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

100 years ago in Grant County: Armed posses corner bank robber

A lone bandit walked into the Wilson Creek State Bank, north of Moses Lake, and forced a teller at gunpoint to give him all the cash. Then he locked the teller in the vault.

The bandit strolled out of the bank, with over $1,000 in his pocket, and wished an unsuspecting pedestrian on Wilson Creek’s sidewalk “a fine day.” Then he walked calmly out of town.

It was the last calm moment of his day.

The teller had unscrewed the vault hinges using a screwdriver hidden inside for just such a purpose and immediately spread the alarm. The Wilson Creek fire bell rang, and soon “a posse of 50 or more citizens” was scouring the hills in autos and on horseback.

Two men on horseback spotted the bandit about 2 miles from town, and he opened fire, shooting one of the horses and knocking off one man’s hat.

The pursuers sent for reinforcements. They watched the bandit swim across Crab Creek and take shelter among the bluffs and rocks. A posse arrived from Krupp and approached, but he barricaded himself in the rocks and fired at his pursuers every time they came within range of his two pistols.

He held them off for a half-hour, while more reinforcements arrived. Hundreds of shots were fired at him, some of which apparently found their mark.

It ended with one last shot, after which the bandit tumbled down the bank, dead.

Authorities discovered he had been “frightfully wounded,” with a bullet in the hip and many shotgun pellets in his body. Yet they believed the bandit, in extremity, had turned his gun on himself and fired the fatal shot through his jaw and head.

They found almost all of the cash on his body, but no identification.