Fort Lauderdale boom brings first bank heist, second in Broward County

By Jane Feehan

John Ashley, far right,
entering prison 

Fort Lauderdale’s boom era of the 1950s brought development, population growth, tourism—and the city’s first bank robbery.

Police records of the day report a robbery of the People’s Industrial Bank at 7 East Broward Boulevard, Oct. 10, 1952. Two robbers tied up several bank employees and made away with $9,028. A third participant drove the stolen getaway car, which was later found abandoned in the “Gateway section.”    

The trio continued their crime spree, which included a murder and other bank heists, one in Alabama for more than $30,000. Eventually, they were picked up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But Lurton Lewis Heflin, Jr., Albert Sidney Denton and Samuel Jay Hornbeck were not brought to trial for the Fort Lauderdale robbery. Instead, they served lengthy sentences for a murder committed before the South Florida caper, their first bank robbery, and another murder after.

The first bank robbery in Broward County occurred decades earlier, a crime committed by the notorious Ashley gang in 1923 or 1924. Leaving their base camp in the Everglades near Fort Lauderdale, they summoned a cab for the job. They robbed the Bank of Pompano of a reported $23,000. The driver of the cab was then tied to a tree and given a bullet and message for Sheriff R.B. Baker to find them. Some accounts say the sheriff found them in the Everglades, shot and killed four. With activities of the gang cloaked in myth and hyperbole, accounts differ.

What is certain: John Ashley escaped the sheriff that day. But he and several gang members were killed in a shootout Nov. 1, 1924 at the Sebastian Bridge, about 25 miles north of Fort Pierce. Law enforcement had had enough of their South Florida antics.

Sources:

Douglas, Marjory Stoneman. Everglades: River of Grass. Miami: Banyan Books (1978)

Fort Lauderdale News, Oct. 11, 1959

Fort Lauderdale News, Aug. 27, 1978

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 22, 1984



Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale crime, Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s,