Duane Earl Pope, Bank Robber and Murderer, Turns Himself In

June 12, 1965 - With the weary plea to police to “come and get me, I’m tired of running,” a clean-cut college graduate gave himself up yesterday in connection with the murder of three bank employees during a holdup last week in Big Springs, Nebraska.

The suspect, Duane Earl Pope, 22, telephoned police from a Kansas City hotel and surrendered meekly when five detectives arrived, saying, “Here I am.” He had been the object of a nationwide manhunt all week and was placed on the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted fugitives just hours before he surrendered.

Pope was arraigned before U.S. Commissioner Lee Cisel on a Federal charge of bank robbery and was held on $100,000 bail. He was expected to be charged in Nebraska with killing three persons and critically wounding a fourth during a holdup in the Farmers State Bank that netted $1,598 June 4. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

The bank president, a cashier, and a bookkeeper were all shot in the back and killed as they lay unresisting on the bank floor. A fourth bank worker survived the shooting but is now paralyzed from the waist down.

Pope, of Salina, Kansas, was a popular youth who was graduated from McPherson College four days before the robbery. He was described by acquaintances as the kind of youth everybody liked — but whom, in retrospect, nobody seemed to know. The tall, crewcut youth was described in an FBI circular as a “polite and neat-appearing individual who is unusually strong and is particularly remembered for his dark, penetrating eyes.”

Pope’s mother, Mrs. Earl Pope of Roxbury, Kansas, said: “I’m very relieved. We just prayed that all this was some mistake. And if he did it — with a big if — he is sick because this wouldn’t be the Duane we knew.”

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