On January 27, 1935 McLean County sheriffs were searching for three men who had killed a Walgreens clerk in Kankakee and who had been identified in Bloomington. The suspects had rented rooms from Mrs. Fuchs at 605 W. Washington Street. On that day the Sheriff Swearingen and one deputy entered the house while three others watched the other means of egress. Two of the robbers were found in the kitchen and were being cuffed in the parlor when the third robber burst through a sliding door and shot Deputy A.L. Vonsar before hiding in the room and then commenced shooting through the door.
Witness to the shooting was Mrs. Fuchs who, when the shooter burst through the hallway, ordered him to "quit fighting the law and to quit shooting in my house!" Kelch Irwin escaped the house and was spotted by Gay S Pinnell, a motorist, strapping his two guns around his waist. The motorist was then distracted by the sight of Deputy Vonsar stumbling out of the house in pursuit. Vonsar was driven to the hospital by Pinnell, but died of his wounds in the hospital.
Kelch Irwin being processed at the McLean County Jail
Irwin continued on his way, stopping at the 918 Market Street grocery where he stole a car from Thomas G Cook at gunpoint. He eluded police in Pekin and robbed a service station in Taylorville during his flight. Irwin was finally caught by police in East St. Louis, near his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, two weeks later.
Kelch Irwin Trial Jury, McLean County Courthouse
Justice was not slow. He went on trial less than three months later in April of 1935. Witnesses from Bloomington included Mrs. Fuchs, Pinnell, Cook and a crowd of evidence witnesses and officers. After a week long trial he was convicted to life in prison. Although the jury asked whether the accused could be paroled from a life sentence, the judge regretfully advised them he could not provide this information. (After twenty years a man with a life sentence was eligible for parole.)
Kelch Irwin at the defense table with his attorneys
Irwin, a St. Louis native, had joined up with two other criminals in robberies and holdups in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. He had spent time in four different penitentiaries doing hard labor, which apparently had not reformed him.
Mrs. Fuchs said that the three young men had paid for a week in their rooms and had seemed like normal young men. The night before the shoot out, she had made coffee for them and played pinochle with them.
A. L. Vansor was just fifty years old and was not married. He had lived in Bloomington just two years, where he was the head of the department of identification. He had served with the secret service and had been a body guard to four different presidents: McKinley, Taft, Coolidge and Wilson. His body was returned to Michigan for burial.
While this was a very serious situation, with a desperate criminal and one dead officer, I still find it amusing that Mrs. Fuchs was allowed to remain in the home during the search of the home and that she reprimanded an armed criminal.