‘Terror Bandits’ left trail of corpses across the city
In fall 1926, San Francisco was rocked by one of the most terrifying crime sprees in its history. On two October nights, a 22yearold former boxer and taxi driver named Clarence Kelly and two different accomplices, one just 17yearsold, drove around town, killing four people in cold blood and robbing and pistolwhipping more than two dozen others. The press dubbed Kelly and his accomplices the “Terror Bandits.”
Clarence “Buck” Kelly was one of 13 children born to John and Kate Kelly. The Kellys grew up in the workingclass South of the Slot neighborhood, living on Clara Street before renting an apartment at 47 South Park. Kelly went to the Lincoln Grammar School (where one of his classmates was future mayor George Christopher). He fought 15 bouts as a prizefighter and worked for a while as a cabdriver. At age 18, he was arrested for grand larceny. He had a commonlaw wife and a 3monthold baby.
Kelly met a laborer named Lawrence Weeks at a speakeasy on Waller Street. A few days before the crime spree, the two men got together at a poolroom at 22nd and Mission.
“We talked about getting easy
money,” Weeks told The Chronicle later. “The wife was coming back from Sacramento, and I didn’t have the room rent or eating money for us . ... We talked about pulling some stickups and made an appointment for Saturday.”
At 6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 9, Kelly and Weeks met at the poolroom, then took the 22Fillmore bus to Fillmore and Broadway and began walking around in search of a car to hijack. With a gun they had obtained from an acquaintance, they commandeered a Buick at Octavia and Vallejo, drove to a poolroom at 1968 Lombard and held it up. When the proprietor resisted, they pistolwhipped him and shot him in the hand and elbow.
They then headed south to 17th and Missouri, at the base of Potrero Hill. They stuck up two men walking on the street, but let them go when one turned out to be an accused robber who said, “Hey, Kelly, don’t you recognize me?”
After robbing several more people in the Mission and on Brannan Street, they kidnapped one of their victims. But when she began crying and told them she was a mother of 10, Kelly stopped the car and said, “Ah, get the hell out of here. We don’t want you anyway, we want a chicken.”
After robbing two more men, they returned to the area where they had strongarmed the car. They robbed a man at Pine and Webster, then a taxi driver who solicited them, then another taxi driver on Jackson Street. When a pedestrian they were about to rob entered his house on Webster Street, they knocked on his door and robbed him when he opened it.
The pair committed their first murder on Nob Hill. They robbed two couples at Clay and Taylor before heading down Washington to Powell, where Kelly drew a gun on a man named Mario Pagano. When Pagano threw his umbrella at them and tried to run, they both opened fire. Pagano fell dead.
They were barreling south on Powell when Police Chief Daniel O’Brien, who had been visiting friends and heard the shots, and his chauffeur tried to stop them. Exchanging fire with the pair, the murderers got away.
Two nights later, Kelly embarked on an even more savage crime spree. Weeks had vanished, but Kelly enlisted a new accomplice, 17yearold Michael Papadaches, who lived in the same building as Kelly and had just been released from reform school, where he had been sent after rolling a drunk.
On Monday, Oct. 11, after drinking at a bootleg joint, they hailed a taxi. The driver, Walter Swanson, took them to a pool parlor at Third and Athens where, Papadaches later said, “We had plenty of drinks.”
Swanson drove the pair down Third Street to 16th Street, then began driving over the Third Street Bridge. In the middle of the bridge, Kelly asked Swanson to stop and join them in a drink of moonshine rum. When Swanson stopped the car, Kelly held him up with a gun while Papadaches went through his pockets. Then Kelly shot him dead.
The terrified Papadaches tried to run away, but Kelly caught up with him, pointed the gun at him and said, “Are you going to stick with me on this and be on the up and up, or shall I croak you, too?” Papadaches decided to stay.
Donning Swanson’s taxi cap and leggings, Kelly drove the taxi to San Bruno and Mariposa, where he asked a man named Nicholas Petrovich for the time. As Petrovich was putting his watch back in his pocket, Kelly shot and killed him.
After robbing two more men near 100 Mississippi St., they shot another man at a restaurant near Seventh and Brannan. Then, around 6:30 p.m., they went across the street to a gas station. They ordered the owner, Carl Johnson, and two other men to line up and put their hands in the air. Johnson was “dumbfounded” when Kelly raised his gun, aimed at his head and fired at a distance of less than 3 feet.
The bullet went through his neck, narrowly missing his spine. As Johnson fell, he saw Kelly shoot his friend, a night watchman named John Duane. Duane fell, mortally wounded, blood spurting out of his mouth. Then Kelly shot the other man, who also survived.
Kelly and Papadaches drove back down to Second and Brannan and robbed someone else. Then they went to Second and Townsend, near Pier 36, where Kelly beat a seaman with his pistol butt and robbed him.
They robbed their final victim at Third and Mariposa.
After a policeman on the scene opened fire, they careened away, wrecking the cab at the foot of Seventh Street. Both Kelly and Papadaches got away and returned to their homes.
The city was traumatized. The entire San Francisco police force, plus volunteers from the Fire Department — 2,000 men in all — were mobilized, with orders to shoot to kill. The tale of the capture and trial of the “Terror Bandits,” and the bizarre fate visited upon Kelly, will be the subject of the next Portals.
Gary Kamiya is the author of the bestselling book “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco,” awarded the Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/ portals. For more features from 150 years of The Chronicle’s archives, go to sfchronicle.com/ vault. Email: metro@ sfchronicle.com