The Panama Hat Bandit
Thomas Gagliano, a wrong man with a noose, and the lead that waited in a parking lot
At noon on June 24, 1958, Detective Walter Holmes walked into the Tangipahoa Parish Jail in Amite. He was a sergeant with the New Orleans Police Department. He had spent six weeks chasing a killer across three states. He had not caught him.
The man Holmes was looking for had shot Thomas Gagliano dead on May 14, 1958. Gagliano was 36 years old. He had run a bar called the T&M at 210 North Dorgenois Street in Mid-City New Orleans for seven months.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune described the shooting as a botched holdup. An anonymous telephone tip told police the assailant was a transfer truck driver. That tip sent Holmes in the wrong direction for six weeks. The record does not show who made the call.
The night of the murder, a man in a Panama hat walks into the T&M shortly after midnight and orders a drink. He leaves. He comes back at closing time, orders another glass, and levels a .25 caliber revolver at Gagliano.
He announces the holdup and backs away from the bar, raising the gun above his head.
Gagliano laughs.
The holdup man fires a slug into the ceiling.
“Okay, okay. Don’t get excited.”
Gagliano walks behind the register, opens the money drawer, and reaches for his pistol. Outside the holdup man’s line of sight, he tries to cock it. A penny from the drawer jams the mechanism.
Margie Simmons is 28 years old, Gagliano’s barmaid and his common-law wife. She screams from across the bar.
“Please don’t use that gun, Tom.”
The holdup man shot Gagliano. Gagliano fell forward, knocking the locked register to the floor. The gunman ran.
Three people witnessed the shooting: Simmons, barmaid Linda Pertuit, 38, and a customer named Louis Gallo, 41. All three would later prove difficult to reach. One would vanish from New Orleans before Holmes could find her.
The police file on Gagliano includes one prior arrest. On Valentine’s Day in 1955, officers raided his home at 827 St. Charles Street and charged him with pandering. Six women who listed the same address as their own were taken in alongside him.
The record notes it without comment. So will we.
Two days after the murder, a police sketch artist sat down with the three witnesses. The composite police distributed across the city carried the following description:
“He is a white man 25 to 30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 160 to 175 pounds. He has straight dark hair, an olive complexion, and was wearing a light plaid sports shirt and blue jeans with spots. He was wearing a Panama hat, was possibly a truck driver, could speak Italian, and he had good teeth.”
Two more holdups followed in the weeks after. A witness to one described a Panama hat. Bars across the city began locking their doors before midnight. At the third holdup, however, the surviving bartender described the bandit in a wool cap and a stocking mask.
Whether the third robbery was the same man, the record does not resolve.
Then came the Slidell Five and Dime.
On the afternoon of June 23, 1958, stenographer Paula Rivet, 44, approached the store’s entrance. A man came out the door with a handkerchief over his face and a gun in his hand. He told her the store was closed and walked quickly away.
Rivet screamed. C.A. Strickland, who ran a nearby electrical repair shop, jumped into his truck and gave chase. After three blocks, the man ran between two houses.
“I shouted for him to stop, and he came back. That’s when I saw the blood on the gun. He pointed it at me and said: ‘Please don’t shoot,’ and tossed the gun under one of the houses.”
In the yard next door, the man confronted Mrs. Freda Magee as she hung laundry on the line. He ran past her to a heavy rice truck at the curb. He climbed into the cab and drove away.
Inside the store, Paula Rivet found the body of Myrtle Jones Pichon in the corner. Pichon was 47 years old and worked as the part-time cashier. The killer had dragged her body 45 feet across the floor.
Slidell Police Chief Clarence Howze spotted the rice truck speeding west on Highway 190 and gave chase. Four St. Tammany Parish deputies joined him. The pursuit covered ten miles and lasted more than an hour.
“It was the darndest thing. He was trying to change clothes as he drove. The way the truck was weaving, it made it dangerous for us to try and head him off.”
Tangipahoa Parish deputies stopped the truck at the parish line. Delbert William Eyer climbed from the cab. “I don’t know what you want me for,” he said. Then he tried to run.
Chief Howze bear-hugged him until deputies could apply the handcuffs.
Police locked Eyer in the St. Tammany Parish jail. That night, an armed mob entered the lockup carrying pistols, shotguns, and a hangman’s noose. Before sunrise, a judge transferred him to the Tangipahoa Parish prison. Deputies there phoned Detective Holmes.
Holmes arrived at noon and studied Delbert William Eyer. Eyer had no olive complexion. He did not speak Italian. His teeth were rotten.
Holmes compared the slugs. Eyer’s weapon had fired .22 caliber rounds. The Gagliano killing required a .25. The fingerprints lifted from an ashtray at the T&M bar did not match Eyer’s.
Holmes ordered a polygraph test. Questioned about the Slidell robbery and the death of Myrtle Jones Pichon, Eyer failed. Questioned about the killing of Thomas Gagliano, he passed.
The polygraph confirmed what the slugs and fingerprints already showed. What no test could answer was who had placed the anonymous telephone call pointing police toward truck drivers in the first place.
He packed his case files and walked out of the Amite jail. He was halfway to his car when a man in a Tickfaw police uniform stopped him.
The officer unfolded a crumpled newspaper clipping. It showed the police composite of the Panama Bandit. “I play cards with this man every week,” the officer said. “He’s got family in Independence.”