Bonnie and Clyde come to Lushton

Okay, the post title is a bit of an exaggeration: there was no Bonnie involved, and the “Clyde” was actually a Closson, but there was a daylight bank robbery in Lushton on Thursday, August 15, 1929, just two years before Bonnie and Clyde began their crime spree.

If I have all my facts correct, Grandpa, Grandma, Matilda, and three-month-old Esther lived on the farm a mile south of Lushton at that time. I doubt that they or anyone else expected Lushton’s peaceful existence to be disrupted by armed robbery, but that is exactly what happened. According to an AP reporter,

Wearing smoked glasses and a heavy growth of beard, the robber entered the bank while Lou Moul, assistant cashier, was [working] alone. He talked with Moul for several minutes about farm rentals and waited for a customer to leave. As Moul turned his back for a moment, the man whipped out a revolver and commanded him to hold up his hands. The robber then bound and gagged the cashier, who managed to break his bonds and give the alarm a few minutes after the bandit departed. (Lincoln Star August 16, 1929, p. 12)

The bank robber, later identified as H. L. Closson of Columbus, Nebraska, escaped by the back door with $1,185.30 stuffed in a satchel. Two alert young men from Lushton who saw him sneak out the back and drive off in his car gave chase, causing the robber to abandon his car in a cornfield somewhere between Lushton and McCool Junction.

A posse of fifty men formed by local law enforcement officials surrounded the field, but the robber stayed hidden and then escaped under cover of night. Unfortunately for him, he left several letters addressed to him behind in the stolen vehicle, so police soon knew his identity. Around midnight Friday the 16th, a Platte County sheriff who had staked out the Columbus train station arrested him without incident.

After first denying any involvement in the robbery, Closson later confessed fully and gave a detailed account of eluding capture in the cornfield, walking to McCool Junction, and then walking and hitchhiking to York, where he spent most of the day in a hotel lobby, even taking time to get a shave. At 8:50 he boarded a train to Grand Island, and from there he took another train to Columbus, where he was arrested.

As often seems to be the case, his neighbors could not believe that such an upstanding member of the community had robbed a bank, and even State Sheriff Condit blamed the sixty-two-year-old’s actions on being in dire financial straits. This did not keep Closson from being sentenced to the Nebraska Penitentiary for an extended period of time.

Closson certainly wasn’t the only one to go down that road. A year later the Lincoln Evening Journal (September 27, 1930, p. 3) noted the alarming rise in bank robberies in small Nebraska towns: eight in 1929 alone, striking Foster, Fairmont, Lanham, Lushton, Seward, Benson, Minden, and Bellwood. Generally none of the money was recovered, but in the case of the Lushton holdup all but $12.57 (the amount spent on the shave and train tickets) was returned to the bank.

Speaking of which … the bank building still stands in Lushton, just down the street from Grandpa and Grandma’s house in town. It has been abandoned for as long as I know. Knowing some of its history makes me want to explore it more than ever. If any of the kids remember Grandpa or Grandma talking about the great Lushton heist of ’29, the rest of us would love to hear about it. Hard as it is to believe, this was not Lushton’s biggest story or worst crime in 1929—stay tuned.

To explore the area around the Lushton bank on Google Maps, click here.