ROBBERY IN RACINE

11/20/1933 - Bank's insides mapped and studied, escape routes practiced, the Dillinger Gang, consisting of Harry Pierpont (the actual leader of the group), Russell Clark, John Dillinger, Charles Makley, and Leslie Homer (a just paroled Michigan City con), visits the American Bank and Trust Company of Racine, Wisconsin.

             
                    The Bank, located at Main & Fifth Street

Driving a black Buick Auburn with jump seats and bright yellow wire wheels, on a mild afternoon of 52 degrees (it is around 2:30) Homer sets the robbery in motion by circling the bank and twice dropping off two of his confederates before parking behind the bank with the motor left running.  All wearing dapper suits, hats, and topcoats (just right for concealing the men's Thompson sub-machine guns), in pairs, Makley and Dillinger, and then Pierpont and Clark, enter the bank.  To obscure the robbery about to take place, Pierpont unveils two large Red Cross posters and pastes them to the plate-glass window that looks out on the street.  Shielded from sight, the bandits then identify themselves with Makley's classic criminal order for everyone to "STICK 'EM UP!"

                      
                                                         Dillinger

Unfortunately, thirty-four-year-old head teller Harold Graham thinks the order is a joke, and when he tells Makley to go to another window because he's busy and fails to raise his hands, the outlaw fires a single shot from his Thompson that wounds the bank employee in the elbow and right hip.  Floored, a bleeding Graham falls right next to the alarm button that rings three blocks away at the police station ... activating it, Makley rewards the teller with a firm kick to go with his wounds but does not shoot him again.  At the same time as Graham is triggering the silent alarm, assistant cashier L.C. Rowan sets off the loud clanging one on the side of the building which immediately draws a crowd.  Employees and customers covered or in hiding (there are more than a dozen inside the bank), the .45 Dillinger places in the ribs of bank president Grover Weyland convinces the executive to open the vault at the back of the establishment and the looting begins in earnest.  Assigned duties as usual, access gained, Pierpont and Dillinger continue gathering money, while Clark and Makley deal with the police who now arrive on the scene.

  
          Makley                                           Pierpont                                         Clark

Officer Cyril Boyard and Sgt. Wilbur Hansen (carrying a recently acquired Thompson to give the American Bank & Trust Company's customers a show) arrive at the bank with sirens blaring, but thinking it is just another false alarm, enter the building casually with weapons not at the ready while Patrol Franklin Worsley stays with their car.  Busy controlling Boyard with his gun placed in the officer's back, Clark yells for Makley to "Get the cop with the machine gun!" when Hansen blithely follows his friend into the bank; instructions the trigger happy gunman instantly complies with, knocking the policeman down with two wounding bullets.  Then, switching to automatic fire, Makley shatters a window firing at two nosy locals peering into the bank, and unleashes another burst of slugs at two detectives lurking across the street that have joined the festivities from a nearby poolroom ... wild shooting that keeps heads down but provides no new hospital cases.  One other act of violence takes place before the bandits vacate the bank, but this time Makley is not involved and the last blood letting is entirely the work of Pierpont.  Tired of listening to a nonstop stream of whining and complaints, when the bank president angrily tells Pierpont that he wouldn't be so brave if he wasn't armed, the outlaw leader finally has heard one comment too many and reacts to the opinion by smashing Weyland in the face with the barrel of his Thompson ... the man offers no further opinions on courage the rest of the day.  Heist now complete with the bank's coffers being lightened by almost $30,000, each bandit takes a hostage as a shield and leave the building as a group, forcing their way through a crowd, now numbering about a hundred people, to the waiting getaway car.

  

Hostages draped over the vehicle, the gang escapes from town and free of pursuit, eventually tie their last two captives (the others have been freed or have fled when the outlaws attention is elsewhere), the bank president and bookkeeper Ursula Patzke, to a tree with shoelaces (they are loose in twenty minutes).  Unhappy with the experience, Patzke asks why she was selected as a hostage and is told by Pierpont it was because her red dress stood out ... and horrified at the information provided, to her dying day she never wears the color again. 

 

It has been another successful day for the gang and they soon are back in Chicago spending the fruits of their labors on clothes, food, booze, and their girlfriends, but not as fruitful as it might have been, stalking about in a rage with his machine gun, Makley has failed to find a stack of special bills that the teller he shot had just finished counting ... fifty one thousand dollar bills!  

"THAT BIRD SURE CAN DRIVE!"

11/15/1933 - Tipped off by underworld associate Art McGinnis that John Dillinger has a doctor's appointment to treat a skin condition (Barber's itch, an inflammation of the hair follicles of the skin), Chicago Police Lt. John Howe, the head of the Indiana State Police, Captain Matt Leach, and American Surety Company private investigator Forrest Huntington meet at the Morrison Hotel in Chicago to come up with a plan to take down the escaped outlaw.

                                   

Kill or capture, the decision is made to arrest Dillinger by boxing in his car when he leaves his appointment, but if he resists in the least, gunning the bandit down immediately (unbeknownst to Howe and Huntington, Leach will tell his men to kill Dillinger as soon as they have the chance).  Plans made, that evening, the coldest November 15th in the history of the city, a group of Indiana police and three squads of Chicago police, sixteen men in all, take up positions in four cars around the office of Dr. Charles Eye.  Right on time for his appointment, at 7:30 in the evening Dillinger, accompanied by his girlfriend Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, arrives in his Essex Terraplane, parks, and leaving Frechette in the car, enters the building where the dermatologist has his office.  Receiving a simple treatment of a medical lotion massaged into his itching scalp, after a short time Dillinger returns to his vehicle and the cold Chicago night quickly heats up!

                                 
                                                      Frechette

Always aware, as Dillinger saunters to his car as if he hasn't a care in the world he notices three cars parked up the street pointing in the wrong direction ... the tip-off that a trap is about to be sprung on him.  He responds instantly by throwing the car into reverse and backs into bustling Irving Boulevard, just missing several vehicles of oncoming traffic.  Surprised at the wrong way move, only one of the cop cars reacts quickly enough to chase after the outlaw.

                                  
                                   John Dillinger

Manic minutes through the streets of Chicago, at breakneck speeds the police car, a Ford V-8 driven by Chicago Sergeant John Artery, weaves in and out of traffic chasing the outlaw, finally drawing near enough that Indiana Sergeant Art Keller is able to blast away at Dillinger with both a 12-gauge shotgun and his .38 revolver, one bullet hitting the door post only inches from the bandit's head while Frechette crouches down in her seat.  In turn, Artery's car has a window shot out ... by a beat cop who thinks a gangster hit is going down when the cars rocket past.  Crazy driving, Dillinger manages to thread his way between the narrowing space of two approaching trolley cars, but finally appears trapped when he turns down a dead end street.  Almost ... once again the outlaw's reaction time is superior to those of the police and turning down an alley and then immediately reversing and then putting his foot to the floor, he is able to lose his pursuers when the police car overshoots the alley and takes too long to turn around.  Gone ... and as Keller throws down his shotgun in disgust he is quoted as saying, "That bird sure can drive!" 

                 
                  The abandoned Terraplane the next day
                   

The next day the Dillinger Terraplane will be found on the north side of town with twenty-two bullet holes in it and the chase will be the headline story of all the Chicago newspapers.  Never a dull moment with the outlaw and his gang on the loose, only a few days later in the month the papers will have a new Dillinger story to run though, when on November 20th he shows up in Racine, Wisconsin and makes a large cash withdrawal from the town's American Bank and Trust Company.

 
 Dillinger

SANTA CLAUS GETS LYNCHED

11/18/1929 - Convicted felon Marshall Ratliff makes a desperate bid for freedom from the Eastland County jail.

                            

                                                            Ratliff

Sentenced to 99 years for the infamous Santa Claus robbery of the First National Bank of Cisco, Texas the previous year (so named because the outlaw wears a Santa outfit, complete with white whiskers, during the job), and death by electrocution for the related murders of Police Chief George Edward "Bit" Bedford and Officer George Carmichael, Ratliff seems to have a complete physical and mental breakdown when one of his partners in the crime, Henry Helms, is fried in "Old Sparky" at the Huntsville State Prison on September, 6, 1929.

                            

                                                    "Old Sparky"

It is an acting job worthy of an Oscar!  Pretending insanity and feigning paralysis with epic bouts of babbling and drooling, the Death Row guards and Ratliff's mother are convinced that Ratliff has gone bonkers and a sanity hearing is scheduled to determine whether the killer will still get the hot seat or be send to a loony bin ... a decision that causes Judge Davenport of Eastland County to become irate, so irate that he issues a bench warrant against Ratliff for stealing an Oldsmobile during the Cisco robbery and has him extradited to the local jail.  It is a move that Davenport will soon come to regret.  At Eastland, Ratliff continues his charade to the extent that jailers Pack Kilbourn and Thomas Alexander "Uncle Tom" Jones are forced to feed, bathe, and place the outlaw on the toilet ... and finally they lower their guards.  Going from cell to cell serving the evening meal, the men forget to lock Ratliff's cell and instantly the outlaw becomes mentally and physically fit once more, running downstairs and grabbing a .38 Colt revolver from a desk in the jail's office.  Realizing Ratliff is attempting an escape, the jailers chase after him and Jones is the unfortunate one to arrive in the downstairs office first, a race won for which he is rewarded with five bullets that hit him in abdomen, chest, and shoulder ... mortal wounds.  Luckier, when Kilbourn arrives the shot Ratliff sends his way misses and the two men then engage in a nasty country brawl that eventually has the outlaw beaten unconscious and returned to his cell.

                                     

                                                            Jones

Now along with the judge really unhappy, the citizens of Eastland are too ... crazy blood lusting unhappy!  The next day a crowd of over 2,000 gathers at the jail and when 20 hot-heads finally storm into the jail, Texas has its last mob necktie party.  Found naked in his cell, Ratliff has his feet and hands bound, is drug to a vacant lot behind the town's Majestic Theater (ironically presenting a play called "The Noose") and then hoisted 15-feet into the air on a guy-wire between two telephone poles.  The mob's first attempt to hang Ratliff is unsuccessful though when a knot in the rope they are using comes untied and the bandit falls to the ground.  No reprieve with the band of upset spiders the mob has become, Ratliff has just enough time to say "Forgive me boys," before rope repaired, he is sent air dancing again ... the second time fatally.  

               

                                      The former jail in recent times

Happy to have killed a killer, despite a town full of witnesses, no legal action is ever taken against any participant in the lynching of the Santa Claus bandit.

THE HANDSHAKE KILLING

11/10/1924 - The bootlegging wars that will plague Chicago for years and cost dozens their lives begin in earnest on this day at the North Side flower shop of Irish Catholic gangster Charles Dean "Dion" O'Banion.

                  
                  O'Banion

Payback by Italian gangsters for double crossing Johnny Torrio in the purchase of the Sieben Brewery right before the bootlegging operation is to be raided by police, and for highjacking too many Genna Brothers liquor shipments (along with being quoted around town as saying, "To Hell with the Sicilians!"), O'Banion is at the flower store he owns, working on floral arrangements for the funeral of mobster Mike Merlo, when a new group of criminals arrive to place an order.

     
     Schofield's

Clipping chrysanthemums, O'Banion steps out of a back room in the flower shop and greets his latest customers, Brooklyn gangster Frankie Yale and the murder duo of Albert Anselmi and John Scalise (notorious, they are called "The Murder Twins" for rubbing garlic on their bullets to cause gangrene to any victims they don't kill outright).

                            
                                                         Frankie Yale
                   
                             Anselmi                                         Scalise

When he shakes Yale's hand though, the hitman from New York keeps a death grip on O'Banion's hand, preventing the gangster from pulling a pistol and defending himself as Scalise and Anselmi each fire two bullets from their .38 revolvers point-blank into the Irishman's chest and throat (leaving powder burns on the corpse).  Down and dead already, Scalise then fires a finishing slug into the back of O'Banion's head.  The killing takes only seconds!

              
              Newspaper depiction
                              
                               Front page

Denied burial in consecrated ground (eventually his family will get the okay to rebury him in Catholic approved sod), O'Banion nonetheless gets a massive sendoff that includes a funeral (the Lord's Prayer and three Hail Marys are said in the by childhood friend Father Patrick Malloy) attended by thousands and a burial at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.  He also gets vows of revenge from the new boss of his gang, Hymie Weiss (receiving the news that he has lost his boss, best friend, and mentor, Weiss collapses on the floor of his bathroom and cries uncontrollably).  A five year long blood bath is about to begin!

                
                Mobbed funeral
                                 
                                  Adios Dion

SAYING NO TO MACHINE GUN JACK

11/9/1927 - Career taking off after a successful run at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, a posh nightclub in Chicago catering to the rich and famous (and the elite of the underworld), singer/comic Joe E. Lewis (real name Joseph Klewan) refuses to renew his contract with the Green Mill, choosing instead to sign on with The New Rendezvous ... a decision that will give the entertainer a raise of $350 a week to a $4000 a month salary (plus a percentage of the club's nightly take during his run).

                    
                                         Lewis

It is a decision however that enrages one of the co-owners of the Green Mill ... head torpedo for Al Capone, Machine Gun Jack McGurn (real name Vincenzo Gibaldi) ... and he tells Lewis that he will not live to open elsewhere when the performer decides to move on anyway.



The charming Machine Gun Jack

Worried, for awhile Lewis is escorted about town by a bodyguard, but when nothing happens and he debuts at the New Rendezvous as planned, the entertainer starts believing that McGurn was just bluffing as a renegotiable tactic and he lets his guard down and relaxes.  It is a mistake that almost costs Lewis his life!

                                   
                                             Lewis in later years

Awakened from his slumbers in his 10th floor room at the Commonwealth Hotel, a groggy Lewis foolish answers the knocking on his door without first checking who is outside his suite.  Door opened, three thugs rush into the room and begin pistol whipping the entertainer, the blows so forceful that they drive pieces of Lewis' skull into his brain.  Brutalized and almost comatose, one of the gangsters then takes out a long bladed hunting knife and carves away at the performer face and throat, cutting him from ear to ear and taking off part of his tongue.  Blood spewing, the trio then drop Lewis on the floor and make their escape believing they've silenced the man forever.  And they aren't far from right ... jugular vein barely missed, Lewis somehow fights through his wounds and is able to crawl out into the hallway where he is discovered by a chambermaid.  Rushed to a nearby hospital, his life will be saved, but it takes months for him to learn how to speak again and he will bear the scars of the attack for the rest of his life.

                                 
                                                      Lewis

In the aftermath of the attack, Capone, who was fond of Lewis and unaware of what his hitman was planning, provides monetary assistance in the form of $10,000 that allows the entertainer to take the time necessary to recover from his wounds.  And recover he does, though he will never sing again, Lewis goes on to a career in comedy and lives long enough (he will die in 1971 at the age of 69) to see Frank Sinatra play him in the story of his life, the 1957 movie The Joker Is Wild based on the book of the same title by Art Cohn.  And living well the sweetest revenge, Lewis stays above ground decades longer than the man who contracted his death!

                              
                                                       Sinatra as Lewis
                                      

No happy ending for McGurn, on the outs with the leadership of The Outfit since Capone's incarceration for income tax evasion, in 1933 the former killer is setup on the anniversary of the crime he helped planned, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and while enjoying an evening of bowling on February 14th, the hitman is himself hit ... dead at the young age of only 33.

                    
                                   Adios Jack   

KARPIS TAKES A TRAIN

11/7/1935 - Missing the adrenaline rush of taking down a big score, Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy #1, decides to rob the mail train ferrying payroll cash from the Cleveland Federal Reserve to Youngstown, Ohio, emulating the Wild West exploits of Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, and the Dalton boys.

   

    Alvin "Creepy" Karpis

For the job, Karpis creates a new gang consisting of former Barker-Karpis Gang member Harry Campbell, a blackjack dealer from Toledo named Freddie Hunter, a 45-year-old bank robber named Ben Grayson, and a bar tending ex-con from McAlester Prison named John Brock.

                         
                                                     Campbell

                                     

                                                     Hunter

Assignments practiced, at around 2:00 in the afternoon the men are in position around the Garrettsville, Ohio train station.  Thirteen minutes later the men, armed with machine guns, spring into action when the mail train arrives.  Hunter and Brock control the crowd of roughly sixty people at the station, Grayson watches the cab of the train, and Campbell and Karpis go after the money ... cowing the clerks to do as they're told by throwing an unlit stick of dynamite into the mail car and saying the next one will have its fuse burning.  The robbery takes only five minutes to accomplish, but unfortunately for the outlaws, the payroll for the town of Youngstown's is missing ... their haul will only be $46,450 (money from several bags of registered mail the bandits steal and the payroll for a steel mill in the city of Warren), five times less than they were expecting to take!

A return to the days of the Wild West, but the robbery is also a leap  into the future, for after driving to the town of Port Clinton, Karpis makes his getaway in a red four-seat Stinson airplane flown by former bootlegger John Zetzer (purchased by Karpis before the caper for the sum of $1,700).

                        

                                               Stinson Reliant

The escape through flight however does not go nearly as well as the robbery had ... over southern Indiana the plane runs out of fuel and Zetzer is forced to land in a field outside of Evansville and hitchhike into town for forty-seven gallons of gas from a Standard Oil station, then aloft again, the same thing happens over Missouri.  Sleeping in the plane, the next morning the winged outlaws make it to Memphis, and by lunchtime the next day they are safely back at their hideout in the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas.  

                                            

At the top of its most wanted list, J. Edgar Hoover and his men have no idea that Alvin Karpis has masterminded the crime.

KING OF THE EVERGLADES NO MORE

11/1/1924 - The outlaw career of the man known as "The King of the Everglades" and "The Swamp Bandit," John Hopkins Ashley, a criminal giant that between 1915 and 1924 robbed at least forty banks of over $1,000,000, dominated bootlegging in Florida, and as a pirate attacked the Bahamas' West End, comes to an abrupt end north of Fort Pierce on a bridge over the Sebastian River.

                                           

Receiving a tip that Ashley and his gang are on their way to rob a Jacksonville bank, with the help of Indian River County Sheriff J.R. Merritt and two of his men, Palm Beach County Sheriff George B. Baker and four of his deputies (Henry Stubbs, Elmer Padgett, L.B. Thomas, and O. B. Padgett) set a trap to put away the outlaw he has been chasing for over thirteen years ... blocking the bridge road with a chain and hanging red lantern and searching each car that tries to pass.  Sure enough, an hour after the stop is set up, at around 10:30 in the evening, the black touring car of Ashley drives into the bottleneck.  According to the official records, surrounded by lawmen with weapons at the ready, Ashley, and gang members Ray Lynn, Hanford Mobley, and Clarence Middleton surrender and are lined up on the bridge while their car is searched ... and while the search is taking place, Ashley draws a concealed pistol and tries to escape, causing Baker and his men to turn the outlaw foursome into bloody Swiss cheese.

            
                         Mobley                                                              Middleton
                                                         
                                                                    Lynn

An alternate tale however is told by two eye-witnesses who were also stopped at the bridge when the Ashley Gang arrives, a story that autopsy records seem to verify (all the corpses show binding marks on their wrists).  The gang is captured and HANDCUFFED, and when defenseless, Sheriff Baker takes out Ashley (and his confederates), the man that has threatened to kill him numerous times over the years for perceived wrongs that include the killing of the bandit's dog and father (indeed, Ashley is planning on shooting Baker later in the month when the lawman is scheduled to appear at the Jacksonville courthouse).  Bad blood, even in death the feud between the two men continues when one of the deputies scoops Ashley's good eye out of its socket (the outlaw wears a black eye patch from a wound received in 1915 while escaping a bank robbery) and offers it to Baker, making good on the sheriff's threat to one day wear the outlaw's eye on his watch fob (the eye eventually is put back with the corpse).  Years of mayhem put to an end, whatever really happened the killings are ruled justifiable homicides and the Ashley Gang is no more!

                            
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