Robbery - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1896: Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch Rob the Montpelier Bank

On August 13, 1896, Butch Cassidy rode into Montpelier, Idaho, with Elzy Lay and Bob Meeks, stopping at a saloon before walking into the state’s number one chartered bank. Cassidy and Lay forced teller A. N. Mackintosh to hand over gold, silver, and currency worth between $5,000 and $15,000, then ordered everyone to wait ten minutes before leaving. The local sheriff gave chase on a bicycle. Cassidy and his crew escaped easily on horseback.

It was one of the first robberies carried out by the newly formed Wild Bunch gang. Cassidy may have needed the money to cover court and attorney fees for former associate Matt Warner, convicted of killing two men in a gunfight. Kid Curry Logan also rode with the gang. The Montpelier bank has since been converted into a museum dedicated to the robbery.

Wanted Robert Leroy Parker known as Cassidy, was an American train, bank robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch Gang in the American Old West. On april 24 2014 in Tucson AZ | ID 176287673 © Meunierd | Dreamstime.com — ID 176287673 © Meunierd | Dreamstime.com

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1964: The Last Two Men Hanged in Britain, Executed Simultaneously 50 Kilometres Apart

At 8:00 a.m. on 13 August 1964, two gallows traps opened in unison across England. Peter Anthony Allen dropped at Walton Prison in Liverpool; Gwynne Owen Evans dropped at Strangeways Prison in Manchester. Both had been convicted of the capital murder of John Alan West, a 53-year-old laundry van driver from Workington, Cumbria, stabbed and beaten to death during a robbery at his home in the early hours of 7 April 1964.

Police traced the men within 48 hours through a medallion left at the scene, inscribed with Evans’ name. Tried together at Manchester Crown Court in June 1964, the jury found both equally guilty of capital murder committed in the course of theft. The judge, executioners Harry Allen and Robert Leslie Stewart, and the clock itself were all synchronised. When the traps fell, Britain’s era of capital punishment fell with them. No one has been executed in the United Kingdom since.

Silhouetted hangmans noose rope on orange backlit background

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1964: Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson Breaks Free from Winson Green Prison

In August 1963, fifteen masked men ambushed the Glasgow to London Royal Mail train near Buckinghamshire, making off with 120 bags of cash totalling a record 2.6 million pounds. Police traced the gang to Leatherslade Farm within days, and Charlie Wilson, then 32, was among those arrested. In April 1964 he was sentenced to 30 years.

Just four months into his sentence, on 12 August 1964, several men broke into the maximum-security Winson Green Prison in Birmingham and freed Wilson in a brazen outside job. He evaded capture for over three years before being recaptured in Canada on 24 January 1968, returned to England, and made to serve out his term. Wilson later moved to Spain, where he allegedly became involved in drug trafficking, and was shot dead on 23 April 1990.

Arm reaches through jail window to open door escape scene

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1873: Oscar Wallace Hanged at Ballarat for Armed Assault at Mount Beckworth

Oscar Wallace, known also by the aliases James and Hasker, had only been free for six weeks when he committed a brutal armed assault on Mary Cook at her isolated farmhouse near Mount Beckworth, outside Clunes, on 4 August 1873. Her husband was away, and Wallace, disguised with a bran bag over his head and a sack about his body, entered the property, seized a double-barrelled gun, locked the children in an adjoining room, and attacked the homeowner at knifepoint. He then fled through the district, robbing several men, firing at a Mr Prentice near Beaufort, and reportedly heading toward a hotel to settle an old score. He had served two years in Pentridge for larceny and had openly threatened the life of a witness from that trial.

Senior Constable Woods disguised himself as a digger and tracked Wallace to a store near Beaufort, where he overpowered him before Wallace could use the butcher’s knife he still carried. Wallace was tried, convicted, and hanged at Ballarat on 11 August 1873. He reportedly showed complete indifference to his fate from the moment of his capture.

James Wallace (tried as Oscar Wallace), prisoner no. 8775. PROV, VPRS 515/P0000, Volume 13, p. 167

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