Racine Art Museum Investigation (The Old American Trade & Savings Bank)
This blog post was written by Whitney Dankemeyer, one half of Two Halves of a Soul.
Have you ever looked at a building and wondered what came before it? Was it a flourishing business? Did someone raise a family there? Were there any deaths on the property? Two Halves of a Soul recently came across an interesting location, not only because it takes place in our home state of Wisconsin, but because it takes place at the Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wisconsin.
The Racine Art Museum is known to hold more than 10,000 objects from national and internationally recognized arts. For this, it holds the most significant contemporary craft collection in North America. Included in the Racine Art Museum is said to be an exhibition of prints, one titled “The Scene of a Crime,” which tells the story of a bank robbery that occurred there years ago. On November 20, 1933, the building that was once called American Trades & Savings Bank was robbed by the famous John Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1.
The American Bank opened in 1929 and shared the rest of the building with Kolinski’s Store, Met Life, and Attorney Fred Ahlgrimm. In November of 1933, Harry Pierpont stepped into the bank to put a Red Cross poster up in the window. In doing so, Pierpont blocked the view of the street outside so Dillinger, Charles Makley, and John “Red” Hamilton could enter the bank with their guns.
To gain the bank’s full, undivided attention, members of the gang started hollering while others started decorated the ceiling with bullet holes. Within seconds, chaos was rampant. Men with guns were at teller cages demanding money, and Dillinger was redirecting staff over to the vault. He had the bank president Grove Weyland, the bank assistant, and one of the cashiers in his possession.
It was reported by the bank assistant later that Dillinger knocked the glasses off Weyland's face at some point in the process. John had ordered him to open the vault, but Weyland only had a fraction of the vault code. This was the bank’s policy, but Dillinger thought the bank president was merely playing stupid.
Around this same time, assistant L.C. Rowan made a getaway attempt through the basement when he sounded an alarm. This notified the mobsters upstairs that police were on their way. Although they emptied the tills and gathered their $27,000 in stolen cash before the police arrived, they realized there was a huge problem with their escape plan: there was no back exit for them to escape out of. With the police arriving at the bank, they needed to come up with another plan and FAST.
The gangsters waited for the police to enter the building before they attacked and stole their guns. It was reported that Makely even shot a Sergeant before opening fire on the building. Glass shards were everywhere at this point.
When it came to the actual escape, the members of the gang grabbed hostages to protect them from being shot at when they walked out the front entrance. The hostages’ names were Jane Williams, Helen Cespkes, Ursula Patzke, Office Boyard, and bank president Grove Weyland. They went as far as to keep the hostages with them and place them on the running boards of the getaway car so they couldn’t be shot at as they drove off.
When the vehicle was far enough away, they dumped the hostages off the running boards and took the rest with them all the way to Waukesha County. It wasn’t until they were out of the city when they stopped in the woods to tie the two last hostages loosely to a tree. Hostages later recalled being told to wait 15 minutes before untying themselves but were set free by the group of criminals.
With that being said, Dillinger and his gang were in and out of the American Trades & Savings Bank within minutes, $27,000 in hand. To this day, the cash they stole is equivalent to $611,000. Not only did this event create an unforgettable moment in time and history, but it created residual energy with it as well. And that’s what Two Halves of a Soul is here to share with you today.
We had another investigation earlier in the day, so we got to the art museum mid-afternoon. Since the robbery happened during the day, we thought we may be able to pick up on residual energy with our device. We decided to have a look around the museum first before going outside to conduct the session so we could see the exhibition of prints pertaining to the famous robbery.
Unfortunately, those prints weren’t inside the museum when we went that day. We believe they rotated out the art, and it was no longer included with the rest of their collection. The other art in that museum was fascinating, but it would’ve been nice to also see art that showcased the memories of this building. (If you would like to see photos of the prints, it is listed in the supporting links below.)
We headed outside and decided to conduct our brief Estes Method session and EVP recording for residual evidence of Dillinger’s bank robbery. The following words are what we captured over the course of several minutes:
GET BACK, POLICE CALL, YES, HE'S THERE, “3 HEADING...", STOP, PRISON, LISTEN TO THOSE-, NOW, HELP, HOLY SHIT, I MISSED, CLOSE, GROUP
While we can’t confirm that all of these words were associated with the residual energy of the American Trade Bank robbery, we found it pretty compelling that our session started with “Police call.” It’s important that people never rule out residual energy as a possible reason for a haunting because not everything is caused by an entity. Sometimes the activity is just the energy of a monumental moment that occurs (oftentimes traumatically) and imprints itself in time.
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