Two men robbed the First National Bank of Atlanta, Texas, at approximately 2:40 p.m. on June 6, 1934. The robbers escaped with over $10,000 in cash, jewelry, and securities. Three bank employees and one customer were present, and all were forced to lie on the floor while the robbery occurred. When leaving the bank, the robbers held the bank’s assistant cashier, Verne Clements, at gunpoint and forced him to leave with them. They took Clements in their getaway car—a maroon sedan with a Missouri license plate—then released him, uninjured, outside the city limits. (Atlanta is in the northeast corner of Texas.)
By late July, no arrests had been made, and the bank hired M. Red Burton, a former Texas Ranger, to expand the investigation. In mid-August, Burton traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas, with an unspecified witness to the crime. While there, the witness spotted 34-year-old Ira “Doc” L. Southerland and identified him as one of the robbers.
Southerland insisted he had been in Shreveport, Louisiana, with his friend Ovid Mathis and two female companions, Vera Buse and Opal Garner, at the time of the crime.
Police arrested Southerland and 27-year-old Mathis, both residents of Little Rock, and brought them to Texas.
On August 22, 1934, Clements and two of the other witnesses—bank cashier R.P. Dunklin and bookkeeper Wilmer Hughes—identified Mathis and Southerland as the robbers. Both Mathis and Southerland said that they had been in Shreveport and knew nothing about the robbery.
In early October 1934, Southerland’s robbery trial began in Cass County District Court. District Attorney Elmer L. Lincoln prosecuted the case and sought the death penalty for Southerland. Lincoln argued that Mathis had been the lookout while Southerland carried out the robbery. Clements and Dunklin identified Southerland in the courtroom. Hughes and customer W.R. Hunt also testified, though available sources do not provide details about their testimony.
Four witnesses testified to Southerland’s and Mathis’s presence in Shreveport from 1-5 p.m. on the day of the robbery. These witnesses included Buse and Garner, who testified they had accompanied Mathis and Southerland on the outing to Shreveport. A Shreveport café proprietor and a Shreveport resident also testified to the defendants’ presence in Shreveport during that time frame. Southerland took the stand and testified to his alibi.
On October 15, 1934, the jury found Southerland guilty of robbery, and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Mathis’s trial in Cass County District Court began following Southerland’s conviction. Lincoln again prosecuted the case and sought the death penalty. Mathis testified and denied any involvement in the crime. Few details about his trial are available. On October 20, 1934, the jury found Mathis guilty of robbery and a related weapons charge. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Both sentences were affirmed on appeal in May 1935.
On August 31, 1936, Charles Chapman was shot and injured while attempting to rob a bank in Atlanta, Texas. He and his accomplice, Luther Bone (also referred to as Hugh Lindsey), were held in jail in Harrison County, Texas, after their arrest. While in the jail, Chapman confessed that he also committed the 1934 bank robbery for which Mathis and Southerland had been convicted. Cass County Sheriff H.T. Hardegree, as well as Lincoln, and one of the witnesses to the robbery came to the jail to meet with Chapman, who again confessed.
Hardegree told reporters that although Chapman was familiar with details of the crime, Hardegree did not believe his confession. “Chapman may have been part of the brains,” Hardegree said, “but I am certain he did not participate in the robbery.”
Chapman stood by his story that he had committed the robbery and that Southerland and Mathis were not involved. On March 15, 1937, Chapman and Bone were indicted by a federal grand jury for their involvement in the 1934 Atlanta robbery. Nonetheless, Mathis and Southerland remained in prison.
S.F. Barnett, a superintendent at the prison farm where Southerland was employed while incarcerated, became interested in the claims that Southerland and Mathis were not involved in the Atlanta robbery. Barnett investigated the story and turned the information he gathered over to Emmett Galloway, an investigator for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. The Board began a months-long investigation into Chapman’s confession and the potential innocence of Mathis and Southerland.
In July 1937, Arkansas Governor Carl E. Bailey wrote to Texas Governor James V. Allred asking that Allred consider granting clemency to Mathis and Southerland. Later the same month, Chapman escaped from prison while awaiting trial on a variety of robbery charges, including the June 6, 1934 robbery.
On November 7, 1938, Governor Allred granted conditional pardons to Mathis and Southerland. Allred described this as “the most difficult and complicated case I have had to pass upon,” saying that after a lengthy investigation, he was not convinced Mathis and Southerland were guilty. The men were immediately released from prison, with the condition that they would remain accountable to the Texas State Prison Board. The pardons would be subject to revocation in the event the men were found guilty of any other misconduct or crime.
Governor W. Lee O’Daniels granted full and unconditional pardons to Mathis and Southerland on September 7, 1939.
In February 1942, Chapman—still on the run after his escape from prison—was shot and killed by state and federal agents near Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Mathis and Southerland did not receive any restitution or compensation for their wrongful convictions.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspaper interviewed Mathis in 1979, more than four decades after his wrongful conviction. In the article, a worn-down Mathis talked about how his wrongful conviction, his years lost, and the abuse he’d suffered in prison had defined the rest of his life. He said that while money could not make up for what had happened to him, the state could have at least helped him get back on his feet and given him money for food upon his release from prison. “Over four years of my life had been taken from me, and my father had died,” Mathis said of his years wrongfully imprisoned.
- Meghan Barrett Cousino
Posting Date: 07-30-2026
