Evening star., 1936-03-03
HOLD-UP SUSPECT
PLEADS GUILTY
Dennis Mcdaniel Held After
Arraignment-Says Broth
er Aided Him.

quentin prisoner, pleaded guilty to
robbing the Old Dominion Bank at
Ballston, Va, February 10 when ar
raigned before United States Commits
sioner John Barton Phillips in Alex
andria, Va, today.
He was committed to the Alexandria
Jail in default of $4,000 bond to
await trial at the June term Of Fed
eral Court in Alexandria.
Mcdaniel is accused of stealing
$2.700 from the bank during a hold
up.
He was taken into custody at
Mallow, Va, by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, whose agents said he
confessed that he and his brother,
John Woodrow Mcdaniel, committed
the robbery.
Mcdaniel was identified and traced
through sawed-of shotgun left by
the bank robbers in an automobile
they abandoned in this city, it was
disclosed by j. Edgar Hoover, director
Of the bureau.
Both Arrested Before.
Both brothers had been arrested
and convicted in the past of numerous
crimes and both had received paroles.
While experts in the technical
laboratory of the F. B. I. were devel-
oping latent f1ngerprints found in the
automobile, Lee Thornton, colored, of
Falls Church reported that newspaper
photographs of the shotgun led him
to believe the weapon was one he had
loaned to Dennis Mcdaniel the day
before the robbery Ito shoot rabbits"
Thornton was shown the gun by
the Federal agents and he identified
it positively as his own. explaining
that the barrel had been sawed off
after it left his possession. The bu-
reau said the identification was ac-
complished with the commendable
assistance Of Sergt. A. P. Shumate of
the Falls Church police department
Federal experts said the gun had
been sawed off recently.
The Mcdaniel brothers are well
known to police of Roanoke and VIC
unity. Mallow, where Dennis was ar
rested, is about 40 miles from Roa-
noke-where his brother was arrested
in 1882 for violation of the Federal
automobile theft act. The brother
served part of one-year sentence in
the Federal Reformatory at Chilli
cothe, Ohio. receiving a conditional
release in September of 1888. Two
months later he became a fugitive
when he failed to report to prison
authorities.
Sentenced in Richmond.
A year later he was arrested and
convicted in Richmond, Va, on grand
larceny charges and sentenced to a
year in jail.
Dennis was given sentence of one
year to life in 1922 for robbery and
was committed to San Quentin Prison
in California. Ten years later. records
show, he was arrested as a highway
robbery suspect and sent back to San
Quentin to serve up to five years. He
was paroled last December by State
authorities.
At the time of Dennis McDaniel's
arrest Federal agents found in his
automobile a .38-caliber revolver,
which had been taken from the Ball.
ston bank by the robbers.
Upon being questioned by the
special agents." Hoover said, "he ex-
ecuted a signed statement in which
heAdmitted that he and his brother,
Woodrow Mcdaniel, had perpetrated
the robbery"
The Ballston bank was robbed early
in the afternoon by two men who
forced bank employees to surrender
all cash in sight. The men fled in
an automobile that had been stolen
i from a parking lot at the south end
of the Key Bridge shortly before the
robbery, the bureau said.
Agents learned that for an hour
prior to the robbery two men answer
ing the description of the robbers had
sat in small cafe at Ballston, await
ing departure of traffic policeman
from a nearby street intersection. AS
soon as the officer left the men pro-
ceeded to the bank.
In making their getaway the rob-
bers sideswiped the automobile of a
woman, damaging their car to such
an extent that they abandoned it on
C street, between Nineteenth and
Twentieth streets.