Thomas Goodman

Let me tell your group a true crime story that reviewers call "thrilling," "cinematic," "gripping"--and "wacky." When the Associated Press first reported on the 1927 heist, they dubbed it “The Santa Claus Bank Robbery.” The ringleader dressed as Santa to hide his identity from his neighbors while he and three others robbed his hometown bank. But their easy heist went sideways fast when armed lawmen and citizens assembled to claim a new reward for dead bank robbers. Taking hostages, the gang forced a path through a frenzied and bloody shootout, setting the whole Lone Star state on their trail. One bandit died in the getaway. One was executed in the electric chair. One swung from a rope in a mob lynching. But the last surviving bandit, like Jean Valjean of Les Miserables, finds the life his orphan heart always longed for.