WHEN WE HARBORED A BANK ROBBER

Submitted by Joan Bittner Fry

Excerpted from a 1979 article in The Record Herald, Waynesboro, Pennsylvania.

Nearly four decades ago (before 1979), an innocent–looking radio shop in Waynesboro turned out to be the front for the leader of a gang of bank robbers. It put the town of Waynesboro in the headlines and cost the town’s chief of police his job.

After his release from the State Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Sabillasville in May of 1938, Gerard Peabody moved into a small house on Military Road between Cascade and the sanatorium. In his home shop he sold and repaired radios and did some electrical work. When his business outgrew this place, he went to Waynesboro and rented a vacant storeroom in center square from D. Roy Wishard.

The store was known as Jerry’s Radio Repair, Equipment, and Electronics Shop. Peabody set up his work table in the front window with the entrances to Waynesboro’s two banks in full view only 100 yards away. He persuaded a young radio technician, Edward Croney, to leave a good job in Baltimore and come to Waynesboro to run the business.

In a back room, Jerry, as he liked to be called, set up a small broadcasting studio. This was the home of his Kiddie Klub from where he aired a weekly Saturday night program through facilities of a Western Maryland station. The Kiddie Klub was Peabody’s creation. One Saturday night, Dr. J. W. Croft, the town’s burgess, visited Jerry’s improvised studio and spoke on the radio, welcoming Peabody to Waynesboro and wishing the club success. He stayed and watched the broadcast operation.

When Peabody was arrested in January of 1940, the citizenry was taken aback. Arrested were Gerard Peabody, George Harry Peabody, and James Allen.

They were charged with four armed robberies of three banks in Maryland. They had struck the White Hall, Maryland bank on October 28, 1939 and November 22, 1939 a few days short of a month later. The second time, one of the men told the bank cashier “we came back for the $10,000 we missed the first time.” The Clear Spring bank was robbed in December 1939 and the Walkersville bank on January 16, 1940.

Peabody played it cool. While he was casing banks and making plans for holdups, he was continuing to build community fences. For instance, the Waynesboro Exchange Club was sponsoring a home talent show ‘Lyric Time’ at the high school and Peabody offered to provide and operate the sound system for free.

The show played January 17 and 18, 1940, opening the evening after the Walkersville bank holdup. As customary, the night of the final performance, the cast party was held in the basement lounge of the Anthony Wayne Hotel.

There, Peabody attempted to muscle in on a date of one of the players. The intrusion led to words and the old ‘see you outside’ challenge. Outside was a small landing at the foot of the stairs and before anything could take place, H. Lee Merriman, manager of the hotel and a member of the show cast, intervened. His 300-plus pounds dissuaded any further action.

Peabody, credited with being the ‘brains’ of the group, and his henchmen were arrested in Baltimore in 1940. A pair of horn-rimmed spectacles with one lens intact and a quick taxi trip from Blue Ridge Summit to Baltimore led to the apprehension of the gang. The glasses were traced to Peabody through optician’s records.

Arraigned before Judge William C. Coleman in Federal Court in Baltimore, Peabody was held in $100,000 bond and each of the others, $15,000. The gang’s armed hits netted less than $5,000 of which between $1,600 and $2,000 was recovered.

After Jerry’s store was padlocked, Waynesboro Chief of Police, Floyd Maurer, became involved through a memo found in the store by H. Blair Minnick, attorney for creditors.

Maurer and his wife were in the radio store the day of the Walkersville robbery, and had a radio delivered to their home from the store on approval. The holdup was timed at 9:25 a.m. Maurer testified to seeing Peabody in his shop between 10 and 10:45 a.m.

Maurer went to Baltimore March 7 to testify. He claimed he was subpoenaed in Waynesboro by federal authorities. Federal authorities said he was subpoenaed when he arrived in Baltimore.

The subpoena discrepancy prompted Town Council to instruct Burgess Croft and council president B. S. Stouffer to ask Maurer for his resignation. Maurer’s resignation became effective April 8, 1940.

Peabody, son of a Seattle ship-owner family, who stood to inherit $123,000, was sentenced to 22 years in prison by Judge Coleman. Dr. Croft later recalled that Peabody told him as he left his office “You know doctor, I’m going to put this town on the map.” “And darned if he didn’t,” the burgess said after the arrest.

From Antietam Historical Society, 2013

Gerard Rushton Peabody (1900–1980) was the fifth of eight sons born to a wealthy Seattle shipping magnate. Gerard became troublesome in his teen age, and was sent first to Peru and later to Australia. In Australia, he married his first wife and eventually returned to Seattle after visiting her native England. Peabody was incarcerated in New Jersey and Maryland prior to being admitted to the Maryland Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Sabillasville in the 1930s. Upon his release from the sanatorium, he dwelt on Military Road near Highfield (now Cascade), Maryland, (later, Mrs. Waterfield’s Nursery School and now a private residence) and opened a radio shop on Center Square in Waynesboro in full view of the two largest financial institutions in Franklin County.

The Peabody ring committed at least four bank robberies in Western Maryland in 1939. This, despite the fact that Peabody himself inherited what was then a princely sum of money. After a trial with some far-ranging consequences, Gerard Peabody began his long association with federal penitentiaries. For a time, he was confined on Alcatraz Island. While released on parole, he committed bank robberies in the Pacific Northwest in 1956 and 1974. He died in a nursing home while still technically a federal prisoner. His life exemplifies the perplexity of the human condition.

From the Internet, 2020

My Name is William Shelton, and my Great Grandfather, Gerard Rushton Peabody (1900-1980), was the son of Charles Enoch Peabody and Harriet Peabody, who were the proprietors of the Black Ball Ferry Line in Washington State in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Gerard was born into a well-off family in 1900. The reason I say this is because Gerard was a mechanic who eventually fell into robbing banks, yet he came from a family of considerable wealth at the time. Quite ironic if you ask me!

Not much is known about his life from about the 1930s-1950s. I would really love to learn all I could about my great grandfather and his “cheeky” antics. I know that he was arrested in 1956 in connection with robbery of the Washington State Bank of $34,000. One possibly true anecdote I read about his activities during the 30s when he lived in New Jersey, he bought a radio shop that was on one street that connected to two roads and there were two banks practically touching each other on the opposite streets that connected to the road the radio shop was on, long story short, he and whoever his cohorts were robbed both banks in mid-daylight without a single shot fired and they made off with the cash.

I’ve even heard things from other family that he knew Al Capone when he did time on the rock and even associated with people like John Dillinger. His cohorts that I know of were Blackie Audett and Raymond William Joseph Clarence. I’ve also heard there was a movie made about him in the 1980s called Over the Hill Gang or something to that effect. I really would love to learn all I can about my great grandpa. A fascinating person I know very little about. Thank you.