Dillinger gang’s bank robbery left Fostoria ablaze in gunfire

The most newsworthy event that ever happened in my hometown of Fostoria was the day in May 1934 when the John Dillinger gang robbed the First National Bank of $18,000.

I have written about that day in the past. Last year, however, a theatrical group in Fostoria did a play on the Dillinger robbery and used my father’s stories to write the script.

My father was the editor of the Fostoria Daily Review on that day when Dillinger’s henchmen came to town. I had never read those stories until they were assembled for the play’s script.

One thing I do remember as a child, though, was seeing the pockmarks on the walls of the downtown buildings made by bullets from the gang’s machine guns. Those bullets also wounded nine townsfolk on that day, including police Chief Frank Culp. A bullet hit his lung and crushed a rib.

My father described Culp as “gravely wounded” on the day of the robbery, but later stories said his health was improving.

One of the bandits was identified by a witness as Homer Van Meter, who my father said was “considered to be one of the most deadly machine gunners” in the gang. Anyone who has read about the Dillinger gang knows that Van Meter was a vile man.

The day after the holdup, my father started an article with the words, “Stories, stories, stories,” in explaining how everyone who was downtown the day of the robbery had a story to tell.

“All day long, people were talking about the great excitement here yesterday afternoon during the bank robbery.” Dad said he “got cramps in the fingers” trying to jot them all down.

One of the stories that my father jotted down was about a man by the name of Bill Daub, who said the most impressive thing he saw during the robbery was how a “red-headed fellow manipulated his submachine gun. When he shot at the mezzanine floor (in the bank), he didn’t even turn around — merely flipped the gun up and over his shoulder and started blasting.”

When members of the Dillinger gang made their getaway, they put two bank employees on the running boards of the car so no one would shoot at them. My father wrote that one of those employees — “a Miss Ruth Harris,” a bank bookkeeper — said, “It was the most terrifying experience of my life.”

“They didn’t threaten bodily harm to me, but several times on that ride I thought I would be thrown from the car,” she told my father.

The bookkeeper said that the gang kept shooting out of the back of the car as they drove out of town.

“When we were several miles out of town they slowed down and told us to jump off. The last thing I remember was jumping off the car and then I fainted,” Harris told my father.

“Miss Harris was highly nervous and hysterical when she arrived back in town, but soon composed herself and assisted other employees in determining the loss,” my father wrote.

A story like that would be a big story in any town, no matter the size. If it had happened in a big city, though, it might have made Broadway.