Herbert Allen Farmer
Encyclopedia
Herbert Allen "Deafy" Farmer (c. 1890 – January 12, 1948) was an American criminal who, with his wife Esther, operated a safe house
for underworld fugitives from the mid-1920s to 1933.
In the 1920s his farm in southwest Missouri
was safe harbor for bank robbers and other criminals of the Cookson Hills
region such as Harvey Bailey
, Jelly Nash
, Wilbur Underhill, "Big Bob" Brady
and the Holden-Keating Gang
. In the Public Enemy era
, as organized crime
strengthened and expanded in the United States, the farm became part of a network of safe houses for gangsters along "the midwest crime corridor."
On June 16, 1933, Herbert and Esther Farmer were involved in the plan which set into motion the Kansas City Massacre
, "a pivotal event in Depression-era
crime." With five others, they were convicted of conspiracy to free a federal prisoner, Frank "Jelly" Nash
, in January 1935.
, Herbert Farmer was in and out of local jails in Texas
, Missouri
and Oklahoma
for much of his youth. In about 1910 his family settled in Webb City, Missouri
, a community near Joplin
in the then-booming
lead
- and zinc
-mining region known as the Tri-State district
. As an adult Farmer made the Joplin area his home.
In Webb City, Farmer's family became acquainted with the Barker family
, and for a while Ma Barker's sons "were practically raised by Herb Farmer's mother." Though the Barkers left Webb City for Tulsa, Oklahoma
around 1915, Fred Barker returned often to visit the Farmers, and he and Herb Farmer remained friends, though Farmer was perhaps 13 years older. The FBI
's official summary of the Karpis
-Barker gang's
career stated, "It is safe to assume that Fred Barker received considerable education in the school of crime from Farmer," and later an agent noted that "Barker and Karpis are known to be henchmen (especially Barker) of Herbert A. Farmer."
In 1916 Farmer began serving a five-year sentence for assault with intent to kill in the rehabilitation-oriented Oklahoma State Reformatory
, but in a few months he was transferred to the state penitentiary
. During this time he schooled younger inmates in the ways of pickpocketing
and con games
and in the penitentiary made friends with veteran bank and train robber Jelly Nash. He served less than two years and upon his release headed west, adding to his record more arrests for assault, larceny
and swindling in Colorado
, California
, Utah
and Texas
.
In about 1927 he and his wife bought a farm of 23 acres (93,077.8 m²) roughly 7 square miles (18.1 km²) south of Joplin, Missouri
. Deafy Farmer's farm was not only a safe place to "cool off," it was "one of the best underworld postal offices in the country." The Joplin safe house operated with no recorded interference from authorities until June 1933, when the Kansas City Massacre drew federal attention.
When Fred Barker or his partner Alvin Karpis shot to death a county sheriff in West Plains, Missouri
in December 1931, Barker brought Karpis, as well as his mother
and her boyfriend, across the state to Herb Farmer's place. When Farmer was indicted on conspiracy charges in 1934, the gang gave him $2500 of the Hamm kidnapping
ransom to help pay his legal expenses. However, during questioning in respect to that crime Farmer, unprodded, twice slyly wondered aloud if Fred Barker might have been involved in the Union Station killings.
Farmer made his official living in the hotels and gambling halls of two nearby "safe cities," the resort town of Hot Springs, Arkansas
and Kansas City
, with occasional forays into Reno, Nevada
and St. Paul, Minnesota, where at the time of his arrest in July 1933 he was negotiating for control of a lucrative craps
concession. Though Hot Springs chief of detectives Dutch Akers knew Farmer to be "the number 1 man for the [St. Paul-Kansas City-Hot Springs] gang organization at Joplin," and though six months before his arrest for obstruction of justice in the Kansas City Massacre case he "took an old man and his wife from Hot Springs to Reno, where he cleaned them for $50,000 in the race track con," when he was arrested he was trading chickens and butter for groceries and he alone of the conspiracy defendants could not make bond.
Deafy Farmer was indeed almost completely deaf. In the 1934 conspiracy trial all of the defendants took the stand, except Deafy Farmer; he was so deaf, his wife said, that questioning him would be useless. In 1933 he was described to the FBI as "a very dangerous man, a killer, and his best known line is the con game.... his favorite weapon being the knife."
Farmer served two years in Alcatraz for his participation in the conspiracy to free Jelly Nash. After his release he returned to Missouri. He and Esther sold the farm and moved into Joplin, where they lived until his death on January 12, 1948.
In October 1966 Esther married Harvey Bailey
, "dean of the American bank robbers," after a year-long courtship. She died in 1981.
Leavenworth
, Kansas
in 1930. At noon on June 16, 1933, Nash was finishing a beer inside the White Front cigar store and pool hall on the main street of Hot Springs, Arkansas when two special agents of the Department of Justice and the police chief of McAlester, Oklahoma
grabbed him, hustled him into a waiting car and drove away. Their goal was to get Nash from Hot Springs back to Leavenworth to finish his sentence for armed robbery.
Dick Galatas, owner of the White Front and "the official representative of the gangster world in Hot Springs," went directly to the police station in City Hall to the office of Dutch Akers, chief of detectives. Dutch Akers was deeply entangled with the racketeering operations of Hot Springs and at the same time was an informant for the FBI. It was he who, that morning, had notified his contact that Nash was in Hot Springs and at the White Front. Akers began calling every police station between Hot Springs and Little Rock to report that a visiting businessman named George Miller—the name Nash went by around town—had been kidnapped. He and Galatas left the police station around 1 p.m. and Galatas went to collect Jelly Nash's wife Frances.
In Benton, Arkansas
, halfway to Little Rock, the agents' car was halted by a police roadblock: "three men with rifles and sawed-off shotguns." They were stopped again at the edge of Little Rock by "two police cars with riot guns." The agents and Nash were aware that the stops were delay tactics. "I hope we make it out of this state alive," Nash said, cryptically.
At 2:34 p.m., from Galatas's house in Hot Springs, Chief Akers called the Little Rock police station. The officer in charge explained that there had been no kidnapping, that a fugitive was simply being returned to prison. The officer told Akers that the car had turned west at Little Rock, onto "the Joplin road." Until then Akers and Galatas had not been certain who had taken Nash, or where they were going.
Galatas had brought Frances Nash to a neighbor's house to make phone calls. At 2:50 p.m., at Galatas's direction Mrs Nash called nightclub owner Louis "Doc" Stacci in Chicago. Stacci's subsequent phone calls to Fritz Mulloy, a friend of Verne Miller's
in Kansas City, drew Miller into the plan to free Nash. Mrs Nash called Esther Farmer in Joplin.
Thirty minutes west of Little Rock the agents stopped in the town of Conway
and called Ralph Colvin, the special agent in charge in Oklahoma City who had given the go-ahead to apprehend Nash, and let him know they were being tracked. Colvin told them to proceed to Fort Smith
and call again from there. The agents had left the Little Rock officers "with the impression that we were proceeding to Joplin, Mo., but at a given point we left the Joplin road and dropped into Fort Smith."
Galatas and Frances Nash hired an airplane to fly Frances and her young daughter to Joplin. Mrs. Nash was afraid to fly in the Ryan B-1
monoplane. Galatas tried to calm her fears by telling her it was just like The Spirit of St. Louis, but she insisted he come with her. They arrived in late afternoon, at 6:20 p.m. Deafy Farmer met them and drove them to his farm.
At about the same time Galatas and Frances Nash arrived in Joplin, the federal agents arrived in Fort Smith and called Colvin. He told them to abandon the car and catch the 8:30 p.m. train to Kansas City. Colvin then called Reed Vetterli, the special agent in charge at Kansas City, and told him the new information. Shortly after Colvin and Vetterli spoke, "Mrs. Galatas called Galatas on the telephone and advised him that Nash was not to be brought to Joplin, but that the federal men were taking him from Fort Smith, Ark., by train "on in." By the time the agents and their handcuffed charge arrived at the station platform, their secret had already reached the press wires
, and "at 8:46 p.m., 8 minutes after the train pulled out of Ft. Smith, a phone call was made from Ft. Smith to [Mrs. Nash's neighbor's house in] Hot Springs."
"At 10:09 pm the Hot Springs number [which had received the 8:46 call from Fort Smith] called Farmer's house." At 10:17 p.m., Esther Farmer called Verne Miller
's house in Kansas City and spoke to Miller's girlfriend, Vivian Mathias. "Mrs. Farmer was heard to say over the telephone on June 16th: 'They got by us here at Joplin. We watched from every angle but they got by us.'" At 12:05 a.m. June 17, Verne Miller called Herb Farmer's house from Union Station, Kansas City. Galatas told him what time the train would arrive at Union Station. Miller's phone calls earlier that evening were first to John Lazia
in Kansas City, then to associates in Chicago and New York and to Harry Sawyer's Green Lantern restaurant in St. Paul to try to interest the Karpis-Barker gang, but on such short notice he could find no out-of-town takers (the Barkers were occupied at the time with the Hamm kidnapping) and the Kansas City mob
did not want to get involved.
At 6 a.m. June 17, Deafy Farmer drove Galatas and the aviator from the Connor Hotel in Joplin back to the airport, and returned home. Dutch Akers later told his FBI contact that as soon as Galatas reached Hot Springs "he ordered every gangster in town to leave." At 9:51 a.m. a call was made from a pay phone in Hot Springs to the Farmers' house. When the Joplin police chief heard the news of the shootings at Union Station he immediately suspected Herb Farmer had something to do with it. He and detectives arrived at the farm at noon, but the Farmers and Mrs. Nash had fled.
When Farmer received his phone bill on July 8 and saw the long distance record for June 16, he sent Esther to the Joplin police station to tell Chief of Police Ed Portley that he would like to speak with him. Portley came out and arrested him at home. Esther Farmer came to visit her husband in the jail and was arrested there. Frances Nash was arrested July 11 in Illinois. Galatas eluded apprehension until September 22. The warrant for Galatas's arrest charged that he had "conspired to cause the escape of Frank Nash at Joplin, Missouri."
Deafy Farmer and his wife, Dick Galatas and his wife, Frances Nash, Vivian Mathias, Doc Stacci of Chicago and Fritz Mulloy of Kansas City were indicted by a federal grand jury in Kansas City on October 24, 1934 and charged with three counts of conspiracy to aid "the escape of [a federal] prisoner properly committed to the custody of the Attorney General." At the close of evidence counts two and three — conspiracy to harbor a federal prisoner and conspiracy to rescue a federal prisoner — were dropped. Mrs Nash testified for the government and charges against her were dismissed. The rest were convicted on the remaining count, conspiracy to free a federal prisoner, on January 4, 1935.
The flurry of phone calls on June 16 and early June 17, their times and connections, were the basis of the prosecution's case. They were also the basis of the defense's case.
The maximum penalty for conspiracy
was two years and a fine of $10,000; all four men were assessed the maximum and all four were remanded to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Farmer, Galatas and Mulloy were later transferred to the new federal prison in California
, Alcatraz. The three women were sentenced to three years' probation and fined $5,000 each.
Safe house
In the jargon of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, a safe house is a secure location, suitable for hiding witnesses, agents or other persons perceived as being in danger...
for underworld fugitives from the mid-1920s to 1933.
In the 1920s his farm in southwest Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
was safe harbor for bank robbers and other criminals of the Cookson Hills
Cookson Hills
The Cookson Hills are in the eastern part of Oklahoma. They are an extension of the Boston Mountains of Arkansas to the east and the southwestern margin of the Ozark Plateau. They lie generally between Stilwell, Oklahoma, Sallisaw, Oklahoma and Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The area became part of the...
region such as Harvey Bailey
Harvey Bailey
Harvey John Bailey , called "The Dean of American Bank Robbers", had a long criminal career. One of the most successful bank robbers during the 1920s, walking off with over $1 million during that time, Bailey is almost forgotten today.- His career :Born in West Virginia, Bailey robbed his first...
, Jelly Nash
Frank Nash
Frank Nash has been called “the most successful bank robber in U.S. history,” but he is most noted for his violent death in what has become known as the Kansas City Massacre...
, Wilbur Underhill, "Big Bob" Brady
Robert Brady (criminal)
Robert G. "Big Bob" Brady was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw. A well-known Oklahoma bandit during the 1920s and 30s, Brady was associated with Wilbur Underhill, Harvey Bailey and Jim Clark....
and the Holden-Keating Gang
Holden-Keating Gang
The Holden-Keating Gang was a bank robbing team, led by Thomas James Holden and Francis Keating , which was active in the Midwestern United States during the 1920s and 30s...
. In the Public Enemy era
Public Enemy
Public Enemy is an American hip hop group consisting of Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff and his S1W group, DJ Lord , and Music Director Khari Wynn...
, as organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
strengthened and expanded in the United States, the farm became part of a network of safe houses for gangsters along "the midwest crime corridor."
On June 16, 1933, Herbert and Esther Farmer were involved in the plan which set into motion the Kansas City Massacre
Kansas City Massacre
The Kansas City massacre was the shootout and murder of four law enforcement officers and a criminal fugitive at the Union Station railroad depot in Kansas City, Missouri, on the morning of June 17, 1933. It occurred as part of the attempt by a gang led by Vernon Miller to free Frank "Jelly" Nash,...
, "a pivotal event in Depression-era
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
crime." With five others, they were convicted of conspiracy to free a federal prisoner, Frank "Jelly" Nash
Frank Nash
Frank Nash has been called “the most successful bank robber in U.S. history,” but he is most noted for his violent death in what has become known as the Kansas City Massacre...
, in January 1935.
Life
A career grifter and gamblerGambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
, Herbert Farmer was in and out of local jails in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
and Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
for much of his youth. In about 1910 his family settled in Webb City, Missouri
Webb City, Missouri
Webb City is a city in Jasper County, Missouri, United States. The population was 10,996 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Joplin, Missouri Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:Webb City is located at ....
, a community near Joplin
Joplin, Missouri
Joplin is a city in southern Jasper County and northern Newton County in the southwestern corner of the US state of Missouri. Joplin is the largest city in Jasper County, though it is not the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 50,150...
in the then-booming
Boomtown
A boomtown is a community that experiences sudden and rapid population and economic growth. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although the term can also be applied to communities growing very rapidly for different reasons,...
lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
- and zinc
Zinc
Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
-mining region known as the Tri-State district
Tri-State district
The Tri-State district was an historic lead-zinc mining district located in southwest Missouri, southeast Kansas and northeast Oklahoma. The district produced lead and zinc for over 100 years. Production began in the 1850s and 60s in the Joplin - Granby area of Jasper and Newton counties of...
. As an adult Farmer made the Joplin area his home.
In Webb City, Farmer's family became acquainted with the Barker family
Ma Barker
Kate "Ma" Barker was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker gang from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the U.S. Midwest gripped the American people and press...
, and for a while Ma Barker's sons "were practically raised by Herb Farmer's mother." Though the Barkers left Webb City for Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...
around 1915, Fred Barker returned often to visit the Farmers, and he and Herb Farmer remained friends, though Farmer was perhaps 13 years older. The FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
's official summary of the Karpis
Alvin Karpis
Alvin Francis Karpis , nicknamed "Creepy" for his sinister smile, was an American criminal known for his alliance with the Barker gang in the 1930s. He was the last "public enemy" to be taken.-Early life:Karpis was born to Lithuanian immigrants in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and was raised in Topeka,...
-Barker gang's
Ma Barker
Kate "Ma" Barker was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker gang from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the U.S. Midwest gripped the American people and press...
career stated, "It is safe to assume that Fred Barker received considerable education in the school of crime from Farmer," and later an agent noted that "Barker and Karpis are known to be henchmen (especially Barker) of Herbert A. Farmer."
In 1916 Farmer began serving a five-year sentence for assault with intent to kill in the rehabilitation-oriented Oklahoma State Reformatory
Oklahoma State Reformatory
The Oklahoma State Reformatory is a medium-security facility with some maximum and minimum-security housing for adult male inmates. Located off of U.S. Highway 9 in Granite, Oklahoma, the facility has a maximum capacity of 999 inmates. The medium-security area accommodates 799 prisoners,...
, but in a few months he was transferred to the state penitentiary
Oklahoma State Penitentiary
The Oklahoma State Penitentiary is located in McAlester, Oklahoma, on . It is a prison of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. Opened in 1908 with 50 inmates in makeshift facilities, today the prison holds more than 1,200 male offenders, the vast majority of which are maximum-security inmates...
. During this time he schooled younger inmates in the ways of pickpocketing
Pickpocketing
Pickpocketing is a form of larceny that involves the stealing of money or other valuables from the person of a victim without their noticing the theft at the time. It requires considerable dexterity and a knack for misdirection...
and con games
Confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
and in the penitentiary made friends with veteran bank and train robber Jelly Nash. He served less than two years and upon his release headed west, adding to his record more arrests for assault, larceny
Larceny
Larceny is a crime involving the wrongful acquisition of the personal property of another person. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of England into their own law. It has been abolished in England and Wales,...
and swindling in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
and Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
.
In about 1927 he and his wife bought a farm of 23 acres (93,077.8 m²) roughly 7 square miles (18.1 km²) south of Joplin, Missouri
Joplin, Missouri
Joplin is a city in southern Jasper County and northern Newton County in the southwestern corner of the US state of Missouri. Joplin is the largest city in Jasper County, though it is not the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 50,150...
. Deafy Farmer's farm was not only a safe place to "cool off," it was "one of the best underworld postal offices in the country." The Joplin safe house operated with no recorded interference from authorities until June 1933, when the Kansas City Massacre drew federal attention.
When Fred Barker or his partner Alvin Karpis shot to death a county sheriff in West Plains, Missouri
West Plains, Missouri
West Plains is a city in Howell County, Missouri, United States. The population was 10,866 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Howell County. The West Plains Micropolitan Statistical Area consists of Howell County.-Geography:...
in December 1931, Barker brought Karpis, as well as his mother
Ma Barker
Kate "Ma" Barker was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker gang from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the U.S. Midwest gripped the American people and press...
and her boyfriend, across the state to Herb Farmer's place. When Farmer was indicted on conspiracy charges in 1934, the gang gave him $2500 of the Hamm kidnapping
Hamm's Brewery
Hamm's is the name of a former American brewery in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hamm's breweries were also found in other cities, such as San Francisco.-History:...
ransom to help pay his legal expenses. However, during questioning in respect to that crime Farmer, unprodded, twice slyly wondered aloud if Fred Barker might have been involved in the Union Station killings.
Farmer made his official living in the hotels and gambling halls of two nearby "safe cities," the resort town of Hot Springs, Arkansas
Hot Springs, Arkansas
Hot Springs is the 10th most populous city in the U.S. state of Arkansas, the county seat of Garland County, and the principal city of the Hot Springs Metropolitan Statistical Area encompassing all of Garland County...
and Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
, with occasional forays into Reno, Nevada
Reno, Nevada
Reno is the county seat of Washoe County, Nevada, United States. The city has a population of about 220,500 and is the most populous Nevada city outside of the Las Vegas metropolitan area...
and St. Paul, Minnesota, where at the time of his arrest in July 1933 he was negotiating for control of a lucrative craps
Craps
Craps is a dice game in which players place wagers on the outcome of the roll, or a series of rolls, of a pair of dice. Players may wager money against each other or a bank...
concession. Though Hot Springs chief of detectives Dutch Akers knew Farmer to be "the number 1 man for the [St. Paul-Kansas City-Hot Springs] gang organization at Joplin," and though six months before his arrest for obstruction of justice in the Kansas City Massacre case he "took an old man and his wife from Hot Springs to Reno, where he cleaned them for $50,000 in the race track con," when he was arrested he was trading chickens and butter for groceries and he alone of the conspiracy defendants could not make bond.
Deafy Farmer was indeed almost completely deaf. In the 1934 conspiracy trial all of the defendants took the stand, except Deafy Farmer; he was so deaf, his wife said, that questioning him would be useless. In 1933 he was described to the FBI as "a very dangerous man, a killer, and his best known line is the con game.... his favorite weapon being the knife."
Farmer served two years in Alcatraz for his participation in the conspiracy to free Jelly Nash. After his release he returned to Missouri. He and Esther sold the farm and moved into Joplin, where they lived until his death on January 12, 1948.
In October 1966 Esther married Harvey Bailey
Harvey Bailey
Harvey John Bailey , called "The Dean of American Bank Robbers", had a long criminal career. One of the most successful bank robbers during the 1920s, walking off with over $1 million during that time, Bailey is almost forgotten today.- His career :Born in West Virginia, Bailey robbed his first...
, "dean of the American bank robbers," after a year-long courtship. She died in 1981.
Background
Federal agents had been on the trail of Jelly Nash for three years, since his escape from the federal penitentiary atUnited States Penitentiary, Leavenworth
The United States Penitentiary , Leavenworth was the largest maximum security federal prison in the United States from 1903 until 2005. It became a medium security prison in 2005.It is located in Leavenworth, Kansas...
Leavenworth
Leavenworth, Kansas
Leavenworth is the largest city and county seat of Leavenworth County, in the U.S. state of Kansas and within the Kansas City, Missouri Metropolitan Area. Located in the northeast portion of the state, it is on the west bank of the Missouri River. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...
, Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
in 1930. At noon on June 16, 1933, Nash was finishing a beer inside the White Front cigar store and pool hall on the main street of Hot Springs, Arkansas when two special agents of the Department of Justice and the police chief of McAlester, Oklahoma
McAlester, Oklahoma
McAlester is a city in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 17,783 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Pittsburg County. It is currently the largest city in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, followed by Durant....
grabbed him, hustled him into a waiting car and drove away. Their goal was to get Nash from Hot Springs back to Leavenworth to finish his sentence for armed robbery.
Dick Galatas, owner of the White Front and "the official representative of the gangster world in Hot Springs," went directly to the police station in City Hall to the office of Dutch Akers, chief of detectives. Dutch Akers was deeply entangled with the racketeering operations of Hot Springs and at the same time was an informant for the FBI. It was he who, that morning, had notified his contact that Nash was in Hot Springs and at the White Front. Akers began calling every police station between Hot Springs and Little Rock to report that a visiting businessman named George Miller—the name Nash went by around town—had been kidnapped. He and Galatas left the police station around 1 p.m. and Galatas went to collect Jelly Nash's wife Frances.
In Benton, Arkansas
Benton, Arkansas
Benton is a city in and the county seat of Saline County, Arkansas, United States and a suburb of Little Rock. It was established in 1837. According to a 2006 Special Census conducted at the request of the city government, the population of the city is 27,717, ranking it as the state's 16th largest...
, halfway to Little Rock, the agents' car was halted by a police roadblock: "three men with rifles and sawed-off shotguns." They were stopped again at the edge of Little Rock by "two police cars with riot guns." The agents and Nash were aware that the stops were delay tactics. "I hope we make it out of this state alive," Nash said, cryptically.
At 2:34 p.m., from Galatas's house in Hot Springs, Chief Akers called the Little Rock police station. The officer in charge explained that there had been no kidnapping, that a fugitive was simply being returned to prison. The officer told Akers that the car had turned west at Little Rock, onto "the Joplin road." Until then Akers and Galatas had not been certain who had taken Nash, or where they were going.
Galatas had brought Frances Nash to a neighbor's house to make phone calls. At 2:50 p.m., at Galatas's direction Mrs Nash called nightclub owner Louis "Doc" Stacci in Chicago. Stacci's subsequent phone calls to Fritz Mulloy, a friend of Verne Miller's
Vernon C. Miller
Vernon C. Miller was a freelance Prohibition gunman, bootlegger, bank robber and former sheriff in South Dakota who, as the only identified member of the Kansas City Massacre, was found beaten and strangled to death shortly after the incident.-Early life:Born in Kimball, South Dakota, Miller moved...
in Kansas City, drew Miller into the plan to free Nash. Mrs Nash called Esther Farmer in Joplin.
Thirty minutes west of Little Rock the agents stopped in the town of Conway
Conway, Arkansas
Conway is the county seat of Faulkner County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 58,908 at the 2010 census, making Conway the seventh most populous city in Arkansas. It is a principal city of the Little Rock–North Little Rock–Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area which had...
and called Ralph Colvin, the special agent in charge in Oklahoma City who had given the go-ahead to apprehend Nash, and let him know they were being tracked. Colvin told them to proceed to Fort Smith
Fort Smith, Arkansas
Fort Smith is the second-largest city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. With a population of 86,209 in 2010, it is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 298,592 residents which encompasses the Arkansas...
and call again from there. The agents had left the Little Rock officers "with the impression that we were proceeding to Joplin, Mo., but at a given point we left the Joplin road and dropped into Fort Smith."
Galatas and Frances Nash hired an airplane to fly Frances and her young daughter to Joplin. Mrs. Nash was afraid to fly in the Ryan B-1
Ryan Brougham
The Ryan Brougham was a small single-engine airliner produced in the United States in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Its design was reminiscent of the M-1 mailplane first produced by Ryan in 1926, and like it, was a high-wing, strut-braced monoplane of conventional design.-Design and...
monoplane. Galatas tried to calm her fears by telling her it was just like The Spirit of St. Louis, but she insisted he come with her. They arrived in late afternoon, at 6:20 p.m. Deafy Farmer met them and drove them to his farm.
At about the same time Galatas and Frances Nash arrived in Joplin, the federal agents arrived in Fort Smith and called Colvin. He told them to abandon the car and catch the 8:30 p.m. train to Kansas City. Colvin then called Reed Vetterli, the special agent in charge at Kansas City, and told him the new information. Shortly after Colvin and Vetterli spoke, "Mrs. Galatas called Galatas on the telephone and advised him that Nash was not to be brought to Joplin, but that the federal men were taking him from Fort Smith, Ark., by train "on in." By the time the agents and their handcuffed charge arrived at the station platform, their secret had already reached the press wires
Wire Service
Wire Service is an American drama series that aired on ABC as part of its 1956-57 season lineup.-Synopsis:Wire Service focuses on three reporters for the fictional Trans-Globe wire service, which was similar to real-life news wire services such as the Associated Press and United Press International...
, and "at 8:46 p.m., 8 minutes after the train pulled out of Ft. Smith, a phone call was made from Ft. Smith to [Mrs. Nash's neighbor's house in] Hot Springs."
Joplin
Around 9 p.m. Farmer and Galatas left the farm and drove into Joplin. "Galatas and Farmer went down town for the avowed purpose of seeing if they could find out if Nash had been brought to Joplin, saying that they would do what they could to get Jelly back to his wife; but when they returned, they reported that he was not in town." Galatas called his wife in Hot Springs from Frank Vaughn's Midway Drugstore in town at 9:37 p.m. "It is apparent Galatas and others... were making plans up to that hour to have appropriate assistance at Joplin to release Nash; that was evidently the reason why [Stacci] at Chicago was trying to reach Miller and the reason [Galatas and Mrs. Nash] flew to Joplin.""At 10:09 pm the Hot Springs number [which had received the 8:46 call from Fort Smith] called Farmer's house." At 10:17 p.m., Esther Farmer called Verne Miller
Vernon C. Miller
Vernon C. Miller was a freelance Prohibition gunman, bootlegger, bank robber and former sheriff in South Dakota who, as the only identified member of the Kansas City Massacre, was found beaten and strangled to death shortly after the incident.-Early life:Born in Kimball, South Dakota, Miller moved...
's house in Kansas City and spoke to Miller's girlfriend, Vivian Mathias. "Mrs. Farmer was heard to say over the telephone on June 16th: 'They got by us here at Joplin. We watched from every angle but they got by us.'" At 12:05 a.m. June 17, Verne Miller called Herb Farmer's house from Union Station, Kansas City. Galatas told him what time the train would arrive at Union Station. Miller's phone calls earlier that evening were first to John Lazia
John Lazia
John Lazia, also known as "Brother John" , was an American organized crime figure in Kansas City, Missouri, during the prohibition period in the United States.-Early years:...
in Kansas City, then to associates in Chicago and New York and to Harry Sawyer's Green Lantern restaurant in St. Paul to try to interest the Karpis-Barker gang, but on such short notice he could find no out-of-town takers (the Barkers were occupied at the time with the Hamm kidnapping) and the Kansas City mob
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
did not want to get involved.
At 6 a.m. June 17, Deafy Farmer drove Galatas and the aviator from the Connor Hotel in Joplin back to the airport, and returned home. Dutch Akers later told his FBI contact that as soon as Galatas reached Hot Springs "he ordered every gangster in town to leave." At 9:51 a.m. a call was made from a pay phone in Hot Springs to the Farmers' house. When the Joplin police chief heard the news of the shootings at Union Station he immediately suspected Herb Farmer had something to do with it. He and detectives arrived at the farm at noon, but the Farmers and Mrs. Nash had fled.
Arrest and trial
Farmer went to Kansas City. He spent several days gambling in the Majestic Hotel, then returned to the farm. In hiding and out of money, he traded chickens for groceries with a family friend, bootlegger Frank Vaughn. In early July Vaughn urged him to give himself up. Farmer said he would when the weather turned cooler, that he hated to be in jail in such hot weather.When Farmer received his phone bill on July 8 and saw the long distance record for June 16, he sent Esther to the Joplin police station to tell Chief of Police Ed Portley that he would like to speak with him. Portley came out and arrested him at home. Esther Farmer came to visit her husband in the jail and was arrested there. Frances Nash was arrested July 11 in Illinois. Galatas eluded apprehension until September 22. The warrant for Galatas's arrest charged that he had "conspired to cause the escape of Frank Nash at Joplin, Missouri."
Deafy Farmer and his wife, Dick Galatas and his wife, Frances Nash, Vivian Mathias, Doc Stacci of Chicago and Fritz Mulloy of Kansas City were indicted by a federal grand jury in Kansas City on October 24, 1934 and charged with three counts of conspiracy to aid "the escape of [a federal] prisoner properly committed to the custody of the Attorney General." At the close of evidence counts two and three — conspiracy to harbor a federal prisoner and conspiracy to rescue a federal prisoner — were dropped. Mrs Nash testified for the government and charges against her were dismissed. The rest were convicted on the remaining count, conspiracy to free a federal prisoner, on January 4, 1935.
The flurry of phone calls on June 16 and early June 17, their times and connections, were the basis of the prosecution's case. They were also the basis of the defense's case.
The maximum penalty for conspiracy
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
was two years and a fine of $10,000; all four men were assessed the maximum and all four were remanded to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Farmer, Galatas and Mulloy were later transferred to the new federal prison in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Alcatraz. The three women were sentenced to three years' probation and fined $5,000 each.
Further reading
- Cooper, Courtney RyleyCourtney Ryley CooperCourtney Ryley Cooper was an American circus performer, publicist and writer. During his career he published over 30 books, many focusing on crime; J. Edgar Hoover considered him at one time "the best informed man on crime in the U...
(1935). Ten Thousand Public Enemies. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. - Haley, J. EvettsJ. Evetts HaleyJames Evetts Haley, Sr., usually known as J. Evetts Haley , was a Texas-born political activist and historian who wrote multiple works on the American West, including an enduring biography of legendary cattleman Charles Goodnight...
(1973). Robbing Banks Was My Business: The Story of John Harvey Bailey, America's Most Successful Bank Robber. Canyon, TX: Palo Duro Press. - Toland, JohnJohn TolandJohn Toland was a rationalist philosopher and freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, which are early expressions of the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment...
(1963). The Dillinger Days. New York: Random House.