Combat Sports Historian and Martial Artist
Posts about police history with special emphasis on St. Louis police history.
On a cold January night in 1904, when the city of St. Louis was preparing for the World’s Fair which would make it famous, overzealous co-workers killed seven boys and a man. It was 5:45 p.m. on January 13th at the old Brown Shoe Company factory at the corner of Washington Avenue and North Eleventh Street. Time for the men to
On Friday, March 13, 1903, the Franklin County Judge William Davidson arraigned William Rudolph and George Collins for the robbery of the Union Bank and the murder of Pinkerton Detective Charles Schumacher. Rudolph and Collins plead “not guilty”. Judge Davidson assigned three attorneys to represent Rudolph and Collins. William Rudolph gave a confession to the St. Louis media, which was
On December 10, 1920, an eighth St. Louis Police Officer would lose his life, the most officers to die in the line of duty in the history of the St. Louis Police Department. Four of the officers’ murders in 1920 would never be solved. This last murder would be one of the four murders never to be solved. Charles M.
On Friday, October 21, 1904, five St. Louis Police Officers went to a rooming house at 1324 Pine Street, site of today’s Soldier Memorial, to arrest three men suspected of an Illinois train robbery in July of the same year. What occurred next would be one of the most storied shootouts in St. Louis Police history. During the World’s Fair,
On April 5, 1920, Frederick Charles Smith, also known as “The Red-Headed Bandit”, walked into the Easton-Taylor Trust Company at 4474 Easton Avenue. Smith had a revolver in each hand and demanded money from the cashier. Fearing for his life, the clerk promptly dropped $15,309 in a sack. John Lanigan, the bank’s president, sat in his office off the lobby
On a cold January night in 1920, the deadliest year for St. Louis Police, kicked off violently. Two not so-bright robbers attempted to rob one of the largest and bravest officers on the St. Louis Police Department. St. Louis Police Detective Sergeant James Martin King was walking to his home at 4973 Lotus Avenue via N. Kingshighway Boulevard, when two
The picture of Cornelius O’Keefe in the book, In The Line of Duty: St. Louis Police Officers Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice by Barbara Miksicek, David McElreath and Major Stephen Pollihan, struck me the first time I saw it. With his hair parted down the middle and a big mustache, I could see him walking the streets of Downtown St. Louis
On Thursday, June 12, 1919, Earl Hunter and Charles Bergman, a parolee and ex-convict, held up the Meramec Trust Company shortly after it opened at 07:00 a.m. The robbery was not well planned and even more poorly executed. The corner of Virginia Avenue and Meramec Street was one of the busiest street car blocks in the city. The robbers had
The deadliest incident in St. Louis Police history was not a shootout, natural disaster or act of terrorism. The deadliest incident in St. Louis Police history occurred on the night of Monday, September 3, 1900. Electricity was the assailant as a power line with 3300 volts of electricity fell onto the telephone lines, at Eight Street and Carr Avenue. The
On Friday, April 24, 1953, three men and a getaway driver attempted to rob the Southwest Bank on the corner of Southwest Avenue and S. Kingshighway Boulevard in St. Louis, MO. The St. Louis Police foiled the robbery, which became the focus of a 1959 movie, The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery. The film is now in the public domain. Fred W. Bowerman,