A bill has been sent to the Texas Senate that would ban banks from bidding on state contracts if they maintained policies that discriminated against gun and ammunition manufacturers. The bill has the support of the Texas Banking Association. This is no surprise.
The Texas Bankers Association once offered up $5000 for dead bank robbers and not one cent for those captured alive. Here is an example of the poster offering the reward. Five thousand was big money back then. To put it context a base model Model A Ford cost $385, that is the equivalent of approximately 13 Model A Fords. To put that into today’s money, 13 Ford Fusions would cost $415,528.
Legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer made the case in 1928 that corrupt lawmen were recruiting suspects to rob banks, promising them a quick getaway. The suspects were then shot by these same cops as they exited the bank. The Bankers Association held firm. The deceased were bank robbers. They might not have been very good. They could have been set up. But, they robbed a bank and they were dead. The reward stood.
DEAD BANK ROBBER REWARD IS SCORED; Texas Ranger Declares State Bankers’ Offer Has Resulted in a “Murder Ring.” PUBLIC OFFICIALS ACCUSED Captain Hamer Says Victims Were Lured to Their Deaths–Grand Jury Investigates.
New York Times, April 8, 1928
AUSTIN, Texas, April 3.–The entire Southwest is watching the more or less single-handed fight which Ranger Captain Frank A. Hamer is waging on the standing reward of $5,000 offered by the Texas Bankers’ Association for dead bank bandits.
The good old days.
I could not find any indication that Frank Hamer ever collected a reward for killing the pair. An offer was made to have a dinner in his honor. He told them to go right ahead, but he wouldn’t be there. I guess a celebrity cop these days would be Mark Furman. All he did was lie on the witness stand and get caught. Cops these days.