DILLINGER FREED

10/12/1933 - Arrested in September, bank robber John Dillinger had been cooling his heels in the Lima, Ohio jail, waiting for his court date on robbery charges to arrive ... or for his recently escaped convict friends from the Michigan City Penitentiary to put in an appearance.  

                   
                                                Lima, Ohio jailhouse

On Columbus Day, it is his armed convict pals who show up at the jail in the form of Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, Russell Clark, John Hamilton, Harry Copeland, and Eddie Shouse.  Treating the jailbreak like a bank job, Pierpont, Makley, and Clark enter the jail, Copeland stays with the escape vehicle, a speedy Essex Terraplane, Hamilton keeps an eye on things from a spot near the theater behind the jail, and Shouse watches things out front beside a monument next to the walk that leads to the jail, a position from which he will convince a couple walking by that the gunshots they soon hear are file cabinets falling over as the jailhouse office is being cleaned.

                         
                                          Pierpont                                           Makley
                               
                                         Hamilton                                              Clark
                                              
                                                             Copeland
                   
                                                                     Shouse

Inside the jail, forty-seven-year-old Sheriff Jess Sarber and his wife Lucy had just begun to relax after finishing a dinner of pork chops and mashed potatoes, the Sheriff reading the newspaper while Mrs. Sarber worked on a crossword puzzle, also relaxing with them is thirty-two-year-old Deputy Sheriff Wilbur Sharp, off-duty in his civilian clothes, sitting on a davenport playing with Brownie, the Sarber's dog, his weapon out of reach.  Behind a barred and locked doorway, John Dillinger is playing pinochle with a pair of petty thieves and a prisoner awaiting appeal on his second-degree murder conviction.  It is 6:20 in the evening.

                                          

Entering the jail, Pierpont claims that the trio are officers from Michigan City, there to question Dillinger about the recent prison break.  When a friendly and polite Sarber asks to see their credentials chaos ensues.  "These are our credentials," Pierpont exclaims as he pulls a .38 revolver from under his coat and then fires the weapon twice when Sarber protests, "You can't do that!" and begins to get out of his chair.  The first shot creates a mortal wound, hitting the lawman in the lower abdomen and severing a femoral artery (the second misses).  Making an effort to reach the gun he has placed in his desk drawer, Sarber is then struck on the head with the barrel of Makley's gun (accidentally discharging his weapon), a blow of such force that his scalp is laid open to the bone, then Pierpont follows up with more pistol blows that insure Sarber stays down.  Caught up in the violence, warning Sharp not to move, Clark also accidentally fires his gun, almost shooting off his own finger.  Begging the outlaws not to hit her husband any further, Lucy Sarber then takes Pierpont to a cupboard where the key to the cellblock is kept and gives it to the outlaw.

                             
                                                              Dillinger

Inside the cellblock, on hearing gunfire from out front, Dillinger puts down his cards, pulls on his coat, and is waiting at the door when Pierpont passes the key in to open the metal bars.  Break almost complete, Pierpont fires a final shot down the cellblock aisle to keep the other prisoners from rushing and interfering with the escape, locks Sharp and Mrs. Sarber in an empty cell (though she pleads to be left with her husband), then escorts his friend out into the cool Autumn night where the rest of the gang are waiting.  Gone, the outlaws head back to their hideout in Hamilton, Ohio, while back in Lima, Mrs. Sarber and Sharp have to be cut out of their cell with an acetylene torch, an operation that takes thirty minutes (there are no backup keys), and Sheriff Sarber is taken by an ambulance to a local hospital where he dies in less than ninety minutes from shock and blood loss.  The first lawman to perish in the crime wave associated with Dillinger and his partners, his death will not go unavenged ... Hamilton is killed in the getaway from the Little Bohemia debacle of 1934, Pierpont and Makley will eventually receive death sentences for the crime, Clark will get life, while Copeland avoids a potential death sentence by pleading guilty to an Indiana bank job that gets him 10-25 years in Michigan City ... and Shouse, soon to be kicked out of the gang for excessive drinking and making a pass at Dillinger's girlfriend, is sent back to Michigan City to finish out his sentence, escaping death by testifying against his former friends when they come to trial for the killing of Sarber in 1934.

HYMIE HOLED

10/11/1926 - The bloody beer wars of Chicago claim 26-year-old Henry Earl J. Wojciechowski, aka North Side Gang leader Hymie Weiss.

                                      
                                                           Weiss

Only weeks removed from spoiling Al Capone's spaghetti lunch by unleashing ten cars of machine gunners and shotgun wielding mobsters on the Hawthorne Hotel, Scarface ends the truce that was put in place after the incident and gets his revenge.  Planned not to fail by Capone's favorite torpedo, "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn (real name Vincenzo Antonio Gibaldi), two rooms are rented near Weiss' headquarters at 740 North State Street in the flower shop that use to belong to mob boss Dion O'Bannion ... rented and made into machine gun nests staffed by two-man crews who watch and wait for their target (it is believed the men that wait in shifts are Capone mobsters McGurn, Frank Nitti, John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, Sam Hunt, Frank Rio, Tony Volpe, Louis Campagna, and Frankie Diamond).

                                         
                                                       Machine Gun Jack


                                                        The machine gun nest

Eventually the wait pays dividends when Weiss, his bodyguard Sam Pellar, gangster Paddy Murray, attorney William W. O'Brien, and investigator Benjamin Jacobs show up at 4:00 in the afternoon of the 11th.  Alighting from their cars in front of the Holy Name Cathedral, the men are crossing the street on their way to Schofield's Flower Shop when Capone's men, believed to be Nitti and McGurn, open up on them.

                                           
                                                           Path of the bullets
      
                    Schofield's and second story windows next door where the bullets cam from

In the hail of shotgun and machine gun lead that sweeps the street, the main target of the attack, Weiss, is riddled by ten hits and dies instantly, fellow gangster Murray is felled by sixteen killing strikes, lawyer O'Brien staggers into a nearby stairwell with four wounds to his arm, side, and stomach, bodyguard Peller gets off a single pistol shot before being hit in the groin and staggering back to the car, and Jacobs is struck in the foot ... also wounded in the barrage is the Cathedral, taking thirty-five .45 caliber rounds, damage which can still be seen today.

                                   
                                                                O'Brien
                 
                                                      Murray in the street
    
                                                     Hymie at the morgue

Hymie killed, the leadership of the North Side Gang then passes to George "Bugs" Moran ... he too will have troubles with Capone, the worst being a little tangle that will go down in history as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

TRAGIC TRAIN ROBBERY

10/11/1923 - A train robbery in the wilds of northwest America goes wrong with tragic results.  Brought up poor, and poorly educated, in a remote section of Oregon, three lumberjack brothers, the D'Autremonts, twenty-three-year-old twins Roy and Ray, and youngest sibling, eighteen-year-old Hugh, come up with a get-rich-scheme ... pretend they are the Daltons or the James Gang and rob a train.  Their plan is simple ... isolate the mail car they want to rob by stopping the rest of the train in railroad tunnel, make off with an estimated $40,000 in cash and securities, and then use their outdoor skills to vanish into the local wilds.  Rookie outlaws, the robbery turns out not to be the simple exercise of the brothers' imaginations!

Riding the Southern Pacific #13, shortly after leaving the Siskiyou, Oregon station, the brothers, wearing heavy overcoats to hide the sawed-off shotguns (and Colt .45s) they are carrying, leave their seats and go into action.  Dropping into the locomotive cab, Roy and Ray command engineer Sidney Bates and fireman Marvin Eng to stop the train, positioning it so that most of the cars remain in the 3,000 foot long tunnel.  Stationary, Hugh than places a package of dynamite on the door of the locked mail car.  When the explosion takes place though, instead of gaining access to the funds they want to remove from the train, the blast creates a holocaust which roasts the car, and kills mail clerk Elvyn Dougherty.  Frustrated by what has taken place, when brakeman Coyl Johnson shows up from the rear of the train to find out about what is happening and can't help put out the fire, an irate Hugh shoots him in the head, killing the man instantly.  A murder the engineer and fireman witness, so in a snap decision, they are eliminated too, with Ray and Roy unloading their shotguns into the men.

                              
                                                   The burnt mail car

Four men murdered for zero profit, the brothers flee, leaving behind only a pistol with its serial number filed off and a pair of overalls ... clues that the local authorities can do nothing with until the chief of the Southern Pacific's train police, Daniel O'Connell, decides to seek the help of an experimental crime lab in Berkeley, California run by a Sherlock Holmes like criminologist named Edward Oscar Heinrich ... soon to become known as the "Wizard of Berkeley."


                                            
                                                      Edward Oscar Heinrich

In two days, Heinrich's examination of the gun and overalls results in the break required to solve the case as he determines the clothing was worn by a left-handed lumberjack (the items belong to Roy) who has worked around the fir trees of Pacific Northwest that is white, between 21 and 25 years old, has medium light brown hair, was not taller than 5'10", weighed around 125 pounds and had fastidious habits ... deductions made by the size of the overalls, tree chips and Douglas fir needles found in the right-hand pocket, neatly cut fingernail slivers found in the seam of a pocket, and a hair fiber found wrapped around a button on the overalls.  And when Heinrich disassembles the pistol, he finds a second serial number inside the gun, along with locating a mail receipt tucked inside the bib pocket of the overalls.  The information is enough to put local police, train agents, postal inspectors, and officers of what will become the FBI on the trail of the in hiding D'Autremonts!

                                    
                                                             Wanted Poster

The search for the brothers becomes one of the largest manhunts in criminal history ... more than two million circulars showing the killers are distributed to almost every city and town in the United States, foreign countries receive numerous wanted posters of the men, and a large reward is offered for information leading to their capture.  The hunt lasts for four years!  Leafing through some wanted posters, Sergeant Thomas Reynolds of the U. S. Army recognizes the face of a man he had served with in the Philippines named Brice, and Hugh is arrested in Manila and sent back to the States.  And when that arrest rekindles interest in the case, while reading a newspaper story about the train robbery, Albert Cullingworth of Steubenville, Ohio recognizes Roy and Ray as the Goodwin twins he has been working with at the local mill and they are soon caught.  All three brothers confess to the robbery and murders, confessions that save them from the hangman's rope.   Found guilty,  the three men are sentenced to life in prison at the Oregon State Penitentiary ... Roy will slowly go mad (it takes six guards to subdue him when he goes berserk in his cell), be given a lobotomy, and die in a mental hospital in 1983, Ray will be paroled in 1961 and serve as a custodian at the University of Oregon, dying in 1984, and Hugh will be paroled in November of 1958, dying three months later of cancer in San Francisco.  Wasted lives!!!!!!!!! 

      
                                                            The killer brothers

THE DALTON GANG DESTROYED

I know, it's not '30s gangsters - but it is bullets and blood ... and it happened today, 120 years ago!!!!!!!

10/5/1892 - A badman Waterloo takes place in Coffeyville, Kansas.  Tricked out with new horses, saddles, clothes, and weapons, the Dalton Gang (31-year-old former U.S. Deputy Marshal and eldest brother Grat, 24-year-old leader of the band, crack shot, and former U.S. Deputy Marshal Bob, youngest brother, 21-year-old Emmett, and former cowboys turned outlaws Bill Doolin, Bill Powers, and Dick Broadwell) visits the town they grew up in as dirt poor farm children in an attempt to gain funds for an early retirement to Mexico, and by hitting two banks at once, to best the robbery record of their desperado uncles, the Younger Brothers.  

                                 

                                                                    Grat 

                                              

                                                                  Bob 

                                            

                                                                Emmett

                                       

                                                              Bill Doolin

A major mistake, things go bad for the brothers and their gang early when Bill Doolin's lame horse forces him to drop out of the morning's robberies, the gang finds street repairmen have removed the hitching posts from in front of the bank so that the group must put up their steeds some distance away from the banks in an alley (soon to be forever known as "Death Alley"), and despite fake beards and moustaches, the Daltons are quickly recognized by storekeeper Alex McKenna, who immediately starts shouting, "The Daltons!  There go the Daltons," and iceman Cyrus Lee, who yells, " The Daltons are robbing the bank!"  It is 9:30 in the morning.  As the town reacts and starts to arm, Bob and Grat enter the First National Bank, while across the street, Grat, Powers, and Broadwell take on the Condon Bank. 

                             

                                                               Condon Bank

                                     

                                                        Condon after the raid

                                    

                                         Original doors to the First National

In the First National, Bob and Emmett fill a grain sack with $21,000 and when bullets greet them as they start to leave the bank, change their exit plans and leave the bank by its back door, and begin a sprint back to their horses.  During their run, the brothers are confronted by four armed citizens that do not enjoy their encounter with the outlaws ... wielding his Winchester rifle with deadly accuracy, Bob kills store clerk Lucious Baldwin with a bullet in his chest, sends bootmakers George Cubine and Charles Brown to eternity with single shots, and then, noting that cashier Tom Ayres has left the First National and armed himself with a rifle from Isham's Hardware Store, puts a slug through his former playmate's left cheek.  Meanwhile, while Bob is shooting up the streets of Coffeyville, inside the Condon Bank, Grat has been duped by cashier Charles Ball into believing that the safe has a time lock and will not open until 9:45 ... so Grat waits and waits and waits as lead begins to crash into the bank ... not the brightest bulb of the gang, he finally comes to the conclusion that it has become too hot to wait any longer, and he and his partners scoop up $1,500, run out the front door, and head for the alley ... all are immediately wounded in the hail of bullets that greets their exit.  Bullets flying from outlaws and angry citizens in all directions,the entire gang finally arrives in the alley, where Bob and Bill Powers quickly have their horses shot out from under them.  Then, in a foolish but heroic move, former school teacher turned lawman, Town Marshal Charles Connelly steps into the alley to block the robbers exit ... a decision that costs him his life when Grat instantly puts a slug in his chest.  

                                   

                             Baldwin, Cubine, Brown, and Marshal Connelly

Grat's triumph lasts only a brief second though ... exposed killing the marshal, livery stable owner and marksman John J. Kloehr steps out from behind a nearby fence and plugs Bob in the chest with a rifle bullet, then hits Grat in the neck with a fatal round.  With his death, Powers jumps on Grat's horse and prepares to spur away, but is hit by a bullet in the heart and is dead before he falls out of the saddle.  Broadwell manages to mount and leave the alley, but he is hit multiple times and will only manage to ride a few blocks before bleeding out and dying.           

               

                                                        John J. Kloehr

Emmett the last outlaw upright, still carrying the First National's money, manages to mount and start his flight to safety, but love of family overpowering, he turns back and attempts to lift Bob on to the back of his horse.  "It's no use Emmett," are Bob's last words and an omen for his little brother, for as soon as they leave the dying outlaw's lips, Emmett is brought down by a buckshot blast from both barrels of barber Carey Seaman's shotgun.  

                                    

                                                   Where the end took place

Robberies and gunfight over, all the loot except $22.02 is recovered, the four dead bandits are propped up for photographs and souvenir collecting (hats, still warm rifles and pistols, and bits of clothing ... and when it is discovered that by shaking Grat's hand a gurgle of blood can be caused to flow from his neck wound, hundreds of townspeople make it a point to say hello to the dead outlaw), and Emmett is taken to Slosson's Drugstore to have emergency surgery on his wounds performed by local Dr. W. H. Wells (the only reason he isn't lynched is that everyone in town believes he will soon die of the 18 fresh holes in his arm, back and shoulder, but nursed by his childhood sweetheart and eventual wife, Julia Johnson, he will recover to be sentenced to life in the Kansas State Penitentiary ... a sentence he will serve until his pardoning in 1907 ... straight and narrow from then on as a real estate agent, author, and actor, he will die without his boots on in Los Angeles in 1937 at the ripe old age of 66).  The toll for the morning's bloodbath, four outlaws and four citizens dead, three citizens wounded (along with Ayers, Charley Gump and T.A. Reynolds are also hit in the battle), three dead horses ... and the Dalton Gang is no more!   

               

                                  Bill Powers, Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, Dick Broadwell

                                 

                                              The dead gang and Emmett

                                           

                                                  The boys in their boxes

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN

10/3/1933 - Flexing the robbery muscles that sent them to jail years before, the recent Michigan City escapees (out and on the loose for only eight days) hit the First National Bank of St Mary's, Ohio.  Seeking a kitty from which they can begin their crime spree through the Midwest, outlaw Charles Makley suggests the new gang hit the bank of his former hometown, St. Mary's, unaware that the establishment is suppose to be closed for a mandatory bank holiday called by FDR to try and stabilize the economy.

 

For the job, the gang takes two cars, one, John Dillinger's fast black Terraplane 8, and the other, a new Oldsmobile purchased by bandit Harry Copeland who begs out of the raid due to an illness, in his place, Harry Pierpont's new girlfriend, Mary Kinder, agrees to drive the backup Olds for a cut of the take (while the robbery is in progress she will wait with the vehicle in a cornfield just outside of town).

                     

                                                                     Copeland                                            
                                                          
                                                                      Kinder

Arriving at the bank just before its 3:00 in the afternoon usual closing time, the gang finds the business open for courtesy traffic and goes on the attack.  Assignments agreed to before arrival, Makley, Pierpont, and Russell Clark enter the bank, John Hamilton controls the entrance, and former race car driver Eddie Shouse remains behind the wheel of the Terraplane.

                                             
                                                Dillinger, Pierpont, Makley, Clark

The robbery begins when a teller waits on the next customer, and when that customer lowers the road map he has been looking at, discovers a grinning Pierpont brandishing a .45 automatic.  "Just stand still!"  Customers and employees brought under control by the threat of being shot, the bandits discover they have timed their endeavor perfectly, for only seconds after entering the bank, the time lock on the safe clicks off, and with a pistol poking in his side, bank conservator W. O. Smith is convinced to open the heavy steel box ... while additionally, police officers (including the town's Chief of Police, Gilbert Gerstner) and citizens that might have disrupted the operation, stand across the street outside a poolroom, listening on the radio to a World Series game pitting the Washington Senators against the New York Giants (the crowd is so absorbed in the pitching performance of Giants Hall-of-Famer Carl Hubbell that even after an alarm is finally tripped in the bank, no one hears it from just across the street). 

Finishing up, the men herd nine hostages into the vault and partially close its door, then exit the bank with two bulging sacks containing over $15,000 in currency.  In and out in minutes, the next day the local newspaper, the St. Mary's Evening Leader, will say of the crime, "Officials believe the bandits were all professional.  They worked quickly and with a nonchalance which amazed their victims."  Back in their hideout in Hamilton, Ohio, the gang finds the only small burr in the day's events ... the money stolen will draw attention because it is brand new, so for the next two days, Mary Kinder, crumbles, bakes, sprinkles with water, and irons over and over the bills until the money looks used and worn.  A good beginning, the gang's next mission will be to free their friend, John Dillinger, from his Allen County, Ohio jail cell.

                                                       

                                                                  Dillinger

DESPERATE TO GET OFF DEATH ROW

9/22/1934 - Desperate to escape their fate, former Dillinger Gang members, "Handsome Harry" Pierpont, "Fat Charlie" Charles Makley, and Russell "Boobie" Clark make a desperate attempt to escape from the Ohio State Penitentiary using fake weapons they have constructed from bars of soap.


                Makley                                           Pierpont                                      Clark

Only days away from their scheduled date to sit in the electric chair for the 1933 murder of Allen County Sheriff Jess Sarber (his friends sentenced to death, Clark is serving a life sentence for the crime), a killing committed while freeing their comrade John Dillinger from the Lima, Ohio jailhouse, the break begins at about 10:30 in the morning when Guard O. E. Slagle enters Pierpont's cell to deliver breakfast.

                                              
                                                           Sheriff Sarber

Rejecting his daily allotment of coffee, powdered eggs, toast, and mystery meat, using his fists and a pistol made out of an assortment of prison junk that includes a bar of soap, tin foil from cigarette packs, black shoe polish, fountain pens, thread from blankets, cardboard tubes, jigsaw-puzzle pieces and wire crafted to look like a snub-nosed .38 revolver (Makley has a similar "weapon"), Pierpont relieves the guard of his keys and lets Makley, Clark, and six other inmates out of their cells ... unfortunately for the desperado though, he does not have a key to get out of the cell block.

                                                                                                                                
                                              Ohio State Penitentiary, Columbus

Crazed for freedom, the trio continue on anyway and leads the unhappy group of still penned convicts in an attempt to batter their way to freedom using a heavy wooden table on the steel door to the outside ... a fruitless pursuit that ends abruptly when the prison's armed eight-man riot squad arrives on the scene.  Seeing the escape is doomed, and not facing death sentences, Clark and the others return to their cells while Pierpont and Makley continue their door pounding ... continue until they are stopped by a hail of lead that is sent through the bars of the door.  The big ouch, Makley is hit in the thorax and abdomen and dies in the prison hospital within an hour of being holed.  Seriously wounded (hit several times, one round lodges in his spine), Pierpont pleads for the guards to "Finish It!" to end his suffering, but none are willing to give him the requested coup de grace, and taken to the prison hospital, the outlaw is allowed to recover just enough to meet his date with death, and carried to the electric chair, he will be juiced with volts of lightning on October, 17th, "Handsome Harry" no more. 
                               
                                                              Execution
                                
                                                            The soap guns

INDIANA CRASHOUT - PART TWO

9/26/1933 - Outside the prison walls the escapees break into two groups.  One group, composed of Dietrich, Burns, Fox, and Oklahoma Jack Clark find Sheriff Charles Neel of Harrison County in the parking lot, just finished with dropping off a new prisoner, and force the lawman into his car and then head down the Dunes Highway towards Chicago (but not before Dietrich thumbs his nose at the prison).  The other group, Pierpont, Makley, Hamilton, Russell Clark, Shouse, and Jenkins, run across the street to a Standard Oil gas station where after a failed first attempt (the station manager, Joseph J. Pawelski, takes off running instead of giving up his car keys and the outlaws irate shots miss the man), they grab a car driven by Herbert Van Valkenberg of Oswego.  Forcing Van Valkenberg, his wife, and their eighty-nine-year-old friend Mrs. Minnie Schultz from the vehicle they then take off.  The Pierpont group is not on the road long though, turning down a dirt road only eighteen miles away from the prison, they take a farmer, Sally "Sal" Warner, and his family hostage and stay in the man's house waiting for dark.

                  
                                                                 Dietrich

Meanwhile the Dietrich party loses control of their car and runs it into a ditch, a situation that causes them to look for another vehicle ... one they find at the farm of Carl Spanier.  Off again, the Spanier car soon blows a tire and the men, all still in their blue convict uniforms, are forced to spend the night, still holding the sheriff hostage, in thick underbrush, waiting for light and for the rain to stop.  Lost, Wednesday and Thursday they walk through the back country and eventually the group begins to fracture.  Clark, not agreeing with the others to tie up the sheriff in conditions that could cause the man's death, and suffering from stomach ulcers irritated by dining on raw vegetables since the break, walks and rides a bus into Gary, Indiana with the captive lawman.  There he releases Sheriff Neel who of course lets authorities know of his freedom, and alerted that an outlaw is in the area, Clark is soon tracked to the the town of Hammond and arrested ... he has been free for all of three days and is not happy about being sent back to Michigan City.  The rest of the group will eventually be back behind bars too ... Walter Dietrich joins the Jack Klutas Gang and is arrested on January, 6, 1934 while he is shaving, Joseph Burns is captured in Chicago on December 18, 1934, and Joseph Fox is once more placed in custody on June 4, 1935.

            
                                                              Pierpont

With one exception, the Pierpont group will become the first John Dillinger Gang (called so by law enforcement and the media, though it is Pierpont that has planned the Michigan City escape and leads the men when they move on to bank robbing).  Leaving the farm they have been hiding at, the Pierpont group uses back roads and makes their way to Indianapolis and the home of Pierpont's new girlfriend, Mary Kinder, who is in on the escape plot so her brother could have a place in the breakout (which he would have, but having contracted tuberculosis, he is confined in the prison hospital when the break takes place).  Ahead of their planned exit day, Kinder has not yet procured a hiding place for the gang, and with no room in the house already occupied by Mary, her sister, her mother, and her stepfather, Kinder takes the men to the home of Ralph Saffell, a man she has been dating while waiting for Pierpont to arrive ... he is not amused.  At Saffell's, the gang cleans up, eats, and puts on new clothes before taking their host's car and moving their site of operations to the hideaway that Mary has procured (along with bandit Harry Copeland) that is now ready in Hamilton, Ohio.

                             
                                                           Kinder

Changing cars, police pick up the trail of the gang and almost catch them, but fail when former race car driver Shouse pulls a skidding U-turn that allows the gang to escape at high speed ... save one, Jim Jenkins.  Off balance from the turn, Jenkins falls out of the rear of the car when a door flies open.  On foot, he will then try and make his way back to the gang's hideout ... he first cons a twenty-four-year-old Good Samaritan named Victor Lyle in giving him a ride with a story about a fight and being hunted by an angry mob, but as the ride continues and reality sets in, forces the young man to continue the journey with threats from the outlaw's drawn pistol.  The ride comes to an end when the pair stop because they are almost out of gas ... coasting into a gas station at 3 in the morning, Jenkins leaves the car to wake the owner of the establishment, and driving on fumes, Lyle uses the outlaw's absence to flee and advise authorities that one of the escapees is in the area.  The locals react immediately and both police and vigilantes begin combing the region for Jenkins ... a search that ends that evening near McDonald's Grocery Store in Georgetown.  Trying to convince locals that his car has broken down and he needs a ride to an auto parts store, when his story is not believed Jenkins pulls his pistol again, shooting grocer McDonald in the shoulder, but this time he is dealing with armed men, one of which, farmer Ben Kanter, puts a round of .20 gauge shot in the bandits head, blowing off a major portion of the bandit's skull.  There will be no reunion with his cellmate, Dillinger

Meanwhile, the rest of the men ready themselves for the crime spree that will be front page news for the rest of the year and into 1934, first by increasing their operating funds by taking $15,000 out of the First National Bank of St. Mary, Ohio on October 2nd, and then by venturing into Lima, Ohio to thank a friend for the weapons that got them out of Michigan City, freeing John Dillinger from the jailhouse he is being held in on robbery charges.

                    
                                                     Awaiting Rescue