Depression Era Gangsters  John Dillinger 2 Flamboyant Yegg True Crime

In May 1933, John Herbert Dillinger had been paroled from Indiana State Prison after serving nine years on a ten to twenty sentence for a botched robbery on a local grocer. When he returned home to Mooresville, IN, he swore to everyone that he was going straight. But he’d chosen a life of crime with big plans to rob America blind.

His buddies at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City were planning to break out. They had taught him all they knew about robbing banks and stores, so he could gather enough money to fund their prison escape. This wasn’t going to be easy. The United States was in the middle of the Great Depression and finding banks and stores to rob would prove a challenging task.

I am Yvette. This is Defragged History. And thank you for tuning in to episode 2 of the story of John Dillinger how it started how it ended and everything in between.

CHAPTER 1: WHITE CAP GANG Harry “Pete” Pierpont  serving ten to twenty years in Indiana State Prison for robbery with little chance of parole, had given John Dillinger the easy jug list the names and locations of the most poorly protected banks and stores in the Midwest that would be easy to rob.

He also gave Johnnie a list of associates who could help him. On June 4, 1933, two weeks after his parole, Dillinger contacted a fellow parolee on Pierpont’s list: Noble Claycomb. He agreed to rob a supermarket that evening but they needed a third man. Claycomb took Johnnie to a baseball field at Spades Park and introduced him to members of the White Cap Gang a group of young thugs who staged small stick ups in and around Indianapolis 19-year-old William “the Kid” Shaw and Paul “Lefty Parker” weren’t sure about letting this 29-year-old “Dan” join the gang

but they agreed to at least do the job. The first headed to a saloon called Shorty George’s to rent guns from owner George Hughes who moonlighted as a weapons broker. Johnnie selected a fancy long-barreled Colt .32-20 It packed a punch but was difficult to conceal. Next, the gang needed a car. They stole a Desoto Sedan.

The car had out-of-State license plates and Shaw had to steal plates  from another vehicle to swap them out Cops patrolling in a police car saw him Claycomb turned off the lights and floored it before Shaw could close the rear door. It smashed against the telephone pole with a loud crash busting one of its hinges.

It just dangled there. Claycomb managed to shake off the police and pulled over. They wired the door shut, and headed for one of the new supermarkets: a City Foods Inc. market. The White Cap Gang circled the place then parked the car The gang handed Dillinger colored glasses and a white cap Was this a joke? No! You see, witnesses would be too distracted by the glasses and caps to notice faces.

Hence, White Cap Gang! Get with a program man. Johnnie reluctantly put on the diguise. This was monumentally stupid! Everybody would know a robbery was about to go down the moment these White Cappers walked in. Dillinger and Shaw headed in and strolled toward the store’s office. but clerk Irene Quigley noticed  the caps, the glasses, and the Colt’s barrel poking out of Dillinger’s jacket.

She hollered to manager Walter Reeves White Cap Gang! Dillinger was like: what did I tell ya? Shaw pulled out his automatic, pushed Irene in to the office and snatched a hundred dollars worth of bills from the register on the go. Meanwhile out in front, Dillinger waved his Colt to herd everyone to the back of the store.

An elderly man didn’t move, perhaps too frightened to follow orders Johnnie became frustrated. and six days after apologizing to grocer Frank Morgan for socking him, he whacked the man across the face with the Colt’s barrel The victim spat out so many teeth that everyone, including Shaw, froze in horror Dillinger had busted the man’s dentures The White Cap Duo quickly exited the store and were scooped up by Claycomb in the Desoto.

The robbery was total amateur hour but Dillinger thought it was a roaring success. He had put his life on the line, risked another long prison term and trusted a driver he barely knew, for the take of thirty dollars his share. The following day, Johnny was a perfect angel to his parole officer. What was he doing? Well, you know, just working on the farm with mah dad looking for a new job, though it was hard because of his prison record.

Listeners, he wasn’t helping his dad on the farm and he had already found a new job. Professional bank robber. CHAPTER 2: TAKE YOUR TIME On June 10, 1933, at 8 AM, bookkeeper Horace Grisso, unlocked the front door of the new Carlisle National Bank and headed into the tellers cage. There.

 stood 3 men, faces covered with handkerchiefs Well, that’s never a good sign. Earlier that night John Dillinger,  William Shaw and Paul Parker had snuck in through an open window and waited for Grisso Dillinger said: All right, buddy open the safe. Grisso got the bank’s combination book but was so nervous he failed to open the lock twice. Shaw said: let me drill him, he stalling! Dillinger raised his hand: shush! And told Grisso to take his time.

When the bank clerk arrived Dillinger gallantly spread a banker’s smock on the floor He apologized but she had to lie down, and be tied up by hands and feet. After Grisso opened the safe, John tied him up as well While Shaw and Parker lifted out the bags of cash Dillinger herded a cashier and a customer behind the cage.

He told the customer with a grin: You hadn’t come into the bank so early. Minutes later, the White Cappers  were back in their car racing toward Indianapolis. It was a small bank,  in the Depression era but they netted $10,660 in cash. Over 250,000 in today’s dollars. But Dillinger needed much more money for his prison buddies escape plan, and persuaded William Shaw to help him stage two more robberies that evening.

CHAPTER 3: ROUND AND ROUND Wheelman Noble Claycomb wasn’t available for the White Cappers next two gigs so Paul Parker, the gang’s backup driver who had never driven a getaway car before, would give it a whirl. Paul double parked outside of Haag drugstore. Shaw donned his glasses and white cap but Dillinger was like: nah man and wore a sailor straw hat instead.

To prevent the whole screaming clerk mess from the first hold up he and Shaw entered the store with guns drawn, and loudly announced  this was a stickup. Shaw headed toward the main cash register while Dillinger emptied the smaller one at the soda fountain Dillinger noticed the herded up customers were staring at him and ordered them to turn around They did.

But moments later, they were facing him again. Dillinger angrily told them to turn around. He didn’t know Shaw didn’t like having an audience either and now the two bandits were spinning the hostages like round tops When they grabbed what they’d come to grab the duo scrammed. Outside was Lefty, smiling ear to ear: check out mah mad  parallel parking skills! He’d wedged the Ford tightly between two cars Seriously? Seriously? Seriously! Lefty knew he’d messed up, butted his way free and drove off while Dillinger and Shaw passionately lectured him

the rules of parking a getaway car Never ever parallel park! After Parker had been sufficiently lectured the White Cappers headed for a Kroger store and cased the neighborhood However, Shaw seemed to know an awful lot about the place Dillinger was like: you hit this store before or something? Uhm No. Pft. Well, they had.

Less than a month before. So when the duo walked in, guns drawn, the manager merely said sighed, and said: Uh oh, here they are again. Shaw check the drawers and only found a few small bills. The manager was like: Ha! Ha! Since the last robbery the company started collecting their cash more frequently. The collector had just left.

Dillinger stalked out of the store but the Kid grabbed an armful of tin cigarette boxes Lefty had dutifully remained double parked and eased forward when he saw the guys leaving the store/ Johnnie hopped in the front but before Shaw could jump in the back nervous Parker hit the accelerator and left the White Capper arms full of cigarette tins, screaming in the middle of College Avenue.

Shaw started running after the vanishing Ford. Dillinger told Parker to stop. Lefty instead threw the gear in reverse and floored it, nearly running over the panting Shaw. The kid jerked the door open dumped the cigarette tins into the seat and slipped inside. Parker sped off and ran a stop sign! Geez Louise.

Dillinger said if you can’t drive let the Kid have the wheel. The total haul was 3600 dollars. not bad but not good enough. Dillinger still needed more money to fund his friends’ jailbreak and he needed a better gang. CHAPTER 4: KANSAS CITY MASSACRE As Dillinger and the White Cappers returned to his father’s farmhouse  in Mooresville, three Dallas natives were speeding through the Texas panhandle in the dark The driver missed a road sign and the car plummeted off a busted bridge into a ravine below.

Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and Clyde’s gopher a teenager named W.D. Jones were all saved from the fiery crash. However, Bonnie’s stockings had melted into her skin. She didn’t want to risk seeing a doctor and teetered at death’s door for a week, but survived. A few days after this crash on June 15, 1933 the Barker-Karpis Gang kidnapped brewer William Hamm in Minneapolis, MN and demanded a hefty ransom.

At the same time Charles Arthur Floyd aka Pretty Boy Floyd was in a garage getting a stolen car fixed when sheriff Jack Killingsworth entered and recognized him from the wanted posters. Floyd kidnapped the sheriff and managed to elude police by frequently hopping stolen vehicles. On June 16, Floyd parked the latest stolen Pontiac outside Kansas City, MO waiting for nightfall to enter the town unseen with his hostage.

On that same day Agents of the Bureau of Investigation arrested Frank Nash an old yegg and prison escapee, connected to George Barnes aka Machine Gun Kelly in Hot Springs, Arkansas because local law enforcement could be on the gangsters payroll the Feds figured it would be safer to take the overnight train to Kansas City.

However an Associated Press reporter got wind of the plot and published an article about the arrest and the train ride. The underworld quickly assembled the avengers. On June 17, Floyd entered Kansas City and switched cars again. He released his hostage and told the sheriff  to wait five minutes after he left, then take the Pontiac and scram.

A little later, at 7 AM the train carrying the feds and their prisoner pulled into Kansas City train station. A phalanx of officers escorted Frank Nash toward a waiting police car as everyone hustled into the car someone yelled: Up! Up!  Get yer hands up! A split second later, a hail of bullets mowed down agents and cops in and around the vehicle.

When the smoke cleared, four officers were dead, two were wounded and the object of the rescue operation, Frank Nash, was a goner as well. No one was caught since no one knew who did the shooting. Vern Miller was certainly one of them, but many believe Pretty Boy Floyd, who just rolled into town,  was also there.

He denied this till the day he died. The ruthlessness of  the Kansas City attack, the second most lethal on  law enforcement at the time, shocked the nation. People were used to a bit of violence, but this was next level. The director of the Bureau of Investigation J Edgar Hoover, all but popped the champagne He christened the assault the Kansas City Massacre, and waved it around as proof that the nation was a lawless frontier.

mismanaged by  corrupt local police agencies It was high time the United States got a federal police whose officers couldn’t be bribed. Hoover declared: Whoever did this must be exterminated, and they must be exterminated by us. Within hours of the shooting the special agents of the Bureau of Investigation who had never been allowed to carry guns before got all the weapons, and were ordered to learn  how to use them.

When the news of the William Hamm kidnapping broke the same day, everyone was even more eager for action. The brewer was freed after the ransom drop. Embarrassingly, the Bureau couldn’t figure out who was behind the kidnapping They blamed and interrogated every gang and gangster in existence but it took them forever  to uncover the real culprits: the Barker-Karpis gang.

United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed 9 major anti-crime bills into law which would federalize crimes like bank robbery extortion and transporting stolen goods across state lines. He also gave Hoover’s Bureau a ton of extra powers. The war on crime began. Well, settle down there, skippy! Congress still had to sign off on the bills and States doing State things they weren’t very eager to surrender State’s rights so easily.

Anti federalism ran strong in America. Citizens in the South and Midwest  in particular deeply mistrusted Washington politicians whom they felt were to blame for the Great Depression. Congress held up passing the crime bills but they folded like a cheap suit after another shoot out. This one had John Dillinger in the starring role.

But we’re not there yet. CHAPTER 5: RUN OF THE MILL The day after his 30th birthday, June 23, 1933, John Dillinger and William Shaw scouted an Indianapolis bank. It was boarded up. Dillinger and his buddies had entered prison during the Roaring Twenties, but he had been paroled into the Great Depression and a world he hardly recognized.

There was massive unemployment, bread lines, hoovervilles, beggars, and many boarded-up banks and businesses. Added to this an extreme drought, and the Dust Bowl Era disaster  was complete in both city and countryside. People lost faith in the American dream, which claimed that as long as you worked hard and lived responsibly, you could make it.

The newly elected president Roosevelt tried to fulfil his campaign promise that “happy days are here again!” He took the US off the gold standard, declared a bank holiday, and phased out the failed prohibition to end the blood shed of warring bootleg mobs to create new jobs. He launched the New Deal, a series of measures focused on the 3 R’s: relief for the unemployed and for the poor, recovery of the economy, and reform of the financial system to prevent another depression.

But none of this had had an effect yet. People raged against the evil banks who forced them out of their homes. Most were simply shocked into apathy. For Dillinger it meant that nearly half of the robbable places on Pierpont’s list had gone belly up. And of the list of associates, only few were available, since most were dead, imprisoned, or had moved to parts unknown.

Shaw was like: Yo, Mr D! That easy jug list is totally bunk, let’s rob some more markets and stores. Sure, the takes are smaller, but so are the risks. Dillinger and Shaw drove 80 miles north to rob Assistant Manager Fred Fisher of the Marshall Field’s Thread Mill in Monticello, IN on the mill’s payday. The man, who had limp, always walked up the hill to the bank to get the payroll for the mills employees.

The duo would wait at the end of the street, jump the man as he hobbled back, and grab all the cash. Eas-y Street! On June 24, Shaw parked a stolen 1932 De Soto sedan and cased the neighborhood. But Assistant Manager Fisher left the mill, went up a side street, and disappeared. The duo raced to the bank and saw him inside collecting payroll.

How did he get there so fast? They rushed to the end of the street to jump him, only to see Fisher drive right past them in his car. Rats! Fisher’s wife had seen the dynamic duo acting all suspicious and warned her husband not to walk to the bank this time. New plan! They’d raid the mill itself. Dillinger went inside to apply for a job so he could case the joint.

He saw the girls counting the money in the office by the front door and tiptoed right out. However, he’d been seen. New plan! Now Shaw would go in and apply for a job. When one of the girls opened the door, he’d force her back into the office at gun point, and slam the door behind him to signal Dillinger to come in.

Shaw knocked on the door of the main office, but another door 25 yards down opened instead, and a stenographer beckoned him. New plan! Shaw pressed a .45 in her back and slammed the door. But it was too far down the corridor for Dillinger to hear it. He remained waiting outside wondering what took Shaw so long.

In the office, Fisher didn’t put up his hands as expected, and instead grabbed the gun and tried to yank it away from Shaw. The freaked teen dropped the gun and ran, past Dillinger, into the car, with Fisher coming after him brandishing the gun. Dillinger leaned out the car window and shot in Fisher’s general direction.

One bullet ricocheted off the building and hit the Assistant Manager in the left leg. The factory whistle started shrieking, followed by the alarm at city hall. The two bumbling bandits had not made a gits, a map of the escape route, and got lost on a dirt road. After fifty miles, they finally got back on the highway… a mere 12 miles from the mill.

There was an ambulance dead ahead… hauling Fisher to the hospital. New plan! They’d rob a bakery in Muncie. Alas, another Depression victim. New plan! Shaw knew an open-air fruit market in Indianapolis where several weapons were kept, including a Thompson machine gun, the gangster’s weapon of choice. Dillinger was like: at least the day isn’t completely fruitless.

CHAPTER 6: FRUITCASE After dinner and a change of clothes, Shaw and Dillinger headed to the open-air fruit market at Tenth and Bellefontaine. They strategically parked the car some fifty feet from the corner, entered the market, pulled their weapons, and ordered a clerk to hand over the money. He gave them $175.

Well, it was sour grapes, because just when Shaw wanted to demand the Thompson, he saw a boy who lived across the street from him. He ducked and whispered to Dillinger: we’re out. Dillinger grabbed more money, while Shaw hustled for the car. When Johnnie ran off, someone threw a milk bottle at him. It shattered on  the sidewalk at his feet.

Dillinger whirled around and aimlessly fired a round from his long-barreled Colt. How do you like them apples? The final haul was $350. Not bad. Shaw’s share ended up in Shorty George’s pocket for the loss of his rented gun left at the mill. Dillinger decided to invest his share… in himself and got a makeover.

He ditched the cheap wrinkled prison-issued suit, and was now sporting a dapper outfit with vest and shiny new dress shoes. He got a spiffy new hairdo and a new hat that sat on his head at a snazzy angle. Shaw, figuring his buddy was dressed… to rob, decided they should  go out robbing again. On Thursday, June 29, the dynamic duo headed to the bustling Eaton’s Sandwich Shop, not to get bite to eat, but to get a bite of the store’s take.

The waitress nearly fainted, but they got  $340. Not bad. The next day, William Shaw married Ufah Benitta Hite. And while he was making a different kind of bang-bang, Dillinger borrowed the DeSoto to visit another parolee on Pierpont’s list, Frank Whitehouse in Bradfordsville, Kentucky. CHAPTER 7: IT’S TERRAPLANING At the Whitehouse’s place in Kentucky, John Dillinger had the stolen DeSoto repainted so it could be used in another heist.

Dillinger offered to treat Frank and his wife to A Century of Progress International Exposition, aka the Chicago World’s Fair, in Chicago, Illinois which had opened a month earlier. He’d already been there once, and it was awesome. The couple jumped at the offer and volunteered their car as transportation.

Underway, Dillinger dropped in on an escapee from Indiana State Prison, a dangerous fellow named Clifford “Whitey” Mohler who was hiding in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Johnnie dug Mohler because he was clever and a little different. The all-American man with movie star good-looks, could have made bank as an actor, but he’d decided to rob banks instead.

Dillinger had gotten Mohler’s hide-away address from 41-year-old Sam Goldstein, another parolee on Pierpont’s list. Goldstein, or Goldstine, he changed the spelling of his name often to elude officials, had spent most of his adult life behind bars, but was happy to join a gang again. He and Mohler had successfully robbed a dozen Midwestern banks, often with the assistance of Dillinger’s fellow parolee, Homer van Meter.

Dillinger and Whitehouse visited another paroled Shirt Shop boy, bootlegger Fred Brenman. Johnnie, the least experienced  among them, sold them all on a grandiose scheme: they’d form a  ‘dream team’ of bankrobbers. By the time Dillinger finally pulled into the Chicago’s Fair parking lot, he’d received commitments from Mohler, Goldstein, and Brenman.

Frank Whitehouse was the only hold out. He wanted in on the action, but worried about his wife’s reaction. Dillinger told him not to worry about it, and three went on to enjoy the spectacular fair. Johnnie had spent nine years living in a cage but now wandered around the world visiting the Chinese and Mayan Temples, the streets of Paris, the Belgian and Moroccan villages, the Italian, Dutch, and Egyptian pavilions as well as the South Pole ship.

John, a car nut, was mostly drawn to all the car exhibits. The huge General Motors one included an actual assembly line. For some reason, Henry Ford had declined doing something similar, so GM had a huge advantage in the branding department. Ford caved and did display his full line of V8s when, unique at the time, the Fair was extended to 1934.

The Hudson Motor Car Company display featured the hot new Essex Terraplane Eight. John watched a short film, which told him that “on the water, it’s aquaplaning. In the air, it’s aeroplaning. On the ground, it’s Terraplaning!” After the film, there was a demonstration of a bold new idea: television. Nobody cared.

Dillinger was dreaming of “Terraplaning” away from police at breakneck speeds, aka 90 miles an hour. He returned to Indianapolis awash in cash from a robbery either in Kentucky or Illinois that was never attributed to him, probably with Whitehouse, Mohler, Goldstein and Brenman. Then he went to buy a car. Shaw warned him to be careful.

Many a robber was caught for making it rain cash after a job, but Dillinger went out to buy a used maroon 1931 Chevrolet six cylinder coupe with spiffy red wire wheels for $250, down from the new price of $575. CHAPTER 8: BIDE-A-WEE On July 8, 1933, John Dillinger, feeling poor again, wanted in on a job Shaw and Claycomb had been planning.

They recruited a fourth man, Hilton “Pizzy Wizzy” Crouch, a dirt race car driver turned robber, the ideal wheel man. They would rob the female collector of Haag Drugs pharmacies in Indianapolis after she picked up the dough from twenty-two outlets Ufah dropped off her husband outside the Apollo Theater to steal a car.

Shaw jumpstarted a brand-new Chrysler Imperial 80 Roadster. The next morning, Shaw instructed Crouch not to turn off the car for more than a few seconds, or else he’d burn out the jumper wire used to steal it. Crouch assured Shaw that this wasn’t his first rodeo. Dillinger and Crouch took up their position while Shaw and Claycomb went to the collector’s next to last stop.

They warned their partners, she was underway. And left them to  handle the actual robbery. Half an hour later, no robbers. Shaw and Claycomb figured they were double-crossed. But they found Dillinger and Crouch standing forlornly on the corner They’d failed because the Chrysler had “run out of gas.” Shaw knew this was a lie, he’d filled the car himself the night before.

You burned the jumper wire, didn’t you? No! Yes… Dillinger was like: Yeah, Crouch shut  off the engine while they were waiting The robbery was off. Shaw was furious. Crouch has to go! Dillinger pursuaded him to keep him on, they needed him for the next bank job. Dillinger’s gang  hung out in Indiana Harbor, the gangster belt.

But the Kid and his bride, Ufah, tipped that the cops were onto them, fled to Muncie, Indiana. The B-team Bonnie and Clyde hooked up with a 37-year-old Michigan City vet named Harry Copeland, who’d done time for a grocery burglary. During a meetup at a speakeasy on High Street, Copeland suggested a hit on a bank in Daleville, a small town ten miles west of Muncie.

Claycomb, Copeland, and Dillinger immediately went to case the joint. John wanted some heavy artillery in case they had problems with the police and contacted his fellow parolee, Homer Van Meter, who set them up with a broker in Fort Wayne. The weapon’s pick up turned out to be a bust and on their way back, Shaw, Claycomb, Copeland, and Dillinger passed a roadhouse, the “Bide-A-Wee Inn” in Muncie that specialized in barbeque.

And figured, why not? Not to get a bite to eat, but to rob it. The robbery went off without a hitch, but the take was a measily $70. A little over 1,650 today. The next moning, after breakfast, Dillinger and Copeland went to park his Chevy in the garage at the rear of the Shaw’s apartment. He drove down the alley but just as he was about to turn into the backyard, he saw Shaw and gang standing near the back stoop with their hands in the air.

They were surround by half a dozen Muncie police officers. The White Cappers had been caught totally off guard. Dillinger threw the clutch in reverse and floored it. A week earlier, not used to the late-model cars, Dillinger had run off the road and rammed a fence. But now, in a crisis, he deftly backed  out of the narrow alley, full speed, leaving Shaw, Claycomb, Parker,  and Ufah to face the music alone.

Johnnie and Harry, underarmed and undermanned, decided to do  the Daleville bank job alone. Because… well… you know — professional bankrobbers.¬ CHAPTER 9: OUT TO LUNCH On July 17, John Dillinger, with Harry Copeland as the wheel man, parked near the Commercial Bank in the tiny unincoprated town of Daleville, Indiana.

Inside the bank were a 22-year old cashier Margaret Good and an open vault. Johnnie had painted his maroon chevy green, but left the wire wheels red… so it stood out like a Christmas tree in July. Dillinger strolled into the little bank like he owned it and asked if the president was in. No, he was away and the cashier was out to lunch.

John brought up his long-barreled gun. “This is a stick-up, get me the money, honey” Miss Good raised her hands, but Johnnie calmly told her to put them back down. He didn’t want to attract the attention  of “citizen variables” outside. Good put all the cash on the counter. Dillinger ordered her to open the door that stood between the lobby and the bank’s caged working area.

Well, she didn’t have the key. No problem. Using the ledge of the cage as a step, Dillinger vaulted lightly over the six foot barrier. The man had seen way too many Douglas Fairbanks’ swashbuckling movies. In the vault, John scooped handfuls of cash into a sack. He also scored a rare coin collection, some diamond rings, and other valuables.

When random customers appeared, Copeland herded them into a corner, so Dillinger could  continue the cash grab. When Johnnie was done, Harry ordered the whole lot including Miss Good inside one of the cages. The robbers left through the main entrance unhindered and sped off. The take was $3,500 or over $82,000 today.

Newspaper articles  called the bank robber who leaped over the railing “Desperate Dan.” No one knew who he was. CHAPTER 10: RAPPER The White Cap Gang was done. Witnesses and policemen from all parts of the state hauled ass to the jail to close any lingering  White Capper cases. John Dillinger didn’t know this, but William Shaw was what the kids called back then: a rapper.

He talked and talked and talked. He admitted to the Bide-a-Wee job and twenty other hold-ups in Indianapolis and threw everyone under the Interurban. He said that “Dan Dellinger” with an e, also known as “John Donovan” had shot and wounded Fred Fisher, the asssistant manager of the Thread Mill. And this Dan was also planning a heist of the Daleville bank at the suggestion of another feller named Harry Copeland.

Not all he said was true, but every time detectives came around for questioning, he dropped a few gold nuggets… Shaw’s wife, Ufah, played all innocent and told police she was shocked, shocked I tell ya, to learn that her husband was a crookedy crook. The cops bought her tale of woe and released her. Everyone else was taken to the Delaware County jail.

Shaw was slapped with ten years in the Indiana Reformatory. Noble Claycomb was sent back to Michigan City. He lamented. “I was in five jobs and out of the whole mess only got eighty-five dollars. Add to that this prison sentence and well, it doesn’t pay.” Parker was charged with the payroll hit of the Leslie Colvin Construction Company, and was sent up the creek as well.

When Dillinger heard the bad news, he tried to give Shaw’s mother some cash to compensate. but she refused his dirty money… she was a Christian. CHAPTER 11: SNAPSHOT At the time of his parole  from the Indiana State Prison, John Dillinger had promised several fellow inmates that he would check in on their relatives and friends.

James Jenkins had asked him to visit his 23-year-old sister living in Dayton, Ohio. Mrs. Mary Jenkins, mother of two, was married to Arthur Longnaker. However, she was separated from her husband who had snatched away and hidden the children. Dillinger saw her picture and was like: don’t mind if I do. He was smitten with  the dark haired beauty, another Frances Thornton stand-in.

Now, since his parole, Dillinger had spent many an evening hanging out with  the ladies of the night, and by hanging out I mean… well, you know. But he actually craved love and family life, more than just s-e-x. In July, 1933, Johnnie drove his Chevy to Mary’s apartment to talk to her about bribing the guards at the prison so her brother could escape.

She was grateful to Dillinger for helping to break her brother out. Mary and Jimmy had been raised in an orphanage together and were very close. After a little chit-chat, Johnnie invited her to lunch downtown at Vargo’s Restaurant. She wanted her friend, Mary Ann Buchholz to join them. During lunch, John wowed them with stories about the Chicago World’s Fair.

The next day, Dillinger took Mary and Mary Ann on a road trip to check it out. However, he first stopped by his father’s farm in Mooresville. John had become what his father had feared, a professional criminal, but there were no lectures. His son had changed. There was no more sarcasm or no dark looks, Johnnie treated his father with affection and care.

On his way out, Dillinger drove to Maywood where he left $10 with a filling station attendant to give to his half-brother Hubert. That’s roughly 235 dollars today. Early the following morning, Johnnie and the girls checked into the Crillon Hotel in Chicago. The Fair, spread out for five miles along the shore of Lake Michigan, dazzled the young women.

During the three day visit, they snapped five rolls of film, mostly of each other. Though at one point John took the camera and got a shot of a smiling Chicago police officer decked out in a pith helmet. He gladly posed for Dillinger. Hilarious. CHAPTER 12: BANANAS On July 24, 1933,  John Dillinger and the girls went home, but not after stopping by the  Indiana State Prison in Michigan City so Mary could see her brother.

At a farmer’s stall, Dillinger  bought a fruitbasket to give to Jenkins. While parked in front of the prison, he wrapped a  50 dollar bill in dark paper and slid it into a hole he’d  made in the top of a banana and stopped it up with the pulp. He instructed Mary to tell her brother  that ten dollars “in the fruit basket” was designated for “certain people,” and James could keep the rest.

He also put fifty dollars in Jenkin’s  account so he could get his teeth fixed. A day after dropping  off the girls at home, he wrote a love letter to Mary. Five days later he received  a friendly response. Not interested. The next day, he wrote: Honey, I miss you like nobody’s business and I don’t mean maybe … I

 hope I can …  spend more time with you, for baby I fell for you in a big way and if you’ll be on the level I’ll give everybody [the] go by for you and that isn’t a lot of hooey either. And If that lousy husband  of yours bothers you anymore, just let me know  and he will never bother you again. Well, sweetheart, I guess  I will ring off for this time.

Love me a little  or do you love me a lot? Well baby, ta ta for this time.  Hope I hear from you soon. Lots of love from Johnnie Mary only giggled to friends  that Johnnie was a hit in the sack. Undeterred, Dillinger visited  a lawyer in Dayton to speed along Mary’s divorce and said he’d pay for both  the divorce and custody case.

He genuinely liked kids and had no problem accepting  his sweetheart’s ready-made family. But two days later, he received  another non-commital letter from Mary. Desperate Dan so longed  for steady relationship that he wrote her  that he was crazy to see her and would like to take her with him  if she cared enough for him.

“Ha! Ha! Kid you’ve  sure got me tied up in a knot but don’t leave me dangling for I want to know something  when I see you again. Lots of love from Johnnie.” A week later: “Baby if I can only get Jimmy out we will get the kids  and leave the country… How in hell did I know  I would fall for you! Honey, I wish you would  get your hair fixed up and put on your black gown and have your picture taken  especially for me.

” In Chicago, Johnnie had bought her a gorgeous floor-length satin evening gown. The threats against his latest  beloved’s husband were not idle. He drove to Pleasant Hill with Mary, tracked down Longnacker  to his work place, and demanded to know  where the kids were. Longnaker refused to talk,  and the pair began to fight.

The supervisor, Ellis Cecil,  ran to get Orth Stocker, the town Constable who happened  to be working nearby. Stocker and some others  broke up the fight, then the unarmed Constable  herded Dillinger back to his car, stood on the running board, and ordered the hot-headed Romeo  to drive into town where he was to be arrested.

That was certainly  a disaster in the making. When they hit  Pleasant Hill’s main street, Dillinger floored it as  Constable Stocker hung on for dear life. Outside of town,  the bandit skidded to a stop, pushed the stunned lawman off,  and sped away. Stocker had some souvenirs  for his trouble – Dillinger’

s hat, and a fountain pen  with an inscription “D. M. Dillinger.” But Mary became Johnnie’s girl. CHAPTER 13: NO SURPRISE On Friday afternoon, August 4, 1933, several N. R. A. – that’s  National Recovery Adminstration – committee members were standing  outside Wells’ & Rapp’s meat market directly across from the First  National Bank in Montpelier, Indiana. At 2:30 PM, they saw a large  dark blue Chrysler sedan pull up in front of the bank.

Hilton Crouch remained in the car, while John Dillinger  and Harry Copeland entered the bank. The bank had been robbed  by three men three years earlier and it had ended ugly. The mayor and police chief, who  shared an office over the bank’s lobby, had shot at them  from their office window. Killing one, capturing the two others.

On this day however, the Mayor H. L. Kelley was out of town  at the horse races and Police Chief E. R. Coleman was at a road construction site  two blocks away. Dillinger, wearing a straw boater hat  and chewing a piece of gum, entered the lobby, drew a revolver,  and said with a smile: “This is a stickup.  All we want is your money.

Stand still and you won’t get hurt.” Copeland forced  three employees onto the floor and Dillinger  leaped over the barrier, again, scooped up cash from the counters, and emptied the drawers  in the cashier’s cage. When a teller reached for an alarm,  Dillinger said: “What are you trying to do,  set off that alarm?” The woman snapped back: “I would if I could.

” It was a perfect robbery. A calmer and more experienced Dillinger took $6,200 from the vault and  added it to the $3,900 from the cage. He also pocketed the bank’s  “security system,” a .45 revolver. When two customers arrived mid-robbery, Copeland, waving his .38, forced  them to the floor as well. Dillinger asked  bank president Merle D.

 Tewksbury where the bank’s government  bond stash was. In a safe… in Fort Wayne… Dillinger and Copeland herded the  employees and customers into the vault, then walked out carrying sacks of money. They supposedly  left behind forty cents. According to newspapers,  the men pocketed some $12,000. According to Dillinger,  it wasn’t that much.

The N.R.A. men saw the duo leave  the bank carrying bags. One of them joked, “What in the hell do those men  have in those sacks? My God, they are robbing the bank!  Fred, get that gun quick!” Dillinger and Copeland passed two men leaning against the Kroger store  next to the Bank building. The men joked: “Look at the money those men have.

  Let’s hold them up!” Dillinger only smiled. The robbers then passed an old  man standing on Main Street who said: “Looks like the bank’s  being held up again.” Before he got into  the Chrysler and drove off, Dillinger turned and smiled: “I’m not surprised.” They drove off and weren’t followed. Marion County and Hartford City  police did set up roadblocks, but the gang switched cars  and the roadblocks were useless.

The job went smooth… maybe a little too smooth. It was almost  as if someone tipped him off about the mayor’s  and police chief’s absence. Was this an inside job? Maybe. More on that later. When Dillinger did his swashbuckling  act and jumped the railing, again. It was recognizable. It was a trademark. It drew the attention of  Philip Hart Matija Ličanin, an immigrant born to Serbian parents, who now went by the name Matt Leach, the Captain of the Indiana State Police.

That jumper was a yegg… with a flamboyant streak… that spelled much bigger  trouble down the road. Captain Leach became obsessesed. CHAPTER 14: THOMPSONS & TERRAPLANES Little Matija arrived  in the United States with his mother Mila when he was twelve. They joined his father Vujo Ličanin who’d been working  in the steel mills for ten years to pay for their passage across.

Matjia had to learn English quickly,  too quickly, which gave him a stutter. He didn’t want to follow  in his father footsteps, and joined the Indiana National Guard  to hunt down Francisco Pancho Villa, who was on the  US Military’s most wanted list after several bloody raids  in New Mexico. After the US entered World War I, Corporal Leach went to Europe to fight.

But two months after his arrival,  the war was over. Leach went home,  got an honorable discharge and joined the Gary Police Department  as a diversity hire. There were many Serbians in  Gary, Indiana, and they could use him. He was handsome, tall, and slim. His only shortcomings, he missed his left middle finger  and he had a stutter.

After being let go from the Police  force for not being corrupt enough, he clawed his way into the inner circle  of the veterans organization, the American Legion. He drew the attention of its commander, 42-year old Paul Vories McNutt and helped the Indiana University  and Harvard Law School Graduate win his campaign  for Governor of Indiana.

McNutt took notice of the young Serbian, who acted like a college graduate, and gave him a job. Eventually, he appointed Matt as Captain of the  newly restructured State Police. Leach’s department  covered seven districts with sergeants, lieutenants, and detectives who all refused to cooperate across county lines.

Leach also realized  his force was too ill-equiped to fight the modern criminal. Indiana State Police had  one armored car, no radio cars, and Leach’s patrolmen  only caried one gun and a badge. Their puny .32 and .38 revolvers were no match for the  gangster’s weapon of choice: the .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun.

It was created during World War I  as a trench sweeper, but was popularized back home  by Al Capone’s mob. It’s also known as a “Tommy gun”, “Chicago typewriter” and “Chicago piano.” The 1921 models, set on full automatic, could spit an ear-shattering  800-rounds per minute. Bonus, Its detachable stock  made it easy to conceal.

To make matters worse: while people needed permits  and background checks to buy revolvers and pistols, a Thompson was considered a rifle and could be bought over  the counter, no questions asked. And while the Police departments  had older model cars, Gangsters bought or stole fast cars  like Essex Terraplanes and Ford V-8’s, capable of speeds of 90 miles an hour.

However, these cars were prone  to breakdowns at such speeds, and were absolute gassguzzlers. Gangsters started hiding  jerry cans with gasoline along their escape routes to  refuel during a getaway. They also carried roofing nails which they scattered behind  them as they fled, to ruin any pursuers tires.

Once they got a head start, the cops in their slow cars were toast, unless they had a two way radio. Most didn’t. At best, cops had one-way radios, they could receive info, but not update the  police stations or other cars. Lack of two-way radios also meant  there were no effective road blocks. The T&T equation,  “Thompsons and Terraplanes,” favored outlaws to a ridiculous degree, especially in States  like Indiana and Illinois.

Captain Leach’s boss,  Superintendent Al Feeney wanted to keep  Governor McNutt’s election promise and get the police cars  two-way radio broadcasting systems like they had in  Michigan and Pennsylvania. They wanted banks and local businesses  to fund it. It was destined to be  a broken election promise. Undeterred, Captain Leach  made do with what he had and reshaped the  State Police to be more effective.

Imposed new rules of conduct. No gossip, no smoking  a cigar while in uniform, and no keeping company  with persons of questionable character. He improved effeciency  by creating a barracks system with rapid response teams. He also implemented  the latest investigative methods and mixed them with his own theories.

As one of few at the time, Leach believed what we  today call Criminal Profiling, using psychology to understand  and outsmart criminals. He used his stutter and  acted clumsy during interrogations to build report with suspects. He used and manipulated  the press to draw criminals out, but many in the police force  didn’t appreciate this blabbermouth.

They eventually stopped  sharing information, fearing Leach might inadvertantly  tip off the criminals they were trying to catch. When Captain Matt Leach heard  about the Jumping Yegg, he send some mugshots over  to the robbed banks and soon found out that Desperate Dan  was, in fact, John Dillinger, a parolee from Indiana State Prison.

He sent Dillinger’s Parole officer  to pick him up in Mooresville. Johnnie wasn’t there  and the Parole officer searched for him at all known addresses  but the man was gone. By the time he got back to Moorseville, the officer found the policemen  he’d left there to watch the farm asleep in their car. Johnnie had simply strolled passed them, to bring his father  a birthday present: a shirt and tie.

Captain Leach put surveillance on the homes of Dillinger’s father  and sister Audrey, and had Johnnie’s first  partner in crime, Ed Singleton, arrested and brought in for questioning. Ed had nothing to offer other than that Dillinger Jr wanted  to put a bullet between his eyes. On August 8, Clifford Mohler,  James Kirkland, Homer Van Meter, and others robbed  the People’s Bank of Gravel Switch, KY, taking home $13,180.

Some say Dillinger was involved,  but he wasn’t. Neither was Maurice Lanham,  who was arrested for the job after eyewitnesses picked  his photo out of available mug shots. On August 10, the Indiana State Police  issued an all-points bulletin, an APB, for Dillinger, Copeland,  Mohler, Kirkland, and Van Meter.

But Captain Matt Leach  was getting competition. CHAPTER: STAY IN THE GAME The American Surety Company,  the Montpelier bank’s insurance company, sent former Pinkerton Detective and one of the original members  of the Indiana Crime Bureau, Forest C. Huntington,  to investigate the robbery. Something was off.

Captain Matt Leach wasn’t a detective, but he was still expected  to chase down tips and lead raids and ambushes. However, he wasn’t as connected, well-informed,  or well-funded as Huntington. The Detective had  many associates in Washington, DC, a large database on  mid-western bank robbers, plus a healthy expense account.

Huntington and associates hit  the streets and dug up many clues. Huntington didn’t like Leach,  not even a little bit, because he was  too chummy with the press. He tried to keep him out of  the loop as much as possible. And Leach struggled to stay in the game. Huntington went to  the Indiana Reformatory at Pendleton to grill William Shaw.

If the Kid gave actionable intel, he promised to put in a good word. Shaw rapped that Dillinger  often hid in Lebanon, Kentucky with an ex-con named Whitehouse. Shaw also sold out Shorty George  Hughes, the weapons broker, detailed the car thefts, and revealed the address of the  garage where the vehicles were stashed.

Huntington questioned the garage owner. A man fitting Dillinger’s  description rented the place under the name “Frank Monahan” and also went by “Clarence Cruse.” Both Dillinger aliases. Huntington then  got Shaw to give an address Dillinger was using  in East Chicago, Indiana. FYI, East Chicago is a city in Indiana,  not a suburb of Chicago.

Since the apartment was in the Region, the police nickname for East Chicago,  Huntington told Captain Leach. The Captain’s men broke down  the door of said apartment and arrested three associates  of Desperate Dan. But not Dan himself, John Dillinger was  in Bluffton, Ohio, robbing a bank. CHAPTER 16: ON THE CLOCK The head cashier of Citizen’s National  Bank of Bluffton, Ohio, Elmer G. Romney, was convinced his bank  was next in line for a hold-up.

He showed his  bosses the newspaper articles of the recent string  of violent robberies and convinced them to put  their vault on a time lock. Starting in August 1933,  the bank went on the clock which meant the vault  could only be opened during a brief, designated period. Shortly before noon  on Monday, August 14, a large green sedan with  Indiana license plates pulled up in front of the building,  facing the opposite direction, the engine kept running.

Like a well-oiled machine,  five men emerged from the vehicle: two stayed outside, two, both dressed in gray suits  and straw boater hats, entered the bank. The fifth man positioned himself  just inside the front door. At the teller’s window,  one of the two front men asked assistant  cashier Roscoe Klinger to change a five, into three ones, a dollar  in dimes, and the rest in nickels.

The man shoved the bills  and coins in his pocket, then smoothly pulled out  a handgun and whispered, “stand back, this is a stickup.” The gang was trying a new approach, instead of shouting, they went  ASMR to announce bankrobberies. When Charles Burkholder, an  employee of the Farmer’s Grain Company, approached the window, ASMR guy,  a gun in each hand, shoved him behind  the counter to join Klinger.

Then the second hold up man vaulted  over the head-high cage fence. He stuck the super hero landing  and ordered bookkeeper Oliver Locher to hit the deck  with Romney and Burkholder. Jumpin’ Jack, well, we all know  who he was, Dillinger, emptied the content of the  teller’s drawer into a pillow case. It wasn’t much.

He glared at Locher. “You’ve got more than this.  Where the hell is it?” Locher pointed to the big vault door right as the alarm began to blare. ASMR guy dropped his act and shouted: “They’re after us. Let’s go!” Dillinger told him to chill,  they had time. The town’s Waterworks whistle  went off, the second alarm.

Dillinger was still chill. He found a locked drawer  and demanded the key. At the same time, the gang’s  lookouts started firing to keep the growing crowd  outside at bay. Slugs hit store windows  and walls all over the area, and two Bluffton News  reporters ducked for cover. But the residents figured all the  noise was the boisterous legionnaires passing through town  for a convention in Lima, Ohio.

Merchant security officer Sidney Garau ran into Greding’s hardware store  shouting for the guns. By the time he got them, the gang had piled into their car, and made off with a disappointing  take  $2,100 and a .32 revolver. Postmaster Dode Murray  hid behind a brick column with a hefty .45 ready to shoot  the bandits as they passed.

But the green sedan squealed off  in another direction, firing over the crowd as they went. The town marshal dropped  his lunch and rushed over. There was pandamonium,  but no gang. Witnesses said the getaway car  was a Buick, an Essex, a Chrysler,  a Pontiac, and a Chevrolet. The machine gun sticking out of the  back window was a little distracting.

When a gas station attendant said  a Chevy headed down Riley Street, County sheriffs threw up roadblocks,  but the mystery car, whatever model it really was,  was long gone. CHAPTER 17: CONNECTING THE DOTS Maurice Lanham handed  Clifford Mohler’s adress in East Chigaco to insurance company detective  Forrest Huntington On August 17, 1933,  East Chicago police arrested someone named Clifford Martin,  or Joseph Martin, and another man at  the Travelers inn.

Huntington identified the man  as Clifford Mohler, through a tattoo, his appearance, and fingerprints on file in Washington, D.C.. He was truly well connected. The other man was James Kirkland. Mohler squealed  that John Dillinger and crew had rooms at the nearby  Borland Avenue Apartments. Off Team State Police went, joined by less than enthusiastic  East Chicago cops.

The rooms were empty. Someone *cough*East Chicago Cops must have tipped off the criminals. Not all was lost. They found receipts  for work done on cars. One of the vehicles was registered  to “Fred Monahan,” a Dillinger alias. Mohler, meanwhile  was the gift that kept on giving, or the rapper that kept on rapping.

He gave a name: Homer Van Meter. American Surety Detective  Forrest Huntington now linked John Dillinger, Harry Copeland,  Sam Goldstein, and Homer Van Meter in the unsolved  bankjob at Bluffton, Ohio. Huntington was on a roll, and yet, he never connected Shaw’s info  that this Dillinger was amassing a nest egg  for his friends in prison and Mohler never squeaked  about the pending prison break.

On August 18, six men robbed the People’s Savings Bank  of Grand Haven, Michigan. In one of the cars  abandonded by the bandits, police found a driver’s license issued  to “Fred Monahan.” One of Dillinger’s aliases. So was it his job? No, he’d merely lent the robbers  one of his many stolen vehicles and left the license by accident.

This job was masterminded by Lester Joseph Gillis, aka Baby Face Nelson. Mohler was turned over to  Leach and kept yacking. He admitted to several bank robberies, including the Gravel Switch job. Mohler hoped to get a deal  from the Indiana State Police Captain and ratted that Dan Donovan  was living with Sam Goldstein at the Beverly Apartments  in Gary, Indiana.

Off Team State Police went. However, the raid was pulled  together at such short notice, Captain Leach had no time  to cordon off the area. And he was short on men. He had to go to the State Police  barracks 18 miles away to get some. As he jumped into his car, he  yelled at the garage man next door to call the police  if anyone showed up.

Mere minutes after Leach drove off, a Terraplane pulled up at the complex. Leach returned with reinforcements and was less  than thrilled to find out that the Police had  arrested the man who go out, and let the driver go. They’d grabbed Goldstein, who’d been dropped off  by John Dillinger. The Garage guy complained he had  called Gary police about the Terraplane, but they were like: meh.

But lucky Leach, he told him that three men had  left word for Goldstein to meet them at the Roadhouse,  9 miles out of town. Off Team State Police went. But Leach found no one at the Roadhouse. Goldstein’s Terraplane was confiscated  and added to the police car fleet. Unlike Mohler, Goldstein was no rapper.

He was too old to crack under  interrogation and told Leach nothing. But the bandits associated  with Dillinger were dropping like flies. Freddy Brenman was also caught. CHAPTER 18: LUCKY DUCK On August 25, 1933,  Detective Forrest Huntington contacted the Dayton Police Department  to inform them that John Dillinger  had a girlfriend in Dayton, Ohio.

He had no address or married name, but she was the sister  of James Jenkins, an inmate at Michigan City. Also “Dillinger is driving a new  Essex Terraplane 8 Sedan black color and is probably  using Indiana license 418-673.” A phone call to Michigan City  produced the name of Mary Longnaker. The letter she’d written to her  brother James revealed her address.

Inspector Seymour Yendes of  the Dayton Police Department ordered two Dayton detectives,  Russell K. Pfauhl and Charlie E. Gross to swing by Longnaker’s rooming house. They showed Johnnie’s picture  to the landlady, Lucille Stricker, who confirmed the man was a friend  of her tenant Mary Longnaker. The man often wrote letters and  Stricker volunteered to call detectives when the next one arrived.

Meanwhile, Mary’s letters  to Dillinger telling him to come over, were all returned to sender. Her boyfriend was  very shifty… ehm… careful. Finally, a letter  dated August 25th got through. She warned him of a medical problem, she couldn’t commit to paper, and no: it wasn’t that! She had recently seen her husband, and he wasn’t going  to contest the divorce.

“If you can come down over Sun[day]. I want to see you so bad. I had my picture taken  they aren’t so hot tho. I sure don’t take a good picture.” Dillinger indeed came that Sunday, driving the new Essex, license 418-673. But he was not seen. Lucky Duck. A few days later, the Landlady  called the detectives to say a letter had arrived  from Johnnie to Mary.

It read:  “I’ll be seeing you soon.” Excited, detectives Pfauhl and Gross  convinced landlady Nosey Rosey to rent them a room across  the hall from Mary’s. Only Dillinger would be allowed upstairs and once he knocked on Mary’s door, they’d open the door,  and shoot to kill – point-blank. The only other man allowed upstairs  was Captain Leach, but he’d call first.

And so, the men waited in the unlit apartment – their ears tuned for footsteps. An hour later,  someone raced up the stairs. The detectives threw open the door,  ready to shoot, but they realized just in time that  the man at door was tall and thin, and not short and stocky like Dillinger. Leach called out:  “Don’t shoot it’s me.

” Captain Dumb-butt  had forgotten his own instructions. He’d raced upstairs in his excitement  because he’d gotten intel that Dillinger was at a restaurant. Let’s go! Off they went. When they got there,  John was already gone. Lucky duck. CHAPTER 19: NO JOKE John Dillinger added another  like-minded parolee to his gang: Hilton Crouch’s  brother-in-law, John Vinson.

24-year-old Vinson had served time for  a bankrobbery in Mohawk, Indiana. On September 6, 1933, Dillinger,  Vinson, and Crouch arrived at the Massachusetts Ave. State Bank  in Indianapolis, Indiana, near the State Police headquarters. Assistant bank manager,  Lloyd Rinehart, was sitting at his desk chatting on the telephone  when he heard someone say “This is a stickup!  We mean business.

” It sounded so fake,  he didn’t even glance up and continued the conversation. “Get off that damned telephone!” Rinehart turned to see Dillinger,  a straw hat tilted smugly on his head, sitting cross-legged on top of  the seven-foot-high barrier, casually pointing  an automatic at his face. This was no joke.

Rinehart and  a cashier raised their hands. Two patrons also raised their hands  but Dillinger told them to lower them. Raised arms could alert passers by. He herded everyone into a corner. The customers just stood there,  hands at their sides, while Dillinger forced the employees  to lie on the floor. Vinson trained his gun on them, as Dillinger gracefully dropped to  the floor and headed to the vault.

He began flinging sacks of cash  over the cage to Vinson. They had hit the jackpot,  the Real Silk Hosiery Company’s payroll. The load became extra heavy when Dillinger discovered  a cache of 1,000 half dollars. The jittery Vinson, struggling  to keep his handkerchief-mask from slipping down,  kept pestering Dillinger to hurry it up.

Johnnie remained calm. Minutes later,  the pair backed out with the heavy bags, hopped into a blue DeSoto, and wheelman Hilton Crouch  burned rubber up Michigan Avenue. Just like that:  the gangsters were gone. The take was  Dillinger’s biggest to date, a whopping $ 24,800,  nearly 600,000 today. was the second most successful  bank robbery in the state and all right under the nose of  the Indiana State police headquarters, where Captain Leach  was tearing his hair out.

Her swore to unleash  every force of the law against this flamboyant… jerkface. Johnnie divided the loot  on the way to Chicago, then the gang parted company. Vinson took his eight grand  and laid so low, he was never heard from again. Dillinger now had enough dough to fund the prison break. But it would keep him busy  for the next few weeks, and sweet Mary would have to wait.

CHAPTER 20: LONE WOLF For the past three months, Dillinger had stayed  in touch with everyone who promised to help Harry Pierpont  and crew escape. Dillinger’s main contact to  Team Escapee on the inside was 22-year-old Mary Kinder, a petite lady with a fondness  for flashy clothes, red shoes, fabulous rouge,  and stunning lipstick.

Mary had an ex-husband,  a brother, and a sweetheart  doing time at Michigan City. Her ex Dale Kinder, son of  an Indianapolis police sergeant, was in for robbing a grocery store. Her brother Earl Northern was in  for a Kokomo bankrobbery, as was his partner and her sweetheart,  Harry Pierpont. She promised to help Dillinger  organize the mass break-out under one condition: her brother Earl had  to be added to the list of escapees.

John assigned Kinder  the job of providing clothing and finding an apartment in  Indianapolis for up to 14 men. Many a successful break out had been  thwarted for lack of a good hide out. Another partner in the break out  was Kokomo Madam Pearl Elliott. Elliot’s brother had been another  one of Pierpont’s partners in a bank robbery,  but he hadn’t been caught.

Since Pierpont hadn’t snitched, Pearl felt she owed him. She passed money to a partner  who bribed the guards at the prison. Dillinger also used lawyer  and fixer Omar Brown to grease some palms  of parole board members. To get Pierpont out the legal way. To no avail. Handsome Harry’s reputation  as a jail breaker had his parole quickly  and forcefully denied.

Plan B. Pierpont sent his mom Lena to  Captain Leach at the Indiana Statehouse. In that era, mothers were considered  vital to a wayward son’s reformation. But Lena couldn’t  get past the receptionist. She handed over a letter for the Captain in which Pierpont offered to  track down Dillinger and Copeland in exchange for his parole.

This was the first time Captain Leach  heard of Handsome Harry, and declined the offer. He figured this was simply  a lone wolf escape plan. It is unclear what  Pierpont’s real plan was. CHAPTER 21: THE LIST The list of Indiana State Prison  inmates joining the breakout had grown since John Dillinger left.

Gang leader Harry “Pete” Pierpont  decided who made the cut. Team Escapee’s core members, of course. Charles Makley, a 44-year-old  former insurance agent from Ohio, had a long criminal record, but was currently serving ten-to-twenty- years for a robbery in Indiana. He was pretty chill in prison,  and was the comedian in the gang.

John Red Hamilton, a 34-year-old  red headed carpenter from Canada, was a quiet guy liked by everyone. He was in his third year  of his 25-year sentence for robbing a gasoline filling station. Though he had only  committed minor offences in prison, the prison board thought him  too dangerous to parole. He was also called Three Fingered Jack, because he’d lost two fingers in  a freak sleighing accident as a kid.

Russell Clark, a 35-year-old average  sort of fella from Terre Haute, Indiana was tall and handsome with  a small black mustache. He was in year six of a  twenty-year sentence for a bank robbery. Plus, when he’d returned  from testifying in another robbery, he’d tried to kill his guard. He’d since made several escape attempts.

Per Dillinger’s request: Mary Longnaker’s brother  James Jenkins had been added. He had completed two years  of a life sentence for murder. He’d panicked during a store robbery and shot the owner who  reached inside his cash register. The Baron Lamm associate,  Walter Dietrich, had served two years of a life sentence  for the Clinton, Indiana bank robbery.

He got another partner of  Baron Lamm on the list. 31-year-old James “Oklahoma Jack” Clark, no relation to Russell Clark, who had also been captured  at the Clinton job. James wasn’t interested in a break out, but Dietrich convinced him  that on the outside he could get medical care  for his awful stomach ulcers.

Also added were: 28-year-old Edward Shouse in his third year of  a twenty-five-year sentence for robbery. Joseph Fox in year three  of a life sentence for robbery. John Burns, a mysterious character whose real name, John Heaps,  was revealed decades later, in his thirteenth year  on a life sentence for murder committed  during a bank robbery.

And of course, Mary Kinder’s brother,  Earl “the Kid” Northern. CHAPTER 22: RED ARROW John Dillinger and Harry Copeland, staying at Pearl Elliott’s Kokomo hideout, prepared to deliver guns to  the inmates at Indiana State Prison. Dillinger had bought  three .38 automatic pistols with spare clips and ammunition  for forty-eight dollars each.

They packed the weapons individually  in Chicago newspapers, wrapped them in cotton, covered the packages with roofing tar, and rolled them in sand   to make them look like sand stone. On or about the night of August 10,  they took the stones, drove to Michigan City, parked  several blocks from the prison, and walked to the walls.

They located the marker made  by one of the inmates, a white piece of board hung  from the window of the shirt factory with a painted red arrow pointing  in the direction of where the guns should  to be tossed over the fence. Apparently, the prison guards and  officials either never saw the marker or thought it was  some kind of inside joke, or well, you know… bribes.

It took pitcher Dillinger several tries to hurl the stones  over the twenty-five-foot wall. Early the next morning,  Walter Dietrich picked up the packages and hid the guns and ammo in a shoebox in the basement of  the shirt shop warehouse. A few days later,  Dillinger tossed another fake stone containing three  more guns over the wall.

This time two convicts noticed  the strange, sticky stone. Hoping to collect some favors,  they warned a guard. Deputy Warden Claudy cracked  open the rock and seized the guns. Shock, horror, surprise! A break out was being planned! For some reason, Claudy  didn’t suspect Pierpont’s gang and instead accused a recent arrival,  Daniel McGeoghegan, a notorious Chicago  beer runner and gunman, and his two bankrobber friends  Jack Gray and Edward Murphy, and placed the trio  in solitary confinement.

A persistent story ignores  the delivery of the first package, and says that after the seizure  of this second faux-rock Pierpont contacted  Dillinger with instructions to send guns in  a specially marked box of threads. However, this story appeared  to have been a deliberate invention  of Walter Dietrich.

More about that in another episode. Speaking of inventions, John Dillinger was accused  of a September 12 hold up of the S. J. Gully State Bank in Farrell, Pennsylvania with a take of $6,000, killing a police officer in the process. However, as his carreer unfolded, he ended up acccused of just about every bankrobbery  and hold-up in the country, months after the fact.

Some of which he’d committed  weeks before his parole. Johnnie specifically  avoided Pennsylvania because their police cars  had two-way radios, making an escape that much harder. Still, on September 15,  Dillinger returned to Chicago with a big bag of money and had to get his pretty  beat up Terraplane fixed in a garage.

So, he had been up to something… On September 18, 1933, Dillinger visited Mary Kinder  at her Indianapolis home to give her 150 dollars  for her expenses. The boys would arrive  September 27 at the earliest, maybe four days later. Then, for the first time in a month, Dillinger had time  to visit Mary Longnaker.

CHAPTER 23: HE’S HERE On September 20, 1933,  the two Dayton Police detectives Russell Pfauhl and Charlie Gross, who’d been on  round-the-clock surveillance of Mary Longnaker’s apartment  for two weeks now, had had enough of each other’s faces. They went home to sleep  in their own beds. The detectives told Mrs.

 Stricker  to call police headquarters if Dillinger ever returned. The next day, September 21, the Landlady heard someone come up  the stairs and enter Mary’s room. She saw the  fancy Terraplane parked outside. Bingo! She dailed the police station  around midnight. Sergeant W. J. Aldredge  answered the phone. “He’s here!” “Who’s there?” “John Dillinger, you dumb flatfoot!” Within half an hour, Phaul and Gross were underway  with Sergeant Aldredge.

By 1.30 AM, the house was surrounded  by uniformed police. Mrs Stricker let the detectives and sergeant in through the back door. Aldredge took up postition  at the bottom of the stairs while the landlady led  the detectives up the carpeted stairs. Gross, with a Thompson machine gun, and Pfauhl with a twelve-gauge riot gun, stood on either side of the door frame and signalled unarmed Mrs Stricker  to knock and announce herself.

Mary opened the door which allowed the detectives  to peek around the corner. In the middle of the livingroom stood a man in  an undershirt and gray suit pants, holding a stack of kodak pictures. Gross moved in while Pfauhl shouted: “Sitck em up John.  We’re police officers.” Dillinger slowly raised his hand  to his shoulders.

The pictures fell, and  he lowered his hands a little. Pfauhl entered with his big shotgun aimed at Dillinger’s head. “Don’t, John. I’ll kill you.” Johnnie froze. Mary suddenly fake-fainted at his feet, but the officers didn’t buy the act. Gross feared a setup, and ordered  Mary to get on her hands and knees and carefully crawl over to him.

Pfauhl told Dillinger that  if he hadn’t put up hands, he could have been shot. Dillinger, trying hard to hide  his disgust, countered: “When you fellows came in,  you said you were police but I didn’t know. I thought maybe you were  part of another gang. If can only tell if they wear uniforms.” With Johnnie handcuffed on the couch, the police searched the room.

They found two guns on his person, a .38 automatic between  the sofa cushions, and five pistols inside a suitcase. A search of the Terraplane  outside yielded $2,604 in cash, ammunition, and a sack of roofing nails. John Dillinger was headed to prison, mere days from  his buddies’ planned break out. He could only hope they succeeded, because he was sure  Harry Pierpont and gang would return the favor  and break him out.

Well, we’ll find out  in the next episode, see you there!