Convicted Bank Robber. Harvey Bailey's criminal career started as a bootlegger before robbing banks. He first arrest was in 1920. Harvey, called the "Dean of American Bank Robbers," was a staple of a loose affiliation of bandits and burglars, who sometimes was known as the "Holden-Keating gang". The gang made the Midwest bank-robbing rounds throughout the 1920s. He used St. Paul as a home base for money laundering. He was suspected in the Great Denver Mint Robbery of 1922, in which five men, with sawed-off shotguns blazing, snatched $200,000 in new five-dollar bills in a "daring daylight raid." Bailey's gang robbed a pair of Minnesota banks, the Bank of Sturgis in 1928 and the Bank of Willmar in 1930, along with a half dozen more in Iowa and Indiana. In 1930, by all accounts by Bailey, the gang stole $2.7 million from the Lincoln National Bank and Trust in Nebraska, the largest bank robbery at the time. He was said to have robbed at least two banks a year, in his 12 year spree. After being arrested and found guilty, he was sent to Leavenworth in 1933 but was transferred to Alcatraz on September 1, 1934. He was returned to Leavenworth in 1946 and transferred in 1960 to Seagoville Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, where he remained until he was released as an elderly man on March 30, 1964. In 1966 he married and retired as a cabinet making, a trade he picked up as a boy and resumed while in prison.
Convicted Bank Robber. Harvey Bailey's criminal career started as a bootlegger before robbing banks. He first arrest was in 1920. Harvey, called the "Dean of American Bank Robbers," was a staple of a loose affiliation of bandits and burglars, who sometimes was known as the "Holden-Keating gang". The gang made the Midwest bank-robbing rounds throughout the 1920s. He used St. Paul as a home base for money laundering. He was suspected in the Great Denver Mint Robbery of 1922, in which five men, with sawed-off shotguns blazing, snatched $200,000 in new five-dollar bills in a "daring daylight raid." Bailey's gang robbed a pair of Minnesota banks, the Bank of Sturgis in 1928 and the Bank of Willmar in 1930, along with a half dozen more in Iowa and Indiana. In 1930, by all accounts by Bailey, the gang stole $2.7 million from the Lincoln National Bank and Trust in Nebraska, the largest bank robbery at the time. He was said to have robbed at least two banks a year, in his 12 year spree. After being arrested and found guilty, he was sent to Leavenworth in 1933 but was transferred to Alcatraz on September 1, 1934. He was returned to Leavenworth in 1946 and transferred in 1960 to Seagoville Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, where he remained until he was released as an elderly man on March 30, 1964. In 1966 he married and retired as a cabinet making, a trade he picked up as a boy and resumed while in prison.
Bio by: Shock
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Son, Von Dwight Bailey B. March 19, 1914 in Fort Dodge, IA - D. October 19, 1995
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