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Posted By: Steve Murray

Jerome Willis "Red" Downs (August 12, 1883 - October 19, 1939), was a Major League Baseball player, who gained notoriety later in life as an armed robber during the Great Depression.

"Liquor has put me out for the third time," said Downs to a police detective upon his arrest for armed robbery in 1932. "First, it caused me to lose a place in the big league, where I might, by this time, have been a successful manager. The second time it threw me out of the Coast League. And now it's got me into this jam."
Red Downs,
Los Angeles Times newspaper article, March 29, 1932