The attempted robbery of the Labette County State Bank in 1933 …

BY ANDY TAYLOR
Labette Avenue

Editor’s note:  This is the first of two installments on the attempted robbery of the Labette County State Bank in Altamont which was 75 years ago in 1933.

ALTAMONT — Coolness, vigilance and bravery — not to mention some free guns and bullets from Uncle Sam — held off the robbery of the Labette County State Bank 75 years ago this month.
It was an event that put Altamont in the headlines of newspapers across the nation.
And, it also thrust two usually-quiet and stoic bank employees into the national spotlight.
For this was the first time when the good guys fought back against criminals and robbers.
And, the good guys won.
Here’s the story . . .
The early years of the 1930s were filled with desperate times.
With Americans up to their collective eyeballs in an economic depression, citizens resorted to desperate measures to stay alive.
Banks became perfect targets. One by one, banks in small towns across the midwestern United States were picked off by misfits who found plenty of loot and open range in which to hide.
Enter the names of Alvin Payton and Ken Conn.
By 1933, the two men were among the most hardened criminals in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. Conn, 21, was serving a life sentence for murder. He spent most of his childhood in and out of reform schools and jails in Colorado and Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, Payton, also 21, was an area native, having lived in the Mound Valley and Edna area. He was serving a a prison sentence — 20 to 100 years — for attempting to rob the Edna State Bank in 1930.
So, when Payton and Conn joined nine other inmates in prison breakout on Memorial Day 1933, banks across Kansas were alerted to the potential for the robberies.
That’s what happened on the morning of July 14 in downtown Altamont. Shortly before the Labette County State Bank opened its doors at 9 o’clock sharp, a Ford V-8 coupe carrying Conn and Payton arrived at the bank. They peered through the bank windows, hoping to garner the attention of teller Colene McCarty.
However, McCarty, along with her husband, cashier Isaac “Ike” McCarty, were already suspicious of the two men. They had noticed the two strangers driving along Huston Avenue, slowly peering out their vehicle windows as they “cased” the institution prior to the bank’s opening.
But rather than wait and have their suspicions confirmed, Ike and Colene went into self-defense mode.
Sitting atop the bank vault and unknown to most people in Altamont was a small crawl space, which was built as a hideout for a bank employee to serve as a marksman in the event of a holdup. Ike McCarty climbed into the concealed space and peered through a small window that overlooked the bank lobby. Next to Ike McCarty’s body were two guns: a shotgun and a rifle.
Meanwhile, Colene McCarty unlocked the front door at 9 o’clock. Payton and Conn entered the bank while Colene walked behind the teller gate.
And, that’s when the two robbers brandished pistols and ordered Colene to empty all of the money into a sack. Conn went into the rear of the bank, where several bank employees, including Ike McCarty’s father, bank officer A.H. McCarty, and several customers were gathered in an office. Conn ordered the locals to lie on the floor of the bank lobby. Colene McCarty, however, was ordered to stand at the teller gates and empty the institution of its available cash.
Unbeknown to the McCartys, the other bank employees or the two robbers was Robert Schooley. He was mowing the lawn of the Kansas Home Telephone Company — located across the street from the bank — when he glanced over to see the two men in the lobby holding guns on Colene McCarty. Schooley ran to the Baker Brothers Garage, which was located diagonally across the street from the bank, where he alerted several men of the robbery underway in the local bank.
At the same time, Ike McCarty rang another alarm — a bell system that connected the bank to the Baker Brothers Garage during a bank heist. The local telephone operator, Maude Hartwell, was notified and began a quick call of businessmen up and down Huston Avenue. Armed with government-issued rifles given to towns with limited police protection, the quickly-arranged militia began a defense of the bank and their town.
While Colene McCarty was dumping money into a bag, Schooley hunkered behind a pile of tires in front of the garage. He pointed his rifle squarely at the tires of the robbers’ car and fired. Four shots later, the robbers’ vehicle was immobilized.
Conn and Payton instantly became nervous of the shots of gunfire coming from outside the bank. Believing that they were the targets of the gunfire, they proceeded to take Colene, with cash sack in hand, and leave the bank via a back door with Colene being used as a human shield.
However, calm, cool and collected Ike McCarty put a bead on his gun sights and leveled the 10-gauge, sawed-off shotgun on Alvin Payton. When Payton got within eight feet of the vault, McCarty pulled the trigger. The blast from McCarty’s gun slammed into Payton’s face, instantly pulverizing his eyes and leaving him on the floor writhing in pain.
The shotgun powder blackened the curtain that concealed the lobby from the public crawl space.
But, Kenneth Conn, still unaware that the gunshot came from Colene’s husband above the bank vault, became scared. Believing that the gunfire came from outside the bank, Conn ordered the elder McCarty to go outside and inform the citizen defenders to stop shooting. He threatened to kill Colene McCarty unless the gunfire stopped.
Above the bank vault, Ike McCarty had a perfect view of Conn. McCarty put away the shotgun, fearing that any other gunfire would hit his wife, and picked up a .30 caliber rifle. He pointed the barrel of the rifle straight at Conn’s chest. Meanwhile, Colene McCarty maintained a cool composure while the robber held her as a shield and while her own husband leveled lethal weapons in his own hands — all within whispering distance of Colene’s ears.
When A.H. McCarty started toward the front door, Ike McCarty twice pulled the trigger of the rifle, knowing that the rifle slugs could come within inches of hitting his own wife.
However, the bullets missed Colene and struck Conn — the first one hitting the robber on the trigger guard of Conn’s pistol while the second striking Conn through the heart and severing the spine.
Conn slithered to the floor as his lifeless body spilled blood on the bank’s tile floor.
Ike McCarty dropped from his perch and walked outside the bank to give the “all clear” sign to the citizen defenders waiting across the street.
Inside the bank were two escaped convicts: one dead and the other blinded and disfigured.
Outside the bank was the robbers’ vehicle with four ventilated tires . . . plus a group of one dozen armed citizens ready to take aim at the robbers had they tried an alternative getaway.
And, no sooner did Ike give that sign than news started to spread throughout the nation with the speed of the telegraph.

Next week’s story: Altamont became the center of national media attention, and Ike and Colene McCarty were literally treated as national heroes.

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1933, Labette County State Bank, robbery