Legends of the Lost

LEGENDS OF THE LOST Bank Robbers Play a Key Role in This Tale of Misplaced Loot

When things got too hot for them in Oklahoma, bank robbers Willard J. Forrester and Earl Nelson drove west to Arizona. While looking for a big score, they found a certain notoriety, and became a footnote in the history books of the state. Forrester and Nelson arrived in Prescott in 1928 but soon moved to Clarkdale in the Verde Valley. Clarkdale was a lively place then, a smelter town and bedroom community just down the hill from the busy copper mines of Jerome. Forrester drove the "stage" (bus) from town to a mining company hospital, and Nelson worked at an automotive garage.

Forrester and Nelson planned to pull off one big heist that would provide them with cash for a few years. Their target was the Bank of Arizona in downtown Clarkdale, and they studied its foot traffic carefully. They decided the best time to hold up the bank was around 11 A.M. on June 21, 1928, when, they believed, a payroll for the United Verde Copper Company would be in the vault.

The bandits had carefully prepared for their escape. They carried several boxes of roofing nails to throw out onto the road to stop pursuing cars. They had ginger, cayenne pepper, and oil of peppermint to throw off pursuing dogs. They seem to have taken care of every detail except one: the shooting skills of Jim Roberts, 70, regarded locally as A courtly old relic. A former gunfighter, deputy sheriff, and town marshal of Jerome, he was then a special officer for the United Verde Copper Company, and he carried a deputy's commission.

Forrester and Nelson entered the bank and quickly covered manager David O. Saunders, teller R.G. Southard, and 13 customers. Nelson held a gun on them while Forrester scooped an estimated $35,000 into a sack. Forrester demanded another $20,000 he thought was in the bank, but Saunders convinced him it had been withdrawn the day before.

The robbers herded the 15 victims into the vault and weregoing to lock them in. Saunders warned that the captives might suffocate before the steel door could be opened. So the robbers closed only an outside grill and dashed to their car.

Saunders grabbed a pistol that had been stashed in the vault and rushed after the robbers. He fired twice, then decided there were too many innocent people in the street to risk shooting more.

The shots alerted Roberts, who was walking down the street. Roberts had been a figure in the Pleasant Valley War of the 1880s, also known as the Graham-Tewksbury Feud. A rancher then, he had been one of the more accurate gunners on the Tewksbury side of the feud. Later he had used his pistol effectively as a Yavapai County deputy sheriff. Nearly 40 years after the feud, though, not all the residents of the Clarkdale-Jerome area knew of Roberts' past; the bank robbers almost certainly did not.

When Roberts saw the bandits run out of the bank, he knew this was not going to be another quiet day in Clarkdale. And when Roberts saw Saunders fire at the fleeing men, he reached into his coat pocket for his old single-action Colt .45. He took a shooter's stance, holding the pistol before him with both hands. Deliberately, he squeezed off a shot