The original NW Bank Ulen location

Michael Stein

Two decades after the Public Enemies Era of Bonnie & Clyde and John Dillinger, the Clay County town of Ulen made the crime news not once, but twice.

On a normally quiet morning of Thursday, November 18, 1954, a well-dressed, unmasked man about 40 years old walked into Northwestern State Bank in downtown Ulen. He proceeded to hold two employees at gunpoint and forced one to turn over a bundle of cash. According to the following day’s Fargo Forum, the gunman drove away in a 1953 Buick, which was later found in the parking lot of the NP Railroad yard in Dilworth. Authorities speculated that the man boarded an NP train after ditching what was probably a stolen vehicle.

Bank cashier (and later bank president) Arthur Andersen, Jr., told a Forum reporter that he and the assistant cashier were alone in the front of the bank when the “man walked in, pulled a gun, and demanded $5,000.” Andersen walked back to the teller’s cage and “grabbed some money—I think it was about $2,000.”

The robber made no threats, just backed out of the bank with the loot while covering the two employees with his gun. After they saw him climb into the Buick, Andersen said, “We watched him get away and got the license number.”

About 35 minutes after the robbery, the suspect gassed up in Averill, about 25 miles southwest of Ulen. The gas station owner said the driver asked for directions to Highway 10. Four days later, the suspect, Wadena, Minn., native Leland Thomson, was caught and arrested in Ashtabula, Ohio. He pleaded guilty in federal court, stating that he planned the holdup because he was out of work and needed to pay bills.

The Ulen bank robbery was reportedly the first in the area since the early 1930s when there was a series of holdups: in January and March of 1931, both at the State Bank of Baker; in December 1931 at Sabin State Bank; and in June 1932 at the State Bank of Audubon, Minn.

Less than two years later, on May 24, 1956—another quiet Thursday—a man entered the same Ulen bank just before closing and said he needed a notary public to complete the transfer of an automobile sale and was waiting for the other party to arrive. He left the bank, but returned a half hour later, still claiming to be waiting for his other party.

Teller Loretta Mellum told a Fargo Forum reporter that the man seemed a little suspicious as he paced the floor. At 4:00, as cashier Paul Ormbreck was dusting the floor behind the teller’s cage, the man “pulled a (sawed-off) shotgun from under his raincoat and yelled ‘this is a stickup’ or something like that.”

The gunman, according to the Forum report, told Ormbreck to close all the blinds in the front of the bank and then “he came back behind the counter with a big paper grocery sack and told me ‘put all the money in the sack.’” Ormbreck scooped what amounted to $1,158 into the bag while the shotgun was leveled at him. The robber wanted all the money in the safe, but Ormbreck could not do that because of a time mechanism.

The man then forced Ormbreck to bind and gag Mellum. He ordered the two to lie on the floor as he tied a gag and cord around Ormbreck. Two customers who had been in the bank but were still on the street ran back in and discovered the bound employees. One ran outside and yelled, “There’s been a bank holdup! Follow that car with me.” He and another man tried to chase the robber, but lost sight of him near Hitterdal.

Two days after the stickup, FBI agents received a tip about a possible suspect: a 31-year-old Otter Tail County farmer and father of six. He was arrested at his farm outside of Fergus Falls on the Saturday following the crime. He wrote a full confession and was arraigned in court the next day.