In the spring of 1937, a young, White / Caucasian FBI agent named Wimberly W. Baker, aged 27, found his first major assignment as a special agent taking a fateful turn in Topeka, Kansas. Assigned to the Kansas City office, Baker was part of a team conducting surveillance on the city's main U.S. Post Office. The targets were two fugitives, Robert Suhay and Glen Applegate, wanted for an $18,000 bank robbery in Katonah, New York. The FBI had received a tip that the men were using the general delivery counter at the post office to receive mail.
For three days, the agents watched and waited. On the morning of April 16, 1937, the stakeout came to a dramatic and violent end. Around 11 a.m., Applegate entered the post office and approached the counter to retrieve his mail. As Special Agent Baker moved in to make the arrest, identifying himself as an officer, he was unaware that Suhay was closing in from behind. Suhay opened fire, shooting Baker multiple times in the back and chest, and the post office lobby erupted into a chaotic gun battle.
Though another agent returned fire, both Suhay and Applegate managed to escape the scene. Wimberly W. Baker was mortally wounded in the shootout and rushed to a local hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries and died the following day, April 17, 1937. The two suspects' freedom was short-lived. Later that same night, law enforcement apprehended Robert Suhay and his accomplice, whose identity was confirmed to be Glen John Applegate, in Plattsmouth, Nebraska.
The fugitives were brought back to Kansas to face justice. In June of 1937, they were indicted and stood trial for the murder of a federal agent in the very city where the crime occurred. After a five-day trial where the prosecution presented sixty witnesses, the jury deliberated for only two hours before finding both Suhay and Applegate guilty. Both men were sentenced to death for the murder of Special Agent Baker. Following a denied appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Robert Suhay and Glen Applegate were executed by hanging at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, on August 12, 1938.
