TRUE CRIME: HAIL OF BULLETS AND BLOOD AT DENVER MINT

The Great Denver Mint Robbery lasted about a minute and unleashed a hail of bullets and blood.

On Dec. 18, 1922, a Federal Reserve armored car pulled up to the West Colfax Avenue entrance of the mint, which still stands today, to pick up a cash shipment of $200,000 in sacks of five-dollar bills.

A black Buick touring car, its curtains drawn, braked at the stone fortress and masked men armed with sawed-off shotguns leapt out, opened fire and snagged the cash.

A Federal Reserve guard named Charles Linton, stationed at the rear of the armored car, died as the robbers opened fire - pockmarking the mint's facade and shattering windows. Linton was shot in the abdomen, reports said.

The getaway car sped east on Colfax Avenue and turned at Pearl Street after the robbers pulled aboard a compatriot mortally wounded by a mint police officer named Pete Kiedegner, the Rocky Mountain News reported.

The evil Buick was found a month later in a garage at 1631 Gilpin Street along with the frozen body of robber Nicholas Trainor stretched on the front seat and a loaded .45-caliber six shooter in a trouser hip pocket.

Trainor "was nattily dressed in a brown checkered suit, tan shoes, neatly polished, black hose and a slouch hat," the Loveland Reporter-Herald said.

A shotgun dropped at the scene of the bloodshed was checked for fingerprints.

After more than a decade of hunting, police identified the robbers - and they were either dead or in prison for other crimes. About $80,000 of the loot was recovered in Minnesota in February 1923 along with bonds taken in an Ohio bank robbery.

[Photos: Wikipedia, private collection]