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A Robbery at the Denver U.S. Mint That Was Never Solved
The only confirmed member was eventually found…dead.
Nearly a century ago, the Denver Mint was robbed in Colorado one morning in a case that remains unsolved to this day.
Mint Job
On December 18, 1922, a day like any other as a Federal Reserve Bank truck sat outside the U.S. Mint in Denver, Colorado. At the time, the guards on duty had just loaded up a total of $200,000 when, at 10:30 a.m., a group of thieves pulled up in a Buick beside the truck. While one of them stayed behind the wheel as the getaway, the other three men jumped out. As one robber rushed to the rear of the truck, firing at and fatally striking a guard, Charles Linton, in the process, a second thief smashed open the truck’s window. As the money was lifted out by the second man, the other two sprayed the Mint building with bullets from their sawed-off shotguns.
As the bandits went to work, and the alarms bell clanged away, employees of the Mint building grabbed their rifles and returned fire. Within seconds, bullets peppered West Colfax, several other buildings nearby as well as the side of the Mint building itself. Finally, 90 seconds later, shots stopped flying from both directions. The robbers ultimately got away, driving east on Colfax, with 50 packages of $5 bills in tow.
Frozen Find
In the ensuing investigation, the bandits were traced from Omaha to Chicago, then St. Paul, before their trail went cold. Then, a month after the robbery took place, on January 14, 1923, one of the confirmed thieves, Nicholas Trainor, was located — his frozen body discovered in the getaway car used in the heist, inside a rented garage at the back of 1631, Gilpin St. in Denver. As later determined, Trainor had sustained injuries during the robbery, and ultimately died during the gang’s escape. Following the discovery of his body, police suspected that Harvey Bailey, whom Trainor had worked with in the past, may have also been a member of the gang in the Mint robbery. However, no evidence was ever found to implicate Bailey in the theft in any capacity.
Then, a little over a month after locating Trainor’s body, on February 17, authorities in Minnesota raided an abandoned hideout, where $80,000 from the theft were…
