Dirty lawman got a second chance

Blackford County Sheriff Ira Barton was 49 when a photo of him with wide, hooded eyes appeared in a Muncie newspaper on Dec. 29, 1931. A headline read “Jailed!”

A defiant Barton claimed that he was a victim of a frameup engineered by Indiana Bureau of Criminal Investigation lawman Charles Bolte.

But three Chicago-area robbers captured after the holdup of the First State Bank started singing.

They had been set up. 

A confidential source tipped off Jay County Sheriff Len Wehrly that desperadoes planned a heist in Dunkirk. Wehrly visited eight local businesses near the bank and armed each with rifles. 

Three robbers stormed into the bank while one stayed on lookout. They filled two pillowcases with cash. A bank employee tripped an alarm that alerted nearby businesses. 

As the four criminals clambered into their getaway car, Hugh Barnett, in front of a nearby garage, clipped its gas tank with a rifle bullet.

Gas flowed from the vehicle. 

Dunkirk patrolman Samuel S. Bennett and a small posse began a chase.  

Out of gas, the robbers tossed their pillowcases of loot into a ditch. They scurried through a farm field. 

A pursuer shot gang leader Tony Capitan, who dropped with a mortal wound. The remaining trio tossed their weapons.

The three reacted in anger when told they had been arrested in Jay County, not adjacent Blackford County. Barton had promised protection in his county.

The trio fingered Barton for the Dunkirk heist and a recent job at a Hartford City bank. The county coroner arrested the disgraced sheriff and took his weapon. 

Justice was swift. A local court gave each of the three surviving robbers a 20-year sentence.

Barton, awaiting charges, was taken to the Hartford City jail, then to the jail in Portland.

Barton protested about being kept in a cell so near the three criminals. He was ignored.

One of the three admitted robbers confronted the disgraced sheriff.

“We’ll get you yet, you dirty rat,” shouted Albert Frabotta.  

“Barton cowered in the corner of his cell and his face whitened at the threat,” noted a Muncie Press reporter. 

Among other charges, Bolte charged Barton as an accessory to bank robberies in Dunkirk, Montpelier and Hartford City. He accused Barton of collaborating with the gangsters and arranging schemes to send area lawmen away on pretexts at time of the crimes. 

Overwhelming evidence against the sheriff piled up over the next six weeks that demonstrated Barton was not only corrupt but clueless about covering his tracks. Several witnesses placed him in Dunkirk at the time of the holdup. 

What followed next was like a page torn out of a bad detective book.

Barton convinced his own teen-aged nephew, Linden Barton, to help him break out of jail. The prisoner took a mace and knocked out deputy Tandy Ferguson, who had been a best friend. 

They didn’t get far. An Indiana state trooper rounded them up.

A 72-point headline in the Muncie Morning Star read “Ira Barton Pleads Guilty” on Feb. 18, 1932. 

His motive? The divorced Barton had considered himself underpaid and wanted money to court his fiancee and furnish their lodgings.

In Jay Circuit Court that day, Judge Frank Gillespie gave Barton a 21-year sentence (slammed as too lenient by many). Barton blubbered throughout the sentencing, as well as when his nephew received a six-month sentence for the escape attempt.

Local eyes were raised in 1938 when a state clemency commission freed Barton. His second wife had waited for his release.

The former sheriff was given a second chance.

Barton, raised a farmer’s son, lived his final years in Muncie and Hartford City, selling farm equipment for Sears Roebuck.

Ill and confined to a Fort Wayne rest home, Barton died May 27, 1969, at age 76. His survivors were a daughter, brother, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. 

Linden Barton served his time and moved to Southern California to raise a family. He rode his horse each year in the Pasadena Rose Bowl parade.

A brief Muncie Star Press obituary noted that Ira Barton once was a sheriff of Blackford County.

Charitably, the obit writer omitted Barton’s convictions.