Lyman Ford

This is Lyman Ford, one of the conspirators of the Cherryvale Bank robbery, along with Charley Mays and George C. Robertson

Like Robertson, Lyman surprises me because of his age but for the opposite reason. He gives his age at the time as 58 which is considerably older than I would have thought. Ford's the one who gave up the details on the Cherryvale robbery. He was caught soon after the robbery in New Mexico and brought back to Kansas. The robbery was an "inside" job. Vice President Robertson, cashier Clarence Howard, and H.H. Zittle of Springfield, MO planned the job to cover certain irregularities with the banks deposits. They brought in Lee Flournoy and Charley Mays to go through the motions of the staged heist. Ford was brought in later. Only problem was that Mays and Flournoy decided to actually rob the bank (they showed up at an earlier time). Never wise to trust thieves. In return for his cooperative nature Lyman received only 2 years for the robbery. I'm having a little bit of a trouble finding out what happened to Lyman after his release from Leavenworth. I have a vague memory that someone told me that they had read that Lyman Ford committed suicide in the OK pen, but I'm not able to verify that because getting information from some State prisons is not easy. Did you know that Missouri did not keep inmate files until the 1930's? Ford really did not want to go back to OK; he contested his extradition. I don't think he felt welcome there...in the McAlester warden's letter to Leavenworth Warden Newell called Lyman Ford a "bad egg".

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.