Worst Crime in Bay City History Occurred 90 Years Ago January 15
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Bay County Savings Bank, circa 1915. Photo courtesy Alan J. Flood.
Gang leader Steve Madaj in a 1920s photo, described as "an enigmatic and elusive young desperado" by Master Detective Magazine.
Notorious bandit/murderer Steve Madaj was in Jackson Prison for car theft, but his gang needed money and couldn't wait for his release.
So, on January 15, 1921, -- 90 years ago last Saturday -- five gang members held up the Bay County Savings Bank at 1900 Broadway at 32nd Street and shot two patrons to death.
Slain were bank customers Martin DeBats, a grocer, and insurance agent Labra Persons.
The thugs escaped with $4,304.54 including $100 in Liberty Bonds and $441.54 in checks.
The robbers abandoned their stolen sport model getaway car in the side yard of the St. James Convent on Columbus Avenue at Monroe Street and scattered on foot.
Groups of citizens with ropes in their vehicles reportedly roamed the streets seeking vigilante justice for the culprits.
Bay City Superintendent of Police George V. Davis circulated a flyer offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the five bandits.
Five young men, all between 19 and 21 years of age, known to be Madaj cronies, quickly revealed themselves by purchases of watches and clothing even though they were unemployed and previous to the robbery had to "bum their cigarette money."
To guard against lynching by the outraged local citizenry, suspects were separated. Two were housed in the Saginaw jail and one in the Caro jail while the remaining pair was in the old Bay County Jail at Center Avenue and Jefferson Street.
Details of the crime were recounted in a series of articles in Master Detective Magazine in August-September-October 1936.
The series was entitled "Cobras of Crime: Smashing Saginaw Valley's Vanishing Slayers," written by former county sheriff Theodore Trudell as told to Virgil E. LaMarre.
The criminals were identified and the robbery solved in a combination of sleuthing tactics that included:
intimidation of a witness,
testimony from a mysterious "Jack" or "Mr. X," and
old police tricks of placing an informant in the jail and
telling one suspect his pal had already "ratted."
In this case, the informant, dressed as a vagrant, was a stenographer who could understand Polish that Madaj and his pal in another cell were talking through an opening in the floor.
Madaj had been returned from Jackson by Circuit Judge Samuel G. Houghton, who personally interviewed him, in an effort to break the case.
Police suspected correctly that Madaj had planned the crime, but the local tough guy wouldn't crack even under heavy pressure.
In Madaj's absence, Aloysius Nowak reportedly had assumed leadership of the gang.
Saginaw police were incensed by Nowak, who reportedly admitted shooting both victims and displayed a cold-blooded attitude that he was justified in the murders. They demanded that Bay County remove the brazen criminal from their jail, according to the article.
The deadly bank robbery was the culmination of a crime wave that began in 1916 when Madaj and an accomplice shot to death lumber baron Franklin Parker on Center and Lincoln avenues.
Not yet suspected in the murder of Parker, Madaj soon enlisted and went off to France for service in World War I with Bay City's 124th Ambulance Company of the Michigan National Guard.
On his return in 1918 he joined with other unemployed veterans and young hoodlums who hung around a pool hall on Broadway.
The gang would stop cars on the street and fleece the driver and passengers. However, if anyone inside was a veteran, they would be free to go. Madaj apparently had a soft spot for fellow veterans.
Breakins at Breens' Hardware, safe cracking at the Bay City Iron works, a holdup at the Standard Oil gas station at Center and Jackson, and other crimes terrified business people and residents.
Madaj was working at the Charles Guinup farm at Tuscola and Cass one summer during the crime wave, venturing into town to steal cars, according to recollections by former farm girl Mabel Guinup Veenstra. (See "Centenarian Recalls . . ." MyBayCity.com June 30, 2010.)
Madaj had been nabbed for the theft of a green Cadillac owned by industrialist E.B. Perry, 2230 Center Ave.
Hulking Assistant Prosecutor Dell Thompson threatened one suspect (Mr. X) --held incommunicado in a room in the Wenonah Hotel -- so much he fainted and "spilled his guts" with key information, the magazine reported.
Two of the gang members were told that the other had accused them of shooting the victims, and confessions were thus wrung from each.
Because of hostile public sentiment, officials decided to hold a secret trial that convened at 1:30 a.m. before Judge Houghton. However, word leaked out and about 200 curious persons showed up in the court room.
Nowak and two accomplices were sentenced to life at hard labor in Marquette Prison. A nineteen year old, driver of the car, and another gang member later received reduced sentences.
Enroute to Marquette on the train, believing that Madaj had turned them in, Nowak told guards that Madaj had killed Parker in 1916. The gang leader was arrested and sentenced to double life terms.
Madaj boasted that "no stone walls can ever hold me," and made good on that in April, 1923, when he escaped and rode the rails to Chicago. Hooking up with mobsters who gave him guns and a car, Madaj eventually returned to Bay City. On June 18, 1924 he robbed the Kosciuszko Avenue branch of the Bay County Savings Bank, escaping with $3,393 but sparing cashier Michael Dardas and other employees and patrons.
While at large for 18 months, Madaj was reported to have killed Munger farmer Henry Nellet, although he was never charged in that crime.
Rookie patrolman Frank Kowalkowski also was killed on Broadway during that period, the murder remaining unsolved to this day.
After a tip led to his recapture in Bay City in 1924, the sheriff allowed an estimated 2,000 persons to file through the jail to view him in his cell. Among the gawkers were many lovesick girls including 14-year-old Violet Eichhorn, a hairdresser.
He served 41 years in prison until his release by Gov. John B. Swainson in 1962. Former Army buddies had lobbied the governor for his release just before the election of 1962 and the governor had acceded, apparently hoping to raise his vote among Bay City Poles.
Miss Eichhorn wrote to Madaj and waited until his prison term was over. She then married him and the pair lived until the late 1980s. They are buried side-by-side in Elm Lawn Cemetery.
(The story of Madaj is included in a local history book, Ghosts, Crimes and Urban Legends of Bay City, Michigan.)
The Bay County Savings Bank moved to a new building at Broadway and 31st in the 1920s.
The former bank building at 1900 Broadway where the robbery occurred was expanded by Clark and Munger, architects, and housed mens' and womens' Odd Fellows Lodges until the 1970s. Vacant for at least 40 years, it has been targeted by the city for preservation and recently was acquired by developer Dr. Steven Ingersoll.
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