The Stockgrower's Bank Robbery: 40 years ago today

WORLAND – Gary Hailfinger arrived in Worland in the fall of 1976, stepping off a Greyhound bus and taking up residence at the Washakie Hotel, with only a few items in his possession, and a virtual stranger to the inhabitants of the small northern Wyoming town.

A Vietnam War veteran originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Hailfinger made only a small impression during his month-long stay in Worland. Hotel maids remarked that he seemed strange and lingered over them when they cleaned his room, but never appeared to be loud or drunk, but solitary and quiet and staying in his room most of the time.

On Nov. 1, Hailfinger left his room with a large satchel and a long black case, and walked one block to the Stockgrower's Bank, where he stopped and looked up and down Big Horn Avenue before entering the bank's vestibule.

"I saw this guy, kinda big, duck into the vestibule with a rifle case in his hand, and I thought 'Oh man, this is a hold-up'," remembered then bank President Don Babbitt, now 93. "He reached around in his bag there and came out with a .30-caliber M1 [carbine], and came on in through the door. I walked over to meet him and sure enough, he told me it was a hold-up."

While Babbitt was talking with Hailfinger, the bank tellers were all pressing their alarm buttons to alert the police, while banker Lowell Peterson ducked down a hallway to a back room, where employees called the police before escaping out a back door.

Up front, Hailfinger had ordered Babbitt to lock the front doors, unaware that employees were escaping, or that the law had already been called.

"It was pretty funny," recalls Babbitt, "because a customer walked up to the door right when I started to lock it. Every time I pulled it closed he would pull it back open, and finally I said 'Look buddy, this guy behind me is holding up the place. You should get out of here," Babbitt laughed. "He just looked at me and said 'Bull*hit!' and walked off down the street."

After locking the door, Hailfinger herded two customers and the remaining bank employees, including banker Peterson, into the vault. "Like an idiot I came back down the hallway right when he was rounding everybody up," laughed Peterson, now the owner of True Value Hardware.

Once inside the vault, Hailfinger asked if he could still get back in if he locked the hostages inside. Sure, said Babbitt, and closed the metal day gate between them and Hailfinger.

But Babbitt had lied. The lock to the gate was located at the back of the vault, and there was no way Hailfinger could get back in. As Hailfinger retreated down the hallway to search for open money drawers, Babbitt and Peterson ushered the hostages into a storage room at the back of the vault, secured behind a two-inch oak door.

Unbeknownst to Hailfinger, law enforcement was pouring into the area. City Marshall Jim Thompson quickly deputized citizens, who grabbed rifles from the Outdoorsman and stationed themselves in sniper's nests on top of buildings lining Big Horn Avenue. State Highway Patrol officers led by Lieutenant Lloyd Sanderson set up roadblocks, cutting off downtown, and guarded the front doors. In Riverton, FBI agents Chuck Wasacheck and Fred Scott jumped into their unmarked 1975 Impala and raced to Worland at 105 miles per hour, arriving in a record 46 minutes. (It was rumored that when the agents hit the railroad crossing on Big Horn Avenue at 80 miles per hour, they cracked the engine block and the car could never be used again.)

Next door to the bank, Peterson's wife was working at a dress shop when she noticed the commotion in the streets. "I saw all these cars doing U-turns and I thought 'where the heck are the police?,'" remembers Punkie Peterson. "Then somebody said the bank was being robbed and I thought "Oh, no...my husband is in there.'"

Inside the bank, Hailfinger had returned to the vault entrance and discovered that the gate indeed couldn't be opened from the outside. In a fit of desperation, the would-be robber started shooting into the vault, trying to hit the lock mechanism on the back wall.

"He got pretty mad and started popping off shots," remembered Babbitt. "There was a lady in the back room [with us] who kept counting off the shots...9...10...11...12."

Hailfinger fired a total of 13 shots into the vault, penetrating the storage room's oak door several times, and ricocheting off safety deposit boxes, before he abandoned the effort and went to look for the building's electrical panel in an attempt to override the locks.

"As those bullet fragments were coming through the door and flying around, I told the lady next to me that we knew how elk felt, when hunting season was on," laughed Babbitt.

It wasn't long before Hailfinger found the breaker box, and started turning things in the bank on and off.

"The lights were going on and off, then he found the breaker for the air conditioner and turned that off," remembered Babbitt. "It got hot in there pretty fast."

Outside and down the street, Lieutenant Sanderson was at the offices of Rural Telephone, examining blueprints for the bank, kept on record by the phone company. Determining that the robber could be ambushed in the bank's hallway from the safety of the lobby, and with a key supplied by an escaped employee, the highway patrol made their move.

As Hailfinger fiddled with the electrical breakers in the hallway, patrol officers snuck up behind and demanded he drop his weapon. Hailfinger complied immediately, and was cuffed and led from the building.

After all hostages were released and the area was searched, law enforcement found over 400 rounds of ammunition in Hailfinger's satchel, and in his hotel room found a change of clothes, a few "girlie mags" and a bottle of Brute aftershave.

Hailfinger was quickly transported to Cheyenne by the FBI and tried with a federal crime, receiving 15 years in Leavenworth Prison.

Peterson spent 26 years in the banking business before becoming a hardware salesman. Babbitt retired from banking in the 1980s. Peterson said FBI Agent Frank Scott retired in the Big Horn Basin and became head of security for Crown Cork and Seal.

Gary Hailfinger died in February 1991, and was buried in Port Clinton, Ohio. To this day, no one knows his motive for trying to rob the Stockman's Bank without a get-away vehicle.

"I think he was waiting for the bus to leave at noon," said Peterson, 40 years later. "I just don't think he was counting on that locked gate."

Information not otherwise attributed was obtained from news articles published in the Northern Wyoming Daily News.