Lou’s View – July 21, 2016
The Beech Creek Bandit
By Lou Bernard
The newspapers later referred to it as “the thrill that comes once in a lifetime.”
It happened in Beech Creek. I’m actually feeling quite interested in Beech Creek lately, as I recently gave a walking tour there. My friend Adam Bugaj booked me to give a tour for the Beech Creek Library, and it was a somewhat historic event—The first time, to the best of my recollection, that I’ve given a walking tour anywhere outside Lock Haven.
It was September 19th, 1929 when three men walked into the Beech Creek National Bank on Main Street. The men had been seen in a Studebaker, hanging around Beech Creek for several previous days. The men had figured out that proceeds from the local farms and businesses were deposited on a Thursday morning, so they walked in and pointed their revolvers at cashier Aaron Haugh, demanding all the money.
Haugh, who later said he had lost his appetite for good from the experience, ghave them the bank’s money, which totaled twelve thousand dollars. The men ran out to their car, which was waiting with a fourth man, and raced off.
The men were Norris Raymond Shope, Hazzard Kline, Kline’s seventeen-year-old son, and a man named Delaney. They had robbed the local bank, and Beech Creek reacted.
Zena Gunsallus had just come on duty at the local telephone exchange, and she cleared the lines and helped law enforcement spread the news. State police at Lock Haven, Bellefonte, Altoona, and Jersey Shore were notified, and the public got the word.
One of the people who heard the big news was local doctor George H. Tibbens. With a borrowed revolver, he took several shots at the Studebaker as he noticed it going past, because it was 1929 and even doctors saw no harm to blasting away recklessly with guns. Shope was driving, and the newspaper reported,”One of the doctor’s bullets came so close that it scarred the skin of his upper lip and left a mark as if burned.”
Several men from the area jumped into a car and began driving around, asking for information. They learned that the robbers were headed toward Snow Shoe. At some point, the robbers switched seats, leaving Delaney to drive. He was at the wheel when they passed the home of Frank Williams, who blew two loads of buckshot into the car. Honestly, I would have hated to be driving a Studebaker that day.
The buckshot blew the steering wheel apart, and the car ran out of control and into a culvert. The impact threw Delaney up against the steering wheel, breaking a rib and puncturing his lung. He died in the Bellefonte Hospital seven hours later.
The other men ran. They scattered, with about half of Beech Creek hot on their tails. Delaney had been carrying most of the money inside his clothes, packed around his body, so when the other three ran, they only had $275 on them. They also dropped their guns, so they were unarmed.
For several hours, in addition to random locals packing heat, a battalion of police searched the area for the remaining three men. At about seven thirty that evening, not long after Delaney died, a railroad security guard in Show Shoe found two men hiding in a train car. He thought they were just catching a ride, until he searched them and found the remaining money. The men turned out to be Shope and Kline, who were immediately arrested and taken to the state police station in Bellefonte.
The police summoned cashier Aaron Haugh and Milton Sykes, who had also been in the bank. They arrived and immediately identified the two prisoners as the robbers. Haugh was given the confiscated money, and after counting it, declared that the bank had now recovered every stolen penny. Shope and Kline confessed, and admitted that the one remaining robber was Kline’s teenaged son, still on the loose.
“It is expected that he will be found,” said the newspaper.
The subsequent newspaper article, published two days later, summed up all the confusion and action, which the citizens of Beech Creek were still talking about. The article declared,”The general opinion is that the robbers had too much whiskey to work out their plans for a good getaway,” which is as good an explanation as any.
The article also praised telephone operator Zena Gunsallus for her quick action, and summed up the day’s activity quite nicely. It said,”The efficient service of Miss Gunsallus all afternoon was an important link in the chain of events that crowned the day’s efforts with success, except for the robbers.”
