John Sykes Says Gambling Debts Lead to His Taking $25,000 from Bank, July 20, 1922

Bank Officials Scout Young Sykes’ Story. . . Don’t Credit Statement That He Was Short in His Accounts for Months

Ashamed to look the old home town folks in the face, and to avoid the gaping, curious crowds at the depot in Elizabeth City, John D. Sykes Jr., released in Raleigh Monday under a bond of $10,000, didn’t come straight home by rail. He got off the train at Hertford, 18 miles from Elizabeth City, and drove thru the country to his old home.

Young Sykes will make no statement to newspaper men and is staying close to the Sykes farm house on Body Road outside the city limits. He hasn’t been in town to pay a visit to the First & Citizens National Bank to express his regrets for having unceremoniously departed nearly a year ago with $25,825 of the bank’s money, tho he was reported in town yesterday in conference with his lawyer, E.F. Aydlett.

Bond for young Sykes was furnished by a number of Elizabeth City people, most of them members of the First Baptist Church where his parents hold membership and are held in high esteem. The bond was fixed at $10,000 because that will just about represent the difference between the sum that Sykes stole and the amount recovered from him when he was captured in Montana a few weeks ago. When captured he turned over to the officers about $10,000 in bonds and currency and other property worth $5,000 or $6,000.

The fact that so much was salvaged means that the First & citizens National Bank will not lose a dollar by the defalcation. Sykes was bonded for $25,000, leaving the bank with a loss of $825. The bank will recover this $825 from the salvaged moneys.

Young Sykes has given only one interview to the press since he was captured in the wilds of Montana and brought back to North Carolina. In this statement he is said to have charged his down fall to dice, sayhing that he had played and lost until he faced a shortage of $6,000 at the bank. That this shortage had stared him in the face for months and, finally, seeing no way to make good, he made away with $19000 more and ran away. He said he had hoped to make good and repay the shortage.

Officers of the First & Citizens National do not credit Sykes’s story. They say it would have been impossible for him to have covered a shortage of more than a few hundred dollars for a longer period than two weeks and that practically the entire sum of $25,825 was stolen within a period of 14 days. The whole thing was ingeniously planned and timed so that he would have two days with the bank closed in which to make his get-away. He left town on Sunday Morning, Sept. 2, 1922, the day before Labor Day. Soon after the opening of the bank on Tuesday the shortage was discovered.

John D. Sykes Sr., father of the boy, says his son will make restitution. “My boy is pure gold,” says the loyal father.

From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, July 20, 1923