The Failed Robbery of Zollie Kelman
By Michael Kelman Portney
1. The Knock
Great Falls, Montana — October 24, 1976.
The knock at the front door didn’t sound like danger. Not frantic. Not loud. Just enough to pull David Kelman to answer it.
Abby was away at school in Denver. The house was quiet.
When David opened the door, a hand clamped over his mouth. Three masked men surged into the entryway, guns up, the kind of shove that told everyone inside they’d just lost control of the night.
One robber covered the family in the living room, ordering them to the floor. Another held position at the door. The third grabbed Zollie Kelman and pushed him toward the back rooms.
2. The Treasure They Came For
The men weren’t there for the TV, the furniture, or even cash. They came for something Zollie was known for — and in Great Falls, that meant everybody knew: the coin hoard.
It wasn’t a myth. Zollie had built it piece by piece over decades. He was the founder of the American Music Company, running jukeboxes, pinball machines, and other gaming devices across Montana. Every coin drop was a chance to hunt silver.
Before 1965, U.S. coins were 90% silver. When the government pulled silver from circulation, Zollie kept every old coin he could get. He had his family help sort through the take, separating the silver-rich ones into boxes. Over the years, he amassed roughly 60,000 silver dollars plus thousands of other rare coins and banknotes — a stash worth about $250,000 then, over $1.3 million today.
The problem was that Zollie liked to talk about it. In Montana barrooms and back offices, a story about “Zollie’s treasure” was part brag, part legend, and part invitation.
3. Face Down and Moving
In the living room, the family lay face-down on the floor, guns hovering over them. Zollie was marched from room to room, ordered to open closets, pull open drawers, point out safes.
The robbers didn’t know they had missed someone. In a back room, Zollie’s brother-in-law had slipped out of the roundup. He had a gun. He was waiting.
When the moment came, he fired. One of the robbers took a bullet to the leg.
4. The Response
While the wounded man screamed, the brother-in-law called the police. Great Falls PD moved fast. Patrol cars boxed in the neighborhood. Officers with shotguns and revolvers surrounded the house.
The robbers panicked. One tried to get out a window. Another considered a sprint for the door. Neither made it far. Officers were inside, weapons drawn, telling them it was over.
Within minutes, the three men were cuffed. The guns were taken. The family was safe. The coins were still in the house.
5. Zollie’s Boots
And that’s when Zollie made his point.
One of the cuffed robbers — the one who’d just been shot — was on the ground. Zollie stepped toward him and started kicking. Once. Twice. Harder.
The officers shouted at him to stop. When he didn’t, they threatened to arrest him too. It took physical restraint to pull him back.
To some, it was rage. To others, it was justice. To anyone who knew Zollie, it was entirely in character.
6. Who They Were
The three arrested that night were later identified as Jack R. Lande, Eugene R. Welborn, and a third accomplice. Lande, 30, was a construction foreman from Missoula. The others had ties to Montana but weren’t from Great Falls.
Under questioning, Lande told police they’d heard about the coins from someone else — a name that would take the case in a stranger direction.
7. The Bretz Angle
That name was Lavon “L.R.” Bretz — a disbarred attorney from Billings, already in prison on unrelated charges. Lande claimed Bretz told them Zollie had 60,000 uncirculated silver dollars at home.
By January 1977, prosecutors charged Bretz with conspiracy to commit the robbery. The theory was simple: Bretz fed the tip, the crew acted on it.
8. Trials and Vanishing Witnesses
The cases split. Lande and his crew were tried for the robbery. Lande was convicted. Welborn and the third man faced similar outcomes.
Bretz’s trial went differently. The prosecution needed more than Lande’s word — Montana law required corroboration. They had a witness lined up, a man named Walter Bridgeford, who supposedly could tie Bretz to the planning.
Then Bridgeford disappeared. Just vanished.
A woman named Barbara Reich had already skipped an earlier date. She eventually testified, but her statements were ruled hearsay.
With no corroboration, the judge dismissed all charges against Bretz in May 1977. Bretz walked out of court cleared in the robbery case.
9. The Lawsuit
In 1979, Bretz filed a $3.4 million federal civil rights suit. His claim? The robbery had been staged — by Zollie Kelman himself — in league with Lande and Welborn, with the help of two Great Falls police officers, to frame him.
Bretz accused them of perjury, fabricating evidence, and running a setup to keep him locked up.
The case, Bretz v. Kelman, moved through the courts for years. Parts of it were briefly revived on appeal in 1985. But in the end, he couldn’t prove it. The lawsuit was dismissed.
10. What’s Proven and What’s Lore
The public record is clear about some things:
Three armed men entered Zollie’s home looking for his coin hoard.
A family member shot one of them.
Police surrounded the house and made the arrests.
Zollie kicked one of the robbers while he was cuffed, hard enough for the cops to threaten to arrest him.
Everything beyond that — whether someone tipped them off, whether it was staged, whether there were bigger forces at play — lives in the space between sworn statements and barroom talk.
11. Aftermath for Zollie
Zollie didn’t slow down after the robbery. He kept running American Music, stayed in the coin game, and continued to have both allies and critics in Great Falls.
His collection stayed intact for decades. Eventually, it was graded and sold off in pieces, with parts of it resurfacing in the numismatic market well into the 2000s.
Zollie’s reputation stayed the same: a businessman with a taste for the gray areas, a man who could be charming, intimidating, and shrewd all in one conversation.
12. The Night’s Place in the Legend
For the people who were there, the robbery was terrifying. For Great Falls, it was confirmation of everything they already believed about Zollie — that his life was big enough to draw dangerous men, that his house held treasure worth killing for, and that if you crossed him, you might find out what his boots felt like.
It was also a reminder that in Montana, legends aren’t always carved from clean lines. Sometimes they’re built from the overlap between fact and rumor, court records and kitchen-table stories.
13. Why It Endures
Nearly fifty years later, people still tell the story. The armed men. The shot in the hallway. The flashing lights outside. And Zollie, leaning in over a cuffed robber, kicking until the cops pulled him off.
The official version ends with the arrests. The unofficial version — the one that sticks in people’s minds — ends with that image of Zollie delivering his own verdict.
It’s why the story lives on in Great Falls. It’s not just about a failed robbery. It’s about a man whose life and legend could produce a night like that, and whose reaction in the moment ensured nobody would ever forget it.
