Preview
Identifier
20127110
Description
Jobless Oil Worker Take $2,180 With Toy A burly, unemployed oil field worked robbed the State Bank of East Fort Worth of $2,180 shortly before 2 P. M. Friday and then was captured less than an hour later in his apartment three blocks from the bank. All but $10 of the loot was recovered when police seized J. L. Henson, 49, in his newly rented apartment at 920 Conner. Henson, who came here Monday from Eunice, N. M. after losing his oil field job, meekly surrendered and admitted that he used a toy cap pistol to force the bank's head teller, Frank Stidham, to hand over the money. It was the second time within a year that Stidham has been face to face with an armed robber. Two gunmen held him up at the bank April 1 and escaped with $3,325. They were arrested six weeks later and are now serving prison sentences. The 250-Henson, clad in faded Army fatigue cap and jacket, entered the bank through the front door a few minutes before the 2 P. M. closing time. He walked directly to Stidham's cage, which is nearest the door, but just as he reached it he dropped the toy pistol on the floor. He came up with it pointed at the teller. He then handed Stidham a note which read: "If you step on alarm you will be a dead man. Put all your currency in this bag and set on floorfive min." Stidham said the pistol dropping incident seemed to have made the bandit very nervous. "I feared that he had some nitroglycerin because he was so nervous," the teller related. Stidham said as soon as he saw the note he began stuffing $20 bills into the bag. He then put in some $10 and $5 bills but when he came to the $1 bills the bandit told him that was enough. As Henson left with the money, Stidham vaulted over the counter in front of his cage and ran to the front door. At the same time, Mrs. Almeda Preston, Mrs. Sue Baker and Mrs. Frances Wilson, employees in the bank's book-keeping department, figured out what was happening and raced to a window from which they saw Henson get in his late model pink Mercury and drive away. It was the description of the car plus an alert Civil Defense radio operator that enabled police to make the quick arrest.
Archival Date
1958-12-26
Collection Name
Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection
Collection Number
AR406-6-182
Original Format
Negatives, Black & White
File Format
JPG
Rights
Rights held by The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections. Any use of content downloaded or printed from this page is limited to non-commercial personal or educational use, including fair use as directed by U.S. copyright laws. For more information or for reproduction requests, please contact UTA Special Collections by emailing spcoref@uta.edu.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Subjects
Robbery; Jail; Crimes
Names
Henson, J. L.; State Bank of East Fort Worth
Subjects
Robbery; Jail; Crimes