Neal Bowman Makes Escape

Article taken from The Portsmouth Times, December 26, 1933, p. 1


Scioto County Officers Warned to Shoot to Kill In Man Hunt

Southern Ohio officers are again on the alert in the search for a member of the notorious Bowman gang who escaped from the state hospital for criminal insane at Lima Monday.

He is Neal Glendon Bowman, who with his brothers, Howard and Lyell Cornell Bowman, terrorized southern Ohio two years ago in a series of bank robberies and grocery holdups.

They lived and had a hideout in the Minford community.  They also had hideouts in Brown county and near Vanceburg, Ky.

Sheriff Al Bridwell and deputies, city and New Boston police, state police and constables are keeping a lookout for the desperado, with orders to shoot to kill.

A convicted bank robber and twice a parole violator, Neal Bowman was transferred to Lima in January, 1932, although Warden P. E. Thomas of Ohio penitentary declared he thought Bowman was faking insanity.

Bowman confronted an unarmed attendant, Frank Devoe, with a revolver, took his keys and locked Devoe and four patients in a small room in the tuberculosis section.  The patients were not criminals, but had been transferred from overcrowded state hospitals.  He then unlocked a chest holding a fire hose, cast it over the wall, climbed over and made his getaway in an automobile.