Time Machine: The first bank robbery in Cedar Rapids

On March 20, 1933, two men robbed the United State Bank at 99 16th Ave. SW — the first bank robbery in the city’s history.

The heist started that morning when George Rejsa was sitting in his garage on Sixth Street SE, reading the newspaper. Two strangers came in, one carrying a black satchel and one holding a pistol.

They ordered Rejsa into a washroom, tied him up with twine and taped his mouth shut. Then they drove off in his dark blue Chevy coupe and headed to the bank.

The two men entered the bank just before noon and ordered cashier Frank Kanak and clerk Bessie Zurka — the only two in the building — to lie on the floor. One man held a sawed-off shotgun on them and the other emptied trays of gold and currency, which included several hundred $1 bills.

The robbers made a quick getaway, abandoning Rejsa’s car — with Illinois plates wired to it — on J Avenue NE.

The police response was hampered by ice-covered streets.

Initial reports said the bandits got away with $895, though an audit later revealed the loss was $2,415 — about $54,000 in today’s dollars.

The investigation

A car accident in downtown Cedar Rapids two days before the robbery provided the initial clue that helped police identify the bandits.

In that accident, a car with Illinois plates collided with one driven by streetcar motorman B.M. Henderson.

Henderson got the names of the two men in the car and wrote down their Illinois license plate number. He also told police the car had a picture of a row of chicks pasted on its back window representing a poultry company.

The Illinois plates were the ones wired to Rejsa’s car during the robbery.

Police found that the car with the chicks in its back window had been traded for another one in Iowa City, with the buyer using $1 bills to complete the transaction.

By April 4, the investigation identified three suspects in Rockford, Ill. Police took the two bank employees there to see if they could identify the men. They told police the three men weren’t the robbers.

The arrests

Though that lead collapsed, Cedar Rapids police detective Earl Stanley was investigating an ex-con named William Collins.

He traced Collins to a Rockford, Ill., poultry magazine company where Collins worked with a man named E.O. Hackman.

Hackman, who owned the car with the picture of the chicks in the back window, was arrested.

Collins was brought back to Cedar Rapids from Chicago on April 14 and charged as an accomplice in the bank robbery.

Kanak, the bank’s cashier, traveled 1,000-plus miles to Nassau County, N.Y., where authorities were holding Dee Aldrich of Chicago, a barker and sideshow manager for a circus. Kanak identified him as one of the two bank robbers.

The final arrest came four years later when James Lynch was captured in Kansas City, Mo., on July 19, 1937. Authorities said Lynch had been on their radar for some time but had escaped earlier police dragnets.

Lynch and Aldrich were charged with bank robbery, tried and sentenced to life in the Fort Madison.

It came out that Aldrich and Lynch, immediately after the bank robbery, had stalled their car on a hill near Eighth Avenue and 10th Street SE. Aldrich got out to push. Lynch was in the driver’s seat with a shotgun on his lap when a police car sped by, en route to the bank.

As for Collins, he had early on confessed his role in the robbery, telling police he and Hackman came to Cedar Rapids in early 1933 to sell subscriptions to a poultry magazine.

They struck on the idea of holding up the United State Bank ”because it was in an outlying district and offered a quick escape.“ They recruited Aldrich and Lynch to rob the bank.

Collins spent time in jail but was released “at liberty” under a $10,000 bond and never prosecuted.

Hackman, the owner of the chick car, was released for lack of evidence and never prosecuted.

New vault

The United State Bank reopened after the robbery. Five years later, the bank’s deposits had doubled, so the robbery had little impact on business.

In 1936, the bank installed a $2,500 vault, a “veritable fortress of armor plate steel, bulletproof glass and gun ports,” according to The Gazette.

It advertised itself as “The Bank with the Bandit Barrier.”

The Gazette reported the vault was installed because Kanak, by then the bank’s president, had determined “the bank robber is here to stay because of fast cars and good roads, and that the bankers of the country must answer the challenge by providing obstacles too great for bandits to overcome.”

Later years

In 1957, United State Bank moved two blocks west to a new building at 129 16th Ave. SW. It went through several name changes and five more robberies by 2018 before closing.

The original bank building, at 99 16th Ave. SW, had opened in 1914 as Citizens Savings Bank. After United State Bank moved out in 1957, it housed a number of businesses and is now home to Café Saint Pio, Brad and Britt Danielson’s coffee shop. The vault still is there, but its gun ports are long gone.

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