George Loper, Officer

Pauls Valley Police Department

Shortly after midnight on Monday, May 27, 1935, a car pulled up near Officer Loper as he made his rounds and the three men inside told him to throw up his hands. At first Loper, 40, thought it was a joke then he observed that the other night officer, George Longacre and his friend who was accompanying him on his rounds were also in the car and realized they had been kidnapped. Officer Loper started to draw his gun but was shot through the heart by one of the men in the car. The men released Longacre and his friend outside of town. With in a week the three suspects, Charles Sands, Ray “Pete” Traxler and Leon Siler, the man who shot Officer Loper, robbed a bank and killed Grady County Deputy Sheriff James E Wilson. Sands and Siler were put to death in the state’s electric chair on June 11, 1937.