The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History by James Higdon Page A
Authors: James Higdon
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Arab peddler, George Shaheen, who had come to America at the turn of the century with a group of Lebanese Christians who settled together in Louisville. Several of these immigrant men employed themselves as pack peddlers across the countryside: carrying blankets, pots and pans, dry goods and animal feed to isolated country homes. George Shaheen supplied these peddlers and stationed himself at Gravel Switch because it was the farthest point that the railroad penetrated the wilderness.
Shaheen gave Dillinger a house on Hickory Corner in Gravel Switch, with nothing but farmland and knobs in every direction. Dillinger found the place nice and quiet, a place to rest between his time in the Indiana State Prison and the spree of bank robbing and jail breaking upon which he would soon embark. Shaheen gave him farm work to do, and Dillinger jumped right in, just for something to do to pass the time. On the backside of the farm, about a mile away, Dillinger parked a car in a barn that faced a back road in case any lawmen came for him from the front.
Dillinger hit four banks that summer: New Carlisle, Ohio, on June 10; Daleville, Indiana, on July 17; Montpelier, Indiana, on August 4; and Bluffton, Ohio, on August 14-all at least two hundred miles from Gravel Switch. These jobs paid for the guns that helped spring his gang from the Indiana State Prison later that year.
By the end of the summer, Dillinger had grown restless, and so were some of his new friends in Gravel Switch like Maurice "Tidbits" Lanham, twenty-three, and Jimmie Kirkland, a teenager. Because Dillinger decided to leave town, he and his buddies planned a parting gift for Gravel Switch-a daytime bank robbery.
On Tuesday morning, August 8, 1933, John Dillinger drove into Gravel Switch at 11:45 and parked diagonally across the intersection in a blue DeSoto coupe bearing Kentucky plates from McCracken County, license number 563-700. Kirkland and Lanham hopped out of the car and into the bank; one wore a straw hat and mechanics' overalls, and the other wore shabby clothes and a dark cap; neither had his face covered. Dillinger sat in the car and kept the engine running.
Inside the bank, Kirkland and Lanham pulled revolvers on four male bank employees and a customer.
"Stick em up!" they said, waving pistols.
While Kirkland held the men at bay with his pistol, Lanham leaped over the counter, handed a flour sack to Edward Isaacs and ordered him to fill it with cash. After Isaacs complied, Lanham led all the bank workers into the vault and closed it behind them, then leaped back over the counter, taking the change of a $5 bill from the customer.
Outside, Kirkland and Lanham hopped into the DeSoto coupe, which they had stolen from Bardstown specifically for the job, and Dillinger sped away with $1,235.55 in cash, which would be worth $21,453.14 in 2011. They headed for the Danville Pike, leaving it when they turned off toward Penick and passed a mail carrier, nearly blowing him off the road. After they split up the loot, Tidbits Lanham took his share and went home, but Jimmie Kirkland accompanied Dillinger out of town.
As soon as the Gravel Switch bankers extricated themselves from their own vault, they told the switchboard operator to alert surrounding communities. But by the time police were looking out for a blue DeSoto coupe, Dillinger and his Gravel Switch gang had already ditched the car in a Raywick cornfield on the other side of the county. Investigators would find it weeks later with the radiator cap off, indicating it had overheated after being driven incredibly hard.
The next day, Wednesday, about noon, Sheriff G. C. Spalding arrested Maurice "Tidbits" Lanham at a pool parlor in Lebanon. Lanham "emphatically denied the charges placed against him," despite the fact that the banker and his son identified him as one of the robbers. Police had arrested Lanham the previous year for "stealing gasoline from the machine of Ernest Gaillard while it was parked near the
Shaheen gave Dillinger a house on Hickory Corner in Gravel Switch, with nothing but farmland and knobs in every direction. Dillinger found the place nice and quiet, a place to rest between his time in the Indiana State Prison and the spree of bank robbing and jail breaking upon which he would soon embark. Shaheen gave him farm work to do, and Dillinger jumped right in, just for something to do to pass the time. On the backside of the farm, about a mile away, Dillinger parked a car in a barn that faced a back road in case any lawmen came for him from the front.
Dillinger hit four banks that summer: New Carlisle, Ohio, on June 10; Daleville, Indiana, on July 17; Montpelier, Indiana, on August 4; and Bluffton, Ohio, on August 14-all at least two hundred miles from Gravel Switch. These jobs paid for the guns that helped spring his gang from the Indiana State Prison later that year.
By the end of the summer, Dillinger had grown restless, and so were some of his new friends in Gravel Switch like Maurice "Tidbits" Lanham, twenty-three, and Jimmie Kirkland, a teenager. Because Dillinger decided to leave town, he and his buddies planned a parting gift for Gravel Switch-a daytime bank robbery.
On Tuesday morning, August 8, 1933, John Dillinger drove into Gravel Switch at 11:45 and parked diagonally across the intersection in a blue DeSoto coupe bearing Kentucky plates from McCracken County, license number 563-700. Kirkland and Lanham hopped out of the car and into the bank; one wore a straw hat and mechanics' overalls, and the other wore shabby clothes and a dark cap; neither had his face covered. Dillinger sat in the car and kept the engine running.
Inside the bank, Kirkland and Lanham pulled revolvers on four male bank employees and a customer.
"Stick em up!" they said, waving pistols.
While Kirkland held the men at bay with his pistol, Lanham leaped over the counter, handed a flour sack to Edward Isaacs and ordered him to fill it with cash. After Isaacs complied, Lanham led all the bank workers into the vault and closed it behind them, then leaped back over the counter, taking the change of a $5 bill from the customer.
Outside, Kirkland and Lanham hopped into the DeSoto coupe, which they had stolen from Bardstown specifically for the job, and Dillinger sped away with $1,235.55 in cash, which would be worth $21,453.14 in 2011. They headed for the Danville Pike, leaving it when they turned off toward Penick and passed a mail carrier, nearly blowing him off the road. After they split up the loot, Tidbits Lanham took his share and went home, but Jimmie Kirkland accompanied Dillinger out of town.
As soon as the Gravel Switch bankers extricated themselves from their own vault, they told the switchboard operator to alert surrounding communities. But by the time police were looking out for a blue DeSoto coupe, Dillinger and his Gravel Switch gang had already ditched the car in a Raywick cornfield on the other side of the county. Investigators would find it weeks later with the radiator cap off, indicating it had overheated after being driven incredibly hard.
The next day, Wednesday, about noon, Sheriff G. C. Spalding arrested Maurice "Tidbits" Lanham at a pool parlor in Lebanon. Lanham "emphatically denied the charges placed against him," despite the fact that the banker and his son identified him as one of the robbers. Police had arrested Lanham the previous year for "stealing gasoline from the machine of Ernest Gaillard while it was parked near the
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