Thieves in the bank’s bathroom

By David Maurer

Published: April 27, 2008

The bad guys came in through the bathroom window.
Unlike the subject of the Beatles 1969 song, “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” these two crooks weren’t “protected by a silver spoon.” They each had automatic pistols.
On Jan. 8, 1971, Marshall Reginald Butler and Paul Taylor Hansborough made history. They did it by being the first to rob a bank in Madison.
That morning in predawn darkness the two men gained entry to the National Bank and Trust Co. in Madison through the bathroom window at the rear of the building. When employees started arriving for work at 8 a.m., the Washington-area men were waiting.
As the four female tellers entered the building they were immediately told to lie on the floor in a corner. When the four male employees arrived they were tied up with tape and lamp cord.
All tied up
The men included bank Director J. William Price and Vice President Burton E. Stacy.
At 8:24 a.m. a silent alarm went off in the sheriff’s office in the building next to the bank. It was probably triggered when the robbers tried to gain access to the vault.
Nobody outside the band was overly concerned about the silent signal, because it had gone off in the past and always turned out to be a false alarm. Nonetheless, Sheriff C.E. Lillard went to investigate, but wasn’t armed.
Butler was waiting with gun in hand just inside the front door when a teller let Lillard in. A few moments later the sheriff had been tied up as well.
Meanwhile outside the bank, attorney Frederick R. Coates was arriving at his office in the courthouse area of the small town. Without realizing it he parked his vehicle next to the getaway car — a new, gold-colored Cadillac equipped with a telephone.
Fancy ride
When Coates saw deputy Kermit Aylor standing nearby, he pointed at the gilded Caddy and asked him how he liked his new car. The two men joked with each other as they gave the fancy ride a once-over.
While the lawman and attorney were inspecting the car, Butler and Hansborough were taking all the money they could gather from the tellers’ cash drawers. When they were finished they departed the bank the same way they had come.
The desperados’ basic plan might have been sound, but their heist also revealed some serious lack of planning. The fact that they had to tear light cords out of lamps in order to secure the sheriff and bank employees showed one shortcoming.
But it usually takes more than one mistake to
doom an operation, and the crooks obliged. Choosing a flashy Cadillac for the getaway car turned out to be a serious failing, because a number of people noticed and remembered it.
But it was the weather conditions that threw the fatal wrench into the spinning gears of the operation. The area had been covered by several inches of snow, and it was the white stuff that brought the whole caper to a crunching halt.
Butler and Hansborough had no problem departing the town of 300 souls. Within minutes they were about 2½ miles north of Madison and heading down a dead-end alley called Route 680.
When the bank robbers realized their mistake, they tried to turn the boat of a car around and got stuck in the snow. S.V. Dove and his grandson, Michael Dove, lived nearby and heard the sound of spinning tires and a racing engine.
Upon investigation the two men saw the car stuck in the snow. Later in the day, when they heard about the robbery they contacted the authorities.
When the police, including Lillard, arrived at the stranded vehicle, they found Butler sound asleep in the back seat of the car with a pistol next to him. Lillard opened the door and invited Butler to step out, at which time he was arrested and immediately advised of his rights.
When the lawmen searched the vehicle they found about $8,000 in the trunk. Butler had awakened to what was rapidly turning out to be one of the worst days of his life.
Not much later Hansborough was apprehended while hitchhiking on U.S. 29 about three miles north of Madison.
His pistol was later found in a field near the stranded car. The two men were taken to the Albemarle County jail, where they were held while legal proceedings went forward.
On March 26, the defense counsel for Hansborough presented a motion to Judge David F. Berry asking that a jury from outside Madison County be selected. The defense argued that newspaper coverage of the robbery had prejudiced the county’s citizenry against his client.
After everyone had his say, the judge said he was convinced that an unprejudiced jury could be impaneled there, “but if not, we can go outside.” Things again moved forward, and on March 31, 1971, Butler was found guilty of the Jan. 8 holdup.
Butler was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. Ten years of the sentence would be suspended on the condition of good behavior.
Hansborough had his day in court in mid-April and also was convicted. He was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.
Toward the end of the Beatles’ “She Came in Through a Bathroom Window,” there’s the line, “She could steal but she could not rob.”
On a blustery January day in Madison, two men slipped through a bathroom window in order to steal money from a bank. What they ended up doing was robbing themselves of many years of freedom.