Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 75 years ago

The suspect behind the notorious 1935 Rosalia bank robbery-murder was nabbed in a shootout on an Ohio chicken farm.

Reese Bailey, 30, was perched right at the top of the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list, and for good reason. He was the ringleader of a “robber band” that had stormed the Rosalia bank, shot the town marshal dead and took a bank official hostage. They eventually shoved the bank official out of a speeding car.

The FBI had been looking for Bailey long before this robbery – he had been on the lam since 1932, when he escaped from the state pen in North Carolina.

Agents finally tracked him to his rural chicken farm, after they discovered his wife had purchased an auto in a nearby town.

A team of agents crept up on the house and barn. Bailey was walking to the barn when an agent yelled “Throw up your hands!”

Bailey replied by opening fire. The agents fired back and Bailey fell with several bullets in his leg and side. He was not critically injured.

He was suspected of a number of other bank robberies in the Northwest. He was eventually found guilty of bank robbery and sentenced to life in Alcatraz.

Also today

(From the Associated Press)

1851: Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale” was first published in the United States.

1969: Apollo 12 blasted off for the moon.