The Santa Claus Bank Robbery (Cisco, Texas) | 1927 True Crime Christmas Special + Texas Manhunt

This is the Signal 51 Chronicles, the Santa Claus bake robbery.
Good morning.
This is a special edition, special Christmas edition of the Signal 51 Chronicles.
I'm John Henry on the other side of the screen at an undisclosed location is Jake White.
And with this being a special Christmas edition, it's also a special delivery format.
You're coming to you by way of the Riverside or something or another.
You heard of the Riverside?
I know the Riverside neighborhood, Jake.
Yeah, I know the neighborhood, no, it's the first time.
I'd like to say that we were somewhere vacationing, if you will, celebrating the holidays.
But I believe both you and I are at our respective office spaces where we make our living
during the day.
So not too glamorous.
Not glamorous at all.
We're not on the slopes of Vail or Aspen or anything of the sorts.
So our producer, Ashley, is somewhere.
I think she is in Vail.
Oh, whoop.
No, not really.
I made that up.
But she's somewhere.
I'm somewhere and Jake, why does somewhere else?
And so I think the moral of the story is that all this technology is doing is just driving
us further apart.
Yeah.
Not closer together.
Hmm.
No.
Take note of that society.
It's Jake, are you down to your Christmas shopping?
Yeah.
You are.
Yeah.
You bought one thing out, you bought one thing out, you.
I lied.
You haven't done anything.
I haven't done anything.
What's on your list?
I know.
Just have one on your list.
Me?
Yeah.
Well, I don't, I don't really do your business does all the work on this.
Yeah.
We know someone else to do it.
I did see a meme recently where a husband, wife, we're in the living room.
The kids were opening presents.
And the mom, I don't know the meme, I don't know what any of that, what any of that should
is.
But it was basically like the mom making some kind of funny comment about how the dad just
shows up for Christmas morning and everything's done ready to go.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Yeah.
That's me.
My kids would be screwed if they just had me to rely on dude.
Big time.
Well, I haven't begun shopping.
But all I've got to handful of things I got to pick up before, I guess Wednesday.
Yeah.
TikTok.
What's that?
I said, TikTok, it's coming up, man.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Just a few days from ho ho hoeing.
Yeah.
For Texas.
Hey, let's go to the blotter.
Let's do it.
Daylines, Buddha, Texas.
I'm sure you heard about this one.
A 51 year old Baytown man faces death charges after allegedly stealing for the $1,700
worth of brisket, a multiple central Texas grocery stores.
Police are calling it the crime spree.
Armando Salazar was arrested December 6 in charge with theft under $2,500, with two
or more previous convictions according to the Buddha Police Department.
He's being held on $2,500 bond.
The police department said in a Facebook post, Mr. Salazar, age 51, stole more than $1,700
worth of brisket.
The post shared a photo of 20 briskets that police recovered from the suspect.
A television station there, KXAN has reached out to Salazar's attorney to request a statement
regarding the charge.
The police department says on Saturday, December 6th, while many of us were enjoying Buddha
fest activities, Mr. Salazar decided not to partake in our wonderful food vendors on Main Street
and in City Park.
It is stead stole over $1,700 worth of brisket.
According to police, Mr. Salazar innocent, I might add, until proven guilty, stole
the meat from an H.E.B. in Buddha, Walmart in Buddha, and stores in Manor in Austin.
The Buddha Police Department said in the post, notified the Kyle Police Department,
which is probably what a force of about two, three.
Everything down there is growing like crazy.
It's probably, or was, I think it's slowed down a little bit, but small, the crime fighters
of the Kyle Police Department located Mr. Salazar at an H.E.B. in Kyle.
How come there's H.E.Bs everywhere except Fort Worth, Texas?
That's what I want to know.
But we have one that I think I know of.
Yeah, it's way up north.
We were just talking about that yesterday, and my wife and I, well, you should, should
Kyle fan?
I mean, an H.E.B. fan?
Um, they me, I don't know.
I mean, we don't have one here, so I don't know if we're a fan or not.
There's one like that.
Is it Buddha?
It's a Buddha.
Oh, Buddha, maybe.
I've heard it both.
Wait, wait.
It's like, what's the other one down there?
There's another town down there that has a spelling.
I don't know.
I don't know that area.
Well, there's Bernie.
Bernie.
That's it.
Is that what you're thinking of?
I think it is.
That's what I was thinking of.
We have a listener in Bernie, Texas, or a viewer in Bernie, Texas.
Oh, we do.
Yeah.
Are you pronouncing that one correctly?
As far as I know.
Okay.
Anyway, police officers smoked.
Mr. Salazar out of his hole in the Kyle H.E.B.
and placed him under arrest.
We're weighted.
We'll be waiting with Bated Breath on the remedy, the resolution in this case.
Jake, have you ever come across stolen brisket before?
A meat thief?
A meat thief, yeah.
No.
Well, no, not that I can recall.
I did one time at a local grocery store in Fort Worth that was having an issue with people stealing stuff.
Heard off-duty police officers.
And this is over not far from our neck of the woods on Cambui.
And I was standing in there in full police uniform.
And this was back in the cigarette heyday, if you will, you know, when everywhere had like cigarettes were accessible.
This guy walks in.
Are they not?
Oh, you mean like you could reach over the counter and grab them.
Yeah, we just reach over grab cartons.
Gotcha.
He walks in, looking a little on the shady side.
And he walks up to this display of cartons of cigarettes.
And maybe 25 feet from him, maybe.
And I see him reach over the counter and grab three, three cards of cigarettes.
I thought he was joking.
Like, hey, this would be fun to joke with a cop.
So I kind of laughed and then all of a sudden he sticks them in the front of his pants and starts walking towards me.
And I still think he's joking.
And then he walks right by me and walks out the door and I said, hey, what are you doing?
He's like, what are you talking about?
So I walked out and grabbed him and pulled the cartons of cigarettes out.
And he's like, I didn't see you there.
I was like, who are the worst thief known to man?
You just stole these three cards of cigarettes right in front of like literally 25 feet from me, man.
So I ought to jail he went.
But now I never had a meat thief.
I, you know, I, I, I think it is pop common.
The steel brisket and such.
I'm more of the, I was thinking about this on the way over.
Knowing this is a holiday special.
And I've been seeing all these posts recently on the holiday crime.
The crime.
And this is not just relegated to the holidays, but it's the porch pirate.
Yes.
The glorious.
You know what I think porch pirates are?
What's that?
You know what I think porch pirates are?
What's that?
They're gamblers.
They're gambling that they're going to get something.
Yeah.
That's really what they are.
I mean, kind of these kind of gamblers.
You think about it.
It's kind of best of both worlds.
I saw a video that appeared to show somebody following around an Amazon truck.
Yeah.
And very brazenly, when that truck pulled off, this guy or gal, I don't know who it was,
would, would just go up to the porch and grab it and run off and then catch up with it.
Where's your stop loss?
But as you know, I do have a knack for bad gambling.
I do know this.
Not that I'm a bad, well, no, I am a bad gambler in the sense that I never make the right gambling
decision ever.
And I don't, I'm not like a gambler.
I don't gamble often.
But if I was a porch pirate, I mean, yeah, I'm never running up and grabbing the MacBook off
of somebody's porch.
No, you're going to get, you know, it's like cheating or something.
Yeah, I get this big box.
I'm like, yes, it's a big box.
It's got to have something good in it.
Then, you know, I don't know where they go back to their shanties and open up their
loot, if you will.
I'm like, man, if I opened up a bit, I mean, I'll, it would be terrible.
I'd be like, and he's a pack of edible thongs and a electric football or something.
Electric football.
I'm like, what are you going to do with all that?
It's anyway.
Well, I was at, I was at the Tom Fahm on Camp Bowie, probably about a year ago or so.
Maybe longer, I don't remember.
And I was at the self checkout line, scanning my items.
I hear this commotion over by the door.
Sir, sir, stop, stop, stop, sir, stop.
And it's a, it's a, it's a Tom Fahm employee trying to stop this, I don't know.
Looked maybe to be homeless.
And he had, in his jacket, all sorts of stuff that he was trying to hide.
He, he, why I'm getting away with, I know some pork ribs.
I know, no, he didn't get away with the pork ribs because those, those fell with the floor
and they, they grabbed him.
But he got away with something.
I don't know what it was.
Yeah, you know, people got to eat, I guess.
Damn, I mean, I suppose.
I don't know.
I mean, I think it depends on food wise what they steal.
In terms of my acceptance of their criminal act.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I, I mean, I don't know what allegedly Mr. Salazar's motives were.
It could have been Christmas feast.
It could have been a business that he wants to start with as a, as a, as a, as a barbecue outlet.
I don't know.
He could have been a, he could have been a beauty of Robinhood, if you will.
Get him to give it away.
He might have smoked him all in.
He had a feast.
By the way, or the city.
Yeah.
I don't know.
All right.
Well, let's get at it with our case today.
We have bank robber.
Oh, it's Santa here.
Are you ready for Christmas?
I sure am.
Well, I'd like to wish you a very, very Christmas and Happy New Year.
Who also might have had the same motives?
Who knows?
Maybe they were Robinhood, their, their modern day Robinhoods.
I tend to doubt it.
I think it was probably greed.
And one, at least one of these guys was in, was in need for money.
I would imagine they all were.
But we are talking about the infamous Santa Claus bank robbery of Cisco, Texas.
Which started at just before noon on December 23rd of that year,
two days before Christmas.
Santa Claus walked down Main Street in Cisco,
which is a town just out west of here, about an hour,
trailing a small procession of children.
In another town and in another time, of course,
this site might have been charming.
But on this day in Cisco, Texas,
it was the opening act of one of the bloodiest bank robberies in Texas history.
The source of three different books,
the most recent in 2023,
by gentleman by the name of Thomas Goodman.
But inside this red suit was a man without the good intentions of,
of St. Nick. His name was Marshall Ratliffe,
the next convict with a gun and a devious plan.
And within minutes, the first national bank of Cisco would be riddled with bullets.
Two almonds would be morally wounded.
Six people would eventually be dead.
And the state of Texas would unleash what newspapers of the era called
the largest manhunt it had ever seen.
So this crime would come to be remembered simply and ominously
as we have just described it, the Santa Claus bank robbery.
Cisco in that day was at its peak,
with a population of more than 7,000 and possibly more.
Although the town played only a minor role in the Eastland County oil boom of 1921,
I'm sorry, 1919 to 1921.
Its population grew rapidly,
with some estimates as high as 15,000 people in Cisco.
According to the State History,
the Texas State History Association.
In the wake of the boom, Cisco adopted City Charter
and built a new railroad station that cost 25,000 bucks.
Cisco was also in the background at that time
and of no surprise of a heated controversy
between the two cugs planned in its opponents
that swept the county in the early 1920s.
In fact, a clan newsletter noted
that clan and anti-Clan forces had agreed to cease hostilities
at Cisco, indicating that there was indeed
clan activity at that time.
Now Texas, meanwhile, in the 1920s, was a wash in bank robberies
which, speaking of Santa Claus,
Peter Pan was legendary at that time.
Three or four in a day was not uncommon.
So in response, the Texas Bankers Association had a great idea, Jake.
They posted a blunt deterrent,
$5,000 reward to anyone who killed a bank robber
during the commission of a crime.
That bounty, of course, ensured that any robbery
might turn instantly lethal.
Of course, it did.
In our case here in Cisco,
is the perfect illustration of that.
This Marshall Ratliffe, Henry Helms,
and Robert Hill,
all knew one another from a very common gathering spot
in those days, the Texas State Penitentiary.
In Huntsville, Ratliffe and his brother Lee
had previously robbed a bank in Valera.
I'm probably mispronouncing that too.
And they both served barely a year before receiving
pardons from the notorious governor,
Miriam A. Ferguson.
They called her Ma Ferguson.
Ferguson.
And that was a clemency that critics would later cite
as dangerously lax.
Lee Ratliffe, of course, was back behind bars.
By the time the Cisco job was planned.
Marshall Ratliffe.
Marshall Ratliffe was recruited Helms and Hill in his stead
and added a fellow by the name of Louis E. Davis,
a relative of Helms.
And as we just discussed,
badly in need of money and lacking,
while at the same time lacking the heart
and the instincts of the others.
A professional safe cracker was originally planned
that illness forced a substitution.
Our friend, Mr. Davis, would ultimately pay for it.
Yep.
So on the morning of December 23rd,
the four men arrived in Cisco in a stolen car.
Ratliffe borrowed a Santa Claus suit from the lady who ran
to which tall falls boarding house where they had been staying.
She was suspicious.
I didn't even get to Ratliffe.
Is anything good start to which tall falls?
No.
Hardly.
Never has.
Not even that bike race to have.
100 hell.
100 hell.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Several blocks from the bank.
Ratliffe stepped out in costume.
Children followed.
Who doesn't want to follow Santa Claus?
Exactly.
Exactly.
Inside the bank assistant cashier,
Jewel Poe was acting as teller.
As a teller.
Oscar client, a manager of a grocery store company,
laid a $5 bill on a counter.
Moments later,
a pistol was leveled at Poe
and a voice ordered the infamous,
get him up.
Another gunman covered the door.
A third,
herded customers towards the back.
Ratliffe still in Santa Claus costume.
Marched Poe into Alex Speer's office
and forced him to open the vault.
Meanwhile,
Mrs. BP Blassengame entered the bank
with her daughter, Francis,
who had seen Santa Claus.
So did Laverne Comer,
who was 12,
an MMA Robinson, who was 10.
When a robber attempted to force,
Mrs. Blassengame into the bookkeeper's room,
she refused.
She, she bolted through a side door,
spun it across an alley,
and vacant lot,
and burst into none other than the police station.
Police chief GE,
goes by the name Dick Bedford,
who was 61, grabbed a shotgun.
The Santa Claus Bandit stuffed $12,400 in currency,
and $150,000 in non-negotiable bonds
into a sack.
As he left the vault,
as he left the vault,
a shot rang out.
In seconds,
the robbery became a gun battle.
The robber's forced bank employees and customers
into the alley
and used them as human shields
while firing at Bedford,
who blasted back with buckshot
from the head of the alley,
and at Deputy George Carmichael,
who was also 60,
approaching from the rear.
The two little girls were held
directly in front of the gunman.
From the nearby post office,
W.B. called well,
a crack shot he was described as,
fired at the robber's car,
puncturing a rear tire,
bullets ricocheted,
one bandit fell,
others shoved him into the car.
Bedford went down.
Car Michael went down.
The car roared out of the alley.
Inside were Helms,
Hill,
Ratliffe,
who was still in his Santa Claus
a garb,
and Davis,
who was severely wounded on the floor.
The girls were forced inside as well.
Near the edge of town,
the robber's common dear to car,
driven by Woodrow Wilson Harris,
who was 14 years old.
Ratliffe ordered him out.
Harris instead,
killed the ignition
and pocketed the keys.
As gunfire closed in,
the robber's transferred Davis
and their gear to the second car,
then realized they couldn't start it.
They fled back to their original vehicle,
abandoning Davis and the money.
Harris later returned under fire
and drove Davis to the hospital.
The girls they were left unharmed
in a field and recovered within minutes.
The money was returned to the bank,
$4 over the calculated shortage.
Davis would die about 30 hours later.
The fugitive staggered northwest
through sleet and winter cold.
Posse's formed instantly.
Lawmen and Texas Rangers pursued by road
and newly by airplane.
Four days later,
Ratliffe was shot down near South Bend.
After another stolen car was halted
at a roadblock.
A week later, Helms and Hill,
wounded and delirious,
wondered into Graham and surrendered.
You're a Bendigram?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then I've been through there.
I think, yeah, recently, in fact,
Fort Grant.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You probably got business up there.
Yeah.
And no, and no one I might add is,
is naming their kids after Woodrow Wilson anymore.
No.
No.
His reputation.
Or letting him drive when he's 14.
That was the way that went though in those days.
Man, he was smart though.
Took the keys.
Hit him in his pocket.
Yeah.
I mean, good.
Yeah.
I mean, kind of a gamble, but yeah.
Yeah.
And that, I looked that up.
That 12,400 cash that he stole.
Yeah.
Worked today $230,000.
Yeah.
It's good take.
Yeah.
That was a good haul there.
So our man, Ratliffe, he got shot in South Bend and,
and arrested.
His end wasn't swift.
He was convicted and sentenced to death,
though he delayed execution through appeals
and it feigned insanity plea,
so convincing that Jailer's fed Bay
then escorted him.
Transferred back to Eastland County,
he morally wounded Special Guard Tom A. Jones
during an escape attempt.
This is where this, this is where the story is really wild.
So of course, in response to that,
public fury exploded.
And in those days,
the lynching was a big player.
And on the night of November 19, 1929,
almost two years since the day of the robbery,
a mob dragged Ratliffe from jail and lynched him.
The first hanging failed.
The second hanging did not.
His funeral was held in all places,
Fort Worth, Texas.
Under the watchful eyes of detectives
who staked out Shannon's funeral chapel,
Shannon's is still going strong.
100 years later.
And those detectives were acting on tips
that Robert Hill was in Fort Worth and might attend.
He did not.
Hill had himself once again escaped prison.
But Hill was not seen there.
He also said that he had visited the morgue on Friday.
Unrecognized.
Another rumour labeled as false
was that Hill attended the service
but slipped away early.
So the chapel door for flung opened around three o'clock.
According to newspaper reports that day,
I found in the start telegram archives.
Friends and curiosity seekers seated themselves.
A line of relatives filed past the cheap casket
upon which lay a few yellow and red flowers.
Two women branded as morbid visitors,
made several attempts to view the body in the grey coffin.
One of those was successful.
A newspaper reporter noted that she studied
for a moment the calm features
still bearing the marks of a mom's violence
before she was asked to leave the chapel.
So the newspaper noted that Ratliffe's mother,
Mrs. Rilla Carter,
became uncontrollable as she looked
into her dead son's face.
And she exclaimed,
oh God, oh God.
Have mercy on my sweet baby boy.
She was let away.
The Reverend Stubblefield, Tola Crowd,
Marshall Ratliffe has already preached his funeral service.
And you are preaching yours.
Ratliffe was buried at Mount All of its cemetery
under what was described as cold grey skies.
Only Robert Hill survived.
And on this Christmas, we actually have
a story of redemption.
Robert Hill escaped the win prison,
the win prison farm in September of 1929.
He wandered five states over 15 months.
Texas Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico,
and then into Mexico.
He later admitted he passed through Cisco once,
eating supper at an outline cafe with tourists,
who obviously had no idea who he was.
So on January 18th of 1930,
1931, part of me, he was captured
on the International Bridge at El Paso by detectives,
detectives by the name of Frank Powers and JD McClellan
as he tried to cross into war as to quote,
have a good time,
who doesn't want to cross into war as,
and have a good time.
Although in those days, it was probably a lot easier.
I don't know.
That was kind of a,
a civil war in Mexico at that time.
So maybe not.
But anyway, that's what he wanted to do.
He blamed his ears for getting caught.
He said lots of folks,
tongues get them into trouble.
But it was my ears that got me caught.
He has some big old ears.
Mr. Robert Hill had apparently.
And he declared that for the last 15 months,
he had quote unquote,
dawn straight,
asked to explain his possession of a pistol
and a black mask found on him at the time of his capture.
He said he admitted that it quoted,
does look bad, don't it?
But he was at a point where he had to do something.
He had gone without any meals.
No, I'm sorry, he had not gone without any meals.
Though he said he had postponed a few.
His visit to El Paso at the time of his capture
was his second, he said,
during his first trip there,
about six months before,
he was arrested.
He worked for a while at oddly enough, fork bliss.
He had been there about 15 days at the last,
he had been there about 15 days the last time before his capture.
Returned to Eastland County in shackles, Hill faced capital charges.
And he clearly expected to be sent to the electric chair,
which he called the hot seat,
which is what he expected to get.
But that didn't happen.
Hill instead was sentenced to 99 years on paper.
He served some of that time.
He even, even after escaping once more,
he eventually changed.
In 1945, Governor Koch Stevenson granted him,
granted Hill a conditional pardon.
He married, he fell steady work as a warehouseman,
he became a stepfather.
He joined a church and his employers even knew who he was.
The board of pardons and peroles
has no record of why they advised the governor to pardon Hill,
only 15 years into his life sentence.
And Thomas Goodman's book, The Last Man,
a novel of the 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.
The author speculates that the decision was a result
of both Hill's personal reform
as well as, this is interesting,
society's need for laborers,
in factories and farms,
while so many American men were overseas
during the Second World War.
And our man, Robert Hill, made the best of it.
Governor John Connolly replaced his conditional pardon
with a full pardon in 1964.
And by the time Hill died in 1996,
he had been married,
a model citizen,
and a model citizen of close to 50 years.
So there is redemption, Jake White,
or can be amongst these folks of ours
that we see committing crime
for the various different reasons.
And that concludes the case
of the Santa Claus robbery of Cisco,
Texas in 1927.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Merry Christmas.
This is a stolen water media production.
You know.