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By Root 722 0

in 1933 he went to the State Prison, at Pittsburgh, PA., to serve a three to six year term for blackmail. The Parole Director of this institution advises this man while incarcerated there received a disciplinary report for being implicated with another inmate in an attack on an officer and suspected of degeneracy, and was held six months over the minimum sentence. He was paroled in 1936, and in January of 1937, less than a year later, he was sentenced to a term of life and 55 years concurrently for Kidnapping, Bank Robbery, and Dyer Act, and committed to Leavenworth Penitentiary, later being transferred to Alcatraz in March of 1937.

The circumstances of this crime are revolting and are outlined in detail in the Deputy Warden’s abstract of admission summary prepared at Leavenworth, copy of which is in the record.

Harold Martin Brest was indicted, in one count, with Harry James Logan, by the Federal Grand Jury at Erie, Pennsylvania, on September 24, 1936 for seizing, kidnapping, and carrying away one Deloria Lester Santee, for the purpose of robbing him of his money and his automobile, and by causing him to be transported by means of his automobile, by threats, by force and arms, against his will, from Sharon, Pennsylvania, to Youngstown, Ohio, on or about July 2, 1936.

On January 14, 1937, Brest and Logan were indicted by the United States Grand Jury, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, charged in four counts, first, with taking from the person and presence of P.M. Cox, Cashier, and Mrs. Mabel Simpson Brown, Assistant Cashier, L.P. Hauschild and L.W. Morgan, National Bank Examiners, on September 15, 1936, lawful money of the United States, in the sum of $5,846.50, which money belonged to and was in the care and custody of the First National Bank of Volant, Pennsylvania; second, with perpetrating the said offense by the use of dangerous weapons and devices, two revolvers or pistols; third, with the robbery of the same bank on December 18, 1936, in the sum of $3,910.36, and fourth, with the use of dangerous weapons and devices in the perpetration of this robbery, to wit, two automatic pistols.

Brest further admitted that he, with Logan, on September 10, 1936, robbed the Farmer’s State Bank of Spring Green, Plain Station, Plain, Wisconsin, where by the use of arms and threats to kill the Cashier, he obtained, a little over $300.00. Brest stated that the banker was “Scared to death, white as a sheet and almost dropped dead;” and that he, Brest, cocked his gun, ready to shoot the banker if he asserted himself, or resisted in any way; that but for the fact that Logan became uneasy, Brest stated he would more than likely have killed this banker.

In addition, thereto Brest admitted that he and Logan participated in so many robberies of drug stores, filling stations, and the like in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, that it would be impossible for him to recall all of them. On being informed by an... B.I. Agent that he, Brest, entered the Volant National Bank but fifteen minutes prior to Pennsylvania State Policeman and that he probably would have been killed had they met there, Brest boldly said: “That all depends on who would have got the first shots in”.

On or about July 25, 1936, Logan and Brest while seated in an auto at a point near Zeeland, Michigan, they were observed by an officer, who gave chase, and caught up with them in Holland Michigan. While the officer drove up beside the car, Brest drew fourth his gun and shot the officer in the mouth. This officer, for a time, was not expected to live. However, the bullet was removed from the base of the officer’s skull and he is on the way to recovery. In conversing with the... B.I. Agent, Brest readily stated that he would shoot it out with any officer who attempted to apprehend him, and that had it not been for the fact that he was unarmed at the time of his arrest, which, incidentally, was the only time he went unarmed, in Boise, Idaho, he would have probably have shot and killed both policeman who apprehended him. During