Today's trivia (August 6)

During the early 1920s, Eddie Adams terrorized the Midwest, killing a handful of police officers and robbing nearly two dozen banks.

Wichita was his stomping grounds, and the city had had enough of him.

"KILL ADAMS AND ROUT GANG," screamed a headline in The Wichita Eagle on Nov. 23, 1920.

By then, he had escaped from authorities on his way to the Missouri State Prison, single-handedly robbed a mail car guarded by eight armed postal authorities, and survived a shootout with a five-man posse in Iowa.

He was the most sought-after criminal in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. A $300 reward was offered for information on Adams. The Anti-Horsethief Association scoured the country looking for him.

Little is known about his childhood, except that he was born in 1887 on a farm near Hutchinson. By 1910, he was working as a barber in a shop on East Douglas.

In 1911, he married a childhood sweetheart in Hutchinson. But she left him for another man.

He was first arrested in 1915 for running a gambling house on Wichita's South Emporia.

"He was nervy and did not seem to care what became of him," The Eagle reported. "He steadily refused to leave Wichita and has operated out of his three or four hangouts in different parts of the city."

By 1921, Adams was serving time in prison, at Lansing Penitentiary. He'd been sentenced to 10 to 30 years for robbing a bank in Cullison.

On Aug. 13, 1921, he escaped Lansing by knocking out the prison power plant and scaling a wall with a ladder he had made from scrap wood.

For the next three months, he terrorized Wichitans.

Question: How did Eddie Adams finally die?

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Answer to Fridday’s question: In 1953 and 1954, Bill and Doree Post worked at Wichita's KFH Radio on a show called "Your Nearest Neighbors."

Check back at Kansas.com on Sunday for the answer to today’s question.

This story was originally published August 5, 2011 at 12:23 PM with the headline "Today's trivia (August 6)."