Deputy Sheriff Elmo "Slim" Ferguson

Elmo "Slim" Ferguson

Deputy Elmo Ferguson was shot and killed while attempting to arrest four bank robbery suspects. The suspects had robbed a bank in Baskin, Louisiana. Deputy Ferguson was riding in a posse, searching for the suspects. Deputy Ferguson was shot and killed, and five posse members were shot and wounded when the posse encountered the suspects in Madison Parish.

The suspects, three men and a woman, escaped after kidnapping a couple and stealing their automobile. They fled into Arkansas, where the woman and two men were arrested near Murfreesboro. The fourth suspect was apprehended two weeks later in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The three men were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. They were also convicted of robbing the Baskin bank and other bank robberies in Louisiana and were among the first prisoners incarcerated at the new Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in 1934. One died at the federal penitentiary in Springfield, Missouri, in 1939, and another one died in Angola State Prison on April 28, 1946.

Deputy Ferguson was survived by his wife.