The Denver Mint and the Robbery That Was Never Solved

The United States Mint at Denver has struck coins since nineteen oh six, and it remains one of the largest producers of coinage in the world. But the building is remembered for something other than minting. On the morning of December eighteenth, nineteen twenty-two, five men ambushed a Federal Reserve delivery truck parked outside the Mint on West Colfax Avenue.

A black Buick pulled up, two robbers leaped out firing sawed-off shotguns, and a third seized bags holding two hundred thousand dollars in five dollar bills. The whole assault lasted roughly ninety seconds. A Mint guard named Charles Linton, a former deputy sheriff, was mortally wounded in the gunfire.

One of the robbers, Nicholas Trainor, was also fatally shot, though his gang carried him off. His frozen body was found nearly a month later in the abandoned getaway car, parked in a garage on Gilpin Street. In February of nineteen twenty-three, authorities recovered about eighty thousand dollars of the stolen cash from a hideout in Minnesota, but no one was ever charged.

Police later suspected the notorious robber Harvey Bailey of involvement but could never produce evidence to support a charge. The case stayed open for twelve years before it was officially closed in December of nineteen thirty-four, a holdup that has never been formally solved. The contrast is striking.

The Mint was one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the region, with dozens of armed officers inside, and yet a handful of men carried off a fortune in broad daylight in the space of about a minute and a half.