'The biggest bank robbery in Fairfield County'

Charles S. Wade, manager of Connecticut National Bank, was shaving in the bathroom of his Church Street home on April 22,1963 before going to work at his branch at 431 Main Street when he heard the doorbell. Wade answered the door and was confronted by a man dressed in green, who pulled a revolver from his coat.

Standing at about 5'10, the stranger wore heavy, dark glasses and had white tape over his right cheek and flesh colored tape over his left. Orange makeup, which appeared to be lipstick, was smeared on and above his lips.

"You know I was going to pull the job last Monday but my car overturned and the thing was put off," he told the bank manager.

Wade went into the basement with the bandit, who disconnected wires to the kitchen phone and to an extension into another room.

Myra Wade woke up and called for her husband from upstairs. He told her to go back to sleep.

Before making Charles Wade drive him to the bank across town, the intruder plugged in a homemade time bomb in a kitchen outlet as Wade's wife slept upstairs. If anything went wrong, the bomb would explode, the bandit warned.

Patrick J. O’Shea, a 37-year-old Fairfield television and appliance repairman, went on to commit what was called "the biggest bank robbery in Fairfield County," making off with an estimated $65,285 from Connecticut National, Monroe's first bank.

The gray building, which was constructed in 1956, will soon be demolished to make way for an outpatient facility for Danbury Hospital.

Bernie Sippin, whose family bought the building from Stepney Baptist Church last year, said the bank vault is still inside. "We'll need a huge forklift to lift it up," he said.

Headlines in Virginia

Town Historian Edward Coffey and his wife Marcia were on their honeymoon in Virginia when Coffey saw the story of the bank robbery in his rural farming town on the front page of the newspaper.

"We were shocked because we just moved to Monroe and it was around the corner from us," Coffey said.

The Wades lived close to the Coffeys. Ed remembers Charles Wade as "a very nice man," who was always involved in the community.

"Bank robberies weren't as common at that time," he said, adding it was more likely to happen in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

Philip Corning lives on Pepper Street and grew up around the Stepney Green, across from the bank.

"I was at work. I remember the activity around and hearing people talk about it," Corning said. "Nobody got hurt."

Corning's mother told him about the robbery and clipped out a newspaper article for her scrapbook.

Corning's sister, Joan Marr, was around 13-years-old at the time, and like a lot of girls her age, mostly thought about the Beatles.

"My only remembrance is not so much the bank robbery, which was frightening, but somebody being held hostage," Marr said. "Certainly that had to be pretty uncomfortable."

Both Marr and Corning said there was no panic in the neighborhood after the crime. "As kids, we had no fear," Marr explained. "We just wanted to know what the next Beatles song was."

Get the Cash. Ditch the Car

Four tellers counted the money in their drawers at 8:50 a.m., while preparing for the 9 a.m. opening, when Wade's car circled around the back of the bank. Wade and the gunman came in through the back door of the building.

O'Sullivan made the tellers fill bags with money, then go into the bathroom, which he left unlocked. Wade loaded the car before being ordered back into the bank, where he immediately turned on the alarm.

O'Sullivan sped north on Main Street as police officers were soon racing to the bank and setting up roadblocks. The stolen vehicle was later found abandoned in a wooded area off Hiram Hill Road.

Investigators initially thought he had an accomplice and a suspicious blue paneled truck was seen parked on Autumn Street about two miles from the bank. Then they decided the clever criminal acted alone, parking his car by Hiram Hill and walking to the Wades' house.

Nancy Lizak, who was married to auxiliary officer Terry Gillette at the time (he went on to be a Monroe police lieutenant), lived on Hiram Hill, close to where Wade's car was left. A police officer and an FBI agent came to her home while canvassing the neighborhood for any information they could find.

"My son offered them a drink in his three-year-old speech," Lizak recalled with a chuckle. "He offered them a beer and they got a kick out of that."

The lawmen politely declined.

Got a bomb? Just unplug it

Myra Wade discovered the bomb when she went downstairs and unplugged it. Police said the bomb, which was packed with gunpowder, was set for 9:15 and was capable of exploding.

An FBI laboratory examined the bomb and police interviewed several suspects, combed the woods for abandoned clothing, and tried to track down where 25-feet of blue wire used for the bomb had been purchased.

Bridgeport police made a composite sketch of the suspect, who fit the description of a man who held up a bank in Wilton.

O’Shea was not caught until the spring of the following year, when he was arrested in Norwalk for robbing the Huntington branch of the City Savings Bank. He later confessed to the Monroe robbery.

The money stolen from the Monroe Branch of Connecticut National Bank was buried on a small wooded lot off Tunxis Hill Road Cutoff, near Cedarhurst lane, in Fairfield just a couple of blocks away from O’Shea’s home at 1265 Black Rock Turnpike.

Patrick O’Shea would often frequent the site, always at night, to replenish his pockets. He last visited the location in October of 1963 when he took a final $6,000 and departed for Texas, according to an old newspaper article on the Save Our Stepney website.

A Bygone Era

When Monroe residents wanted to make a transaction up until the early '50s, most went to the City Trust at the corner of North Avenue and Main Street in Bridgeport, Bernie Sippin recalled.

"That's where we used to go," he said. "It was a real pain."

Connecticut National Bank, which was headquartered in the Park City, added its first branch in Monroe in the late '50s and Charlie Wade was hired as manager.

"My mother used to love that guy," Sippin recalled. "He was a real gentleman. When you walked into the bank, he walked right up to the door."

"We knew Charlie Wade pretty well," Lizak recalled. "It was the only bank in town then. You could go in the bank and you knew everybody that worked there and the other customers, because we were all local people. That small town is gone now."

"If you wanted to borrow money, when you walked in they knew right off the bat whether they'd give it to you or not," Sippin said with a laugh.

Most of the details from the bank robbery was obtained from Bridgeport Telegram stories written by Pete Mastronardi and Jean Loveland. The articles can be found in the Jean Loveland collection at Edith Wheeler Memorial Library.