BROOKINGS – It was considered by most to be a “daring daytime robbery,” when two bandits made out with somewhere between $12,000 and $15,000 on Halloween morning in 1938.
The pair of bandits were described as a “pasty” 30-year-old man and a “pretty” 17-year-old girl in the Oct. 31 edition of The Brookings Register. The site of the robbery: Northwest Security National Bank, located at Fourth Street and Main Avenue, where the Ram stands now, in downtown Brookings.
This is a lookback on Brookings’ first ever bank robbery through a rehashing of reports from The Brookings Register and Matt Cecil’s book, “The Ballad of Ben and Stella Mae.”
Elkton heist
It started on Aug. 25, in neighboring Elkton when Ben Dickinson, 30 year-old Topeka, Kansas native, and his 17-year-old wife, Estelle, entered the Elkton Corn Exchange Bank. According to the Aug. 25 edition of The Brookings Register, it was around 3in the afternoon when “the man accosted cashier R. S. Petschow with a gun” and walked out with “all the money in the bank”, fleeing the scene in a Ford V-8 car.
The Register reported that this was not the first time Corn Exchange Bank had been robbed. In 1931 it was robbed, and despite the earlier heist, the bank still did not have a security system nor any firearms in the building, Cecil reported.
According to reports, “the robber working in the bank seemed cool and collected, even amazingly so considering the circumstances. Only once did he appear the least bit nervous and that was just before the time clock was about to go off and he told the customers on the floor to sit up and face north.”
Ben’s coolness was due in no small part to his history of crime. According to Cecil, at sixteen, Ben took a joyride in a cab and was sentenced to prison, which Cecil felt was unjust.
“Ben was a good student and a smart kid but he just got caught up in some stuff,” Cecil said. “What happens when you send sixteen year old’s to prison? They become better criminals.”
After being released, Cecil said that Ben tried to straighten out his life but “had a reputation” which made it difficult to get work in Topeka. He later met some criminals who roped him into a bank robbery, according to Cecil. Ben was convicted and spent seven years in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
According to Cecil, Estelle’s story is much sadder, explaining that she had a hard and difficult early life. At the age of 15, she was raped and subsequently ran away to California. After Ben’s release from prison, he met Estelle, whom he married near Pipestone just weeks before the Elkton robbery, according to Cecil’s reporting.
During the Elkton heist, Ben was considered a “gentleman” to witnesses as he questioned why a druggist, J.E. Dunn, only had $18 in his bank account, in a “Robin Hood” incident, as reported by the Register.
“Keep it – you probably need it worse than I do,” Benny reportedly told Dunn.
Throughout the heist, Benny repeatedly warned Petschow that he “would plug him” if he wasn’t careful the Register reported. Fortunately, there was no shooting and no injuries during the Elkton Corn Exchange Bank heist of 1938.
Ben and Estelle made out with $2,187 (worth about $42,547 now) and apparently fled to eastern Minnesota, according to reports. They spent several weeks on the run following the heist, traveling to Topeka before coming back to Brookings County in October of 1938 for their next heist.
Brookings heist
It was 8:30 in the morning on Oct. 31, 1938, the weekend after Hobo Day. John Torsey, assistant manager to the Northwest Security National Bank, felt something shoved into his back while opening the doors to the bank that Halloween morning.
“This is a holdup- just walk in as usual,” Ben reportedly said as he held a gun to Torsey’s back.
The Oct. 31, edition of The Brookings Register states that after entry, the pair of bandits, Ben and Estelle, were armed and demanded the vault be opened. Ben had a shotgun under his coat and Estelle a had a pistol. It was soon learned that the vault was not accessible immediately, as timelocks would not let it open until 10:30 a.m. Ben decided they would wait until the vault opened nearly two hours later. During this time, Ben stood behind R. M. “Dick” DePuy, vice president and manager of Northwest Security Bank, with the shotgun, hidden under his coat but pointed directly at him.
The Register reported that DePuy “worked under terrific pressure” during the ordeal, completing “numerous loans” as business went on “as usual” during the entirety of the heist. Estelle waited in the lobby, with a pistol hidden under a newspaper, watching the entrance. Cecil later reported that during this time period, DePuy conducted business with over 50 customers, with the threat of a shotgun omnipresent.
“We aren’t taking a thing from you,” Benny reportedly told employees. “This money is insured so do what you are told – and remember if anything happens you will be the first ones to get it (indicating his gun).”
While waiting for the vault to open, Benny collected money from a smaller safe and the teller’s drawers, leaving just enough to conduct business throughout the entire ordeal. There was also a rudimentary alarm system in the bank that Benny sniffed out and forced Torsey to cut, Cecil reported.
In a rather “funny,” Robin Hood like-moment, reported by the Register, Benny ordered insurance representative John Hanten to bring his overcoat to him.
“Bring your topcoat over here,” Benny reportedly said. “How much did it cost you? It cost $25 huh? All right, go over to the till and take out $25 for yourself.”
Once the vault opened around 10:30 a.m., Benny forced Torsey and DePuy to load a pillowcase full of money and securities, as well as some silver and the rest of the cash that was missed earlier. Forcing the two men to carry the heavy haul, Benny reportedly chuckled watching the men awkwardly carry the bags to the getaway car.
Now in the getaway car after briefly holding Torsey and DePuy hostage, the couple fled east of Brookings onto Highway 14, bound for eastern Minnesota, the Register reported. To keep authorities from chasing them, Estelle spread roofing nails on the road near the intersection of Sixth Street and Medary Ave., Cecil reported.
It was later found that the bandits escaped with $17,592 (worth $344,690 today), “plus stocks valued at more than $16,000,” Cecil reported. The funds from the heist were never recovered by authorities.
Afterward
The manhunt following the heist was extensive. The FBI tracked the couple on a wild chase that spread throughout much of the Midwest. Cecil’s book dives much deeper into Benny and Estell’s exploits after the heist.
Benny and Estelle’s odyssey came to a conclusion in St. Louis, Missouri, in the spring of April 1939, when Benny was shot outside a hamburger shop following a meeting with an FBI informant, Cecil reported. Estelle, who was sitting in the car at time, drove away, back to her mother in Kansas City, before being apprehended by FBI agents days later. This ended a year of car-crashes, gun-fire, hostages, and more bank heists.
Estelle was extradited to South Dakota, to face bank robbery charges. She was sentenced to two concurrent 10-year sentences by a Federal District Court in Deadwood, Cecil reported. Estelle served her time in Alderson, West Virginia, before spending her remaining years in Raytown, Missouri. In 1971, then president Richard Nixon pardoned her of the crimes she committed as a teenager. She died in 1995 at the age of 72.
The book
Cecil, a Brookings native, first became interested in this story at the ripe young age of 16, when he was working at the Ram as a dishwasher. He says that the Ram had articles and newspaper clippings of the robbery, making it the stuff more of legend. He also remembers the time before the Ram, when the building was still Northwest Security National Bank. Cecil said that he spent much of his time working the mundane job of dishwashing envisioning what the robbery was like.
The process for finding the sources for the book was extensive.
He tracked down relatives for both the Dickinson's and Estelle’s family, even going as far to track down Estelle herself, though he was never actually able to speak with her.
The book was released in 2016, and now that some time had passed, Cecil still has an unanswered question: Did Ben and Estelle have a child together? He says that while speaking to Estelle’s family, a picture shown to them made them think that she looked pregnant, but he has never really been able to pinpoint it.
As for the never-recovered money from the heist, Cecil reported in the book that Ben gambled away nearly $14,000 because that’s what Ben wrote in his notes, but Cecil has never been able to verify that Ben was a gambler. Rather, he believes that Estelle was able to recover the money at some point, as she died with a “surprising” amount of money with her estate.
“I suspect they hid the money and she found it later,” Cecil said. “I hope she did.”
Contact Addison DeHaven at adehaven@brookingsregister.com.
