The Cretzer-Kyle Gang
Unlike the majority of the depression era roaming gangs, the Cretzer-Kyle gang did not terrorize the Midwest, but instead operated almost entirely on the West Coast. It was formed by Joseph Cretzer, who like so many of the criminals of the thirties gangs began his career at an early age. He was well acquainted with the inside of jails and prisons by the time he was in his twenties, and with his brother in law Arnold Kyle, formed the gang in the mid-1930s. With their accomplice Milton Hartmann the gang robbed their first bank in Portland, Oregon, in January 1935.
In November of the same year the three men robbed another bank, this one located within the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and within a couple of months, they struck two banks in two days, one in Oakland and the other in Los Angeles. From then on they stepped up their tempo, and several banks were robbed, in Los Angeles, Oakland and as far north as Seattle. When it became evident that the police had descriptions of all the gang members they began to change their method of approaching the banks, sometimes adding accomplices and sometimes acting alone.
By the mid-1930s the most notorious of the Midwestern roaming gangs had been rounded up or killed, and the FBI began to shift its attention to other areas of the county. The spurt of bank robberies up and down the west coast quickly drew their attention and resources. Federal agents arrested a part time member of the gang in Los Angeles in March 1937, just over a week after its most successful robbery yet. The next day a raid on a Los Angeles hotel room failed to pick up Hartmann, who foiled the agents by shooting himself.
Cretzer and Kyle fled California for the Midwest, where the depression era crime spree had largely run its course. Kyle managed to avoid the authorities by using the alias Raymond Palmer, but a May 1939 arrest for drunken driving in Minnesota led to his fingerprints being checked and his true identity revealed. He entered a guilty plea for bank robbery and was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.
Cretzer was arrested shortly after Kyle, in Chicago, and after some legal maneuvering entered a guilty plea for one bank robbery, he too receiving a 25 year sentence. Both served their sentences for a time at McNeil Island before being transferred to Alcatraz after attempting to escape. They tried to escape from there too, in 1941 and Cretzer made one final attempt during the prison riot known as the Battle of Alcatraz in 1946, dying during the attempt, either shot by prison guards or by suicide. His body was found with an automatic pistol beside it.