On the morning of September 29, 1937, the quiet streets of Midland, Michigan, erupted into violence during a botched bank robbery that would ultimately claim the life of an innocent bystander. Henry Porter, a 52-year-old male truck driver from Bay City, was in the vicinity of the Chemical State Savings Bank on Main Street when the chaos unfolded. Inside the bank, two armed men, Anthony "Tony" Chebatoris and Jack Gracey, attempted to execute a heist they had planned after meeting in prison.
Their plan quickly disintegrated when the bank's president, Clarence Macomber, and cashier, Paul Bywater, resisted the intruders. In the ensuing struggle, Chebatoris shot both employees, wounding them, before the robbers abandoned their plan and fled the building.
As the assailants exited the bank and ran toward their getaway vehicle, they came under fire from Dr. Frank Hardy, a local dentist who had observed the commotion from his second-floor office window. Using a hunting rifle, Dr. Hardy shot and killed Gracey instantly. Chebatoris, wounded in the arm by the same gunfire, scrambled to escape the scene. It was during this desperate flight that he encountered Henry Porter. Chebatoris, reportedly mistaking the uniformed truck driver for a police officer, raised his revolver and shot Porter in the abdomen.
Chebatoris was subsequently apprehended by the Midland County Sheriff after his escape was cut short. While the bank employees survived their injuries, Henry Porter was transported to Mercy Hospital in Bay City, where he fought for his life for nearly two weeks. He succumbed to his wounds on October 11, 1937, turning the case into a federal murder investigation. The tragic death of the Bay City resident became the pivot point for a historic legal precedent in Michigan.
Because the robbery targeted a federally insured bank, the crime fell under the jurisdiction of the newly enacted National Bank Robbery Act of 1934. Anthony Chebatoris was indicted for murder and tried in a Federal District Court in Bay City. Although the state of Michigan had abolished the death penalty nearly a century earlier, the federal nature of the charges allowed prosecutors to seek capital punishment. Chebatoris was found guilty and sentenced to death. On July 8, 1938, he was executed by hanging at the Federal Detention Farm in Milan, Michigan, marking the only time an execution has been carried out in the state since its admission to the Union.
