Broadway Avenue, Spring Valley, Minnesota, home of First National Bank, 1908

1933-1972

It was a typical Tuesday at the First National, and only, bank in the small Spring Valley, Minnesota community, population about 2,000, until gunmen burst through the doors and ordered everyone to lie on the floor or get in the criminals’ car outside.

One of the three abrupt intruders had gold-capped teeth. He was 32-year-old, Omaha, Nebraska resident, Raymond E. Simpson, nicknamed “Cappy,” presumably due to his obvious dental work. Short, stocky and seemingly in charge, he brandished a machine gun and ordered around his victims and accomplices. Regarding anyone who didn’t do as instructed, Simpson suggested “blowing ’em up if they don’t git about.”

Wielding pistols, Simpson’s crew told the 11 patrons and staff caught in the crime, “This is a stickup; don’t make any false moves,” and set about collecting all of the cash and coins from the money drawers.

The safe, which contained about 80 percent of the bank’s money, was locked and on a timer, so it couldn’t be opened for another half-hour. Not about to wait, the trio left the bank with $2,000 (about $39,000 today), got into the small black sedan waiting in the alley out back and drove out of town.

This gang was believed to be the same one that had robbed the Pipestone National Bank of $1,600 ($31,500 today) three days earlier and had “escaped after overpowering the town’s only policeman,” reported The St. Cloud Daily Times (Oct. 3, 1933).

Bank robberies were commonplace during The Great Depression of the 1930s, during which gangsters like John Dillinger, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Alvin Karpis and “Baby Face” Nelson (né Lester Joseph Gillis) became renowned. In Minnesota alone, in 1933, a total of $127,000 ($2.5 million today) had been stolen in 33 bank holdups, for which 20 robbers had been captured and two others killed. The previous year, banks in The Land of 10,000 Lakes had lost $386,000 ($7.2 million today) to theft.

Minnesota State Prison—Stillwater, 1902

In The Wind

A wanted man, linked to about a dozen bank robberies in Minnesota and North Dakota, Simpson was working as a craps stickman in a Nevada casino two months after the Spring Valley bank heist, in December. Seemingly, when he wasn’t robbing banks, Simpson worked in the gambling industry in various cities, including Omaha, St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Though Simpson wore a disguise while at his Las Vegas job, police officers figured out who he was. They arrested and detained him in the Clark County Jail in lieu of a $50,000 bond. Initially, Simpson confessed to his involvement in the Spring Valley crime and waived extradition but then sought to fight it. He applied for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging the right of Sin City authorities to keep him behind bars. They were holding him on the charge of being a fugitive.

Judge William E. Orr denied the writ, after which Simpson agreed to be returned to Minnesota. He arrived in St. Paul in mid-January 1934.

At his subsequent preliminary hearing on his first degree robbery charge, Simpson, “in a jovial mood,” denied ever having robbed a bank (The Lime Springs Herald, Feb. 1, 1934). The judge held him over for trial and set bail at $25,000, which would remain unpaid.

Simpson’s trial took place over two days in June. His defense was that he’d been in Omaha, not Minnesota, on the day of the robbery. The jury, however, after four hours of deliberation, found the defendant guilty. Immediately thereafter, Judge Norman E. Peterson sentenced Simpson to a life sentence in the Minnesota Correctional Facility—Stillwater.

Continuing A Life Of Crime?

In April 1953, Simpson, no longer imprisoned and living in Omaha with his wife, was questioned about the recent murder of a local gambling operator, Edward “Eddie” J. McDermott. The career thief provided no information, however, and was released.

He was back in the news again in 1961 when professional safe cracker, LeRoy Kirkland Jr., 23, during his trial in Montana for first-degree burglary of Briggs Implement Co., claimed that his alleged accomplices in the crime, Simpson and another man, had framed him in an act of revenge. “[Kirkland] had agreed to assist Seattle authorities with arrest of the pair for smuggling dope, according to his testimony,” The Great Falls Tribune reported (Feb.17, 1961). (The court didn’t buy Kirkland’s defense, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.)

Raymond “Cappy” Simpson passed away in Omaha at age 70 in November 1972.

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1921

Two Minnesotans each wagered $5,000 (about $67,000 today) on a new Fort Scott, Kansas oil well not producing 25 barrels the first day. Twenty-seven Kansans pooled the same amount and bet the opposite. The latter group won and was paid.

The losers, however, alleged that water had been mixed with the oil to reach the 25-barrel mark and took the case to court, hoping to recoup their $10,000.

Instead, all 27 men were charged with illegal gambling as such activity was prohibited in Kansas then.

Photo from freeimages.com: by Julie Elliott-Abshire

1935

When two United States state governors made a friendly bet, neither knew it would become problematic.

They wagered each other their state would win the upcoming football rivalry between the Minnesota Golden Gophers, a national powerhouse, and the Iowa Hawkeyes, the loser having to award the other a prize hog.

Minnesota beat Iowa, 13 to 6, leaving Governor Clyde Herring to make good on the wager. He set out for St. Paul, accompanied by a 320-pound, thoroughbred porker named “Floyd of Rosedale” in honor of Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson and the pig’s birthplace — Rosedale Farms. (Floyd, the pig, was the brother of “Blue Boy,” an Iowa State Fair grand champion boar and actor in the 1933 Will Rogers film, “State Fair.”)

“I’ll drive the pig into Governor Olson’s office and if the police arrest me for violating an old city ordinance, I’ll get an immediate pardon from my host,” Herring said (Reno Evening Gazette, Nov. 13, 1935).

Herring delivered the bounty to Olson.

“The boar refused to pose for pictures until the executives pulled him from under a desk, slapped his sleek sides and tugged on his ears to steer him into position,” wrote the United Press (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 14, 1935).

Herring In The Crosshairs

The Iowan governor learned a man named Virgil Case had obtained a warrant to be served on Herring upon his return to Des Moines. The document charged the governor with unlawful gambling, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $500 and a prison term of one year. Case was active in the Des Moines Social Justice Club and an editor of the monthly Des Moines Times-Examiner.

“I raise hell with public officials — and governors too — because they should be the first to set an example for others,” he said (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 14, 1935).

The governors found the charges amusing. Herring asked Olson to be his attorney in the matter, as he’d been district attorney of Minneapolis previously. Olson jokingly reassured Herring that if he remained in Minnesota, he’d be safe from extradition.

Back in Des Moines, the assistant county attorney, C. Edwin Moore, filed a motion to have the charges against the governor dismissed and to have Case’s motives for filing the action investigated. Then the publisher of the weekly Des Moines Post News, Ray McAndrews, filed a petition asking that Moore’s motives be investigated as “nothing in the Iowa code book authorized the procedure being followed” (Oelwein Daily Register, Nov. 23, 1935).

About two weeks after the troublesome wager, the court addressed the matter. Judge J.E. Mershon vacated the charges against Olson on the grounds of no jurisdiction as the wager had been consummated in a different county. Mershon ordered that information Case had filed be released and McAndrews’ motion be removed from the records.

In Memoriam Of Floyd

Unfortunately, “Floyd of Rosedale” died from swine fever a few years later. However, a Minnesota artist memorialized him in bronze, and the Iowa and Minnesota teams have wagered that coveted statue every year since.

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