Charlie Mays

Chas. Mays circa 1919 when admitted into Kansas State Penitentiary for robbery.

You know my first reaction was that he looked a little like Charlie Birger, but no my senses are a little off these days so I'll reserve that comparison for another day.

Charlie doesn't really seem to have been a very nice guy but he appears to have known how to play the system. His original sentence was for 10 to 21 years. He got that commuted to 1 to 5 by having one of the men he robbed Arthur Henderson write a letter saying that he was never certain of the robber’s identity. In fact once Henderson got a good look at Mays close up (you see Henderson through dumb luck of his own happened to get incarcerated also) he could tell that Mays just wasn't the guy! Henderson writes that he was pressured to identify Mays by the court. Since the robbery occurred in a box car it's hard to believe that he didn't get that close but hey I wasn't there. Well things just fell into place after that. After serving a year and eight months he received parole on 6/12/1921. The Kansas parole board was very understanding: even though Mays did not report to his parole officer during 1922 and had been arrested for vagrancy repeatedly in Joplin, MO he received a full commutation in early 1923. Which I'm sure he appreciated (it's so stressful having to keep up with these small details when your casing banks).

I do wonder if this is the right Charlie Mays though; I mean supposedly he murdered a man in that box car when he was robbing them. His papers don't mention the murder although there is a statement that one of his victims can't be found.

Earl McDowell

Finally got to LOC newspaper reading room again. Found articles on Earl McDowell in the Chicago Tribune when he murdered a young woman who had the bad fortune to be in the bullets way. One night, McDowell went to a "beer flat" in Chicago, IL with some friends. While there, he took an intense dislike to the radio station being played. In order to register his displeasure he shot the radio. Unfortunately, the bullets found Dorothy Evelyn Renshaw, a 23 year old mother from Sioux City, IA, killing her. McDowell fled to Kansas City, MO after this incident.

It's his Kansas City exploits that concern me and proved to be the death of him. Once there he began living with Vivian Chase who began using his name. It's evident McDowell was a handsome man, but evidently he had a nasty temper. He once shot at his wife but missed her. It's always been said that Luther Jordan , another of Vivian's paramours, was intensely jealous of McDowell, but Jordan always denied any relationship with Vivian or jealousy resulting from her affections for McDowell. It makes since that Jordan would deny his involvement with her. McDowell was found dead in a ditch outside of Kansas City shortly after his arrival.

Crash Out!

The time frame for this book is just on the cusp of period I usually read. The story begins in 1939 with the Shopping Bag Gang from Hell's Kitchen, their exploits and capture for robbery, and the gang leaders' attempt to escape from Sing Sing.

It's a great read. Goewey has provided meticulous details for every facet of the book. He really shines describing the break out and the gang's capture. The 3rd degree given to the captured suspects is described in graphic detail. He also manages to be fair in his assessments of all the characters involved- police, criminals, guards, family members. The details in the book make it easy for the reader to have sympathy for Whitey Riordan (executed for the murder of a guard and a policeman during the robbery but not the actual killer); but, Goewey doesn't just gloss over the escape attempts victims and it's a rotten deal that they were killed in what was supposed to be a clean break.

UGH!

I'm mad at everyone. No getting around it; today is one of those days that I'm sure I exist because people need to say the word NO.

The FBI can't find the record for the Cherryvale Bank Robbery investigation. Although the file is referenced in the Luer documents, it appears that it no longer exists. I was looking forward to reading that file on my next day off. But it's not to be. I'll make another request using the names of the other principals in the case, Charlie Mayes, Lee Flournoy, Lyman Ford, & Clarence Howard. I thought that since the agent referenced a file called George C. Robertson, Montgomery National Bank....that one must surely exist. Silly me.

It's a shame that so many records from the past were destroyed or are put someplace where no one can find them. I've been trying to find out if any original materials still exist for Vivian's arrest following the Picher, OK shootout. No such luck. If they do exist there isn't anyone in OK who knows where they are. But at least everyone I talked to was polite when they said no to me.

I'll look at it in the positive think of how much copying fees I'm saving by not having access to that file!

Trudging Along

Well I found George Chase in the Missouri Penitentiary in 1920. Whether or not he is Vivian's George Chase is the question. I wrote the archives to see if I could get some information. Hopefully they have intake papers and a mugshot. It will take them 8 weeks to get back to me. It would be great if it turned out to be Mr. George M. Chase.

I also think I have found the right Vivian Davis. 18 years old in 1920 living in Kansas City working as a waitress. Rooming in a household of older men. Yes that sounds like Vivian. The marriage certificate states that she is from KC and 19 years old. The date of the certificate is April 1921.

When she was arrested in 1923 Vivian gave her place of birth as Springfield, MO.; I don't know. Births prior to 1910 in Missouri are harder to trace. Not impossible though.

I guess the only thing for certain is that Vivian is a product of Missouri and Kansas during Prohibition. It would have been so much easier if she had been from Chicago. There's loads of information on Chicago. It's so funny so much happened all over the country but historians typically focused on New York and Chicago so if you go looking for information on who, what & where for some other area you have to cross your fingers and hope.

William Radkay

I really enjoyed this book because it written very informally. When I was reading it, it was easy to imagine that Willie Radkay was telling me all of these stories himself.

First hand accounts are great because the stories that people tell explain what it means when someone says a "town was wide open" and it explains more than a researched book what the culture and attitudes were during the time discussed.

The book really shines in two places. The first is Willie's account of growing up in the Strawberry Hill Section of Kansas City, KS and the second is his description of doing time in Alcatraz and Leavenworth. It's not that the rest of the book lacks anything. It's just hard to keep reading about an obviously bright man making the bad decision to follow a life of crime. It's a value's thing.

Oh yeah, and the book is good because for once another criminal has something decent to say about Machine Gun Kelly (George Barnes). Radkay and Kelly were friends. While I don't think Kelly as a bank robber was in Alvin Karpis' or Harvey Bailey's league as a bank robber. He's not the blow hard doofus that Karpis makes him sound like in his book.

Oh S#!#

A years work down the toilet. Evidently, I have been completely and utterly wrong. There's no way that the Vivian Davis who married George M. Chase in 1921 is Vivian G. Davis of Springfield, MO. That Vivian died a year and a month before the wedding!

Time to take another look at the sources or perhaps I could interest one of those mediums, who are always bothering dead people, to visit the graves and find out the truth from the source.

I have learned a valuable lesson. I will never trust someone else's research at face value. I will always do my own or verify as if it were my own. Truthfully, piecing together someone's information from old census records when they have a common name is not easy. It is easy to trip up when you can't find everything at once i.e. birth, marriage, and death data scattered everyplace. I just have to look at this as part of the process and not give up.

George C. Robertson

G.C. Robertson, was one of the inside guys on the Montgomery County National Bank robbery. I was a little surprised to find out that he was 35 at the time of the robbery. Because I read that he was the bank Vice President, I was expecting an older man with a paunch like Lionel Barrymore.

There's more to this story than is commonly known. Mr. Robertson, who served 1 year and a day in Leavenworth for his role, is originally from Springfield, MO. The address he gave for his father's home is on the same street, Kimbrough, that Vivian Chase's family occupied. Hmmm.

So where is my fertile mind going with all of this? Did Vivian actually know Robertson prior to the robbery? Did she set him up? Or was he in on the double cross from the beginning?

There is something odd in Robertson's Leavenworth file. Supposedly he had no prior arrests to the Cherryvale robbery, yet there's an FBI arrest record for in his file for a Clarence Griffin dating back to 1918. Maybe it's a mistake someone else's information in his file. Maybe not.