Robbery Gang Captured

By Jack Klasey

August 16, 2025

At 3:15 a.m. on January 29, 1938, a car “driving aimlessly through the business district” attracted the attention of patrolling Kankakee police officers John Powell and George Bjick. They pulled the car over at the intersection of Station Street and West Avenue, and began to question its’ occupants, driver Donald Holley, 23, of Kankakee, and passengers Merle Hoffman, 21, also of Kankakee, and Omar Scheidler, 22, of Rensselaer, Indiana.

Adding to the suspicious nature of the car and its occupants was the vehicle’s mud-caked license plate, which had visible only three of its numbers, “542.” The three digits matched those of a get-away car that had been used in an attempted robbery a week earlier in Kankakee. The suspicions of Officers Powell and Bjick were confirmed when they searched the men’s car and found a veritable arsenal: four loaded shotguns, two pistols, and boxes of ammunition.

The attempted robbery in Kankakee had taken place on Saturday, January 22.  In its January 24 edition, the Kankakee Republican-News described the event: “Two young men armed with revolvers attempted a holdup at the Hub clothing store, 232 South East Avenue, early Saturday evening but were frustrated when the proprietor, Louis P. Ellman, grappled with them. [Ellman] let out a yell and the pair became frightened and started to leave with the proprietor at their heels. He scuffled with them as far as the vestibule, where one felled him with two blows with the butt of his revolver. They jumped into their car and drove north on East Avenue….Police were summoned but the pair made good their get-away.”

Louis Ellman’s wounds were treated at St. Mary’s Hospital. The newspaper noted it was “the second time in three years that Ellman had averted a robbery at his establishment by resisting thugs and absorbing blows to his head.”

Following the early-morning traffic stop at Station Street and West Avenue, the three occupants of the car—Holley, Hoffman, and Scheidler—were arrested by Officers Powell and Bjick. At 8:30 a.m., Kankakee Detective Daniel Bergan and Officer Thomas Cantlin went to a rooming house at 319 N. Fifth Avenue, where the arrested men lived. At that location, reported the Republican-News, “Bergan and Cantlin recovered loot which they believe will connect members of the gang with a dozen or more cases.” Two other roomers at the Fifth Avenue address were arrested on suspicion of being members of the robbery gang. They were Ray Holley, 46, the father of Donald Holley, and Thomas Matthew, 36.”

Kankakee police said the loot found at the rooming house tied the gang members to robberies or burglaries at two Kankakee pharmacies (Jaffe’s Big Four and Koehler’s Southside Drugs); three grocery stores (Tatro Brothers and Pugliesi & Indorante in Kankakee and an unnamed store in Monee); five gas stations (Legg Service station, Savoie gas station, Cities’ Service Southside station, and the Johnson Oil station at Station Street and Washington Avenue, all in Kankakee, and an unnamed gas station at Thawville in Iroquois County), two coal companies (C.L. Moore and Luehrs), and the Alexander Lumber Company.

Investigators also located a stash of stolen goods in a garage on North Evergreen Avenue. “Here, police recovered a motorcycle stolen in Hammond in 1936, a $300 set of acetylene torches, with which slot machines were cut open, and several auto tires,” noted the newspaper.

On Saturday afternoon, Chief of Police L.B. Rogers and Detective Daniel Bergan announced that “they had obtained confessions from Omar Scheidler, Merle Hoffman, and Donald Holley of 30 or 40 crimes covering practically all the unsolved cases in Kankakee, as well as many holdups and burglaries in this and neighboring counties, and in southern Indiana and southern Illinois…. They also admitted the attempted holdup at the Ellman store.”

The first three gang members told police “that Ray Holley was with them when they robbed gas stations and stores at Dyer and Schneider, Ind., Grant Park, and Indian Oaks In some of these, they carried off slot machines.” The fifth member of the gang, Thomas Matthew, was being held “as an accessory to the crimes, since he went ‘scouting’ with the others when they looked over places to rob.”

The Republican-News edition of Monday, January 31, reported “Dozens of victims of robberies and burglaries perpetrated by members of the gang of five men arrested by police on Saturday paraded through the city jail cell block over the weekend to identify them and the stolen property as more of their crimes were uncovered.”

On Wednesday, February 2, the Republican-News reported, “Four of the five men arrested by the police last weekend in connection with a series of robberies and burglaries in Kankakee and other towns in this area were ordered held in $10,000 bail each for grand jury action at their hearing late Tuesday afternoon in the court of Police Magistrate Edward Hoennicke.”

Three of the group —Donald Holley, Hoffman. and Scheidler—were named in warrants charging robbery with a gun. The newspaper noted that the three had “confessed a lengthy list of crimes, including the attempted holdup at the Ellman clothing store in which the proprietor, Louis Ellman, was slugged.”

Donald Holley’s father, Ray (who had twice escaped from an Indiana state mental hospital) was charged with grand larceny. The fifth man held for questioning, Thomas Matthew, “was released after police were satisfied that he had no part in the actual participation of the crimes,” the newspaper reported.

Jack Klasey is a former Journal reporter and a retired publishing executive. He can be contacted at jwklasey@comcast.net.