Outlaws/Mobsters

Babe Simpson, the Bank Robber in the Family Tree

Yesterday my brother found this website with lots of interesting facts pertaining to my family. The man in this picture is Babe Simpson who is my

grandmother's brother. Babe was a gangster of some sort.

The picture was taken in Knoxville. The back of the picture is an advertisement for "The Askins Stores, 506 S. Gay St., Knoxville, Tenn."

Babe had been in the Bunch Gang. All of which I had never heard of.

Clarence Bunch was the leader of the gang. He was shot in Knoxville in 1934.  After escaping from the Cocke County jail in Newport, Tennessee on May 15, 1934, Clarence and his gang rampaged through Claiborne, Grainger, and Knox Counties. They killed Sheriff Hutchinson of Union County. They stole cars and robbed travelers until they were finally trapped at the home of C.T. Epperson, who was described as a bootlegger and was a first cousin of Clarence's mother. Clarence was killed in a hail of machine gun fire as he tried to shoot Sherriff Brewer of Knoxville.


The Knox County Sheriff's Website mentions that Wesley Brewer, in his term from 1932-1936, "was Sheriff in an era when the Roger Toughy Gang was headquartered here and Clarence Bunch was killed in a shoot-out with police."

The Bunch of the Bunch Gang were primarily bank robbers. They operated mostly in Northeast Tennessee. I know Clarence escaped once while awaiting trial for a bank robbery in Virginia. He was killed in Knoxville in August 1935. Almost the entire front page of the Knoxville paper was devoted to the shooting, including a morgue picture.

The front page story was in the August 23, 1934 edition of the Knoxville Journal. The Journal went into a long decline and was sold to its current owners as a shadow of its former self in 1995. I'm not sure if Babe was present at the gunfight, but if so he survived. His brother, Walt Simpson told them that the gang had hidden some of their loot on the banks of the Tennessee River. When the gang tried to retrieve it they couldn't locate the hiding place. If the story's true, there could still be a Bunch Gang treasure somewhere along the river.

After he got out of jail, Babe apparently quit the outlaw life. He married a lady named Vernell(3rd marriage) and moved to Virginia, they had two children. Vernell had a son(Bobby) from a previous marriage.

Babe's real name was Jesse Edward Simpson, named after his father. He was born in 1909 in Petros, Tennessee. He died in 1978 and is buried in Fries Cemetery in Grayson County, Virginia. Walt Simpson passed away in 2007.

The majority of this information was posted by Les Jones @ www.lesjones.com/posts/002232.shtml


I am just now finding this information out. My grandmother(Mary Nell Simpson-Akers) is still living at 92. If you know any information about this gang/mob, I would love to hear from you.