Girl Bandit of Taft Is Held For Quiz

Officers Accuse Eleanor Walling of S.F. Holdups

ELEANOR WALLING, Taft girl who seven years ago placed her name in the nation’s headlines as California’s first flapper bandit when with two men companions she executed the daring daylight holdup of the State Bank of Taft, is making another bid for a penitentiary cell, according to a special dispatch from San Francisco today.

Twenty-seven years of age but still retaining a trace of the beauty that carried her pictures as 20-year-old bank robber to the front pages of the country, Eleanor was taken into custody in San Francisco late yesterday, in company with Ada Randall, possessor of a long police record.

The two women are suspected of perpetrating a series of drug store robberies in the bay district while masquerading as men.

Find Garments

In their apartment at 473 Ellis street, San Francisco, inspectors for the police department said they found men’s garments similar to those worn by two bandits who have been specializing on drug stores.

Later today Eleanor and the Randall woman were to be compelled to don the mail attire while victims of the robberies attempted to identify them.

Masquerading as a man while engaging in robbery is no departure for Eleanor, police remember—and if they don’t remember, Kern authorities will be only too glad to refresh their memories. It was in khaki shirt, breeches and boots that she participated in the robber of the State Bank of Taft in 1924.

Names Boy Friends

With two men, whose names she at first refused to reveal, she bound bank employees and escaped with $5000. Virtually all of the money was recovered after she confessed the crime to Sheriff Cas Walser. She also then implicated her asserted “boy friend,” William “Bill” Crocket and Scotty Taylor.

Trying to shield Eleanor, Taylor confessed and served a term in Folsom penitentiary. The girl went to San Quentin for five years to life and although her record showed she had been in trouble many times, she was paroled in 1929 after serving the minimum sentence.

Crockett denied the robbery and was acquitted by a Superior Court jury, Later he was sent to the penitentiary for alleged participation in a Hollywood bank robbery, according to authorities.

Serves Jail Term

After being paroled from San Quentin, Eleanor Walling came back to Taft for a shirt time, then moved southward to Los Angeles and San Diego. A short time later she was arrested in San Francisco for investigation on a robbery charge and released. In September, 1931, she was sent to the San Francisco county jail for six months after being found guilty of robbing taxicab drivers.

Source: Bakersfield Californian, September 21, 1932.

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