DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm not adding a single word it didn't earn. We're talking about the First National Bank in Eastland County, Texas — and what happened there on December 23rd, 1927. Two days before Christmas.
You already feel something coiling up, don't you. Good. Let it coil.
It happened during Christmas festivities. The town was alive, people were out, the season was doing what the season does — and right into all that warmth and good feeling walked a man dressed as Santa Claus and three fellow bandits. They walked into the First National Bank and they looted it.
Twelve thousand two hundred dollars in cash. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars in securities. Now that right there would be enough of a story.
But they weren't done. When it came time to leave, they took two little girls as hostages and shot their way out — a gun battle, with children in the middle of it. They escaped.
A three-day manhunt followed. Three days. And when it was over, the children were recovered, the money was recovered, and the robbers were captured.
Six people were killed in all of this. Eight were injured. That's the weight of it — hold it for a second.
Now here's where the story takes one more dark turn. The man who had worn the Santa suit, after he was in custody, broke out of jail. And a mob lynched him.
The marker doesn't dress that up, and neither will I. The First National Bank of Eastland County — the official marker calls it the scene of the daring Santa Claus Bank Robbery, and I suppose daring is one word for it. History remembers what it remembers, and this one it never let go.
What the marker says
Scene of daring Santa Claus Bank Robbery, Dec. 23, 1927. During Christmas festivities, costumed Santa and three fellow bandits looted bank of $12,200 cash, $150,000 in securities. They escaped through gun battle with two little girls as hostages. A three-day manhunt followed. The children and money were recovered; the robbers captured. Six persons were killed, eight injured. Later a mob lynched "Santa" when he broke out of jail. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967