Next week marks 55 years since the Bangs bank was robbed, leading to the eventual conviction of a group of local country music performers who may have taken the outlaw country concept a little too far. Billy Nelson of Brownwood was kind enough to send me some details about this incident. It does sound a bit like a sad country song. Things went from bad to worse, in this case ending in a train wreck of disaster, but not without a thread of hope through it all.

At approximately 10:30 am, on Thursday, June 11, 1970, according to an article in the

Brownwood Bulletin

from that date, three armed men held bank staff and one customer at gunpoint at the First State Bank in Bangs. The robbers were dressed in all black suits, wearing sunglasses and gloves. Mrs. Billie Williams, a member of the ban

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