In the article, it tells that a $10,000 reward was paid by the Texas Bankers Association, $5,000 per man. In the late 1920s, bank robberies were on the rise in Texas and to combat the problem, in 1928 the Texas Bankers Association began offering a $5,000 reward for the killing of bank robbers. The printed flyers stated— Reward $5,000 for Dead Bank Robbers, Not One Cent for Live Ones. While this may have been well intentioned, pretty quickly someone came up with the idea of luring people to a bank, usually drunks or drifters, shooting them dead, then pocketing the reward money. The fact that several of those killed weren’t actually bank robbers didn’t seem to matter to too many people. Except the famous Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, later known for ending the careers of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Hamer figured out that robberies in Stanton, Odessa, and Rankin weren’t really robberies but were instead “murder machines” (Hamer’s words). He brought the scheme to the attention of the Bankers Association, judges, and other law enforcement officers but no one seemed to care. He finally had to go to the press to make it public. The only real effect this publicity had was for the Association to finally drop the “dead only” clause from the reward.

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SWHF #691