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Dillinger's job was to smuggle some guns into the prison. That
required money. Soon after his release, while he was
ingratiating himself with the citizens of Mooresville, Dillinger
contacted Noble Claycomb, an associate of Pierpont. On 4th June,
with a teenager, William Shaw, the three held up a supermarket.
Then, on 10th June, Dillinger robbed his first bank. Early that
morning, he and two accomplices arrived at the National Bank at New
Carlisle, Ohio, tied up three bank employees and a customer, and
escaped with $10,600. Afterwards, Dillinger went back to
Indianapolis, contacted Shaw, and robbed two more stores the same
evening.
Two weeks later, he and Shaw tried something more ambitious.
They attempted to steal the payroll at Marshall Field's Thread Mills
in Monticello, but as they fled, empty-handed, Dillinger fired a
warning shot which ricocheted and hit the mill manager in the leg.
This was not too great a setback, Dillinger had memorised a list of
target banks given him by Pierpont in prison, and he set about
contacting other gangs, including one formed by Homer van Meter, who
had been paroled a few weeks after Dillinger. In the space of
just three weeks, Dillinger participated in ten bank robberies in five
different states.
During this time, Shaw and Claycomb were arrested. Under
questioning, they implicated Dillinger, who was known to them as
'Dan', in several robberies.
In mid-July, Dillinger and two others robbed the Commercial Bank at
Daleville, Indiana. After pulling a gun and announcing that a
hold-up was in progress, Dillinger climbed onto the counter and
vaulted over the high barrier, a trick that earned him the nickname
'The Leaping Bandit'. Local newspapermen christened him
'Desperate Dan'. |
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THICK AS THIEVES :
Short, chubby and
jovial, Charles Makley (pictured above) was born in 1889. He
began his criminal career as a common thief, then turned to
bootlegging and armed robbery during Prohibition. He was wanted
in three states for bank robbery. Makley had a reputation for
having a ready tongue, and talked himself out of many tight spots.
This, combined with his convincing manner, enabled him to pose
successfully as a bank official on many occasions.
John Hamilton, known as 'Three Fingered Jack' since a childhood
sleighing accident in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, had also been a
bootlegger but turned to bank robbing in the hope of greater
excitement. The boyish glee he took in the dangers of his chosen
profession was well known.
Russell Clark, known as 'Boobie', was a brooding young man whose calm
exterior hid a volatile temper. He was serving twenty years for
his one bank robbery. Like Dillinger, he had a keen sense of
injustice about his lengthy sentence and persistently attempted to
escape from the penitentiary. |
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Matt Leach, the head of the Indiana State Police and a man who was to
become one of Dillinger's most implacable enemies, ordered him to be
brought in for questioning.
Dillinger evaded capture in Mooresville by chance - the police staking
out his sister's house were sleeping when he called by - and went on
the run.
He went to Dayton, Ohio, to visit Mary Longnaker, the sister of a
prison friend, James Jenkins. Dillinger fell for Mary
immediately and moved into a vacant flat in her block. He took
her to the World's Fair in Chicago, then dropped her off at Michigan
City to visit her brother and smuggle in some cash for bribes.
In mid-August, following a tip-off, the Indiana State Police raided an
apartment rented by Dillinger. Three of his associates were
arrested, but Dillinger was out. He was in Bluffton, Ohio,
robbing a bank.
Acting on information received from one of the captured men, Leach's
men raided another address - but Dillinger had just left. The
Leaping Bandit was acquiring a reputation for lucky escapes.
Detectives from the Pinkerton Agency, who had been brought on to the
case by the bank at Bluffton, found out about Dillinger's relationship
with Mary Longnaker, and staked out her apartment early in September.
But Dillinger's run of luck continued. |
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THE STATE PRISON IN
MICHIGAN CITY :
The State Prison in Michigan City, Indian, was to further Dillinger's education
as a master criminal. On his release in 1933, he supplied weapons to
fellow inmates so that they could carry out a mass escape. |
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On 6th September, he robbed a bank in Indianapolis just as it was
preparing a major payroll delivery. The manager looked up from
his desk to find an armed bandit, his straw hat set at a rakish angle,
sitting cross-legged on top of a high barrier. He handed over
nearly $25,000.
Now Dillinger had all the money he needed to break his friends out of
Michigan City. He contacted Mary Kinder, who had know Pierpont
as a boy. Mary's brother Earl, had been sentenced with Pierpont
for a bank robbery in Kokomo, Indiana, and she had agreed to help the
break-out if Earl was added to the list of escapees. Her job was
to rent an apartment in Indianapolis to use as a hide-out immediately
after the prison break.
Dillinger bought three guns, wrapped them up, and, under cover of
darkness, tossed them over the prison walls. However, they were
found by an inmate and turned over to the warden before any of the
plotters could pick them up.
Dillinger tried again. He bought more guns in Chicago, and
bribed someone to secrete them in a large box of thread destined for
the prison shirt factory, where most of the conspirators worked.
Sure that his plan could not fail, he went to Dayton to see Mary
Longnaker on 22nd September. That very afternoon, the Pinkerton
men, who had been staking out Mary's flat, had abandoned their wait as
fruitless. Before they went, they told the landlady to call them
if Dillinger showed up again. Just after midnight, she did.
Two detectives, armed with a machine gun and a shotgun, and
accompanied by a local policeman, were let into Mary's apartment by
the landlady. They surprised Dillinger looking at snapshots from
his trip to the World's Fair. Faced with such an intimidating
array of weaponry, he gave up without a fight. |
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MATT LEACH :
Matt Leach, chief of the Indiana State Police, hoped to trap Dillinger through
psychological tricks. But the gangster amused himself by playing practical
jokes on the policeman, such as making taunting telephone calls to him. |
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Matt Leach of the Indiana State Police went to Dayton to interview
Dillinger about hold-ups in his state. He got nowhere.
Every questions was answered by a sardonic smile and the wide-eyed
enquiry: 'What are you talking about?'
In Dillinger's pocket were papers containing details of the prison
escape. But Leach failed to realise their significance.
The guns had arrived safely in the prison workshop and been secreted
by Walter Dietrich, a one-time associate of the Prussian officer
turned bank robber, Baron Herman Lamm.
Lamm had devised a successful method of robbing banks involving a
great deal of organisation and precise planning. Dietrich had
passed on details of the method to Pierpont, who planned to put it
into operation as soon as he got out.
The escape was set for 27th September, but was brought forward a day
because the prison authorities got wind of it. Mary Kinder's
brother, Earl, was no longer part of the plan. He was dying of
tuberculosis in the prison hospital.
At 2pm, nine prisoners, who had all applied for passes to see the
doctor, met Dietrich at the shirt factory. Makley, Pierpont and
Hamilton took the .45 pistols, while the others had fake guns.
They took two hostages - an unpopular guard and a businessman who ran
the shirt factory - and walked out of the factory with them. The
prisoners carried piles of shirts to hide the guns. They crossed
the yard to the Guards' Hall, where the main gates were situated.
Taken by surprise, the guards were overpowered, and the prisoners were
soon through the double gates into the administration block.
Pierpont held up the prison officials, demanding guns and cash.
There had recently been a change of personnel at the prison, and the
officials did not know the lock combinations for the safes. The
one man who did know, the chief clerk, was hiding beneath his desk and
phoning a warning to the police. |
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THE
LAMM SCAM :
Herman K. Lamm, a cashiered Prussian officer, came to the USA just
before the First World War. In 1917, while serving time for armed robbery
in Utah, he devised a system for robbing banks that served him well until
December 1930, when he was killed in a shoot-out after the gang's car was in an
accident.
Suitable banks were found by an accomplice, who checked the layout while posing
as, for instance, a potential large investor or a vault salesman. The
robbery was then planned and precisely timed out. One man guarded the door
and kept an eye on the customers while others cleaned out the vault and the
teller's cages. When he signaled time was up, everyone had to leave,
whether or not they had all the money.
The getaway was rehearsed, too. Back roads were used to avoid roadblocks;
and getaway cars had to kept o speed limits and rules of the road, so as not to
draw attention. Also, the route and timings were noted down and strictly
adhered to. |
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The convicts gave up their search for money.
Abandoning their hostages in the prison compound, they split into two
groups. Dietrich and three others fled in a sheriff's car.
The man group - Pierpont, Makley, Hamilton, Clark, Jenkins and a
racing driver turned bank robber called Ed Shouse - commandeered a
passing car outside the prison grounds and hid in a nearby farmhouse,
holding the family hostage until it was dark. Then they drove
the car to Indianapolis.
Mary Kinder was surprised to see them a day early. The hide-out
she had prepared was not ready, so she took them to a friend's house.
The next day she went out and, using money Dillinger had given her,
bought six new sets of clothes. The now smartly-attired
desperados were visited by Pearl Elliott, a madam and bank robber who
had been to see Dillinger in jail.
He'd given her all the cash he had managed to secrete about his
person, and asked her to arrange for Evelyn 'Billie' Frechette, a
half-Indian girl he had recently met, to be waiting for him when they
got out.
The gang understood the implied message. The first chance they
got, they would free Dillinger. |
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JOHN DILLINGER & HIS FATHER :
A teenage John Dillinger is photographed with his father on the
verandah of their Mooresville farm in Indiana. His swaggering
pose and direct gaze contrast pointedly with those of his father,
whose righteousness alienated him. |
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The second of two children of John Wilson Dillinger, a
grocer and landlord, and his wife Mollie, John Herbert Dillinger was
born on 22nd June 1903 in Oak Cliff, a middle-class district of
Indianapolis.
Mollie Dillinger died in 1906 and young John was looked after by his
sister Audrey, who was 15 years his senior. When she married,
their father took over. John Dillinger Snr, a committed
Christian, was essentially a kind man, but he thought shows of emotion
unmanly and could be a strict disciplinarian. He was often
wrapped up in his work, and his son spent a lot of the time in the
house on his own or out wandering the city streets.
Young John had few friends, and grew lonely and sullen. In 1912,
his father married Elizabeth Fields, a quiet, inoffensive woman.
She was never really close to her stepson, though she tried hard to be
friends with him. He seemed to resent the affection his father
showed her and his half-brother Hubert, who was born in 1913.
Dillinger took more and more to the streets. At the age of 12,
his reputation for daring and his precocious sexual knowledge had made
him the leader of a neighbourhood gang, the Dirty Dozen. This
brought him his first brush with the law. He and his pals took
to stealing coal from the railroad yards and selling it locally.
When they were hauled before the Juvenile Court, he refused to be
cowed. He set his cap at a rakish angle, adopted an expression
of open defiance, and casually chewed gum. Disgusted, the judge
told him: 'Your mind is crippled.' The Dirty Dozen were let off
with a warning.
Dillinger continued to develop his talent for inventive delinquency.
He liked to break in to local factories or the railway yards and run
the machinery, occasionally causing damage. He was not brought
before the law again, but his father attempted to cure his waywardness
with ever more severe punishments, including beatings with a barrel
stave. |
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DILLINGER FARM
The Dillingers' farm at Mooresville. One reason for the move to the
countryside from Indianapolis may have been Dillinger's father's effort to curb
his son's rebellious nature. |
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At sixteen he left school and refused to go on to technical college.
He wanted to work. His first job was at a veneer mill - one of
the places he had broken into - and then he worked as a mechanic in a
machine shop. Always dexterous, he proved a fine worker,
described as 'sober, honest and industrious'.
Away from work, his habits were less sober. He dismayed his
father by staying out late. John Snr. was ready to retire from
his business and, partly to remove his son from the temptations of the
big city, he sold up and bought a farm in Mooresville, his wife's
hometown.
At first, Dillinger tried to fit in. He entered High School at
his father's insistence, but refused to work and failed in almost
every subject. After one term he quit and returned to his job at
the machine shop, travelling the 27km (18 miles) to the city on a
motorbike.
He spent his free time in Mooresville, hunting squirrels, talking with
his friend Delbert Hobson, who lived in the neighbouring farm, going
to the movies and devouring stories about the Wild West.
He was particularly keen on reading about Jesse James, a vicious
killer and thief who had been mythologised into a chivalrous Robin
Hood figure.
His arguments with his father about the way his life was going became
increasingly bitter. He took to staying out all night and
spending most of his time in Martinsville, the nearby country town.
There he played pool and baseball and chased the local women, becoming
an obsessive philanderer.
Once he had seduced and abandoned all the local girls in Martinsville,
he took to consorting with prostitutes in Indianapolis. He
craved continual excitement and lost his job through persistent
dissipation. |
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JOHN WILSON DILLINGER :
John Wilson Dillinger, in April 1934, holds a petition seeking an
amnesty for his son from the governor of Indiana. Though also signed by
citizens of Mooresville, the petition was refused. |
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In July 1923, his father refused to let him have the
family car to drive to Indianapolis to see a girl, so he stole one.
The next morning he was picked up by the city police on suspicion, but
escaped.
Feeling that he could not go home, he enlisted in the US Navy, as a
fireman on 24th July. He did not take kindly to service
discipline, and spent ten days in solitary confinement after going
absent without leave. In December that year he walked off his
ship, the USS Utah which was docked in Boston, and deserted.
By March 1924, he was back in Mooresville. A month later he
married a Martinsville teenager and moved in with her parents.
He joined the town's baseball team and fell in with one of the
umpires, Ed Singleton, 31, who was a distant relative. Singleton
told him that B. F. Morgan, a local grocer, was in the habit of
carrying the day's takings with him when he made his regular weekly
visit to the barbershop. They decided to rob him. |
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DILLINGER'S MARRIAGE :
On 12th April 1934, John Dillinger walked
into his family's farmhouse with a young girl on his arm and introduced her as
his wife.
Beryl Ethel Hovius was just 16, the daughter of a working class couple in nearby
Martinsville. They spent very little time together. Her new husband
disliked married life, and although he moved in with her family shortly after
the marriage, he was soon going out at night on his own or with his friends.
Beryl stood by him when he was sent to Pendleton Reformatory, writing and
visiting regularly, but the strain began to tell after the first year and she
divorced him on 20th June 1929. The judge who allowed her petition was the
same one who had sentenced Dillinger. |
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On 6th September 1924, Morgan locked up as usual but
dropped off his takings at his home. He had nothing with him
when Dillinger, swaying drunkenly and armed with a pistol and a
makeshift cosh - a heavy bolt wrapped in a handkerchief - confronted
him on the street.
Morgan was hit over the head - the wound would require 11 stitches -
and fell to his knees, shouting out the Masonic distress call, 'Will
nobody help the widow's son?' Many people heeded the call and
came running.
Morgan grabbed at the gun, which went off and Dillinger fled.
He was arrested on 8th September and promised leniency for a guilty
plea, but refused, maintaining his innocence. When confronted by
his father, however, he broke down, and confessed everything.
The prosecutor told him that there was no need to hire a lawyer if he
pleaded guilty, and his father did not turn up at the trial.
Dillinger was alone again when the judge decided to make an example of
him, sentencing him to a minimum of ten years in jail. |
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MARY KINDER :
Mary Kinder, the girlfriend (or moll) of gangster Harry Pierpont, was
only too happy to be part of the plan to help free Dillinger from Lima jail.
She was later arrested for helping the gangsters. |
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Dillinger was held in the country jail at Lima, Ohio.
He had strongly resisted Matt Leach's attempts to have him extradited
to Indiana and instead confessed to the Bluffton, Ohio, robbery.
He knew he had a better chance of escaping from Lima than he did of
getting out of Michigan City.
Besides, a prisoner's life was relatively easy at Lima. The jail
was run by County Sheriff Jess Sarber with the help of his wife and
his son, Don. He was a humane man who believed in treating his
charges decently. They ate well and were allowed plenty of time
out of their cells for free association.
On 29th September 1933, Pierpont and the five other escapees in his
group moved to a new hide-out in Hamilton, Ohio. On the way,
they were spotted by a police patrol, which gave chase. Although
Ed Shouse managed to shake off the pursuers, James Jenkins fell from
the car during a particularly tight turn but his fellow criminals did
not dare stop for him. Jenkins had o be abandoned to fend for
himself. The next evening he was shot dead by vigilantes in the
small town of Beanblossom, Indiana.
The others had no money to help Dillinger break out of jail, but they
did not worry about that for long. On 3rd October,
they robbed a bank in St Marys, which was Makley's home town.
Mary Kinder, who had agreed to throw in her lot with Pierpont, drove
one of the getaway cars. The take was $11,000. All the
money was new, so Mary spent a couple of days baking, wetting and
ironing the notes to make them look used. |
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COUNTY SHERIFF JESS SARBER :
County Sheriff Jess Sarber was responsible for
guarding John Dillinger in Lima jail, Ohio. In October 1933, he was shot
and killed by Harry Pierpont who, together with his accomplices, entered the
jail to free Dillinger. |
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Pierpont then went to fetch Billie Frechette, and installed her, with
Mary, at a house in Cincinnati. On 11th October the men set out
for Lima. After looking over the outside of the jail, they
decided they needed to get someone inside for a better look before
finalizing their plans.
Late in the afternoon of the next day, Pierpont and Makley approached
a local lawyer, asking him to arrange for Dillinger's sister to visit
him. They planned to send in Mary posing as Audrey Dillinger.
When the lawyer said he'd check with Sheriff Sarber in the morning,
Pierpont realised that the time for planning had passed. They
had to act straight away.
At 6.20pm, Pierpnt, Makley and Clark entered the jail while Shouse
waited outside as lookout. Sarber and his wife had just finished
dinner and were relaxing in the outer office with Deputy Sheriff
Wilbur Sharp. Their prisoners, about a dozen of them, were
playing cards in the day room.
Pierpont introduced himself and his partners as police from Michigan
City, who wanted to speak with Dillinger. Sarber asked to see
their credentials. In reply, Pierpont drew his gun. Sarber
made a move toward the pistol in his desk drawer. Pierpont fired
his gun twice and the sheriff fell to his knees. Clark covered
the deputy while Pierpont and Makley pistol whipped the wounded man,
demanding the keys to the cell block.
At the sound of the first shot, Dillinger abandoned his game of cards
and went to fetch his coat and hat. He was ready to leave when
Pierpont opened the door and gave him a gun. Mrs Sarber and
Wilbur Sharp were locked up with the other prisoners. |
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'BILLIE' FRECHETTE :
'Billie' Frechette, seen here, met Dillinger at the height of his criminal
activities. She fell in love with him and was soon part of his gang.
In 1934, she was imprisoned on a Federal Detention Farm in Michigan because she
had hidden the gangster. |
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Perhaps the criminal felt a slight twinge of remorse,
for Dillinger paused to kneel a moment and look at Sheriff Sarber,
before he walked out to a waiting car which drove sedately away.
Soon afterwards, Deputy Don Sarber walked into the jail to find his
father unconscious in a pool of blood. At 8.05pm, Jess Sarber
died in hospital.
The gang were back in Cincinnati by midnight. However, the
killing of Sarber had made Ohio too hot for them. Within a
couple of days, they set out for the relative safety of Chicago.
On the way there, they stopped at the police station in the small town
of Auburn, Indiana, and looted the arsenal there, taking a selection
of rifles and pistols, some bullet-proof vests and a submachine-gun.
Even this array of hardware was not enough. Dillinger now
remembered that, before his arrest, he and van Meter had wandered into
the police station in Peru, Indiana, posing as tourists, and seen a
collection of guns in a cabinet.
On 20th October, John Dillinger and Pierpont, armed with the
submachine-gun and a pistol, brazenly walked into the station, held up
the occupants and made off with a carload of firearms, including
shotguns and submachine-guns, and a selection of armoured vests.
It was time to get down to what they did best - robbing banks. |
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JOHN DILLINGER :
By late 1933, John Dillinger had become a
household name with his bank robberies and derring-do in the Midwest states of
Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. He and his gang fled to Florida, then
Arizona. |
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The Dillinger gang's next job, on 23rd October 1933,
was at Greencastle, Indiana. They followed Lamm's stick-up blue
print to the letter, meticulously planning and rehearsing both the
robbery and their getaway. They entered the bank, scooped up
$75,000 in cash and bonds into army barracks bags, and left without
firing a shot.
They followed a previously mapped route along back roads to Chicago,
where they had all rented apartments in the better areas of the city.
Dillinger began phoning Chief of Police, Matt Leach and taunting him.
Leach took this as a sign of weakness but he enjoyed the psychological
battle. He learnt from an informer that Dillinger had an
appointment with a dentist on 15th November and sent a small squad,
under Sergeant Art Keller, to Chicago. Three carloads of Chicago
detectives joined them outside the surgery.
They planned to pull out and block Dillinger's car when he tried to
drive away.
When Dillinger came out of the surgery, he spotted the waiting police
cars. He got into his own car, told the waiting Billie Frachette
to get down on the floor, then roared away in reverse on to the main
street, taking the police by surprise.
The Indiana detectives managed to take up the chase. Keller and
his men fired at the fleeing Dillinger with a .38 and a shotgun.
The only return fire came from a Chicago cop walking his beat.
He assumed that the out-of-state car with gunmen hanging out the
windows contained mobsters. |
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SENSATIONAL EXPLOITS :
The sensational exploits of the Dillinger gang were widely reported across the
country. The coverage supplied by this Milwaukee newspaper helped to give
the gang a fearsome reputation. |
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Though his windscreen had been shot out, Keller continued the chase
for several kilometres, losing Dillinger only when the latter made a
dizzyingly sharp turn and disappeared in a maze of back streets.
This manoeuvre earned the outlaw grudging praise from the detectives;
'The bird sure can drive .'
Abandoning the car, which was shot full of holes, Dillinger and Billie
also quit their apartment and moved in with Clark and Makley.
The newspapers wrote up the abortive ambush as a long gun battle.
Soon after this, Ed Shouse was dropped from the gang. He was
becoming a liability. An inveterate womaniser, he had upset
Dillinger by making a play for Billie.
More damning, the gang found out he was planning some robberies of his
own. They decided to pay him off. Stealing Russell Clark's
car as a parting gesture, he made for California.
In late November 1933, the five remaining gang members went to rob a
bank at Racine, Wisconsin. This time, things did not go
smoothly. The head teller made a sudden move when invited to
'Stick 'em up' and Makley shot him. As he fell, the wounded man
pressed a button which sounded an alarm in the police station.
The police were in no hurry to respond. There had been plenty of
false alarms. A couple of officers sauntered over to pick up the
box of cigars the bank handed over on these occasions.
Patrolman Boyard walked into the bank without drawing his gun.
His partner, Sergeant Hanson, followed, negligently holding a machine
gun. Makley shot and wounded Hanson, while Pierpont disarmed
Boyard. |
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THE DILLINGER GANG :
Although all the Dillinger gang members were entitled to express an opinion in
the planning stage of a raid, Harry Pierpont was very much the leader, thinking
up ideas for robberies and giving the orders when they were under way.
It was chief of police Matt Leach who called it the 'Dillinger
Gang'. He was a great believer in psychological methods of fighting crime.
He thought that Pierpont's pride would not be able to stand another gang member
getting the publicity, and hoped this would lead to in-fighting and break-up of
the gang.
But Leach's ply backfired. Dillinger revelled in his notoriety, while
Pierpont was happy to stay out of the limelight. He knew Dillinger was not
trying to upstage him, and was too grateful to him for breaking him out of jail
to resent his fame. |
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The tellers and customers caught inside the bank began
to panic. The gang calmly selected some hostages. By this
time, a large crowd of spectators had gathered in the street to watch
as the gang came out, ushering their hostages before them as human
shields.
Makley loosed off another burst from his machine gun when an armed
detective came into view. The detective ducked out of sight as
the bullets shattered a jeweller's shop window.
The hostages were loaded onto the running boards of the getaway car to
discourage hostile fire, and the gang made their escape. Once
they were sure they were safe, they let their hostages go free.
Following this exploit, the Dillinger gang topped the 'Most Wanted'
lists published by most of the police departments in Chicago.
In mid-December, following a tip-off, a police sergeant went to check
out a Chicago garage where one of the gang's cars was being repaired.
When gang member John Hamilton turned up, the sergeant challenged him,
and was shot dead, the 13th Chicago policeman to be killed on duty
that year.
This shooting led to the formation of a special 40-strong 'Dillinger
Squad' in Chicago, under the command of Captain John Stege.
Chicago was getting too hot for the robbers, and on 20th December the
whole gang left for holiday in Florida. |
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SERGEANT WILBUR HANSON :
Sergeant Wilbur Hanson, wounded by the gang during their raid on the Racine
bank, recovered and eventually became the town's police chief. |
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Two days later, another tip-off led members of the Dillinger Squad,
under Sergeant Frank Reynolds, to raid an apartment in the city.
When the armed police burst into the room, three startled occupants
reached for their guns. Reynolds killed them all.
Once the smoke had cleared, the three men were identified as minor
Chicago mobsters.
In Florida, Dillinger and Frechette checked into a villa on Daytona
Beach. Soon after, they quarrelled, and Dillinger threw her out.
She went back north.
On New Year's Eve, there were firework parties all along the beach.
The gangsters joined in the festivities by standing on the villa porch
and loosing off bursts of machine-gun fire into the night.
In the early hours of the morning, the radio programme they were
listening to was interrupted for a news flash. The Dillinger
gang had supposedly held up the New Year's celebrations at the Beverly
Gardens roadhouse outside Chicago, killing two policemen. |
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GETAWAY CAR :
During an earlier chase in Chicago, police had riddled Dillinger's car with
bullets. |
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Their holiday over, the gang broke up for a while in
the middle of January 1934, agreeing to meet up later in the month in
Tucson, Arizona. Dillinger was missing Billie, and so he went
north to fetch her.
On 15th January, a bank in East Chicago, Indiana, was robbed by three
men. Two of them were identified as Dillinger and Hamilton,
though Dillinger denied ever being there. Several witnesses,
including Mary Kinder, steadfastly maintained that he was still in
Florida, 1,500km (1000 miles) away, the day before.
The East Chicago robbery was a reckless one, which broke just about
all Baron Lamm's rules; no guards were posted outside and the whole
thing had an improvised air.
By this time, most robberies in the area were being credited to
Dillinger, who was fast acquiring a mythical reputation. What
made the East Chicago raid different was that when the man identified
as Dillinger left the bank, the policeman he was using as a human
shield broke away, and another policeman, Patrolman William O'Malley,
opened fire.
The robber was wearing a bullet-proof vest. O'Malley was not,
and he died when an answering burst from a machine gun hit him in the
heart.
The man identified as John Hamilton was wounded when a bullet got
through a seam of his vest, but he was helped to the car by his
confederates, and they made good their escape. Dillinger was now
wanted for murder. |
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DILLINGER :
After being caught in Arizona, Dillinger hoped to evade extradition by playing
one state off against another. Finally, a deal was struck and he found
himself escorted to the death penalty state of Indiana. |
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By 23rd January 1934, Makley, Clark and their
girlfriends had set themselves up in a hotel in Tucson. At 7am
that morning there was a fire in the hotel and everyone was evacuated.
A fireman, William Benedict, saw two men trying to get a ladder up to
the third floor. When he challenged them, they said they were
trying to rescue luggage.
The obliging fireman took a colleague up to their hotel room and
brought down some clothes and a heavy, locked box.
Inside the box was the gang's supply of machine-guns.
The very next morning, the fireman was glancing through a copy of True
Detective Magazine which contained a feature on the Dillinger gang.
One of the men illustrated looked familiar. Benedict checked
with the police and identified Makley and Clark from wanted posters
they showed him.
At about the same time as Benedict went to the police, Dillinger and
Billie Frechette arrived in Tucson and checked in at a motel.
Pierpont and Mary Kinder moved in next door.
On 25th January, the police traced Makley and Clark to their new home.
They followed Makley when he went shopping and arrested him in a
store. Meanwhile, other police tricked their way into the house
and subdued Clark before he could reach his gun. |
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EXTRADITION :
In 1930s America, the criminal law was almost entirely
the province of individual states. As a result, a criminal had only to
cross the state boundary to win at least a temporary reprieve from pursuit.
Extradition treaties between the states meant that a person wanted in one state,
but arrested in another, could be brought back to face trial, but this could be
a long process. This could be easily subverted by clever and corrupt
lawyers.
The bank robbers of the 1930s took particular advantage of this. They
rarely raided banks in the centre of a state, but concentrated on those near the
borders, knowing that the local police would not pursue them across the state
line. |
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Later that afternoon, Pierpont went to the house but, seeing signs of
a disturbance he turned on his heel and went away. His strange
behaviour was noted by a neighbour, who reported it to the police.
They circulated her description of the man and an Officer Nolan
realised that it tallied with a description given him by a tourist the
day before. The tourist was also staying at the motel on South
Sixth Street.
Nolan and Sergeant Eyman, who had arrested Clark, went to investigate
the motel. Nolan recognised Pierpont and Mary Kinder driving in
the opposite direction. The police got the car to pull over.
Pierpont had decided to bluff his way out when Eyman told him that
out-of-town drivers had to apply for a visitors' permit at the police
station.
Without being asked, the obliging Eyman slipped into the back seat and
directed Pierpont to the station. Only when they swung into the
yard, and Pierpont saw Makley's luggage piled outside the door, did he
realise that he had driven into a trap.
At dusk, police were waiting when Dillinger and Billie, who had been
sightseeing, parked outside Makley's house. They were surrounded
and taken without a struggle. In the space of a little over four
hours, a small town police department had captured four of America's
five most wanted men - without firing a shot.
The next day, the four outlaws were brought to court. Bail was
set at $100,000 each. Their women, charged with harbouring
criminals, had bail set at $5,000. All were remanded in custody. |
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WOMAN SHERIFF :
Lillian Holley became sheriff of Lake County, Indiana, after her husband died.
In the USA, sheriff is a political post, with every office-holder having to
stand for election once every four years. It was not unusual for a widow
to see out her husband's office in this way.
Sheriff Holley, a slightly built woman, had twin 18 year old
daughters. While Dillinger was at Crown Point, she received several
letters threatening her and her family. However, she remained convinced
that her jail was escape-proof and blocked prosecuting attorney Robert Estill's
attempts to have Dillinger taken back to Michigan City as a parole violator.
A corrupt judge, William Murry, persuaded Sheriff Holley that handing over a
prisoner would be an admission of weakness. |
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As soon as the news got out, representatives of the law and the media
descended on Tucson. Even Arizona's governor came to the jail to
chat with the celebrities.
Matt Leach made the long train journey from Indianapolis to confront
the man who had been taunting him. He was not allowed to take
Dillinger away, however. The states of Ohio and Wisconsin had
also filed for the extradition of the gang.
Robert Estill, the prosecuting attorney from Lake County, Indiana,
flew into Tucson with Hobart Wilgus, who identified Dillinger as the
man who had killed Patrolman O'Malley in East Chicago. Estill
felt he had enough to indict Dillinger for murder.
The Tucson police, who had captured the gangsters, wanted them to go
to the state offering the largest reward - Wisconsin. This was
also the outlaw's choice, as there was no death penalty in the state.
Ohio and Indiana objected. |
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JOHN DILLINGER IN CROWN POINT JAIL :
John Dillinger in Crown Point Jail, Indiana, leans amiably on the
shoulder of prosecuting attorney Robert Estill, who hoped to see him
executed. Sheriff Lillian Holley looks on with other law
enforcers. |
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While the lawyers wrangled, Estill and the Governor of Arizona made a
deal. Dillinger would be tried for the O'Malley killing in
Indiana, while the other three would be extradited to Ohio to stand
trial for the murder of Jess Sarber.
Late on 27th January, Tucson's Sheriff Belton abandoned his
high-security policy and let the public into his jail to see
Dillinger.
Around 1,500 people had taken the opportunity to 'view' Dillinger
when, at 4pm on the 28th, Belton removed him from his cell and told
him he was being sent home.
Kicking and protesting, the handcuffed Dillinger was taken to a nearby
airfield and put on a plane with Estill. According to Estill, on
the way north Dillinger confessed to the East Coast robbery and to the
shooting of O'Malley, though he claimed he would deny it in court.
Just after 6pm, Dillinger was back in Chicago. He was met by the
whole Dillinger squad, plus 85 armed police.
He made the journey from Chicago to jail in Crown Point, county seat
of Lake County, in a convoy of 13 cars with 12 motorcycle outriders.
Thousands lined the streets of the towns en route, hoping to catch a
glimpse of the legendary outlaw. |
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LOUIS PIQUETT :
Dillinger's wily lawyer Louis Piquett
ridiculed Sheriff Lillian Holley's decision to call out the National Guard in
order to foil any potential jail breakout by her charge. On past evidence,
this was a possibility. |
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Dillinger continued to get film-star treatment at Crown Point
jail in north-west Indiana. When he was received by Mrs Lillian Holley,
the sheriff, the jail was packed with people trying to get a look at the outlaw.
A newspaper photographer called out for Attorney Estill to put his arm around
Dillinger. Dillinger rested his elbow on Estill's shoulder and grinned.
The resulting photograph was to destroy Estill's promising political career.
For the time being, though, he ignored criticism, and began to prepare the case
against Dillinger. Estill now had five witnesses who would swear that
Dillinger pulled the trigger when Patrolman O'Malley was killed.
Dillinger was arraigned on 9th February 1934. Police and national
guardsman ringed the courthouse. No one knew where gang member John
Hamilton was, but many expected him to raid the jail.
Dillinger had a new lawyer, Louis Piquett, a former Chicago prosecutor reputed
to have Mafia connections. The bank robber's trial was set to begin on
12th March. Piquett insisted on more time.
When asked why, he blandly admitted that he needed it to fence some bonds stolen
in the Greencastle robbery to raise his fee. |
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DEPUTY SHERIFF ERNEST BLUNK :
Deputy Sheriff Ernest Blunk was one of the hostages taken during the jailbreak. |
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Dillinger phoned Piquett after the robbery. He wanted his
share to go towards the defence of Clark, Makley and Pierpont, whose trial was
under way in Ohio.
The money did little good. Harry Pierpont's alibi defence was blow to
pieces by the ex-racing driver Ed Shouse, who had acted as lookout in Lima.
He had been arrested in December and agreed to testify about the jailbreak.
On 12th March, Pierpont was found guilty of murder. Makley was found
guilty on 17th March and Clark on 24th March. Clark was sentenced to life
imprisonment, Makley and Pierpont to the electric chair.
On 13th March, the Dillinger gang hit a bank in Mason City, Iowa. It was a
fiasco. A guard in an armoured cage fired tear gas into the bank.
Hamilton missed nearly $200,000 in the bank vault. Three civilians were
wounded and both Hamilton and Dillinger were hit in the shoulder by John
Shipley, a retired magistrate who fired on the escaping outlaws from the third
floor of the bank.
In the confusion, most of the gang had taken hostages, and the getaway car
lumbered off with more than a dozen people in it or festooned on it.
At first they followed, but Nelson got out and began firing = seriously injuring
a passer-by - then spread tacks on the road. They made good their escape,
gathering speed as they shed their hostages one by one. |
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LITTLE BOHEMIA LODGE :
When the FBI finally caught up with Dillinger in April 1934 at Little Bohemia
Lodge in the Wisconsin wilds, they botched the operation - none of the gang were
caught and two innocent men died. |
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Dillinger rented a flat in St Paul with Billie. Before
long, the FBI were called to the block by a suspicious neighbour, and in the
ensuing fracas, Dillinger took a bullet in the leg before they made their
getaway. He was joined by van Meter, who had walked in on the raid.
On 3rd April, the FBI had their first real success. Agents staked out
Eddie Green's apartment and shot him in the head when he failed to put his hands
up on command. Green lingered for eight days. In his delirium, he
gave information on several people who had harboured the gang.
On 5th April, Dillinger went to Mooresville to see his father and introduce him
to Billie Frechette. They reached the farm cross-country and stayed a few
days, enjoying a family party, while FBI agents - unaware that Dillinger was
there - watched the road to the farm.
Dillinger and Frechette returned to Chicago on 9th April. Soon after her
return, Frechette was arrested in a bar by FBI men as the helpless Dillinger
watched from across the street. She was charged with harbouring Dillinger
in St Paul, and in June began a two year prison sentence.
Much of the gang's armoury had been left behind in St Paul. Early on 13th
April, they re-equipped by holding up the police station in Warsaw, Indiana. |
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BOHEMIAN LANDLORD :
Emil Wanatka, the owner of the Little Bohemia Lodge, was born in Brumov,
Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic, in 1888. He emigrated to USA in 1906.
In 1923, in the middle of Prohibition, he opened a saloon, also
called the Little Bohemia, on Chicago's North Side. He was rumoured to
have connections with organized crime, and several members of Bugs Moran's gang
drank at his bar.
He was almost wiped out by the Depression, and sank all he had left in the
lodge. After the 'battle', it became a tourist attraction, and Wanatka
opened a small museum of the gangsters' personal effects. |
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Three days later, the gang reunited and decided they needed a
holiday. They settled on Little Bohemia Lodge in the wilds of northern
Wisconsin. Hunters used it in season, but in April it was likely to be
deserted.
The gangsters and their wives and girlfriends made the 400 mile trip in three
cars. Nelson and his wife, Helen, stayed in a cabin in the grounds, while
the others took rooms on the first floor. They were the only guests.
It is not known whether the owner of the lodge, Emil Wanatka, was expecting
them. Piquett had been Wanatka's counsel a few years earlier and had
presumably recommended he lodge. But Wanatka maintained that it was only
when he had noticed that his affable guests all carried guns, and had checked
out the latest newspaper photos, that he realised that he was harbouring the
Dillinger gang.
Whatever the truth, the next day his wife, Nan, got a message toher sister to
contact the authorities.
At 1pm on 22nd April 1934, Ed Voss, Nan Wanatka's brother in law contacted
Melvin Purvis, who was in charge of the Chicago FBI office, and told him the
news. Purvis spoke to J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI boss, then took ten agents
and flew the 413km (275 miles) from Chicago to Rhinelander, Wisconsin.
There they met up with a deputation from St Paul office under the command of
Hugh Clegg.
Ed Voss met them at the airport, giving them a map of Little Bohemia, and they
hastily formed a plan. |
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LOYAL VILLAIN :
Herbert Youngblood, 34, knew Dillinger only briefly. The day after they
escaped together from Crown Point they split up.
Less than two weeks later, Youngblood was involved in a gun
battle with three lawmen in Port Huron, Michigan. Youngblood killed a
deputy sheriff and wounded two others before being fatally wounded himself.
Before he died, he said that he had been with Dillinger the day before,
switching the focus of the manhunt to the Canadian border.
In fact, Dillinger was in St Paul, Minnesota, with Billie Frechette at the time,
and Youngblood's dying gesture earned him some much needed breathing space. |
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The main force would steal up on the building and mount a frontal
attack, while the others approached from either side to cut off the escape.
They were not bothered about the rear. The sketch showed it backed on to
Little Star Lake.
The lodge was always busy on a Sunday. Nearby there was a camp of the CCC,
a government conservation agency set up by President Roosevelt. CCC
workers and local foresters often took advantage of the lodge's special $1
lunch.
Most of them had left the lodge by the early evening. The last three
stragglers came out and got into their car at 7.45pm, just as the FBI men
reached the end of the drive.
Purvis called on them to stop, but, as they were some distance away and their
car radio was blaring out jazz, they did not hear him and attempted to drive
away. Their car was stopped in its tracks by a hail of bullets.
Two of the men fled, wounded, one into the woods and the other back into the
lodge. The third, conservation specialist Eugene Boiseneau, 35, was killed
instantly.
Wanatka, his bartenders and three of the gang's women took shelter in the
cellar. Mrs Wanatka had left the lodge earlier that evening. The
outlaws immediately put a slick and well-rehearsed escape plan into action.
While the FBI agents at the front of the lodge opened fire, and those
approaching from the sides got bogged down in a drainage ditch or tangled in
barbed wire, Dillinger, Hamilton, Carroll and van Meter jumped through a first
floor window into the snow, then fled away north along the shore of the lake and
into the woods. There Tommy Carroll got separated from the others; after
walking for a while he stole a Packard from outside an inn and headed
northwards.
Dillinger's group burst into a cottage and ordered the owner to drive them away
in his Model A Ford. They let him out on their way to St Paul. |
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AFTER THE BATTLE :
After 'The Battle of Little Bohemia' and the escape of the Dillinger gang,
police found a cache of their weapons in the lodge, which included an array of
submachine-guns, rifles and handguns. |
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Nelson was in his cabin when the shooting started. Grabbing
two pistols, he made a break for it. After stumbling through the woods,
Nelson came to the house of Alvin Koerner, who ran the local telephone exchange.
Koerner knew what was going on at the lodge. He had connected Wanatka with
the FBI, arranging a ceasr-fire so that he and his staff could get out.
The women stayed put.
Wanatka was in shirtsleeves. His brother in law, George La Porte, offered
to drive him to Koerner's to get some warm clothing as the agents renewed their
siege.
Nelson met them just inside the door. Taking Koerner as hostage and
Wanatka as a driver, he prepared to make his getaway in La Porte's car.
At that moment, another car pulled up. In it were two FBI agents, Jay
Newman and Carter Baum and Carl Christensen, a local policeman. They were
looking for the car Tommy Carroll had stolen. Nelson ordered them out of
their car, then, without provocation, he opened fire, killing Baum and seriously
wounding the two others.
The terrified Wanatka got La Porte's car moving but ploughed it into a
snowdrift. Nelson slid into the driving seat of the FBI car and roared off
down Route 51. Wanatka now ran back to the lodge. Smoke bombs and
tear gas had been used and local vigilantes were taking pot shots at the
building.
Only when dawn broke did the three women emerge from the cellar. FBI
agents stormed the building and found no one there. The whole operation
had been a tragic farce. Two men were dead, four wounded, and not a single
criminal was in custody. The only way for the FBI to salvage its
reputation was to get Dillinger, and quickly. |
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JOHN DILLINGER :
This snapshot of Dillinger was taken just after his 1934 breakout from Crown
Point prison and while visiting his father's farm in Mooresville, Indiana.
It shows him holding a submachine-gun in his left hand and the wooden gun used
in his escape in his right. |
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Bank robbery in the 1930s offered greater rewards than any other
kind of organised crime. Its practitioners graduated to it from other
crime, usually after spending time in prison.
Some men, such as Charles Makley and John Hamilton, began as bootleggers; Baby
Face Nelson and Harry Pierpont had been car thieves.
Generally robbers who killed in the course of a raid only did so to avoid
capture, although Nelson, who seemed to derive a thrill from the act of killing,
was an exception.
While still at liberty, successful robbers could live a lifestyle beyond the
wildest dreams of the law-abiding citizen. If they were caught they would
be imprisoned for much of the rest of their lives. Many preferred to go
down fighting rather than return to jail.
But easy money was not the only incentive. One or two bank raids were
enough to set a group of robbers up for life, but still they risked their lives
for the excitement of it. One robber boasted that he lived more in 40
minutes than his father had in 40 years. |
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JESSE JAMES :
James, a preacher's son born in Missouri in 1847, began his bloody career with
William Quantrill's Confederate guerillas in 1863. By 1866, he and his
elder brother, Frank, formed a gang of bank robbers, and in 1873 they graduated
to robbing trains.
Neither the railroads nor the northern banks were popular, and
the James Gang were seen as heroes by many, especially those who still clung to
the Confederate cause. They believed James possessed all the chivalrous
virtues supposedly to be found in a Southern gentleman.
James became a legend in his lifetime, which ended in April 1882, when he was
shot in his home - while adjusting a picture on the wall - by gang member Robert
Ford. Many believed an imposter had died in his place, and James became
the subject of hundreds of romantic tales. |
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There were a great deal of this thrill-seeking in Dillinger.
His lonely childhood had made him a fantasist, while his father's haphazard, but
sometimes extreme attempts at discipline had left him with a hearty contempt for
authority. This was more mischievous than murderous: while Harry Pierpont
attempted to strangle Matt Leach through the prison bars in Tucson, and once
attempted to shoot him in cold blood, Dillinger contented himself with
telephoning the police chief to taunt him about his stutter.
Where others reached for their guns when they saw a policeman, Dillinger took
great delight in getting them to pose for photographs.
Although undoubtedly bitter about the length of his prison sentence, Dillinger
always retained a certain playfulness. When the manhunt was at its height,
he sent an unsolicited testimonial to Henry Ford: 'Drive a Ford and watch the
other cars fall behind you. I can make any other car take a Ford's dust.
Bye-Bye, John Dillinger.'
Dillinger always cast himself in the role of the dashing romantic hero, like the
swashbuckling actor Douglas Fairbanks.
As a young man, he loved to read tales of the Wild West. His favourite was
Jesse James, a bank robber mythologised as champion of the poor in the struggle
against the rich. |
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THE WOODEN GUN :
The wooden pistol purportedly used
by Dillinger in the Crown Point jailbreak. Dillinger sent it to his
sister. The Department of Justice insisted that Dillinger had wielded a
real .38 gun but the wooden gun story is part of Dillinger mythology. |
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Dillinger tried to re-create James's mythical image in his own
crimes. He made a point of being polite to those he was robbing and was
always gallant with his female hostages.
But he also had a strong pragmatic streak. He would shoot it out when it
suited him, but twice - in Dayton and in Tucson - he gave up meekly when
cornered.
He like to read about himself in the newspapers. He would go into
libraries to consult back numbers describing his exploits. He enjoyed his
fame and tried to live up to it.
When he fled Crown Point, Dillinger treated his hostages to a hearty rendition
of a Wild West ballad - 'We're heading for the the last round-up'.
Although he had set up his escape with an unheroic $5,000 bribe, he took the
opportunity to embellish his fame with the wooden gun story.
He kept up the fiction, sending a crude wooden gun to his sister Audrey and
writing 'Don't part (it) for any price for when you feel blue all you will have
to do is look at the gun and laugh your blues away. Ha! Ha!'
In the same letter, he was happy to tell Audrey not to worry as 'I am having a
lot of fun'. |
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JOHN 'THREE-FINGERED JACK' HAMILTON :
A year or so after his death, FBI agents carry the body of gangster John
('Three-Fingered Jack') Hamilton from the gravel pit where he was buried by
Dillinger. Despite decomposition, he was identified by dental records and
his missing two fingers. |
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Baby Face Nelson, fleeing south on Highway 51 after the Little
Bohemia fiasco, got stuck in deep mud some 18km (12 miles) from the lodge and
continued on foot into the woods. For three days he sheltered in a shack
belonging to an elderly Indian who had never heard of Dillinger. Then he
stole a car from a vacationing fisherman and drove off.
Dillinger, van Meter and Hamilton remained together, heading for St Paul by a
circuitous route, and approaching it from the south.
The police were on the lookout for cars going south from St Paul. However
Deputy Sheriff William Dieter thought there was something suspicious about a car
heading north with three men crammed in the front seat. He began to follow
it in fairly heavy traffic. When he got close enough to read the number,
he began shooting at the tyres.
Van Meter, who had been driving at a respectable 52km/h (35mph), stamped on the
accelerator and Dillinger returned fire through the back window. Before
the Ford managed to outrun the police car, it was hit several times. One
of the slugs tore into Hamilton's back.
Abandoning their riddled car, the gangsters commandeered another from a young
couple out for a spin, and headed for Chicago. It took them two days to
get there.
The wounded Hamilton had lost a lot of bloody, and was sinking fast.
Dillinger tried to find an underworld doctor, but the gang was too hot. No
one would deal with them. The only one who would take in the desperate men
was Volney Davis, a gunman living in Aurora, some 45km (30 miles) west of
Chicago. Davis was working for the Barker-Karpis gang, and had been
involved in a major kidnapping.
Although he could provide shelter, medical help was impossible to get.
Hamilton's wound became gangrenous and he died. He was buried in a gravel
pit after Dillinger poured lye - a caustic solution - over his face and hands to
prevent his body being identified. |
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ABANDONED GET AWAY CAR :
The Minnesota County Sheriffs knew they had shot one of the Dillinger gang - it
proved to be John Hamilton - when they discovered the bloodstained seat of the
gang's abandoned Model A Ford which was found a few kilometres south of St Paul. |
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Dillinger and van Meter then returned to Chicago, where Piquett
could offer them protection. They advertised their return by abandoning
their bloodstained car, the one they had commandeered outside St Paul, in a busy
street.
Dillinger disappeared from view. Belatedly, a reward for $5,000 was posted
for his capture. His face was everywhere, in newspapers, on hoardings and
in every public building.
The pressure on the Dillinger gang kept increasing. Tommy Carroll, who had
not managed to rejoin them was killed by police in Waterloo, Iowa, while
resisting arrest. The only sign of Dillinger, though, was a letter to his
father, saying: 'This sure keeps a fellow moving. I will be leaving soon
and you will not need to worry any more.' |
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JOHN DILLINGER :
In Chicago's Cook County Morgue, Dr Charles D. Parker
(with glasses, centre) lifts the head of the dead man for the cameramen.
Some experts claim the corpse was not Dillinger's. |
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On 22nd June, his 31st birthday, the FBI designated Dillinger Public Enemy
Number One. The reward for his capture was raised to $10,000.
Eight days later, five men held up the Merchants National Bank at South Bend,
Indiana. Three of them were identified as Dillinger, Nelson and van Meter.
Another was named as Pretty Boy Floyd, never otherwise associated with
Dillinger.
The raid was chaotic. One of the robbers needlessly fired a machine-gun
burst into the ceiling. Van Meter, guarding the bank entrance, shot a
traffic policeman, Howard Wagner, who came to investigate the noise.
Wagner died later that day. |
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ANNA SAGE :
Anna Sage was the Romanian brothel-keeper who led Dillinger to his death - an
FBI trap at Chicago's Biograph cinema. An extrovert, she was described as
a cold schemer who thought only of money. |
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A local jeweller took a pot-shot at Nelson, who was guarding the
getaway car, but he was saved by his bullet-proof vest. Nelson returned
fire, injuring two passers-by. A sixteen year old boy leapt on Nelson's
back. The gangster threw him off and shot at him, wounding the boy in the
hand.
The gangsters in the bank came out with three hostages. All three hostages
and one of the bandits were wounded by police cross-fire. As they reached
the car, van Meter was hit in the head. Dillinger dragged him inside and
the bandits escaped. Their total haul was $24,000.
Again, Dillinger disappeared. Many of his underworld contacts refused to
believe he had been involved in the South Bend robbery. It was rumoured
that he had been killed soon after leaving Little Bohemia, or that he had
escaped abroad. Others claimed that he had been made unrecognisable by
plastic surgery.
In mid-June 1934, a Chicago waitress and part-time prostitute, Polly Hamilton,
started to go out with a stocky, dapper man called Jimmy Lawrence. He told
her he was a Board of Trade clerk, though he rarely seemed to be at the office. |
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THE G-MEN :
Three G-Men involved in the Biograph trap were (from left to right) Glenn
Stretch, Tim O'Neill and Martin Zarkovich. The three supported Anna Sage's
claim that she had struck a deal with the FBI to stay in the USA. |
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He took Polly to nightclubs and to the movies, and spent a lot of
time visiting restaurants and a bookmaker in her neighbourhood. He got
friendly with Polly's landlady, Anna Sage.
Mrs Sage, née
Anna Cumpanas, was a Romanian who had operated for many years as a
brothel-keeper in Indiana, where she enjoyed police protection. Political
changes made her position as an immigrant very vulnerable, and when she met
Lawrence she was under sentence of deportation.
Like many people, Anna Sage noticed that Jimmy Lawrence bore a marked
resemblance to John Dillinger. Whenever anyone commented on it, Lawrence
simply laughed it off.
However, Mrs Sage confided her suspicions to a police contact in East Chicago.
She told Sergeant Martin Zarkovich that she knew where Dillinger was, and would
trade the information for the right to stay in the United States.
Zarkovich confided in his superior Captain Tim O'Neill and the two of them
travelled to Chicago on 20th July.
First they visited Captain John Stege of the Dillinger Squad. They told
him they could lead him to Dillinger, but would only do so if the police
guaranteed that Dillinger would be killed. Stege threw them out.
The next day, they approached Purvis and Sam Cowley, appointed to oversee the
Chicago office after Little Bohemia. The FBI men agreed to meet Anna Sage.
She told him she had directly challenged Jimmy Lawrence, and he had freely
admitted he was Dillinger. Purvis promised her a substantial reward and
told her that he would do what he could about the threat about deportation. |
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BIOGRAPH CINEMA IN CHICAGO :
Movie-goers turned into ghoulish souvenir hunters after Dillinger was shot dead
outside the Biograph cinema in Chicago. Women even dipped their
handkerchiefs into the gangster's blood. |
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She told him that she and Polly Hamilton had a date to go with
Dillinger to the Marbro Cinema the next evening, Sunday 22nd July.
The FBI decided on a joint operation with the East Chicago police, but they
mistrusted them, believing Dillinger had a paid informer in their ranks.
During that Sunday, in temperatures of over 100°F, the FBI men staked out the
Marbro, planning the arrest. At 5.30pm, Anna Sage rang to say that they
might be going to the Biograph Cinema instead. The forces were split.
Purvis waited outside the Biograph, which was showing Clark Gable in Manhattan
Melodrama. Just after 8pm, he saw Anna Sage arrived with a man and a
woman. Mrs Sage wore an orange skirt that appeared blood red under the
lobby lights as she waited for Dillinger to buy the tickets.
The cinema was crowded, and the FBI men decided not to risk the lives of the
other patrons by attempting an arrest in the auditorium. Zarkovich and the
others were summoned from the Marbro and the agents prepared to take Dillinger
when he came out.
He emerged at 10.30, flanked by two women. Purvis lit a cigar as a signal
and the agents closed in.
According to the FBI, Dillinger realised he was trapped and made a break for a
nearby alley, reaching in his pocket for a gun. He was cut down before he
could fire, and fell face first into the alley. |
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DILLINGER'S BODY :
Dillinger's body was put into a hearse for the long journey home, and burial
near his mother. |
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American crime author Jay Robert Nash tells it differently. From the path
of the bullets described in the autopsy report and
from the fact that two women, innocent bystanders were hit in the leg by
ricochets, he deduced that Dillinger was pushed, or fell, to the ground before
being executed by two men firing from in front and from behind. These two
men Nash identified as Zarkovich and O'Neill.
The body was taken to Cook County Morgue, which was besieged by sightseers
wanting a look at the body. In the alley by the Biograph, people dipped
their handkerchiefs and their clothing into the congealing pool of blood.
As far as the law was concerned, it was all over, but not for those who had
hero-worshipped John Dillinger.
Rumours spread that the FBI had shot the wrong man. Many people who knew
Dillinger did not recognise him when they viewed the body, which was buried at
Crown Hill Cemetery in north Indianapolis during a thunderstorm. A crowd
of over 5,000 gathered outside the cemetery gates.
John Dillinger Snr. worried that souvenir hunters would dig up the body, had the
coffin encased in concrete. |
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DILLINGER'S FAMILY :
John Wilson Dillinger and Hubert, the
gangster's father and half-brother, travelled to Chicago from Mooresville,
Indiana, to fetch the body. |
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There the story ended, until Jay Robert Nash and Ron Offen
published Dillinger - Dead or Alive? in 1971.
On a visit to the Dillinger museum at Little Bohemia in 1968, Nash had been
shown a letter sent to Emil Wanatka Jnr. on 30th July 1963 by a man purporting
to be Dillinger. A photograph was enclosed but, unsurprisingly, no return
address.
The envelope was postmarked Hollywood and contained information about Dillinger
that was not readily available at that time. It claimed that the man shot
was indeed Jimmy Lawrence, who had been impersonating the outlaw. |
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DILLINGER LETTER :
This letter to the
Indianapolis Star newspaper in 1959 came from a man who claimed to be Dillinger.
In death, Dillinger proved to be as controversial as in life; some doubted the
identity of the corpse. |
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Once Nash had tracked down the autopsy report, which had eluded
researchers for 35 years, it confirmed that the dead man had brown eyes -
Dillinger's were blue-grey - and had none of Dillinger's identifying scars,
which could not have been removed by plastic surgery. The heart showed
signs of childhood rheumatic fever, from which the athletic Dillinger had never
suffered.
Further investigations showed that there was some doubt over whether the
fingerprints filed under Dillinger's name were actually taken from the body, and
that the dead man's personal effects - he wore prescription glasses when
Dillinger had perfect vision = could not have belonged to Dillinger.
Nash's conclusion is that Dillinger and his lawyer Louis Piquett had set up a
minor hoodlum who looked like him, using Zarkovich and O'Neill to make sure that
he did not live to deny he was Dillinger. Nash also believed that the
gangster lost his taste for crime, and that Dillinger went to Hollywood and
settled down to live quietly under an assumed name. |
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DILLINGER'S GRAVE :
John Dillinger's grave in the small Crown Hill cemetery, Indianapolis, has a
grandness that seems ill suited to a notorious bank robber. |
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In August 1934, Homer van Meter
was killed by four high-ranking policemen in an alley in the city of St Paul
during a gun battle.
The following month, Harry
Pierpont and Charles Makley tried to bluff their way out of death row in Ohio
with guns carved from soap. The guards opened fire. Makley was
killed and Pierpont wounded, though he recovered sufficiently to be sent to the
electric chair a few weeks later.
This left Baby Face Nelson,
the only important member of the Dillinger gang, still loose. Nelson, his
wife and hanger-on, John Paul Chase, travelled all over America, hunted and
hounded. On 27th November 1934, near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, they got into
a gun fight with G-men Sam Cowley and Herman Hollis, both of whom were involved
in the Dillinger shooting. Nelson, true to form, broke cover and walked
through the agent's fire, killing them both. But Nelson was also hit.
The next morning, his naked body was found dumped in a ditch 30km (20 miles)
away.
Anna Sage was paid $5,000
for betraying Dillinger. However, her deportation to Romania went ahead.
She died in Timisoara in 1947.
After leaving the FBI,
Melvin Purvis failed to settle on a career. He married in 1938 and helped
prosecute war criminals in Europe. In 1960, amid rumours of alcoholism and
poor mental health, he killed himself.
John Wilson Dillinger, his
family and, after her release, Billie Frechette toured the vaudeville circuit
with their reminiscences of the bandit. Dillinger Snr. died in 1943
and was buried beside his son.
Louis Piquett was tried for
harbouring Dillinger but, after a historic display in court, claiming he was
only doing his duty as a lawyer, he was found not guilty. He was then
tried for harbouring van Meter and sentenced to two years in June 1935. On
his release he became a bar-tender, and in 1951 managed to arrange a full pardon
for himself. He died that year.
Those who believe Dillinger
did not die thought of him quietly living out his life in Hollywood under an
assumed name. Following the publication of Nash's book in 1970, the
gangster was adopted as a kind of saint by anarchists and hippies all over the
USA. In California, the so-called John Dillinger Died For You Society
continues to flourish. |
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