Les Jones

Babe Simpson, the Bank Robber in the Family Tree

Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 | Best Of, Family Tree - Moore Side, True Crime |

Last week Melissa’s mother Virginia gave her some of aunt Marg’s old family photos and the stories to go with them. The man in this picture is Babe Simpson. Melissa’s mom knew that he was Melissa’s grandfather’s cousin, and was a gangster of some sort.

The photo was apparently taken in Knoxville. The back of the picture is an advertisement for “The Askins Stores, 506 S. Gay St., Knoxville, Tenn.”

Virginia knew that Babe had been a gangster, and had met him a long time ago when she was very young and he was old, but she didn’t know the whole story. Melissa called her grandmother Geneva, who said Babe had been in the Bunch Gang. We had never heard of them, so we went looking.

At Geneaology.com someone had once asked about the Bunch Gang and gotten an answer from Harry Till:

My cousin, Clarence was the leader. He was shot in Knoxville in 1934.

After escaping from the Cocke County jail at Newport Tn on May 15, 1934, Clarence and his gang rampaged through Claiborne, Grainger and Knox Counties. They killed Sheriff Hutchinson of Union County. They stole cars and robbed travellers until they were finally trapped at the home of C T Epperson, described as a bootlegger and a first cousin of Clarence’s mother. Clarence was killed in a hail of machine gun fire as he tried to shoot Sherriff Brewer of Knoxville.

The Knox County Sheriff’s Web site mentions that Wesley Brewer, in his term from 1932-1936, “was Sheriff in an era when the Roger Toughy Gang was headquartered here and Clarence Bunch was killed in a shoot-out with police.”

I emailed Till to see if he had more information, and he responded:

The Bunch of the Bunch Gang was my cousin Clarence. They were primarily bank robbers. They operated mostly in Northeast Tennessee. I know Clarence escaped once while awaiting trial for a bank robbery in Virginia. He was killed in Knoxville in August 1935 [I think he meant 1934 - LJ]. Almost the entire front page of the Knoxville paper was devoted to the shooting, including a morgue picture.

According to this message board post, the front page story was in the August 23, 1934 edition of the Knoxville Journal. The Journal went into a long decline and was sold to its current owners as a shadow of its former self in 1995. I called their offices, and they said I’d need to go to the library to find back issues, so that’s a project for a rainy day.

I’m not sure if Babe was present at that fatal gunfight, but if so he survived. During Father’s Day dinner Melissa and I quizzed her family. They say Babe did a long stretch in the penitentiary. After he got out he visited his relatives in Knoxville. I assume that’s when Melissa’s mother and grandmother met him. He was still handsome enough to make Melissa’s grandmother “weak in the knees.”

His brother Walt Simpson told them that the gang had hidden some of their loot on the banks of the Tennessee River. When the gang tried to retrieve it they couldn’t locate the hiding place. If the story’s true, there could still be a Bunch Gang treasure somewhere along the river.

After he got out of the pen, Babe apparently quit the outlaw life. He moved to Virginia, married, and had three children. This is a picture of him with two of his kids.

Just last night someone on RootsWeb answered Melissa’s post with more information, including Babe’s real name - Jesse Edward Simpson. He was born in 1909 in Petros, Tennessee. He died in 1978 and is buried in Fries cemetery in Grayson County, Virginia. Walt Simpson passed away just last year.

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