On Tuesday, August 21, 1934, Raban County Sheriff Luther Rickman was getting a haircut at Roy Mize’s barber shop when he heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. He ran out the door and discovered that across the street, five men were robbing the Bank of Clayton.
The gang had parked in front of the bank. One member stayed in the car, three went into the bank, and another stationed himself outside.
One of the masked robbers (some reports say they wore false beards) pointed his gun at bank teller Druilla Blakely and called her by name, instructing her to hand over the cash. She screamed and ran out of the bank’s back door and into the Dover & Green Drugstore next door.
Dr. J.C. Dover, one of the bank’s founders, ran out of the drugstore to see what was happening and straight into the man posted outside the bank, who was equipped with a submachine gun. The gunman said, “Get back in there, big boy,” and let go a burst at the doctor’s feet.
You know how it is, if you’ve got a big gun, you have to shoot it.
The screaming and gunfire unnerved the men inside the bank, and they fled with only a little over $1,800 from the cash drawer and jumped in the waiting getaway car.
Sheriff Rickman hastily deputized two men who grabbed guns and ammo from Reeves Hardware store, and they gave chase in “a little old Ford.” The thieves had prepared a surprise for pursuers: they scattered tacks onto the road as they drove.
The Chase Is On
In an interview from the Spring 1967 Foxfire magazine, then 78-year-old Rickman recalled the chase, saying, “There was four cars off the road with their tires punctured. They was tarpaper nails, the kind with the big heads, and so about half of ’em was standin’ up. One of the robbers had ordered fifty pounds of them from Greeneville, Tennessee.”
“I took to the wrong side of the road and dodged the nails… the nails lasted from Clayton to Tiger, Georgia (3.3 miles or 5.3 km). A little below Tiger. They made ’em last until where they turned off on the Eastman Road.”
The gang vanished into the countryside.
Rickman later learned the gunmen had crossed into South Carolina, then turned north into North Carolina and stayed overnight at a sawmill camp in Transylvania County. They divided the loot (about $366 each) and switched cars there.
Wednesday night, August 22, the gang crashed into a Hudson sedan that was pulling onto the highway from a side road near Old Fort, NC. A Charlotte businessman, B. Scott Blanton, stopped at the site of the wreck to see if he could render assistance. The gunmen forced him and his son from his Packard, stole the car, and continued on their way.
The August 22 Salisbury Post carried the following headline: “Wreck Gun-Laden Car and Flee in One They Steal.” The car the gang abandoned was a 1929 Ford reported stolen from Marshall, NC, on the day of the robbery. In the car, officers found multiple firearms, ammunition, and “a bucket of carpet tacks.”
Blanton’s Packard was found abandoned with a flat tire near Micaville, NC, a small town between Burnsville and Spruce Pine. Yancy County Sheriff A. L. Honeycutt and McDowell County Sheriff O. F. Adkins formed a posse and scoured the area but came up empty.
The investigation was temporarily stalled, and then a suspect emerged. The wrecked 1929 Ford involved in the Old Fort collision turned out to belong to one Zade Sprinkle of Marshall, NC. Authorities also learned that Sprinkle had recently made a large purchase of carpet tacks and ammunition in Greeneville, TN.
Sprinkle was arrested in Asheville. Sheriff Adkins arranged to have him transferred to Marion for questioning for highway robbery, the theft of Blanton’s Packard. Sheriff Rickman came up from Georgia, and the two sheriffs convinced Sprinkle to confess.
Sprinkle and Rickman had a bit of a history. In May 1930, Rickman arrested him at Jabe’s Roadhouse in Tiger. Sprinkle had been on the run for five months. He was wanted for shooting and killing Ted Davis in Asheville in November of 1929. He shot Davis in a dispute over the man’s wife. Buncombe County Sheriff Jesse James Bailey took custody of Sprinkle, who pled guilty to second-degree murder and was pardoned by Governor Max Gardner.
Businessman to Bank Robber
Sprinkle had been a prominent businessman in Madison County and served two terms as the register of deeds. After a series of heavy financial losses, he became involved in bootlegging. In 1922, after a year-long game of cat and mouse with Sheriff Bailey, he tried to force his way through a roadblock and crashed a Ford coupe with 18 gallons of illegal liquor into a deputy’s car.
Sprinkle’s time in Raban County explains why the gang chose the Clayton Bank and how one of the robbers knew the bank teller’s name.
He was tried and convicted on the highway robbery charge and sentenced to seven years in prison. Released in September of 1939, he fought extradition to Georiga for the bank robbery charge and lost. Sprinkle was convicted but was later pardoned by the Georgia Governor after a series of heart attacks. He died in November 1943 at the age of 60 in Mars Hill, NC.
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Sources
Foxfire Magazine, Volume One, Number One, Spring 1967, pages 8-12. Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, Rabun Gap, GA
Winston-Salem Journal, NC, Monday, October 23, 1922, Page 6, “Zade Sprinkle is Under Arrest”
Asheville Citizen, Thursday, May 15, 1930, Page 1, “Zade Sprinkle is Caught by Sheriff’s Men
Asheville Citizen, Thursday, July 23, 1931, Page 3, “Zade Sprinkle is Paroled by NC Executive”
Hendersonville Times-News, NC, Wednesday, August 22, 1934, Page 1, “Bank Robbers Sought in 3 WNC Counties”
Macon News, GA, Wednesday, August 22, 1934, Page 2, “Escaping Robbers Commandeer Auto”
Salisbury Post, NC, Wednesday, August 22, 1934, Page 1, “Wreck Gun-Laden Car and Flee in One They Steal”
Asheville Times, Wednesday, August 22, 1934, Page 1, “Commandeered Bloody Auto Is Abandoned”
Charlotte Observer, Tuesday, January 08, 1935, Page 17, “Sprinkle Gets 7 to 10 Years”
Atlanta Constitution, Wednesday, September 20, 1939, Page 11, “Robbery Suspect to Fight Return”