Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
The history behind the holdup
Gentry chamber building site of Spencer Gang robbery
GENTRY — According to historical accounts, the building which is now home to the Gentry Chamber of Commerce was once the scene of a bank robbery involving the notorious Al Spencer Gang.
The date was March 31, 1923. The place, First National Bank in Gentry.
According to the account on the Al Spencer Gang compiled by David Murray of Inverness, Scotland, in 1996, (mostly from newspaper records), it happened like this:
“About noon on Saturday, March 31, 1923, the bandits drove into Gentry in a new Studebaker car, which had been hijacked in Bartlesville (Okla.) three nights before from a businessman named W.C. Smith. While White stayed at the wheel, the other three walked into the First National Bank.
“President Marion Wasson, cashier J. Napp Covey and three others were ordered to raise their hands; and, while Berry and Lamar held them at pistol-point, Spencer bustled about scooping up whatever currency and silver he could find, a grand total of $2,053 and 16 cents.
“In the midst of the proceedings, a female employee managed to push an alarm button with her foot; and within seconds armed citizens were converging on the bank.
“Shoving their victims into the vault, the gang ‘lit out with lead flying at ‘em from every corner.
“With all their planning, however, they hadn’t thought to cut the telephone wires leading out of town, and the news of the holdup was quickly broadcast ahead of them. As they approached the hamlet of Bloomfield, two or three miles west of Gentry, a crowd of officers and civilians armed with rifles and shotguns stationed themselves behind a stone wall fronting the village store.
“‘When Al and the boys reached there,’ related Henry Wells, ‘Winchesters and shotgun slugs tore into the car from behind the stone walls. Nick Lamar was the first man out with a bullet in his shoulder and his legs all shot to hell. They slung plenty bullets theirselves and I bet they’s some of them old timers down there still carrying bandits’ lead. Ralph White got shot in the side and arms and Al got a slug through the fleshy part of his right arm. They got past the store still right side up and come on to where they had the horses hid. Well, here’s where trouble hit hard. The boys didn’t have anything but iodine to doctor their wounds with and nothing but strips of their clothes for bandages.’
“About eleven miles west of Gentry, and now well within Oklahoma, the gang abandoned Smith’s badly shot-up and bloodstained car (which was returned to its rueful owner in this condition a day or so later) and hauled themselves painfully onto the waiting horses. On their subsequent ride across country, they had to stop every few minutes to rest and tend their wounds, and it was several hours before they reached Carl Reasor’s home.”
Murray tells of the apparent planning that led up to the robbery:
“The Gentry, Ark., bank robbery — possibly the only bank holdup that Spencer pulled in that state — appears to have been the brainchild of one Carl Reasor, a veteran of the Spanish-American War who lived with his wife and four children at Rowe in northeastern Oklahoma, fairly close to the Arkansas line. ‘The plan,’ said Henry Wells, ‘was to take two cars down there and stash one with Oklahoma license plates this side of the line and take the other one into Gentry to rob the bank. We was going to drive the car out a few miles from Gentry and then take to horses to get over the hilly rough country. That way, they couldn’t trace us, because they wouldn’t find out about the horses until it was too late….’
“Reasor’s contribution was to supply the horses, and to map out the best escape route from Gentry back across the line. Which being said, Gentry was literally only a few miles from the Oklahoma border. Towards the end of January 1923, under the name of Clifford, (Al) Spencer rented a 50-acre farm in Delaware County, Okla., adjacent to Arkansas, leaving it in charge of his part Indian half-brother, Campbell Keys, who, he explained to the owner of the property, was a dope-head undergoing a cure, and needed the isolation. Subsequently, Spencer (alias Clifford) made several trips to the farm, accompanied by his girlfriend, ostensibly to see how Keys was getting on, but actually to complete plans for the Gentry robbery.
“The identity of the actual bank robbers is, as usual, slightly controversial, but only slightly. (Arthur) Shoemaker names them as Spencer, Wells, Gragg and Bud Ewers, but how he came by this list is anybody’s guess. Wells, who gave a vivid account of the robbery, listed them as ‘me an’ Al Spencer an’ Ralph White an’ Nick Lamar an’ some more boys’; but, as his tale progressed, it became clear that he was referring to the gang as ‘they’ rather than ‘we,’ and there is no reason to suppose that he was present. In fact, from identifications by witnesses, subsequent confessions and reportage by the press, it is fairly certain that they were Spencer, Nick Lamar, Big Boy Berry and Ralph White, with a fifth man to look after the horses. He was named by Wells as Si Fogg, but could have been an elderly Indian outlaw named Red Cloud Scruggs, who was later implicated in the robbery by Big Boy Berry and was killed in a holdup later the same year. Lamar and Berry have been mentioned before. Both were hard-bitten bad men in their mid-thirties: Berry, a World War I veteran who had reportedly served nineteen months in France; Lamar, a native of Atlanta, Ga., and one of Spencer’s earlier criminal associates, like Spencer, had been imprisoned for the Kansas store burglary in 1919; however, he had escaped after three years and was rumored to have taken part in several Spencer holdups. Ralph White is a more elusive figure. He was fairly often referred to in the press, and on occasion was described as
Spencer’s ‘right-hand man.’ If this was true, however, it was not a relationship that lasted very long.”
Once at Reasor’s home in Oklahoma, Murray writes: “A doctor was summoned but had still not arrived when two Delaware County deputy sheriffs turned up, accompanied by Sheriff George Maples of Benton County, Ark. Spencer and White appeared at the door of the house and loosed a barrage of shots at the officers, wounding Deputy Ben Smith and narrowly missing Maples. The officers scattered for cover and, seconds later, the outlaws burst from the rear of the house and escaped into the brush, leaving fresh bloodstains behind them. When the officers got into the house a few minutes later, without further bloodshed, they arrested Reasor, Campbell Keys and a young man named George Tibbs; and, in a barn nearby, they found a Cadillac stolen in Bartlesville a couple of weeks before. To avoid red tape, Reasor and Keys were whisked at once across the state line and lodged in jail at Bentonville, Ark.
“The bandits, meanwhile, had presumably retrieved their horses for, according to Wells, they had another painful day in the saddle before hiding up the second night after the holdup in the graveyard of a small town on the Grand River.
“Spencer, evidently the least wounded, walked into town and, explaining to inquisitive townsfolk that he had been on a fishing trip and had wrecked his car, telephoned Stanley Snyder at Bartlesville.
“In the interim, his companions had managed to scrounge four dozen eggs from a local farmer. Recalled Wells: ‘When by the time Al got back, the boys had built a fire and boiled and et all them eggs, they was that hungry. Al shore was sore when he found out they hadn’t saved him any.’
“A few hours later, Stanley Snyder and another shady character named Pat Durkin arrived in a big Packard sedan and transported the woebegone crew back to the Osage.”
According to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, Al Spencer, outlaw and notorious bank robber, was killed after firing at a posse headed by U.S. Marshal Alvie McDonald. Luther Bishop, “undercover man for the State of Oklahoma,” is credited with being the officer who killed Spencer.