Severy Bank Robbed

[genealogynut]

Howard Courant-Citizen
February 5, 1942

Severy, Kan., Feb.4---A lone bandit held up two women employees of the Severy State Bank and escaped with an estimated $700 in mid-afternoon Wednesday.

The unmasked man entered the bank about 2:30 p.m. flourished a pistol and forced Mrs. Lulu Pottorff, assistant cashier, and Mrs. Janice Fiscus, bookkeeper, to put the counter currency, estimated at $700, in a sack.

He fled after ordering the women to remain in a back room of the bank for 10 minutes.

Mrs. Pottorff and Mrs. Fiscus were alone in the bank at the time.  Cashier W. H. Stewart having left the building to go to the postoffice.

Stewart said the man, who had a strip of adhesive tape over the bridge of his nose and another strip on the side of his face, had been seen on the streets of Severy before the robbery.

Greenwood county officers began a search for the bandit.

(Note: I have read in the Howard newspapers, where there was a bank robbery or two during the same time period, so it's possible it was the same bandit)

[Marcia Moore]

Yes, the robber did rob a bank at Howard.  The robber's name was Tom Wheeler, and he was arrested at Knoxville, TN in August 1943 on charges of robbing the Severy State Bank as well as a bank at Howard four months prior to the Severy robbery.