The onlooker simply stared, uncomprehendingly. Lunn cried out, “Get the police!” but when the man didn’t move, he murmured, “Get on away from here!”
Rolling out of the doorway, Lunn stared at the robbers. The smaller crook had collected the money-ladened bags, was pleading with his companion to leave. “Let’s scram before our luck runs out.”
The tall desperado stood in the center of the room as if receiving a charge from this moment of evil triumph that might never come again. They’d been inside the bank no longer than seven minutes. Their loot consisted of more than $26,000.
“Come on.” The stocky man moved toward the door. “Do you have to put on a show for ’em?”
The tall gunman backed toward the door. He glanced at Cashier Lunn, jerked his gun up, fired a shot to cow the witnesses. The bullet lodged in a window sash.
Before the sound of the shot had died, before the hold-up victims had recovered from the paralyzing effects of the raid, the two bandits leaped into Constable Godwin’s car and sped west on Broadway.
Alton Bourne, employee of the hardware store beside the bank, had been alerted about the robbery by bank Vice-President J. H. White. He in turn had called police headquarters, where the alarm had been radioed to Chief Glenn Baggett.
The police chief arrived at the bank as the two bandits piled into Constable Godwin’s car and sped away. Baggett gave chase.
Drawn outside his filling station by the sound of the speeding getaway car, Ex-Chief of Police L. M. Roberts saw the man at the wheel, still wearing his stocking mask. The bandit was driving too fast to make the turn into Sand Mountain Road, and he skidded into the mud beyond it.
Gears grinding, the desperado thrust the car into reverse. When the car didn’t budge, the two thugs leaped out and fled on foot.
At this point, Perry Johnson, a Fort Meade wholesale dealer, pulled into the service lane of Roberts’ filling station. And at just this moment Chief Baggett braked his car behind Constable Godwin’s abandoned sedan.
Johnson rushed to assist Baggett, who was already crouched in the thick growth of a hedgerow, firing at the criminals running across the fields with the bags of money.
Chief Baggett tossed Johnson a gun while he continued to blaze away with his police automatic. The bandits, streaking across the field, returned his fire. By now the thugs had reached their plane.
The pilot clambered into the Aeronca. The tall man threw the money bags in ahead of him, stumbled as he turned to shoot at Chief Baggett and Perry Johnson. The pilot caught his companion by the shirt collar, dragged him into the plane.
As Johnson and Baggett ran forward, the plane was being revved, jerked about. The tall man fired once again to force them back.
The lawman and his courageous associate were stunned by the short run which the plane made before it was airborne — almost as if it were lifted bodily by that pilot’s know-how and frantic skill...
Within minutes, word of the daring daylight bank robbery and unique getaway was radioed throughout that section of the state. All law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI were converging on Fort Meade.
Meanwhile, in the yellow Aeronca, the tall bandit stuffed the loot into two suitcases he had brought along as part of the operation.
And, while this was taking place, the standard-band radio was broadcasting the following through Station WGTO, Haines City: “At noon today, John Parker of Lake Alfred reported the loss of his yellow Aeronca, pocketed at Gilbert Field, Winter Haven. Aw, come on, fellows, bring back John’s plane!”
The tall bandit could not stop laughing at the announcer’s witticism. Of course, the radioman had no idea of the use to which the plane had been put.
The bandit-pilot was not so happy. His radio was reporting that planes from Bartow Air Base, two Florida Forest Service aircraft and a Coast Guard helicopter from the St. Petersburg base were in the air search. Forest Service fire towers from Fort Myers to Gainesville were alerted to watch for the Aeronca.
Avon Park and Sebring announced that a plane answering the description of the Aeronca had been spotted. State and local police checked these reports, but the Bartow Air Base stated that one of the search planes had spotted the Aeronca on an abandoned airstrip near Plant City.
Hillsborough County police raced to the airstrip, found the Aeronca pitted with bullet holes. The robbers had vanished, leaving behind as clues nothing but shoe prints leading away from the Aeronca. Deputy Leon Thornton brought bloodhound trainer Carl Andrews and some of his best tracking dogs to the airstrip. Lieutenant J. J. Mitchell, fingerprint expert of the Hillsborough County sheriff's office, searched the plane for fingerprints, while other law officers made plaster casts of the shoe tracks.
Sheriff Ed Blackburn of Hillsborough County was in his office in conference with Pinellas County Sheriff Sid Saunders when a break in the case came. Witnesses reported that they had seen the two fugitives abandoning the Aeronca and continuing their flight in the small, silver Cessna. A description of the two-seater plane was furnished.
A check of the aeronautic records revealed that only two planes were registered in the State of Florida in that particular silver with yellow-trim color combination. One of these was quickly checked out. The other was supposed to be in its Tampa hangar.
Sheriff Blackburn’s telephone rang. A man named Eiler said he’d heard that the police were seeking his Cessna; he’d called as soon as possible. He had lent the plane to an employee of his named Don Thompson, who had told him that he had some urgent business across the bay in Venice.
Thompson was no stranger to the Hillsborough County authorities. He’d come to Tampa as an Air Force pilot at McDill Air Field, was esteemed as an excellent flier in both speed and acrobatic planes.
Thompson’s wife and seven-year-old daughter were not home. Lawmen doubted that the war hero was connected with the crime, but radioed descriptions of him and the silver Cessna throughout Florida.
Shortly before 5 P.M., Tampa police were called to the intersection at Cypress Street and Howard Avenue. Two cars had collided. A man named Irvin U. Suits was arrested for drunken driving.
Suits, youthful, handsome, 26-year-old son of a respected Hillsborough County family, was routinely questioned by the city police. Because he was known to be a friend of Don Thompson, was a plane broker, had more than $300 in fresh bills in his pockets and resembled the man described as the taller of the two Fort Meade air bandits, he was turned over to Sheriff Blackburn and the FBI.
At 5:06 P.M. Don Thompson landed at Tampa International. An airport attendant called Sheriff Blackburn, told him that “Bugs” Thompson — as he was familiarly known on the airstrips where he was a flying instructor — had just flown in with a silver Cessna.
“Keep talking to him,” Blackburn directed. “Hold him until I can get somebody out there.”
Thompson was arrested by sheriff's deputies. While he admitted that he had been drinking, he maintained that he had been giving Irvin Suits flying lessons all afternoon and knew nothing of the Fort Meade robbery. There were no guns on him or in the plane, no trace of the $26,000. Nevertheless, Thompson was detained.
Brought from Fort Meade, Constable Harry Godwin picked Irvin U. Suits from a line-up, definitely identified him as the man who had cursed and pistol whipped him in the Fort Meade bank. Godwin, however, failed to identify the stocky Dan Thompson in another police line-up.
Confronted with the fact that Godwin, as well as other Fort Meade witnesses, had definitely named him as one of the hold-up men, Irvin Suits confessed to the crime, implicating Donald J. “Bugs” Thompson as his accomplice.
He said that he and Thompson had cased a number of banks in central Florida, and had chosen the one at Fort Meade because they figured they could fly in and out of a small city with little difficulty and with no chance of pursuit.