Notorious Kansas Bank Heists

Gunslingers to Gangsters

by Rod Beemer

What on earth do wrecker trucks have to do with Kansas bank robberies? Find out on page 53 of Notorious Kansas Bank Heists: Gunslingers to Gangsters by Rod Beemer along with a slew of other surprises.

BANK ROBBERS HAVE WREAKED HAVOC in the Sunflower State. After robbing the Chautauqua State Bank in 1911, outlaw Elmer McCurdy was killed by lawmen but wasn’t buried for another sixty-six years. His afterlife can only be described as bizarre. Belle Starr’s nephew Henry Starr claimed to have robbed twenty-one banks. The Dalton gang failed in their attempt to rob two banks simultaneously, but others accomplished this feat in Waterville nineteen years later. Nearly four thousand organized vigilantes patrolled the central plains state during the 1920s and 1930s to combat the criminal menace. One group even had an airplane equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun. Join author Rod Beemer for a wild ride into Kansas’s tumultuous bank heist history.