Senate Saloon Robbery, 1897
In the early morning hours of December 8, 1897, three masked men entered the Senate Saloon at 113 25th Street. With guns drawn they ordered Joe Hall, bartender, and Alfred Townsend, bar patron, to hold up their hands. In a matter of seconds money drawers were emptied and the robbers ran out with $35 in cash. Police were called, and Sheriff Belnap and his deputies immediately began working the case.
Two days later, Don McMillan, Norton Curtis, and George Allen, were arrested in the rooming house of Mrs. Maggie Kirk. Townsend and Hall confirmed that the arrested men matched the size of the robbers and identified that a bone-handled Colt confiscated from the rooming house was a gun used in the hold up. Police also arrested Thomas Samuelson as an accomplice, and Mrs. Kirk for aiding and abetting the criminals.
For a week, police continued their questioning of the men, hoping for a confession. Curtis confessed that they hid clothing near the Central Fire Station, including the coat that McMillan wore during the robbery, but it wasn’t until Samuelson confessed that the case was finally solved.
Samuelson told police that McMillan and Allen visited him before the robbery, detailing their successful heist at the Little Queen and recruiting him for help at the Senate Saloon. The gang needed a home they could go to without suspicion after the robbery, and Samuelson’s home was chosen. He agreed to the robbery because he was poor and had three starving children and a sick wife. After the robbery, the gang laid low for a few days, thinking it had all blown over. They started making bigger plans, including a bank robbery, before they were finally arrested.
The men were all repeat offenders. Allen had been given two hours to leave town just a week before the robbery, but went into hiding instead. McMillan’s father had been killed in the backroom of a saloon in 1880, and the newspaper reported that he was “raised with a gun and knife in his hand.” Curtis had spent time in prison and the State Industrial School. The men were convicted of the robbery and sentenced to six years in jail.
Dan McMillian
Martin Curtis
George Allen