Life at 9200rpms: The Great Drayton Bank Robbery

      This is another in a series of recollections about my time as a trial lawyer in North Dakota.  The story is made possible by my LVAD, a left ventricular assist device, that helps my heart pump 24/7.  I recommend anyone suffering from congestive heart failure to learn more about LVADs.  Mine is manufactured by Thoratec Inc. of Pleasanton, California.

      The case at hand involves one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted, who was captured February 19, 1987, after robbing the State Bank of Drayton, North Dakota (pop. 824).  Drayton is home to one of American Crystal Sugar Co's sugar beet processing plants that dot the Red River Valley. 

     Thomas George Harrelson, the mastermind, was 29 when he and his two accomplices robbed the bank of $2,807.  During the trial of one of the robbers, the evidence showed the trio had one penny between them before robbing the bank.  They were down to their last cent after putting gas in their uniquely outfitted getaway car.

     The trio did not count on being pursued by an irate banker, who commandeered the car of a bank depositor outside the bank and had her "follow that car." The robbers fled across the Red River into Minnesota and got stuck in a snowbank.  

     They flagged down an unsuspecting farmer, driving a large farm truck taking a load of grain to an elevator. The farmer, his wife, and two of their grandchildren were taken hostage by the robbers.  There were seven persons in the cab of the truck when police and sheriff's deputies finally got the vehicle stopped.

     Bank president Kelly Bakken gave chase to the robbers car, which had a wheelchair strapped to the trunk.  Harrelson shot himself in the  knee sometime during his bank robbery spree that covered 18 months and six states from Arkansas to Illinois to Ohio and finally to North Dakota. 

      He used the wheelchair because he  never sought medical attention for the wound and his leg was bent sharply at the knee so he couldn't walk.  His confederates were Stuart Skarda and Cynthia Ehrlich.

     Harrelson, who was linked to neo-Nazis in Northern Idaho, pleaded guilty to the six bank robberies and received a sentence of more than 34 years.  Ehrlich also pleaded guilty and received a six year prison sentence.  Skarda stood trial and, after being found guilty by a jury, was sentenced to prison for 11 years.

     During Skarda's trial, Kelly Bakken testified that something in him snapped as the bank was being robbed. He said he felt he had to protect the bank's deposits.

     When the trio fled in their wheelchair toting car, Bakken approached a depositor in her car at the curb.  He got in the car and ordered her to "follow that car."   She said that her car's transmission was "iffy" and Bakken said he assured her the bank would buy her a new transmission, if necessary.  

     Bakken and the bank customer pursued the getaway car north out of Drayton and then east across a river bridge into Minnesota.  He said they kept the car in view and when the farm truck became the getaway vehicle, he chased it.  

     The robbers were armed and presumably would have shot at their pursuers.  Despite his efforts the $2807 in bank robbery proceeds were held as evidence until the court proceedings were concluded.

     Moral of the story is never underestimate the resolve of an irate North Dakota bank president when his bank has just been robbed.