On Sept 20, 1921, Roland Williams was arrested near Ozark City, Missouri. Was Harry Campbell also arrested? Any idea when and where they were convicted? On April 5, 1925, Williams escaped from the Pawnee County Jail with Ray Terrill. After that, Roland seems to have vanished. What became of him? One more thing, does anyone have the date Ray Terrill was released from the Oklahoma Penitentiary early in 1926?
I have a 1934 FBI record, which states, "Roland Williams, a recent parolee from OSP now living on an isolated drilling rig site near Seminole,OK and a past assosiate of Harry Campbell's, was interviewed by agents"......I have his OSP record somewhere deep in my files.
Ron, If it's any interest to you, the FBI report went on to say Roland Williams was born in Missouri...raised by a his widowed mother in Sapulpa,Ok in poverty... dropped out of school early on and took a job sweeping floors in a downtown flop-house...
Roland G. "Shorty" Williams was (possibly) involved in the robbery of banks in the following towns: Shamrock (1920); Coweta/Meramec/Ripley/Tyron (1921); Shawnee (1924); and, Maramec (1925). Any others!?! What about 1922 & 1923?
Williams was indeed a well-known bank robber in the 1920s and was involved in heists at Shamrock 12/12/20; Tryon on 1/8/21, Maramec the next day, and was planning a bank robbery at Coweta on 1/14/21 but was arrested. He escaped enroute to Chandler on a train on June 11, 1921. He was caught on 2/22/25 at Sapulpa in a round-up of thugs headed by U. S. Marshal Alva McDonald. The bank at Maramec was again looted on 2/13/25.
Roland "Shorty" Williams, like Ray Terrill and Harry Campbell, began his career in serious crime as a student of Old Jeff Duree knocking off a horde of one-horse oilfield banks under the moonlight. His hometown, Sapulpa, was a hotbed of crime back in the oil-boom days.....No telling how many night-time hijackings "Shorty" was involved in..
What I got here is: On June 11, 1921, Roland and Harry Campbell escaped from the train. On June 27, 1921, both were recaptured in Sapulpa, OK. On August 25, 1921, both escaped from the Lincoln County jail in Chandler, OK. On September 20, 1921, both were arrested in Ozark City, MO. Roland arrested with Terrill on Feb 22, 1925. I lost both Williams and Campbell after the Ozark City arrest. I may have gotten the info from a book, or an old Oklahoma newspaper I have on microfilm.
After that incident Williams was sentenced to a term at Big Mac while Campbell managed to flee to Wyoming where he drove a coal truck for a living until he was injured in an accident.Soon afterwards he returned to Tulsa where he was involved in the burglary of the Wilcox Oil Co. as well as the 1932 murder of attorney J. Earl Smith. His partners at the time were Glen Roy Wright, Jimmy Lawson and "Jew" Eddy Moss.In 1933 he and Wright were fingered for the armed robbery of an auction house in Stillwater.In 1934 Campbell joined his boyhood pals, the Barkers, as a full-fledged memeber of the Barker-Karpis Gang. I assume you know of his adventures with that bunch...Harry Campbell served time in Alcatraz 1936-42 before being sent to Leavenworth 1942-59. Paroled to his daughter's custody in Amarillo, Texas, he worked as a handyman until his death in 1974. He is buried at Tulsa's Rose Hill Cemetery....What a life!...Lost track of Roland Williams after 1935....R. D.
