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The following is excerpted from Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers, by Robert M. Utley. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press. Used by permission.

In the spring of 1957, Dallas-based Company B of the Rangers was commanded by Sergeant E. J. "Jay" Banks, acting as captain until confirmed later in the year. As Ranger Glenn Elliott remembered, "Jay was a very high profile type person. He was always on the cover of a magazine or newspaper." He even stood as the model for the statue of the ideal Texas Ranger that graced the terminal lobby of Dallas's Love Field. Despite starring in a string of well-publicized cases, Jay Banks is mainly remembered for one bloody event.

Gene Paul Norris, the "smiling killer," was an Oklahoma gangster with a long record of murder, burglary, bank heists, and sadism. He seemed to enjoy killing, and the slightest provocation could trigger his revenge, often preceded by torture. Big-time criminals hired him as a hit man. Lawmen credited him with about fifty homicides. The FBI kept track of the comings and goings of Norris and his sidekick, William Carl ("Silent Bill") Humphrey.

In March 1957 Norris drove to Fort Worth from Oklahoma. He had conceived a scheme for robbing the payroll of the branch of the Fort Worth National Bank at Carswell Air Force Base. Norris knew that James E. Papworth, who ran a collection agency out of a Lake Worth office on the northwestern edge of the city, had served prison time with John W. Taylor, former manager of the branch bank who had been convicted of embezzlement. Norris demanded (or proposed) that Papworth get a floor plan and other inside information about the bank from Taylor. Papworth delivered, handing over the floor plan and the name and address of the cashier, Mrs. Elizabeth Barles.

The plan was for Norris and Humphrey to seize and doubtless murder Mrs. Barles and her twelve-year-old son John early on the morning of the scheduled payroll delivery, Tuesday April 30, 1957. What Norris wanted was Mrs. Barles's auto and bank keys. Her car, bearing a base entry sticker, would get them into the base, and the keys would get them into the bank. There they would wait for the payroll couriers to arrive with $500,000 in cash, tie them up, and return to pick up their own car at Mrs. Barles's residence.

First, Norris had unfinished business in Houston. The mission was to carry out a twenty-year-old vow: a revenge killing of gambler John Brannan, whose testimony in 1937 had sent Norris's brother to prison for ninety-nine years. On April 17 Norris and Humphrey entered the Brannan home, threw blankets over the heads of Brannan and his wife, and with hammers pounded their heads to a pulp. Police discovered the deed the same night, and before long they and Company A Ranger captain Johnny Klevenhagen had enough evidence to support arrest warrants. Aside from pistols that linked the two to recent robberies, police had twice spotted Norris's souped-up green 1957 Chevrolet in Brannan's neighborhood and had once given chase, only to be outrun by the powerful Chevvy.

Hardly had the Carswell bank scheme been worked out than the FBI knew about it, alerted by a tipster whose identity was never confirmed. Captain Banks later identified the informant as Papworth himself. In Fort Worth, the FBI, Texas Rangers, Fort Worth police, and Tarrant County sheriff met to work out a plan. They knew where Norris and Humphrey were holed up and set up a listening device connected from their motel room to one next door. Thus they knew exactly what the two gangsters planned.

The law enforcement response to Norris's design exemplified the long-time Ranger policy of cooperation with other agencies. Acting Captain Banks worked smoothly with Tarrant County sheriff Harlon Wright, Fort Worth chief of police Cato Hightower, and FBI special agent in charge W. A. "Bill" Murphy. The FBI tracked Norris and Humphrey from Houston to Fort Worth, where they arrived on Saturday April 27. With the surveillance link in place, they learned that Norris and Humphrey intended to make a dry run of escape routes on Monday afternoon. Officers laid plans to apprehend the two hoodlums then. Banks called Johnny Klevenhagen in Houston and invited him to take part. The captain grabbed his shotgun and arrest warrants and sped north to Fort Worth.

On Monday afternoon April 29 the local officers converged on the Lake Worth community where Mrs. Barles lived. They had three cars. Captain Banks drove his new high-powered Dodge with Captain Klevenhagen, Chief Hightower, Sheriff Wright, and city detective captain O. R. Brown. Banks's sergeant, Arthur Hill, with Ranger Jim Ray and city chief of detectives Andy Fournier, manned a second car, with Ray at the wheel (he had been a Ranger for only two weeks but a highway patrolman for twelve years before that). In the third were Ranger Ernest Daniel and city detectives George Brakefield (later a Ranger) and sheriff's deputy Bobby Morton.

Banks's car contained the top law officers because they would man the ambush. Posting Sergeant Hill and his two Rangers at "Casino Beach," an amusement park a short distance up Meandering Road from the Jacksboro Highway, Banks and his carload of four other officers drove two miles southwest down Meandering Road to Mrs. Barles's home. She and her son had been moved elsewhere on Sunday. There the lawmen lay in wait.

The FBI spotted the two men in Fort Worth and followed them until Hill saw them turn onto Meandering Road. "Take over, Rangers, we are out of it, now," the FBI radioed.

Hill swung in behind at a distance, but the scheme had gone awry. A Cadillac and the green Chevvy had turned right off Meandering Road onto a residential street. Hill's car turned too, maintaining a discreet distance. The officers saw a man get out of the front car and get in the second. They misinterpreted what they saw. Actually, the first car was Papworth's, and he was taking Norris to show him the location of the Barles house. Humphrey followed in the Chevrolet. Papworth, according to his confession, had second thoughts and deliberately took a wrong turn. An enraged Norris, hurling threats, ran back and got in the car with Humphrey. At this time they spotted Hill's car behind them. Swiftly turning in a driveway and backing out, they sped back to Meandering Road and swerved northeast toward the Jacksboro Highway. Banks and his Dodge full of locals, alerted by Hill's radio, swiftly took up the pursuit.

Suddenly Humphrey veered left off Meandering Road and bumped across an open pasture toward the Jacksboro Highway, which here ran almost parallel and about one-fourth mile from Meandering Road. Banks followed. Humphrey smashed through a fence, bounced across a ditch and headed up the four-lane Jacksboro Highway. Banks kept on his tail.

Meantime, Sergeant Hill, with Jim Ray driving, raced back up Meandering Road to the Jacksboro Highway. At the left turn Ray miscalculated and found himself speeding north in the southbound lanes of the Jacksboro Highway. Soon they had pulled abreast of the two cars across the median. But Ray slowed to cross into the northbound lanes and fell behind. The third car, monitoring the radio traffic, now joined the chase, close behind Ray.

The pursuit reached speeds of 120 miles per hour, sirens wailing. Norris leaned out and exchanged fire with three officers hanging out the windows of Banks's car. The race slowed none as they streaked down the main street of Azle, scattering autos and pedestrians but avoiding collisions.

A mile and a half south of Springtown, in Parker County, Humphrey swerved right into a country road, spraying mud across the highway. This was probably not a sudden decision but part of the escape plan earlier mapped. Banks turned too, but spun in two complete circles before recovering headed in the correct direction. A light rain fell, making the caliche-based road slick as it twisted along the banks of flood-swollen Walnut Creek. Bullets and blasts from Klevenhagen's shotgun continued to slice the space between the vehicles. Suddenly Humphrey took a curve too fast, slid on the rain-slick road, plowed into a ditch, and smashed into two trees. Both gangsters leaped from the car and ran toward the creek, firing pistols at Banks as he sought to bring his Dodge to a stop. With the car crossway on the road, the officers piled out firing with all the weapons at their command, Klevehagen with his shotgun. Banks grabbed his M-3 (an army M-1 converted to fully automatic, with a large clip), but the magazine fell out, and he had to run back to retrieve it.

The two fugitives fired from behind the creek bank, then struggled to cross the flood-swollen creek. Bullets downed Humphrey, whose body washed up on a small flood-made island. Norris, screaming laughter, backed across the creek firing at the lawmen, all of whom sprayed bullets from every weapon they had. Banks let go the entire clip of his rifle. As he later stated, "The bullets started stitching Norris and he didn't have enough hands to stop up the holes. He died, screaming like a baby, on the banks of muddy Walnut Creek." Norris fell backward in the mud. All the officers later maintained that they did not know who had downed Norris, but the consensus awards the distinction to Banks and his automatic rifle.

At this moment Ray topped a little hill at high speed and saw Banks's car broadside across the road. He hit the brakes, swung in a complete circle, and came to a stop three feet from the side of the other vehicle. As Ray rolled out, Klevehagen shouted, "I'm out of ammunition. He's getting away, give me a gun." Ray pitched him his own shotgun. The third pursuit car rolled to a stop. But the firing had ended, and the bodies of both gangsters could be seen in and across the creek, about thirty yards apart. Norris had slipped back down the slope, his feet in the creek. Fearing he would be swept away by the flood waters, Sergeant Hill dragged the body back up the hillside.

Attendants at the Fort Worth funeral home where the corpses were taken told the press that Norris took sixteen hits, mostly in his chest and body, Humphrey twenty-three in his mouth, chest, and left leg. "He shot him to pieces," concluded Jim Ray of Banks's burst of automatic rifle fire. Chief Hightower declared that the death of Norris enabled him to clear nine murder cases from his books.

Banks and his fellow officers had ended the rampage of two of the deadliest criminals in Texas history. The furious chase of twenty-five miles had put many citizens at risk. Even the sheriff had urged Banks to call off the pursuit, to no avail. After years, they finally had two of the most-wanted and deadliest criminals cornered, and Banks intended to get them. He and his colleagues did.

The operation testified to the merit of agency cooperation and revealed the planning skills of the Rangers as well as their ability to push an auto chase to the limit and prevail in an exchange of gunfire.