Wayward Santa nearly arrested in Hammond
Tangipahoa Parish Deputy Sheriff Arthur Ricks ordered a hamburger and orange soda, leaned back in one of the café’s new booths, and read two newspapers, The Hammond Vindicator and The Morning Advocate from Baton Rouge.
All his life, Art loved this little diner on Thomas Street. As a kid, his parents would bring him there after the Columbia Theater’s Saturday matinee, and in later years, when folks just called it The Tropic Café, he and his wife would come in for Nectar Milk, not that Nectar Soda stuff they had at The Fountain. However, in 1956, the new owner dubbed the landmark The Imperial Tropicana after redecorating to match those fancy Havana restaurants everyone raved about.
Sheriff Tom Sanders had skipped their lunch. Art expected that would happen. Three days before Christmas, Mrs. Sanders certainly had a long honey-do list for her husband to check once or twice.
But not everyone had the day off, and Art had to eat.
As he finished reading and folded his papers, a burly man sat down at the bar. He wore gray work pants and big black boots. Above the waist, he had red long johns, green suspenders, and a full head of snow-white hair. From the back, the man looked like jolly old St. Nick. As he looked sideways, Art saw the man’s profile, clean-shaven without whiskers.
Art snatched The Advocate from the seat beside him and turned back to page 3-B. After reading again about the bank robbery in Sherman, Mississippi, one day earlier, Art slid his gun from its holster and his keister across the booth seat.
The Advocate story reported:
“A heavy-set man, his face masked with shaving foam that made one victim describe him as Santa Claus, robbed this North Mississippi town’s only bank of $222.
“Pontotoc County Sheriff M. C. Hembree said the fast-moving bandit, who stood 6 feet and weighed between 185 and 200 pounds, forced the bank manager, W. G. Littlejohn, to stuff the money, all in ones, fives, and ten-dollar bills, into a cloth bag resembling a bank bag but larger.
“Sticking his gun into the ribs of Clyde Goodwin, 48, a customer in the bank cashing a check, he forced the man to accompany him out the door. Outside, he yelled ‘beat it!’ to Goodwyn and fled in a green or tan 1950 model Ford pickup parked nearby. Witnesses said the truck had Mississippi plates and someone replaced one broken window glass with cardboard.”
Clyde Goodwin told an Associated Press reporter, “He looked like he had shaving creamed on a phony beard and whiskers to make him look like Santa Claus. He looked enormous to me, yelling ‘Stick’em up,’ he didn’t seem nervous at all.”
Leroy Anderson, a Sherman television repairman, said “Santa” walked in, put a gun on him, and told him to give a note to the cashier. The cashier, Littlejohn, moved slowly, Anderson told reporters, “So I told him to hurry before he got us both killed.”
Littlejohn told police he was not only the bank manager. He was the Bank of Sherman’s only cashier. He said he looked down throughout the robbery and could only describe the man’s gray work pants.
The robber’s description minus the shaving cream matched that of the big man Deputy Sheriff Art Ricks saw on the barstool at the Imperial Tropicana.
As Art approached, the man stood with his hands raised, and Art told him to walk outside to his vehicle. Outside, Art found the green pickup truck with the cardboard window, but before he could see the license plate, the big man slammed Art’s head against a brick wall, rendering him unconscious.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation apprehended the big man again shortly after New Year’s and identified him as 44-year-old Jessie Woodrow Easterling of Laurel, Mississippi. In New Orleans, the man left two FBI agents unconscious and escaped again.
In July, the Bureau caught him once more, this time in Jackson, Mississippi. By then, he had grown a real beard as snow-white as the hair on his head.