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Bank Robbers Captured Near Lowden

    As a senior in high school, the trip home for dinner and back to school on February 2, 1932 proved to be one that I will remember. Upon arriving home, my father M. V. Pauls, who was the Town Marshal and also a local member of a vigilance committee, was being informed by another vigilante that the group was being summoned --- the bank in Stanwood had just been held up and robbed.

     Father left with the vigilante, and after eating dinner I went back to school for the afternoon classes. My arrival at school turned into a state of alarm. Pupils were whispering to each other as I approached and I then experienced an awareness that something must have happened to Dad. I soon learned the shocking news that he had been shot by one of the bandits, but I was later relieved when assured that it was only a wound in the right leg.

     The lightning-fast events that took place between the time of the calling of the Lowden vigilantes and their interception of the two bandits is described as related in saved newspaper clippings regarding the robbery and from memory.

     The members of the vigilante group as named in one newspaper article states that in addition to my father, who was known as Walt, there were A. F. Clemmens, Hans Andresen, and Ray Marks. However, a picture of the group involved in the capture included Lawrence Kemmann.

     The details, when received in Lowden, regarding the robbery, indicated that two men held up the Union Trust and Savings Bank in Stanwood and left town driving west in what was believed to be a Model T Ford.

     The Lowden officials headed west out of town on the Lincoln Highway (now U.S. 30) in a pickup truck that was owned and used by August Malottki in the butchering and meat market business where Ray Marks was employed. About a mile west of Lowden, a late Model A Ford was noticed approaching from the west. Since the bank robbers were supposed to have fled from the bank by driving west out of Stanwood in a Model T Ford, a decision was made to stop the Model A Ford and ask the occupant or occupants in it, if they had seen . . .

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. . . the get-away car that was used by the bandits.

     As my father approached the stopped car, a man in the back seat opened fire. The newspaper article explains that, “A. F. Clemmens fired a riot gun through the window of the bandit's car and wounded one bandit.” The man in the rear seat jumped out of the car and ran to the back of it for protection. Again the article from the newspaper states it was, “Marshal M. V. “Walt” Pauls, whose bullet killed the man. Pauls received a leg wound.” The ordeal ended as one bandit lay dying on the highway and the other, still in back of the steering wheel, surrendered by raising his hands. Had the outlaws not been so hasty in opening fire, they may have eluded their captors. Both the dead and wounded men were brought to town to await the arrival of Sheriff Foster Maxson and Coroner A. M. McCormick from Tipton, the county seat. The wounded man was temporarily placed in the Lowden jail.

     The holdup of the bank was carried out by forcing Otto Evers, vice-president and C. H. Haesemeyer, cashier, into the bank vault. Walter Lehrman, a customer, came into the bank during the robbery and he too was ordered in to the vault.

     The automobile that was used for the escape from the bank by the bandits was driven west out of Stanwood on the Lincoln Highway to the first T-intersection, where they transferred to the previously planted Model A Ford.

     The bandits were apparently Mexican and both were about 35 years old. The driver of the car at the time of the capture was referred to as Wall and the dead man, Forbes was sometimes known as Robert Morse. George Morse of Cedar Rapids claimed that the dead man was his stepson and that Wall was his son-in-law.

     A search of the dead man by the Coroner revealed $575.00 in bills inside his shirt, and six one dollar bills in his trouser pocket. The clothing worn by Forbes at the time of his death was not the same used in the holdup as was later discovered by finding a black overcoat and shirt near the high bridge over the railroad track west of Lowden. The man was undoubtedly in the act of changing clothes when the car was stopped by the officers. He wore a pair of oxfords that were untied at the time of his death, and the bankers remembered the man as wearing high-top shoes.

     The older car, bearing Benton County plates, used in the first part of the escape contained several pistols, a shotgun, sledge hammers, and bars. The Model A Ford was registered in the name of Robert Morse, and bore New Mexico plates. It was equipped with a radio and gun holster on the steering column. In the back seat was found a Texas Ranger rifle, two chisels, a small maul, four or five new flat iron handles of the old type, and several suitcases full of clothing.

     It was said that Forbes, who was born at Stanwood but left there when about seven years old, had a wife in Texas, went from a taxi driver to bootlegging, and finally ended his career in the county in which he was born, as a bank robber.

              Mrs Arthur (Vanita Pauls) Fisher