Monthly Archives: January 2019

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 60)

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That early morning conversation which Olivia had with law enforcement was a detailed one, in which she told them about Leo’s real name, his use of aliases including the ones she knew about and also a list of places that he had lived.  She of course informed them about his recent incarceration in Kentucky as Robert O’Hara after which they contacted the prison for more information.  Finally, as they were wrapping up the interview, Olivia gave them a description of the Essex along with a partial plate number.  She stated that she believed Leo would have fled the state and be in hiding until he turned up somewhere else under another name.  The detectives thanked her but had their own suspicions that Leo had not gone far and put the information out to other law enforcement agencies in the state.  To obtain a recent photo quickly the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension convinced the prison in Eddyville to send an official to meet their officer in Rockford, Illinois, about halfway between the two cities.  That allowed them to have a mug shot in hand by late afternoon, after which the bank teller quickly identified it as the man who had held him up.   He swore out an affidavit to that effect and the MBCA thought they had a good start on chasing down their fugitive. 

By the next morning this information had started to pay off as a Minneapolis police officer found the Essex, promptly alerted the MBCA and county sheriff, and an intensive manhunt began in the downtown area.  As that search got within two blocks of the Marlborough Hotel Otto happened to be at another business nearby, which was owned by the same man, and where he picked up occasional extra work.  It took him only a moment to determine what was going on and he hastily made an excuse that he had to leave for a few minutes.  He walked quickly back to the Marlborough and found Leo sitting in the lobby reading a newspaper.   Other than a cleaning woman the rest of the area was deserted, a quiet and calm Saturday morning with thin rays of light falling across the plants and art work on display.  Otto had only managed to get about five words out when Leo held up his hand and quickly went to the front entry, stepping out slowly and looking up and down the street.  He then repeated this at the back entry after which he walked briskly to his room, Otto following quietly behind him.  At the door to the room Leo turned around and told him to stop and wait in the hall.  

clubhouse brogue shoe courtesy thepeoplehistory.com

clubhouse brogue shoe courtesy thepeoplehistory.com

Once alone with the door closed behind him, Leo sank into a faded grey armchair that was next to a window overlooking Third Avenue.  He had already seen that the police were very close and that his escape was going to have to be quick and done with a minimum of encumbrance.  That meant he would have to leave behind most of this personal belongings including all of his new suits and hats.  After a minute or two, he rose with a sigh and hastily packed up a small valise. He then took the remaining cash he had obtained from the robbery, around eight hundred dollars, and stuffed it into one of his clubhouse brogues.  He figured that if he was captured it would not look good to have almost the same amount of cash on him as the amount taken from the bank.   He then placed those shoes and some miscellaneous other clothing and personal items into a large black suitcase.  Stepping out into the hallway he motioned to Otto who was leaning against the wall several doors down.  When the young man approached, Leo handed him the suitcase and asked that he keep it safe, stating that it contained one of his best pairs of shoes and he would either send for it or retrieve it himself very soon.   He then shook Otto’s hand, thanked him for the tip-off and walked away down the hallway.  Several minutes later Leo had slipped past the police that were out and about on the streets and was on his way out of town.

He had of course failed to give Otto any money for providing him with the information about the police, something that did not sit well with the young janitor.  It had only taken him about three minutes of contemplation before he opened the suitcase Leo had given him, determined to at least get a good pair of shoes out of the deal.  Several moments after finding them he also had removed the eight hundred dollars and was much happier although he still held a grudge against Leo.  About an hour later, when the police arrived at the hotel to continue their search, the staff could not positively identify the man in the photo as having stayed there.  Otto took that opportunity to pay off his grudge, marching up to the officer in charge, stating it had definitely been Leo who had stayed there and directing them to the room.  As it was being searched he decided that it would be a bad thing if he somehow was caught with Leo’s personal effects.  Going back to the detective, he turned them over, stating that he had found the suitcase in the alley and the shoes in the hallway outside the door of Leo’s room.  He then provided a very detailed description of the fugitive and mentioned the discussion they had about Louisville.  

That was exactly where Leo had gone, making good time by hitching rides and arriving by mid-afternoon of Sunday, September 15th.  He was angry when he arrived, about several things, and had stormed into  Lucy’s house without even knocking on the door.  Startled as she had been by his entrance, she quickly recovered and tried to calm him down and by nightfall they were enjoying each other’s company.  The next morning, having collected the items and cash Lucy had been keeping for him, he penned a short note to the Marlborough:

Sirs:

Having recently left your establishment, I found that I have forgotten a pair of my best shoes along with several other personal items.  Please inquire of your staff, especially the janitor named Otto, as I feel they are certain to have found these items.  I expect my belongings to be forwarded  immediately to The Drake in Chicago, where I will soon be arriving.  Your prompt action is appreciated. 

L Humford

Giving it to Lucy with stern instructions that it must go out that same  day via Special Delivery, he gave her a passionate farewell kiss and walked out of the house.  The last she saw of him he was stepping quickly down the street swinging his brown valise as he went along.  

…to be continued

A Burning Cold Morning (Part 59)

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When Leo awoke the next day, September 3, 1929, he could not have known that he was just nine days away from initiating a series of events which would leave him as a minor criminal celebrity and grant him the place of notoriety for which he had been looking for such a long time.  It began with him sitting on the low brick wall that ran behind the motel he was staying at, trying to put together a plan on what he was going to do next.  Much of his prison time had been consumed with thinking about bank robbery and he knew that was the direction in which he wanted go in regard to the future.  It was time for him to make a move into more serious crimes.  He felt he had accumulated a good amount of information over the years and was ready to take action.  The only limitation he put on himself was that he was not going to do anything illegal in New Munich, mostly out of a sense of responsibility toward Olivia, something he had not thought would really matter.  It did though, now that he was back and had seen her again, he just felt a kind of family connection and knew that she was seen as a respectable part of the community.  He did not want to ruin that.  

He spent the remainder of the morning sitting in his room at the small table by the window, writing down some ideas on nearby towns to scout for potential targets.  Around eleven-thirty he had gone into the bathroom and when he came back out was surprised to find Olivia standing in his room right next to the table at which he had been writing.  His notebook was open and he hastened over to close it while attempting to not seem too concerned.  He did not know it at the time but she had indeed looked over the page and had made a mental note of a few things that were written down.  Olivia then invited him to lunch, which he declined, and she left after a few more minutes of conversation.  Leo, resolved to get things into motion as quickly as possible, got into his Essex and drove out of town for the day.

The communities closest to New Munich included Greenwald, Melrose and Freeport, and Leo drove through all of them scouting out the banks.  It was in Meire Grove though that he found a promising opportunity.  The First State Bank of Meire Grove was a small brick building situated on a road near the edge of that town.  This road branched off into two directions about three hundred feet from the building, giving Leo a choice on escape routes and also potentially adding to the difficulty for police in pursuing him.  Pulling over under a tree near the bank, he got out his notebook and sketched a map of the area.  Then he walked into the bank and pretended to be lost, asking a clerk for directions to Melrose.   Chatting with that man for a few minutes, Leo took in the general layout of the bank and tried to assess the place for any potential pitfalls or problems.  When he left, he felt fairly confident that he had found his target, and he spent the next eight days doing more scouting and planning.  He was ready by the evening of September 11th and he went to bed that night with a strange nervousness in his system, one that made his stomach uneasy and caused him to have difficulty falling asleep.

The robbery itself seemed anti-climatic to Leo, especially when he had the opportunity later to look back on it.  His plan had been to commit the hold-up by himself, partly because he did not want to split the money but more due to the fact that he really did not have any criminal connections in the area.  He wanted to get this robbery done and over with so he had some cash and could maybe start putting together his own gang.  That was how he pulled it off too, just Leo going into the bank and sticking a gun into the cashier’s face, despite the fact that some later newspaper reports would say several men were involved.  After getting the  money, which amounted to eight hundred sixty dollars, from the bank, he took off toward the Twin Cities and abandoned the Essex on a street near the Mississippi river in downtown Minneapolis.  He then walked to the Marlborough Hotel and registered under the name Leo Humford, figuring that slight variation should be enough to conceal his true identity.  It also was an alias he had not previously used, at least as far as can be determined from historical records.  As he was walking out of the hotel lobby to go to his room, the hotel’s extroverted janitor Otto Knaack commented that Leo was a, “nifty dresser,” a comment which of course got Leo’s attention.  He spoke to the man for several minutes after that as the floor was wet from just being mopped.  That conversation quickly went from that brief compliment into a rambling discussion of Otto’s family, his recent stint in jail for punching a man he thought had insulted a hotel guest, and why he did not like Ford motor cars.  During this conversation Leo even discussed his opinion of Louisville after Otto mentioned he had a sister living there and working as a seamstress.   As he said good-night to Otto, he made the further mistake of thinking they shared some kind of criminal bond due to the jail time the janitor had mentioned.  Leo told Otto that he would pay him generously for any info he could bring to him in regard to potential police activity around the hotel.  It was more conversation than an on-the-run bank robber should have had and it would come back to haunt Leo. 

St Cloud Daily Times Headline 12 Sept 1929 - Evening Edition

St Cloud Daily Times Headline 12 Sept 1929 – Evening Edition

Back in Meire Grove, law enforcement was at a dead end in regard to trying to to apprehend whomever had robbed the First State Bank.  They had a description of the man, a few conflicting ones on the vehicle and that was about it.  The information went out to all local police agencies and it was of course picked up on by reporters, with the story running on the front page of the next day’s newspaper.  In New Munich Olivia read that article while drinking coffee after breakfast and recalled immediately that Meier Grove was one of the town names she had seen written in Leo’s notebook.  She had not been quite sure at the time what it related to, and was still not certain, but after some soul-searching she made contact with the police.  The information she gave them was unknown to a peacefully resting Leo who had just asked Otto to go out to a local diner and pick him up some lunch.  

…to be continued