This day in history: A real-time bank robbery and a sinister threat from a ‘physical wreck’

From 1975: An Old National Bank employee at the Country Homes branch was on the phone to the downtown office when she heard a gunshot and saw an overhead light shatter.

“My God, we’re being held up!” she gasped and hung up.

Two men had walked in and ordered everyone to lie on the floor. One of them fired a shot into the overhead light. One employee was able to set off the silent alarm before complying.

One of the robbers “catapulted over the counter and began scooping money into a sack tied around his waist.”

Police arrived in five minutes, but by that time, the robbers had already absconded with about $10,000 in cash.

Police found the getaway vehicle parked at Holy Family Hospital. It had been stolen from a used car lot the night before.

From 1925: “Drunken debauches” had turned a 22-year-old former Gonzaga University student into a “physical wreck,” and most alarmingly caused him to issue a violent threat against his ex-fiancée.

When his fiancée learned that he was drinking to excess, she withdrew her promise to marry.

“He then wrote her a letter and told her he would throw acid in her face and disfigure her so no other man would marry her,” The Spokesman-Review reported.

A judge put him under a “peace bond” and kept him in jail so that he would have no access to liquor.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1923: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party stage the “Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, Germany.