buick was driven by Jesse Doyle, and a dark-colored Chevrolet was piloted by Fred Barker.

Two of the gang members, armed with machine guns, remained outside as lookouts, riddled the exterior with a volley of gunfire and stopped all traffic. Inside the bank, Frank Nelson was instructed to open the vault, while the other 16 employees were ordered to lie down on the floor.

The robbers took $25,700 in cash and $125,700 in bonds, and more machine gunshots were fired from inside the bank as the gang ran out using bank employees Olive Hallek and Keith Sexton as hostages/shields. As they sped away, the robbers threw roofing nails in their wake to ensure that no one could follow without multiple flat tires.

Courtesy photo

Maurice "Blondie" Denning

Maurice "Blondie" Denning, once an Iowa farmer, found his way onto the wrong side of the law at age 23. While serving a bootlegging sentence, he hooked up with several other men to form a gang.

After numerous robberies across the Great Plains in 1934, the gang hid out in the nearly deserted town of Kinney, Nebraska, in Gage County. Sheriff Thomas Dunn recruited a number of officials to raid the hideout, but Denning wasn't there during the raid.

Denning and fellow gang member Thomas Limerick arrived in Kinney around midnight in a car they had stolen hours earlier. Finding the area guarded by officers, they ignored the order to halt, speeding through a flurry of gunfire and into the night, eluding capture.

Their stolen car was found Dec. 4, 1934, in an abandoned barn near Odell. Bullet holes were visible in the gas tank and above the rear door. There was no sign of Denning or Limerick.

Reports came in over the next several days of possible sightings in Omaha and farther east in Iowa, but nothing was known of their whereabouts until a Jan. 5, 1935, robbery of a bank in Hudson, S.D.

Denning was never seen nor heard from again in Nebraska. On July 20, 1936, FBI Director John Edgar Hoover named Maurice Denning Public Enemy No. 1 after the death of Dillinger associate John "Red" Hamilton. Staying on the FBI's radar until the 1960s, Denning was never apprehended, making him the most successful public enemy.

Doc Middleton

Doc Middleton went by a number of names and worked throughout the Niobrara River valley of Nebraska in the late 1800s. According to docmiddleton.com, Middleton is reputed to have stolen 2,000 horses from ranchers and Sioux over two years. His gang was known as the "Ponyboys." 

"He was also a respectable businessman, a lawman and married three times.  Most people who knew him spoke kindly, saying that he had Robin Hood-like discretion when 'hoss-thieving,'" the website says.

Docmiddleton.com

Jesse James

Jesse James visited Nebraska repeatedly during his criminal career. Nebraskans who had a brush with the outlaw seemed to outnumber those who did not.

Some of the stories about James in Nebraska are verifiably true. It can be proved he wanted to buy land in south-central Nebraska. On March 2, 1882, James, using the name Thomas Howard, responded to an ad in the Lincoln Journal. James wrote the property owner, who lived in Lincoln, expressing interest in the 160 acres on the south edge of Franklin. James also indicated he would soon travel to Nebraska to inspect the land.

Historians say James wanted to go straight, settle down, help raise his children and become respectable. But he needed one more score, so he tried to gather a new gang of robbers. Among his recruits was Robert Ford, a 21-year-old bad guy wannabe.

Turns out the coward wanted the $10,000 on James’ head, so on April 3, 1882, he put a bullet in it when the outlaw turned to adjust a picture on the wall of his St. Joseph, Mo., home. James was also suspected of being involved in the Big Springs train robbery, but it was not proved.

Sam Bass

Sam Bass, who had been a horse racer, teamed up with Joel Collins to drive a small herd of longhorn cattle to Kansas for several owners, according to frontiertimes.com.

"After selling the herd and paying the hands, the drivers had $8,000 in their pockets, but instead of returning to Texas, where they owed for the cattle, they squandered the money in gambling in Ogallala, Nebraska, and in the Black Hills town of Deadwood, South Dakota."

Bass and Collins rounded up a gang to rob stagecoaches, holding up seven. The gang's biggest crime was the holdup of a passenger train in Big Springs, Nebraska, on Sept. 18, 1877. The gang got $60,000 in newly minted $20 gold pieces and $1,300 plus four gold watches from the passengers, frontiertimes.com said.

legendsofamerica.com

Charles Wesley Cox

Charles Wesley Cox was a free man for 25 years after the killing of 11-year-old Goldie Williams of Grand Island in 1912. He had lured Goldie away with a promise of new skates; she was found in an empty house two days after she disappeared.

Cox confessed to the Nebraska crime in 1937 in Colorado and confessed to assaulting two other young girls as well.

Journal Star archives

Flat Nose Curry

George Curry moved to Nebraska with his family when he was a child. At 15 he began cattle rustling. He earned his nickname after he was disfigured when a horse kicked him in the nose, according to Legends of America.

Curry joined Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, participating in several holdups. Curry was killed by Sheriff Jesse Tyler near Moab, Utah, in April 1900, according to history.net. He is buried in Chadron.

Courtesy photo

Thomas Limerick

Thomas Limerick, a onetime boxcar bandit, became a "public enemy" bank robber in the Gage County area in the 1930s. Limerick joined the Maurice Denning gang in 1934, and their spree of heists across the Great Plains began. 

The Denning-Limerick gang burglarized the Omaha and Council Bluffs area before joining the big leagues, plundering a National Guard armory on Aug. 23, 1934, "taking pistols, rifles and other equipment," according to researcher Brian J. Beerman.

Now well equipped for their task, the gang would go on to rob banks in Hawarden, Iowa, Dell Rapids, South Dakota, and Superior, Nebraska, their largest, during October and November 1934. Their total haul: $19,217. 

Limerick finally was arrested following a fight in a nightclub in St. Joseph, Mo., on May 25, 1935. He confessed to robbing banks but never named his associates. He was sentenced to life in prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, and was later transferred to Alcatraz. On May 23, 1938, he was killed trying to escape from Alcatraz.

Kid Wade

William Albert "Kid" Wade worked with the Doc Middleton gang of horse thieves, the Ponyboys, in the Niobrara River valley of Nebraska in the late 1800s.

He turned to crime at age 19. "Eager to prove himself to those around him, Kid sometimes  acted without conscience or morals," docmiddleton.com said. "Often exploiting those from whom he stole, he was quick to beg for his life when the tables were turned. Like many outlaws, death found him at a young age."

docmiddleton.com

Earl Keeling

Earl Keeling's record began in 1928 when he was committed to the state reformatory for five years for a burglary in Saline County. In late 1934, Keeling and one of his partners in crime, Francis Harper, were holed up in the ghost town of Kinney east of Wymore when lawmen converged. Both men were planning to marry their sweethearts the next day in Marysville, Kansas. They had just pulled off the Superior bank robbery of almost $20,000 the week before as part of the Denning gang.

Over a dinner of rabbit stew, the two men and four women in the house had no idea the law had finally caught up with them.

With his officers in place, Gage County Sheriff Thomas Dunn ordered the men to surrender themselves in the next 15 minutes or officers would storm the residence with guns and tear gas.

Dunn's deadline was near as Keeling and Harper finally exited the house. The Liberty Journal reported that the two men walked 50 feet from the house with their hands up before making a dash for a field across the road. The officers' guns began firing without hesitation.

Keeling was hit almost immediately, a bullet tearing through his back and exiting below his liver. The robber continued half a mile more before collapsing in a ditch. The Wymore Arbor State reported that Keeling was treated briefly on the scene before being taken by ambulance to Lutheran Hospital in Beatrice, where he died the next morning.

Journal Star archives

David McCanles

David McCanles is notorious for allegedly leading a gang of men who robbed banks and trains, rustled cattle, committed murder and stole horses in the early 1860s, according to Legends of America.

McCanles was known as a bully in the vicinity of Rock Creek Station in Nebraska, but an article in Harper's Monthly Magazine is the only thing pointing to the gang's existence. The only confirmed fact is that McCanles was killed at Rock Creek Station by the man who came to be known as Wild Bill Hickok.

LegendsofAmerica.com