The Gazette
April 22, 1931

Sheriff Murphy and Deputy Edwards Return Yarrell

IS NOW IN UNION PARISH JAIL AT FARMERVILLE

At the request of Sheriff Pat Murphy of this parish, a posse of seven detectives in Beaumont, Texas, Monday morning arrested one Jimmie Yarrell, alias Hunt Boyd Watson, alias B. B. Gathright and alias Hunt Ward, bank bandit who is charged as being one of those who entered the bank here on last September 22 and robbed it of $10,831.00 in cash.

On last December 19th. Yarrell and another one of the robbers by the name of Edwards succeeded in making their escape from the custody of Sheriff Murphy while on their way from Farmerville to Monroe after arraignment in the District Court at Farmerville that morning before Judge F. L. Walker on the charge of robbery to which they had entered a plea of not guilty. With them was Mike Escew, another man charged with being implicated in the robbery. They handcuffed the officers and tied them to a tree near Jonesboro and made their escape. The men have been at large since that time. Yarrell had married a sixteen-year-old girl at Beaumont.

Sheriff Murphy was notified immediately by telephone that the Beaumont authorities had his man. He and deputy sheriff George Miller Edwards left at 9 o’clock Monday morning for the Texas city arriving there about six that evening. Yarrell having waived extradition they left there at nine o’clock Monday night, arriving here at six o’oclock yesterday, Tuesday morning and landed their prisoner in the Farmerville jail.

Yarrel, it seems, was living with his young wife in hiding in the attic of his mother-in-law’s home int he city of Beaumont. When the police of that city finally located him there and demanded his surrender, he refused at first saying he would fight it out with them, but his young wife and mother-in-law pleaded with him not to endanger their lives with tear gas bombs which the officers had resolved to use and he finally yielded and surrendered. He told the police immediately to phone Pat Murphy to come and get him.

Yarrell declared that he had not seen his accomplice Edwards, since they were separated in December, that he does not know where he is but thinks he went north.

Arrangements for the trial of Yarrell in district court here have not as yet been made but it is probable that he will be tried at an early date.