The Riverside Press-Enterprise
In 1895, outlaw pulled off brazen bank robbery in Ontario
Channing B. Barnes was one of Southern California’s last wild west outlaws, and in the late 1800s, he lived like a desperado in an old Western film filled with clichés and plot twists that tested reality.
C.B. Barnes began his violent career at age 26, with a brazen daylight bank robbery in Ontario on Jan. 4, 1895.
At 11:15 am, Barnes and an accomplice known only as “Hyatt” entered the Ontario State Bank at the corner of Euclid Avenue and Main Street, where Barnes pulled out a six shooter, and pointed it at the head of the bank’s secretary, F.B. Stamm. The robbers had been watching the bank and waited to enter until there were no customers inside.
Barnes ordered Stamm to hand over all the gold in the bank, and Hyatt escorted him into the vault, where he loaded up $4,000 to $5,000 in gold coins. Dissatisfied with the haul, Barnes threatened, then beat Stamm unconscious with a club before throwing him to the floor of the vault and locking him inside.
The amount of $5,000 in 1895 would be the equivalent of about $180,000 in 2023.
The robbers finished their work by grabbing the cash from the drawers behind the counter. Just as the men were ready to leave, an unlucky customer named R.P. Sibley entered and was beaten unconscious by Barnes.
Barnes and Hyatt made their hasty escape in a rented buggy and lit off heading south, toward the Santa Ana River. According to witnesses in town, the two men were dressed like hoboes and had been hanging around
the area for three days, apparently casing the bank.
Neither robber wore a mask, so Stamm provided a good description of the pair, with Barnes being described as “the taller one” with sandy red hair and weighing about 130 pounds. Hyatt was described as about 50 years old, with a sandy mustache and beard that showed about two weeks of growth.
Using telephones and telegraphs, authorities quickly assembled a posse of more than 50 men from nearby cities and began to pursue the robbers in the direction of Orange County.
Descriptions were sent to every city in the area. By the following day, six men in different towns had been mistakenly detained or arrested for the robbery.
The thieves split their loot early in their escape route, and Hyatt was never seen again. With his share of the gold and cash, Barnes could have simply bought a train ticket to anywhere and
lived comfortably. But it’s likely that his own arrogance kept him in the area, believing he was too clever to be caught.
The posse had no luck and Barnes’ arrest was ultimately the result of good, old-fashioned, lowtech detective work, and collaboration between Los Angeles and Orange County police.
Los Angeles Police Chief John M. Glass had reason to believe Barnes had been in his city and he kept a strong focus on the case. Los Angeles Detective Goodman and Orange County Sheriff Joe C. Nichols were the primary investigators.
Like many other criminals, Barnes raised suspicion when he began to spend gold coins and cash lavishly. With all of Southern California on alert for the robbers, the townspeople where Barnes visited began reporting these suspicious activities to authorities.
In Fullerton, Barnes raised considerable suspicion by going on a spending spree. A local hotel owner told Nichols that
he found black hair dye on Barnes’ pillow, indicating that he had dyed his hair to change his appearance. Nichols had Barnes watched closely and collected information that was shared with L.A. Detective Goodman.
Goodman went so far as to recruit a young woman in Fullerton to lure Barnes into tipping his hand at a lavish party set up to expose him. According to Goodman: “The young woman was at the spider-web party in which Barnes led the fun. He was the lion of the hour there and in his foolish efforts to cut a big dash he gave himself partially away to this watcher of mine.”
Barnes returned to Los Angeles, where he was arrested by Goodman on Jan. 25, 1895. The San Bernardino Daily Sun called the arrest “the most important one ever made by the Los Angeles authorities.”
The trial of C.B. Barnes in San Bernardino in April 1895 became a highly publicized spectacle that riveted Southern
Californians. Barnes’ attorney, John M. Lucas, convinced him to throw himself on the mercy of the court and plead guilty to the bank robbery charges and claim that Hyatt had done the beatings.
Using scores of letters and live character witnesses from his younger days in Austin, Texas, Barnes’ attorney convinced the judge that Barnes was a good and decent young man who had fallen in with a bad crowd and hard times after leaving home.
Lucas also managed to convince the prosecuting district attorney that Barnes wasn’t the robber responsible for beating the two men. That claim must have infuriated Stamm, but it was made easier by the fact that Hyatt was never caught.
At the end of the proceedings, the district attorney showed pity for Barnes by making a statement that encouraged leniency.
Judge Campbell was swayed by the witnesses, and with the statute allowing a sentence of one year to life imprisonment, he handed down a sixyear sentence that would ultimately let Barnes walk free in four years.
Barnes was released from San Quentin prison June 6, 1899, and he began a new life of crime by robbing a train with his brother Charles W. Barnes in Kentucky in July 1900. C.B. Barnes was captured, but he shot one of the officers and escaped. His brother Charles was captured and held by authorities.
C.B. Barnes continued his crime spree in Louisiana, where he held up a train and shot the conductor in December 1900. The Louisiana authorities chased and wounded Barnes, but he escaped again and disappeared into a swamp.
Wounded and despondent, C.B. Barnes slit his own throat rather than be captured. His body was found in the swamp Dec. 18, with some missing mail and dynamite.
The Ontario bank robbery was such a vicious and well-planned crime, it’s hard to imagine it was a “misguided man’s” first offense. Barnes’ later crime spree proved that he had fooled nearly everyone about his true character.