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By Root 2378 0

from prison. Coker was arrested with Barker and Karpis that June, and his parole was revoked. He was released a second time in September 1935, joining Karpis in Hot Springs; some sources suggest Karpis paid a bribe to secure his release.

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Grayson, whose real name was Bensen Groves, was born in 1880 in West Virginia. He had served two concurrent five-year sentences in Atlanta for post-office robberies.

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The bartender, John Brock, was another McAlester alumnus, a prison pal of Volney Davis and Dock Barker. He had come to Ohio that spring for a time, intending to be the third man in the Warren payroll robbery. But he had second thoughts and returned to Tulsa.

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The same band of inspectors had investigated the Warren robbery that April and had picked up rumors that Karpis had been involved.

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Connelley discounted rumors of Milton Lett’s involvement because the FBI had already interviewed Lett and considered him a confidential informant.

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On March 13, FBI agents arrested Ed Bentz in Brooklyn. The last of the great Jazz Age yeggmen, the were getting nowhere, and he knew it. The only ones making any progress were the inspectors. As irksome as he found the task, Connelley needed to know what they knew. He couldn’t simply ask; the two sides were now openly hostile to each other. Somehow Connelley had to force their hand. Thumbing through his papers, he came upon the Cleveland office’s report of its visit to Clayton Hall’s house. There were rumors the inspectors had been seen with Hall.

man who had mentored Machine Gun Kelly and Baby Face Nelson, Bentz had cannily relocated to New England when the Bureau mounted its great hunts for Dillinger and other Midwestern outlaws. He had robbed several banks in Vermont and New Hampshire; agents tracked him down after finding one of his girlfriends. In time the bookish Eddie Bentz became Hoover’s favorite bank robber. Devoting an entire chapter to Bentz in his 1938 book Persons in Hiding, Hoover termed him “a superman . . . known to thousands of honest persons as one of the most gracious men, generous attributes, enviable education, and impeccable morals.”

Connelley spent hours debriefing the talkative old yegg. Bentz told a strange tale of meeting Karpis in Chicago in 1935 and of following him to an Indiana hideout at what he described as a yeggmen’s “burial ground,” where various bank robbers buried stolen bonds. Connelley spent a week trying to find the place before giving up.

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In Cleveland a wire-service reporter got wind of the flight and issued a dispatch saying a group of FBI agents were en route to Arkansas. The leak enraged Hoover, who ordered an investigation. In the meantime, reporters were told the agents were gathering in Arkansas for a conference.

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Not for several weeks would FBI agents learn who had been in the house the night before. It was Grace Goldstein, removing her things in anticipation of a raid. With her was the Hot Springs police chief, Joe Wakelin. According to FBI files, while Connelley was watching the house that night, Wakelin and Goldstein were having sex inside.

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FBI files do back up Hoover’s assertion about the rifle in the backseat. An inventory of items seized from Karpis’s car lists two .45 caliber pistols, two shoulder holsters, a hunting knife, a tackle box, and a .22 caliber Remington rifle.

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The key role played by postal inspectors in Karpis’s capture was never revealed.

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Harry Campbell and Sam Coker were arrested the following week in Toledo. Checking Coker’s records for his hospitalization the previous fall, agents learned he had dated a Toledo nurse. The nurse, who was unaware of his identity, led agents to both Coker and Campbell. Hoover went on that raid as well.