Dedicated to his criminal craft
Henry Fernekes hit the books for a master’s degree in bank robbing
Reporters dubbed him the “midget bandit,” butHenry Fernekes drewupon a big brain when he decided to focus on bank robbing. He did his research, formally and on the fly.
He studied at the School of the Art Institute so he could draft floor plans of banks he intended to rob, police told the Tribune.
Fernekes learned on the job too: “Heworked in thewelding department of an electric company to familiarize himself with blowtorches for cutting into bank vaults,” the Tribune revealed when he died in 1935. “He spent several months firing a locomotive so hewould knowhowto halt an engine.”
And once when hewas on the run, the police found him at the John Crerar Library, poring over chemistry textbooks.
Fernekes also distinguished himself in the age of headline-grabbing bank robbers like Baby FaceNelson and John Dillinger by claiming to hold himself to an ethical standard— while admitting to juvenile lapses. Yes, he pulled a few stickups and robbed “L” station cashiers, he told a Tribune reporter through the bars of a police station jail cell in 1925. But he’d put such capers behind him.
“You see, when you do that you are taking money away fromsome poor fellowwho hasn’t much. Probably his pay check,” he said. “But a bank, or a syndicate, nowthat’s entirely different. They’re insured. It’s just a profit and loss business deal with them.”
His criminal career began on a poetic note in 1914, as the Tribune reported. Hewas 18, and his soon-tobe bridewas 16. Two days before they were married, he wrote a letter to her:
“A fewwords before I go on this ungodly errand, although knightly in purpose. If I amcaught, which will only be atmy death, as that is much preferable, learn to forgive and forget, asmy sincere love for you prompted this action. Iwanted to give you comfort and happiness but alas ‘the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee.’”
He signed it with his name and “a loving kiss.”
Less than a month later, Fernekes, with pistols in both hands, rushed into a roominside a commercial building in the Loop to the surprise of two brothers and a pair of secretaries there. “Close that door, and keep still,” he ordered and then placed one of the guns in his coat.
“The big black pistol in his hand was almost as big as the boy himself, it seemed to the girls. They began to giggle,” the Tribune wrote of the witnesses’ account. “The bandit himself gaveway to laughter.”
Taking aKodak camera fromhis vest pocket, Fernekes asked if he could take pictures of the group, and the four obliged. Afterward one of the brothers excused himself to go to the bathroom and found a police officer.
It turned out that policewere searching for a young man who had pulled a stickup in a room on the same floor. Fernekes took $45.50 from awoman who scared him off by screaming when he pushed for more money.
Hewas sitting at a desk when the brother and officer arrived and “gracefully submitted to arrest,” the Tribune noted.
He later told detectives hewas making $9 aweek as an office clerk for a tool company before he quit. Because of his criminal pursuits, the teen girlwhom he hoped to better provide forwanted nothing more to do with him.
“I couldn’t help it,” Fernekes said. “I loved the girl. I couldn’twait until I had money enough to support her.”
His father also wrote him off. “How does he repayme for the money I spent on him for the education I gave him? He elopes with her,” the elder Fernekes said. “And (in jail) is where I find him.”
Fernekes’ misadventure cost him a two-year stint at a state penal institution. He emerged with heightened ambitions and formed a criminal gang. Fromthat point, his rap sheet alternately lists bank robberies and prison escapes.
He creatively devised hideouts and storerooms to support his bandit life. In 1925, an orphan girl gave the cops a tour of aWest Side boardinghouse that Fernekeswas using as storage for the tools of his trade, the Tribune reported. The girl, who swept floors there, told the officers that she practiced pirouettes in the basement.
“There’s where the packagewas,” she said, near where shewould dance. She had beenwarned to not throw the package into the fire. The cops told the Tribune that it contained 40 sticks of dynamite.
Explosives came in handy for heists — and for jail break attempts. With dynamite smuggled to him, Fernekes blew a hole in Cook County Jail, but
“You see, when you do that you are taking money away from some poor fellow who hasn’t much. Probably his pay check. But a bank, or a syndicate, now that’s entirely different. They’re insured. It’s just a profit and loss business deal with them.”
some sturdy brickswithstood the blast and prevented him fromfleeing. Itwas one of his four attempts to escape during that stay. On Christmas in 1925, while hewas awaiting execu
tion for his crimes including murder, thewarden kept him in solitary confinement to make sure he stayed put.
Fernekes spent the holiday “writing a chapter of his short love story, which he said he hopes to have for sale in the near future,” the Tribune reported.
Whether he found a publisher isn’t clear, but he did invest the take froma bank robbery in 1918 toward a legitimate venture. He and accomplices took $105,000 fromArgo State Bank, and he fled with his romantic partner, Jennie, and her child to aNew York hamlet, where he opened a batteryservice station.
“Shortly afterward he robbed the town bank, killing the cashier and a teller,” the Tribune recalled in Ferneke’s obituary.
Determining whether Fernekes’ criminal careerwas profitable requires something between mathematical calculation and guesswork. The loot from his crimeswas substantial, but so, too, were his lawyers’ fees.
In 1925, Fernekes admitted to the Argo robbery. Whereupon Jennie Saunders, who also had a child with Fernekes, went to ClarenceDarrow, the famed labor lawyer. She brought with her four diamond rings.
“Mr. Darrowdenies theywere given as a retainer’s fee, saying he merely is keeping them in security for thewoman,” the Tribune dryly observed.
Fernekes got appellate courts to reverse judges’ death sentences— again, pricey undertakings.
The other side of the ledger bears witness to Fernekes’ productivity. At just one 1925 lineup, witnesses fingered him for robberies of Citizens State Bank ofMelrose Park, Brookfield State Bank, Inland Trust and Savings Bank and Prairie State Bank in Oak Park.
In his spare time, he penned letters to people whowere not expecting to hear fromhim. When mobsters assassinated a prosecutor who had convicted him, Fernekes sent a note to his
boss.
“Although I have nothing in common with the state’s attorney’s office, yet I feel called upon to console you in the loss of a brilliant and conscientious member of your staff,” he wrote.
When Fernekes escaped from Joliet Prison in 1935, Gov. Henry Horner offered a reward. In a letter to the prison, Fernekes complained: “I think a reward of $5,000 ismore fitting than the $1,000 posted by Gov. Horner.”
That escapewas doubly notorious: Not only did Fernekeswalk out the door in civilian clothes, but also the investigation discovered that he had played the stock market while in prison. He had the proceeds of stock sales sent to thewarden’s office for deposit in Fernekes’ prison account.
“Warden (Frank) Whipp knew nothing of these transactions until this morning when he examined the records,” a state official explained.
Captured in Chicago less than three months later, Fernekes declared he’d never go back to prison. While in local custody, he swallowed poison from a vial he had smuggled in and died.
The truth of his exploitswas as strange as fiction, as the Tribune noted: “The life ofHenry J. (Midget) Fernekes, bank robber, murderer, and escaped convict, who ended his life in a police cell early yesterday, was as bizarre as any ‘master’ criminal created by amystery writer. Hewas considered by detectives who trailed him during his years of crime as the shrewdest public enemy at large.”
— Henry Fernekes, to the Tribune in 1925 about putting small-time capers and stickups behind him