A hundred years ago, the scene inside the Bank of Pompano unspooled like Hollywood cinema. At noon on a warm September day, a tall, handsome man — John Ashley, ringleader of the desperado Ashley Gang — entered the bank with a right eyepatch, a loaded rifle and a grudge.
Three outlaws shuffled in behind him, and employees Cecil Cates and T.L. Myers found themselves staring down the barrels of unfriendly guns. One gangster demanded the contents of the vault in a calm, charismatic voice, but the engraved bullet left on the counter conveyed a threat: There’s a round with Sheriff Bob Baker’s name on it waiting for him.
After relieving the Bank of Pompano of $5,000 in cash and $18,000 in securities, the Ashley Gang ducked into a stolen getaway cab and peeled off. But that loot proved to be their last. After a 40-bank robbing spree, the saga of South Florida’s most infamous gangsters ended with a midnight police ambush on a bridge over Sebastian Inlet that left Ashley and his cohorts dead. In the aftermath, Sheriff Baker reportedly bent over the gangster’s body, lifted the eyepatch and retrieved a keepsake: John Ashley’s glass eye…