Santa Claus Bank Robbery

A True-Crime Saga in Texas

by

Tui Snider

Genre: Nonfiction / Texana / Texas History

Publisher: Castle Azle Press

Date of Publication: December 8, 2019

Number of Pages: 146 pages + black & white photos

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When Marshall Ratliff dressed like Santa Claus to pull a Christmas-time heist, he thought it would be easy. Unfortunately for him, when the citizens of Cisco heard Santa was robbing a bank, they came running – with loaded guns in hand!

But can you blame them? In 1927, the only way to earn the $5000 Dead Bank Robber Reward was to kill a bandit while the crime was in progress.

This bungled bank robbery led to a wild shootout and a getaway with two little girls as hostages. And that is only the beginning!

Tui Snider’s true-crime tale reads like a comedy of errors as the consequences of the Santa Claus Bank Robber’s actions escalate to include a botched car-jacking, one of the biggest manhunts in Texas history, and a jailbreak leading to a deadly conclusion.

Meanwhile, it’s up to readers to decide whether or not a mysterious blonde helped these gangsters escape. And if so, did she get away with murder?

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I first heard about the Santa Claus Robbery on Drunk History (season 5 episode 9).  I can’t speak for the accuracy of that episode but what I will say is that Tui did some massive digging into files, newspapers, and other sources to get to the bottom of what really happened that fateful day in Cisco Texas.  She became a detective for the truth.

This is a masterfully told story of a bank robbery, the innocent victims, the criminals behind the robbery, and a few others that we may not know the full extent of their participation in the sequence of events.  The book is filled with newspaper clippings, photos, and other memorabilia that help depict the time and the events during the 1920s.  Texas may have been a little tamer than during the Wild West era, but there were still scoundrels and thieves running around the state robbing banks and committing other crimes.  Apparently it got so out of hand that they raised the bounty on anyone brought in dead that robbed a bank from $500 to $5000.  Either way, that was a lot of money in the 20s and I’m sure a few might have been killed erroneously.

I was surprised at the bravery of some of the victims in the bank that day.  The mother who rushed out the back with her daughter and was unharmed.  That took some moxie!  And Woody Harris, the teen that foiled a carjacking, he too took a chance on being killed or more by not giving in to the thieves.  There were others that helped or hindered along the way and I wonder what was going through their mind during the sequence of events.

While the book is non-fiction and peppered with thoughts and comments from the author, it is engaging and I enjoyed learning about this event in Texas history and it almost reads like fiction in places.  Tui mentions that she doesn’t think that everyone was brought to justice and that there is more to research to try and get to the ultimate truth.  I was surprised to learn that another book about this event by A.C. Greene is fictionalized and has errors or doesn’t tell the whole story to the reader.

I appreciated the Places of Interest listing at the end that provides us with an opportunity to see for ourselves the various locations that Tui visited in her search for the truth.  There is also a list of books and newspapers that she utilized for her research.

I think the only thing I would have done differently was to omit all of the subchapters in each chapter.  I think either making each subchapter its own chapter would have been wiser.

But overall this was a fascinating book about an incident that I might never have known about had it not been for this book and that episode of Drunk History!

We give this book 5 paws up.

Tui Snider is an award-winning writer, speaker, photographer, and musician specializing in offbeat sites, overlooked history, cemetery symbolism, and haunted lore. As she puts it, “I used to write fiction, but then I moved to Texas!”

Tui lectures frequently at universities, libraries, conferences, and bookstores. This fall, she will speak about the Great Airship Mystery of 1897 at this year’s UFO Congress and teach a course on Understanding Cemetery Symbols at Texas Christian University. She also shares weekly info-videos based on her research on her YouTube channel.

Snider’s writing and photography have been featured in a variety of media outlets, including WFAA TV, Coast to Coast AM, LifeHack, Langdon Review, the City of Plano, Wild Woman Waking, Shades of Angels and many more. She has several more books in progress.

  Website  ◆  Facebook  ◆  Twitter

 Amazon Author Page  ◆  Goodreads

 Instagram  ◆   YouTube

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GIVEAWAY!  GIVEAWAY!  GIVEAWAY!

 GRAND PRIZE (US only):

Signed Paperback +$10 Amazon Gift Card

+ Thank You Post Card

2^ND PRIZE (US only): Signed Copy + Thank You Post Card

3^RD PRIZE (International): Kindle eBook

  December 12-22, 2019

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