ARVADA BANK ROBBERS LODGED IN GOLDEN JAIL

Two of four implicated are captured and make full confessions – Part of loot recovered

                Lee Masters and Claude Carmen 22 and 25 years old respectively, have been arrested and have confessed to being two of the four men taking part in the Arvada bank robbery a week ago Monday. They are now being held in the Golden jail pending trial.

                Masters was arrested in Pueblo as a suspicious character, and after being severely grilled by detectives and unable to give an account of his actions or where he obtained the money found in his pockets, he broke down and confessed his part in the robbery.

                Carmen was arrested in a private home in Littleton. According to the signed confessions of Masters and Carmen, the holdup of the bank was not arranged long in advance, as was first believed by the police. They both declared that four men were implicated.

                Carmen and Masters, according to their own story, and an ex-sailor, known to them only as “Jack”, were the three who did the actual work of holding up the bank. The fourth, who they declare was F. O. Carpenter, 25 years old, of 5040 Pecos Street, helped them plan the crime. It was Carpenter’s Cole 8 roadster they said, in which the escape was to have been made had not the hot pursuit put up by bank officials and citizens thwarted their plans.  

                The quartet met only a week before the robbery, Carmen and Masters told police. Carmen and Masters had known each other previously when both were soldiers at Fort Logan, they said, but had not met for several months.

                “Jack”, who police believe to be the most hardened criminal of the quartet, first suggested the robbery, the arrested men declare.

                He and Carpenter, they said, believed it could be staged without a chance of being captured, and Carmen and Masters agreed to take part in it.

                Carpenter, in addition to his Cole eight roadster, had a Ford Touring car, the second car, the confessed bandits declare, that was used in the robbery and later recovered by police. The four men met in a Stout street rooming house, one occupied by Carmen and Masters, Monday morning several hours before the holdup. They drove the two cars to West Forty-Sixth Avenue and Tennyson Street, and there left Carpenter and his Cole eight, they explained as they reconstructed the crime for police officials.

                Carmen, Masters and Jack then drove to Arvada and committed the holdup. Carmen and Jack first covered J.F. White, president of the bank, and his son, Morley White, cashier, while Masters ran around behind the two bank officials and ordered them to back into a rear room. Jack and Carmen then looted the bank of all cash in sight, and Carmen turned the cash he had over to Jack to carry.

                It was while this was going on that Charles W. Clark, president of the Midwest Tire Company, of Arvada, walked into the bank. As he did so, Masters, in the teller’s cage, temporarily lowered his gun out of sight. Clark inquired for the elder Mr. White, and Masters told him that Mr. White was in the rear room, directing Mr. Clark how to come around behind the cage to see the bank president. As he walked behind the cage, Masters leveled his revolver at Clark, forced him to hold his hands and then to walk back where the two Whites were being kept prisoners.

                Completing their looting of the bank as best they could, the three fled in the Ford touring car, with Morley White, Mr. Clark and O.H. Donner, of Arvada, pursuing them in another car. The bandit car reached West Forty Sixth Avenue and Tennyson Street as planned, where the transfer to the more powerful car was made. The Cole eight was there, but the banding could not see Carpenter nearby, and fearing they could not start the car before their pursuers would catch up, continued in the Ford car.

                At Forty-Fifth and Raleigh Street Jack dropped off the car, carrying with him all the stolen money except $490 in silver dollars, having arranged before leaving the car to meet the others later in the Stout street rooming house. Carmen dropped off at West Twenty-Fifth Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard and Masters continued to drive the car, doubling back to West Twenty-Sixth Avenue and west on the avenue until a flat tire forced him to stop.

                He buried the $490 in silver dollars that Jack had left in the car because of its weight, digging a small hole under a conspicuous tree in a nearby field, about three miles west of the city limits. Near the buried money he also buried his revolver. He then walked south the to the Denver and Intermountain railway line and at a small way station caught a car to Denver.

                Masters returned to the room on Stout Street and found Carmen and Carpenter already there. They waited until early in the evening when Jack arrived, telling them of his experience with Feuerstein of 4515 Raleigh Street, in whose garage he had sought shelter to better conceal the stolen money inside his shirt and elsewhere on his person in fleeing after firing one shot at Feuerstein when the latter discovered him. Jack had left behind $1,665 in a sack hanging on a small nail inside the garage.

Jefferson County District Court: 303-271-6446

·        Frank O. Carpenter

Case Number: 1038

Held: October 24, 1923

Book 4, Page 146

·        Lee Masters

Case Number: 1039

Held: October 14, 1923

Book 4, Page 147

·        Claude Carman

Case Number: 1040

Held: Oct. 24, 1923

Book 4, Page 148