Photo by Terri Davis graphic

Courtesy The true crime book features a high school picture of Duane Pope on the cover.

It was 43 years ago that Duane Earl Pope was sentenced to death after robbing a Big Springs bank and shooting four bank employees.

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Pope was convicted of killing Andreas Kjeldgaard, 77, president of the Farmers State Bank at Big Springs. Glenn Hendrickson, 59, the cashier and Lois Ann Hothan, 35, a bookkeeper, were also shot and killed.

A fourth man, Franklin Kjeldgaard, 25, and the nephew of Andreas, was taken to a Denver hospital and survived, although remains paralyzed to this day.

A jury of 10 men and two women found Pope guilty and ordered him executed for his actions that rainy day on June 4, 1965.

But the court of appeals overturned the execution in 1970 and commuted Pope’s sentence to life. Now 65, Pope remains in jail in an Oklahoma federal prison.

The crime

Pope was one of eight children born of farm parents. He attended elementary and high school in Roxbury. He led the normal life of a farm boy.

Pope was an ordinary student and perhaps less of a disciplinary problem then the average boy. He was very active in both the athletic and extracurricular programs of his high school. He engaged in football and basketball for four years and in track and baseball for three. He participated in band, glee club, chorus and dramatice. He was president of his senior class. He was a member of the student council for two years. He was captain of the basketball team and co-captain of the football team his senior year. He rarely dated and was considered honest and polite.

But Pope had another side that no one saw.

There was evidence that Pope worked on silencers for guns at his father's workshop and at the college laboratory. Pope designed and constructed at least two of these devices and on May 15, 1965, he purchased a revolver to which he affixed one of the silencers.

Pope tested it in his father's barn and found it not to be effective.

Then, on May 27, Pope purchased a .22 Ruger automatic pistol with a $10 down payment and welded a coupling to this gun so that a silencer could be attached to it.

Pope also fashioned a breastplate out of a tractor blade. But all of that work was done secretly.

Pope graduated from McPherson College and received his degree in Industrial Arts. Just two days after graduation, Pope borrowed $50 from his dad and announced he was driving to Oklahoma to look for work.

Pope went upstairs and dropped a rifle out of his bedroom window. He went downstairs, picked up the rifle and put it in his 1939 Buick. He had already placed the Ruger and silencer in the car.

Pope drove north some 30 miles to Salina, Kan., where he registered in his own name at a motel. The next morning he rented a 1965 Chevrolet from the Hertz Agency and drove it to Ogallala, Neb., where he registered in his own name at a motel. That evening, after dark, he drove the few miles to Big Springs, rode around the bank there, and returned to his room.

Pope arose early the next morning, placed the gun in his brief case and drove as far as Brule on the way to Big Springs. It was here he turned off the highway and checked a back road south of Brule, which he used after the robbery. While on this road he removed the license plates on the rented car.

Pope drove into Big Springs and passed by the Farmers State Bank several times, waiting for some customers to thin out.

A bit past 11 a.m., Pope noticed there were no customers in the bank, only employees. He parked, grabbed the briefcase with the Ruger and affixed silencer, and entered.

Andreas Kjelgaard asked if he could help Pope. A man entering the bank later said Pope looked like a successful salesman, wearing a nice suit and tie.

Pope told Kjelgaard he was interested in a land development loan.

Kjeldgaard told him that the bank did not make those kinds of loans and went to get a telephone book to find the number of another area bank, which might make the loan.

Pope calmly walked around the counter into the employees’ area, drew out the gun and ordered Kjelgaard to put the bank’s money in the brief case.

Employee Franklin Kjeldgaard, the 25, came to assist his uncle. They removed the money from the cash drawer under the counter and put it in the brief case.

Pope then ordered employee Lois Ann Hothan to get money out of the vault. She entered the vault, brought out a handful one-dollar bills, and placed them in the brief case. Hothan explained that was all she could get because the vault was on a time lock and couldn’t be opened.

A fourth bank employee, Glen Hendrickson, was sitting at a table while all this was happening.

Pope then ordered all four persons to lie on the floor face down. All complied. Calmly and methodically, Pope then shot the elder Kjeldgaard in the back and at the rear of the head.

The gun jammed.

Pope worked with it for several seconds until he was able to unjam it. He then shot the other three employees in the back, aiming for their hearts, and again in the head or neck.

Three of the bank employees died.

But Franklin Kjeldgaard never lost consciousness and was able to see and hear what took place.

Pope calmly walked out of the bank, bumping into Otto Mauser, a farmer and bank customer.

“Good morning,” Pope said politely to Mauser as he exited.

Pope walked out of the bank with $1,598 cash.

Mauser continued into the bank as the stranger drove unhurriedly away.

Mauser walked into the bank but didn’t immediately notice anything unusual. He said he wrote out a check at a desk and noticed how quiet it was. He said he saw the bloody bodies as he looked around and ran from the bank yelling for help.

Even though severely injured, Franklin Kjeldgaard was able to sound the bank’s burglar alarm and alert the small town of 510 residents.

Franklin survived and later testified at Pope’s trial.

On the run

Pope drove to the main highway and then took the back road running south of Brule for his escape. He traveled southeast at high speed. He unscrewed the silencer from the Ruger and threw it out the window of the car.

Farther on, Pope stopped the car, got out, and threw the gun into a field. He continued traveling fast, hit a bump and punctured his gas tank. He purchased gas at Wauneta and attempted to plug the hole with a rag. The station attendant refused to accept his expired credit card or his check and Pope drove off after giving a false address. He later purchased gas for cash and put the license plate back on the car.

Pope eventually reached Salina and registered at the same motel in his own name. He obtained his 1939 Buick. He went to bed but at two a.m. he got up, returned the rented automobile to Hertz, and then drove his own Buick back to his parents' home. He did not go into the house but left $150, together with a note, in the mailbox. The note advised his father that he was returning the $50 he had borrowed and asked that he deposit the other $100 in his bank account.

Pope drove to Wichita and abandoned the Buick. He bought a bus ticket to Enid, Okla., and then proceeded by bus to Oklahoma City, by plane to El Paso, and by bus to San Diego where he arrived June 6.

Since the robbery and murders took place in a federal bank, Pope was wanted by the FBI. During the nationwide manhunt, Pope was placed on the FBI’s infamous 10 Most Wanted List.

Pope placed money and another gun he was carrying in a storage locker and went to Tijuana, Mexico where he attended a bullfight. He returned to San Diego and checked into a hotel under a false name. On June 7 he bought a used car under another name.

While purchasing the car he saw a newspaper and read of the Big Springs robbery and murders.

Pope’s used car broke down so he took a bus to Las Vegas where he gambled and amused himself until Thursday, June 10, when he read a message from Desmond Bittinger, the president of his alma mater, McPherson College, appealing to Pope to turn himself in. He later said he laughed when he first read it but did not stop thinking about it.

The next day, June 11, Pope flew to Kansas City Mo., and checked into the State Hotel downtown under a false name.

Then he telephoned the Kansas City police.

“I’m tired of running,” Pope said.

The trial

At the trial – which took all of November of that year – teachers, staff and classmates of his high school and his college years and businessmen and employers at Roxbury and McPherson testified that Duane's conduct in their experience was exemplary. His high school superintendent could not recall any problem of discipline or behavior with respect to Pope. His Roxbury employer considered him 'the best man I ever hired'. His college football coach described him as cooperative and as giving him 'the least trouble of anybody that I had'. His harvest employer said that he did his work 'better than anyone else'. His hometown banker, from whom he had borrowed money, described his attention to his credit responsibilities. The McPherson buildings and grounds superintendent, under whom Pope had worked during his college years, said he was 'the best of any of them'.

Except for parking tickets and one minor traffic violation, there is no evidence that Pope had ever been in difficulty with law enforcement authorities.

His defense team tried to portray Pope as mentally ill with schizophrenia and presented psychiatric evidence to prove it.

But prosecutors presented Pope’s actions that day as well-planned and carried out in a vicious and brutal manner.

After his arrest, Pope gave the police two confessions.

Prosecutors said Pope admitted purpose and motive in his words. They said Pope had been thinking about robbing the Big Springs bank for a long time, ever since he had been there as a traveling harvest worker the year before.

Prosecutors said Pope always intended to kill everyone in the bank to remove witnesses who could later identify him.

Pope told officers that he was $1,300 in debt and that he wanted to marry his fiancé, Melinda.

The defense contended that these debts were not bothering the defendant; that he had no such pressing need for money as would prompt him to rob a bank; that his only reason for going to the bank was to kill as the result of a schizophrenic breakdown; and that the robbery was secondary.

Gerald Johnson, who knew Pope while he worked during the 1964 harvest season in the Big Springs area, testified that he had a conversation with Pope and another person while they were sitting on a curb one day in Big Springs; that the conversation was about the details of a bank robbery there six or seven years before when robbers stole about $15,000; and that Pope started the conversation by asking if the bank had ever been robbed.

Pope was convicted of the crimes just six months after he committed them but the jury’s wish of electrocution for him will never come.

The first infamous Big Springs robbery

The horrific triple murder at Big Springs was the second spectacular crime which focused national attention on the small ranch town near the Colorado border.

The famous train robbery and theft of $60,000 in gold by Sam Bass and his gang in 1877 at Big Springs was the subject of many novels and songs for years.

This account of the train robbery is credited to Capt. James Cook, who in Ogallala when the robbery occurred:

Cook was in Ogallala when six men rode in. He watched them make camp about 100 yards west of the hotel.

Shortly afterwards he met one of the man and recognized him as a cattleman he had met earlier in a Kansas cowtown. His name was Joel Collins. He told Cook his outfit had just delivered a herd to some buyers from the Black Hills.

Cook then met the other men in the outfit – Jim Berry, Bill Hefferidge, Jack Davis, Sam Underwood and Sam Bass.

Collins was a heavy drinker and one evening after he had played Spanish monte for some time he asked Cook for $75. Cook loaned it to him.

Rumors had Collins losing the cattle to sales receipts by gambling between the Black Hills and Ogallala.

A few days later, these men robbed the best through train on the Union Pacific, lifting $60,000 in gold from the pay car and several thousand from the passengers. The robbery was big news, the first time a Union Pacific train had been held up and at first it was thought that the James Brothers or the Younger gang had pulled it off.

But an Ogallala merchant identified the robbers. He recognized a mask that had been left at the scene of the holdup as a length of cloth he had sold one of the men six days earlier.

Union Pacific offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest of the bandits and recovery of the gold. Half the country was after the bandits and the reward.

Collins and Hefferidge were killed while resisting arrest in Kansas. Barry was shot in Missouri and Sam Bass was killed a year later by Rangers at Round Rock Texas.

Only a small portion of the money was recovered.