GREAT MAN HUNT

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 4 September 1935, Page 5

GREAT MAN HUNT

ARMED AMERICAN GANG mrnnmtrna ROBBERS AND MURDERERS FIVE POLICE CHIEFS KILLED. VANCOUVER, Aug. 17. A tremendous man-hunt is proceeding throughout California and; other Pacific States for a gang of desperadoes who, since August 3, have killed five chiefs of pjolice of small towns where they raided banks. Their latest crime occurred yesterday in the town of Rosalia, in the State of Washington. The robbers visited a bank late in the afternoon and secured 8000 dollars, while most cf the police and many of the residents were fighting a fire,. which the robbers themselves probably started to divert attention.

Two of the bandits entered the bank and forced the clients to lie on the floor. A clerk pressed a secret alarm, and Bert Lemley, chief of police, came running toward the entrance. DEATH OF CHIEF. From the bandits’ motor-car a fusillade killed the chief instantly. This shooting was done by a third bandit disguised in woman’s clothing. Citizens who gathered at the scene were unable to shoot the bandits as they emerged because they held Matthew Elliott, a cashier, as a shield against bullets. Ten miles outside the town they threw Elliott out of the car, but he was not hurt. Elliott said the car was protected by a steel lining. Lemley’s son led the pursuit, hut the robbers shot a hole in the front tyre of his car, stopping him. The gang apparently started their •operations in the middle of July, but they lost one of their members, Clyde Johnson, who was lynched eight days ago for killing Chief of Police Fran! Daw, of Dunsmuir, a mountain town iit northern California. HOLD-UP MAN LYNCHED. Daw had captured Johnson redhanded in a hold-up, and was conveying him to gaol when he suddenly pulled a gun and fatally wounded Other police arrested Johnson The same night 25 motor-cars carrying 100 masked men seized the gaol and quickly hanged the barefooted Johnson to the limb of a pine tree two blocks distant. The bandits then struck successively in two southern California villages shooting a policeman in each. Then the same three last Sunday were seen looting grocery stores in North Sacramento. Police Chief jElton Fish perished in a gun duel with them, and they escaped to turn up again yesterday many hundreds of miles from Sacramento.