Lenawee County History: Cement City bank robbery of 1931 went unsolved
Last week, I wrote a column about what is said to be the first daytime bank robbery in Lenawee County. In 1923, the Onsted State Bank was robbed by two males from Indiana. They were caught within a few days and sentenced to incarceration.
In 1931, the bold, afternoon robbery was eclipsed by a holdup in Cement City, where a shopkeeper who witnessed the robbery was shot twice during the criminals' escape.
On April 28, 1931, four armed men burst into the Bank of Cement City at 10:35 a.m. as another man waited outside in the getaway car. Guns were pointed at bank president John Flint and cashier Mabel Parker. The robbers grabbed up $3,380.50 from the vault and cash drawers, locked the bank employees in the vault, and ran out the door.
Lester Wolf, a shop owner across the street from the bank, watched the robbers come out of the front door. One of the men told Wolf to "beat it," but when Wolf refused and produced his own pistol, he was shot twice — once in each leg. Wolf returned fire, shooting three bullets at the robbers. None of them were hit.
As the getaway car left town, the police were called and neighboring agencies in Indiana and Ohio were alerted.
The five men appeared to disappear into history for a time. Occasionally, investigators would bring the bank staff and eyewitnesses to their towns to see if an arrested man or men were the culprits behind the Bank of Cement City robbery. It wasn’t until December 1933 that that seemed, for a short time, to pay off. Stanley Bielski and William Duck, also known as William Ryan, were arraigned in connection to the crime. Both denied involvement, although Bielski admitted driving two men from Michigan Center to Toledo a few days after the robbery. Duck was identified by bank employees as possibly being one of the bandits.
However, Bielski was released in January 1934 due to insufficient evidence, and Ryan, aka Duck, was released shortly thereafter, when the witnesses were unable to positively identify him as being one of the holdup men.
Further research did not reveal if the robbers were ever caught. The Brooklyn State Bank absorbed the Bank of Cement City in the fall of 1931; bank president John Flint relocated to Pennsylvania in 1938, and Wolf, who was shot during the robbery as a witness who got too close, died in 1932.
Dan Cherry is a Lenawee County historian.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Lenawee County History: Cement City bank robbery of 1931 went unsolved
