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Bank Robberies · the documented cases
South Bend's banks are chronicled in the Banks section, and its crime in the Crime section. This section holds the narrow ground where the two meet: the times men took money out of a South Bend bank by force, in the order they happened. The record has an unusual shape. The nineteenth century prints blank. Then, on one Saturday noon in 1934, the most documented bank robbery in America that year happened here — the last bank the Dillinger gang ever robbed, with a South Bend patrolman killed in the street outside it — and the file after that is quiet for four decades before it resumes, in federal court paper, with small takes and long sentences. The famous-name test that this section runs on every city is run hardest here, because here the famous name is real: the FBI's own published summary places John Dillinger at the Merchants National Bank robbery in person. What the record will not support — an unidentified fourth man, a shelf of hideout stories, two dead men placed inside the bank by a modern retelling — is printed at its true size alongside what it will.
The nineteenth century · a blank page, and the quiet decades after
1838–1933
No case: South Bend had banks from the State Bank of Indiana's branch, located here in 1838, through the national charters of 1863 and after, and the county's historians chronicled those banks in detail — their charters…
The Dillinger test · the gang's course around this ground, and the one job in it
1933–1934
The question: the Dillinger gang worked northern Indiana and the Chicago country through 1933 and 1934, and local retelling in every city on its roads has since placed the gang inside that city's banks. This section asks the…
The Merchants National Bank · the last Dillinger robbery
Saturday, June 30, 1934
The bank: the Merchants' National Bank of South Bend, OCC Charter No. 6334, organized 1902 by the DeRhodes brothers, stood at 229 South Michigan Street, at the corner of Wayne, in the bank building the family had erected for it …
The man never named · the fourth (or fifth) at the Merchants National
June 30, 1934 — unresolved
The count itself is unsettled: the FBI's published summary names three participants — Nelson, Dillinger, Van Meter. The Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial's record says the robbery "was being committed by four members of the…
The story as it grew · the South Bend Dillinger lore, tested
1934–2025
Two men who were not there: the city's current retelling — Aaron Helman's account in the South Bend News-Times of September 13, 2025, the fullest modern telling — narrates the robbery with Charles Makley vaulting the Merchants…
The answer in steel · the South Bend "Dillinger Car"
1934
Outgunned and outrun: the robbery left the South Bend Police Department with a plain lesson, which the South Bend Tribune 's retrospective feature states in its own terms: at the Merchants National the department had been…
The credit union robbery of 1976 · the case the court reports carry
October 15, 1976
The robbery: late in the afternoon of October 15, 1976, two men walked into a federal credit union in South Bend — the court reports that preserve the case do not name the institution — and robbed it of about $2,400. Robert Lee…
The robbery the Bureau believed in · South Bend, 1994
Before October 27, 1994 — file 91A-IP-79372
What the file says: the FBI's released file in the Midwest bank-robbery investigations — obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and published as the "Midwest Bank Robberies" (BOMBROB) release — contains an Indianapolis…
The note-passer of 2002 · a series the police linked, a disposition not found
2002
The series: in 2002 the South Bend Tribune reported a run of robberies at South Bend banks that the city's police were working as one man's series. No weapon was displayed in any of the South Bend robberies; the robber worked by…
Over $12,000 · Darius Jiggetts and the television identification
2011
The robbery: Darius Lamar Jiggetts entered a bank in South Bend — the Seventh Circuit's order in his case, like most of the modern records, does not name the institution — wearing a bandana over his face, pulled a gun from the…
The Shawn Fox records · 2011, 2013, and the winter of 2018–19
January 2011 – January 28, 2019
The 2011 robbery: a United States Attorney's week-in-review report for the South Bend division records that Shawn Fox, 49 years old, of South Bend, was sentenced by District Judge Robert L. Miller Jr. to 120 months in prison and…
Thirty years · Carlos Maez and the bank of October 16, 2015
October 16, 2015
The robbery: on October 16, 2015, a bank in South Bend — unnamed in the Department of Justice's account — was robbed by a man who displayed a firearm, demanded money from the teller, and fled on foot with over $8,000, seen by…
The credit union robbery of November 20, 2019
November 20, 2019
The robbery: on November 20, 2019, Armand White and Daniel Scott entered a federal credit union in South Bend — unnamed in the Department of Justice's account — with their faces covered and firearms in hand, and demanded money…
Three banks in four days · Nahkomie Taylor, February 2020
February 18–21, 2020
The robberies: Nahkomie Taylor, 31, had been on parole for armed robbery for less than a month when, on February 18, 2020, he robbed a bank at gunpoint in South Bend. Three days later, on February 21, he robbed a different bank…
The note that threatened to kill · Shamond Jenkins, December 2020
December 2020
The robbery: in December 2020, Shamond Jenkins, 20, of South Bend, went into a bank and handed over a note threatening to kill an employee if the employee did not give him cash; while the employees gathered cash from the teller…
South Bend Robbers at Other Cities' Banks
2013–2025
The rule: the federal court for this district sits in South Bend, and its prosecutors' reports carry a South Bend dateline for cases across the district's whole map. This section counts scenes, not datelines: a robbery belongs to…
The shape of the record · statute, scale, and the one death
1934–2025
The statute: bank robbery became a federal crime in May 1934, weeks before the Merchants National was robbed — the statute that stands today at 18 U.S.C. § 2113 was the Dillinger era's own legislation. It was never used on the…