100 years ago in Spokane: Man who confesses to bank robbery accused of California crime spree
Leo Hartman, 22, alias Chester Clark, confessed to authorities in Marysville, California, to robbing the Union Park Bank in Spokane earlier in the month.
That, however, was the least of Hartman’s problems. His confession came after Marysville police had arrested him on a charge of murdering William Mitchell, a Marysville bootblack.
Police believed that Hartman went on a crime spree in California after he held up the Union Park Bank at gunpoint.
He apparently told Marysville police that he got away with $1,055 from the Union Park Bank and gave $600 to his wife in Spokane. Then, he drove to Davenport in a stolen car and then left by train in company with another man, suspected of being Tom Simms. When they got to California, they were suspected of holding up, robbing and shooting Mitchell. A half-hour later, they hired a taxi and then held up the driver. They bound him, gagged him and left him at the side of a country road.
Hartman admitted to robbing the Union Park Bank, but adamantly denied that he and Simms had killed Mitchell. Mitchell did not live long enough to identify his assailants.
Hartman was a seasoned criminal long before he arrived in Spokane. He had been arrested and convicted of robbing a Hillsboro, Oregon, bank earlier in the year. He served only one month of his 10-year sentence before escaping from the Oregon State Penitentiary. Before that, he had been arrested for burglary in Los Angeles, but escaped from the Los Angeles city jail. He was also an army deserter.
It was highly unlikely that Hartman would ever face trial in Spokane for the bank robbery because he was “wanted in too many other places” on serious charges, including the murder charge.