FISH FRY

1/16/1936 - The state of New York does the world an immense service by executing one of the foulest individuals ever to live ... child rapist, kidnapper, murderer, and cannibal ... a horror nicknamed The Grey Man, The Werewolf of Wysteria, The Brooklyn Vampire, The Moon Maniac, and The Boogey Man ... Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish

                                    
                                                                  Albert Fish

Outwardly appearing to be a friendly handyman and house painter, a husband, and the father of six, Fish spends decades secretly raping children, practicing sexual mutilation and sadomasochism (not caring whether he gives or receives the pain, along with the gratification he finds in torturing others, he will burn and whip himself repeatedly, and when the moon is full, thrust sewing needles into his body) and engaging in grand larceny before graduating to more heinous deeds.  Claiming to have raped, killed, and eaten children in every state, no one will ever be able to prove how many innocents the madman savages ... what is known though is that using the alias Frank Howard, Fish is able to convince the family of twelve-year-old Grace Budd to allow him to take the youngster to the fictitious birthday party of a niece.  She will never be seen alive again. 

                                                
                                                             Grace Budd

Allowed to walk off with Budd, Fish will take the girl to an isolated cottage he uses for his molestations, and there he will strangle, rape, and eat Budd in June of 1928.

                             
                                                           Murder Cabin

Drawing pleasure from remembering what he did, and from the pain he knows he is causing to the little girl's family, six years after the murder, Fish will provide police with the clue they need to stop him when the monster writes a vile anonymous letter to Budd's mother that the authorities are able to track back to its source.

       
                                   Fish and his lawyer, James Dempsey

On March 11, 1935, Fish goes on trial for murder, and trying to save him from electrocution at Sing Sing Prison by way of showing he is totally insane, his defense lawyer, James Dempsey allows all of the maniac's many depravities to be documented to the jury.  One shocked psychiatrist who interviews Fish and testifies at the trial will state that the defendant has lived a life of "... unparalleled perversity.  There was no known perversion that he did not practice, and practice frequently."  Judged by all in the courtroom to be absolutely bonkers after ten days of testimony, the jury nonetheless decides Fish is too awful to be allowed to live and finds him guilty of the murder of Budd.  Horrified by what he has heard, Judge Frederick P. Close gladly sentences Fish to death.  

                          
                             X-ray of the pelvic region of Fish showing some
                                    of the twenty-nine needles the psycho
                                          has jammed into his scrotum

Nuts for sure ... while waiting for his execution day to arrive, Fish tells authorities he is looking forward to getting jolted, "It will be the supreme thrill.  The only one I haven't tried."  On the day of his "thrill," Fish walks briskly into the death room, jumps into the electric chair, and helps his executioner fix the electrodes to his legs ... ready to go.  A slight problem arises though when the juice is turned on, a massive charge of 3,000 volts ... so many pins and needles are in the body of the madman that a short circuit is created (along with a small puff of blue smoke over Fish's head).  Reaping machine fixed, the second charge however does the job and Fish is finally sent off to explain his many sins to Satan.

          
                                                        A living nightmare

As a coda for the event, at a meeting with reporter's after the execution, Fish's lawyer reveals that he is in possession of a "final statement" from his client, but having read the document, Dempsey declares of the several pages of handwritten notes, "I will never show it to anyone.  It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read." 

THE BREMER KIDNAPPING

1/17/1934 - After weeks of planning at the behest of underworld kingpin Harry Sawyer, for the second time the Barker-Karpis Gang decides to forgo the energy and danger required to rob banks, and instead pursues a big buck payday by kidnapping the thirty-four-year-old president of the Commercial State Bank of St. Paul, Minnesota (and son of the millionaire owner of the Jacob Schmidt Brewing Company, a personal friend of President Roosevelt) ... Edward G. Bremer.

                     
                                                          Edward G. Bremer

Seemingly a normal day, though a bit on the frosty side, Bremer is right on time as his morning routines begin at his mansion at 92 North Mississippi River Boulevard ... dressing for work, breakfast with the family, a drive in his black Lincoln sedan with his nine-year-old daughter Betty to her third-grade classes at the Summit School, then at 8:30, off to the bank at Washington and Sixth.  Typical, normal, routine ... but that all changes when he brakes at the stop sign on the corner of Lexington Parkway and Goodrich Avenue.


Bremer's car

As Bremer stops, Freddy Barker, Harry Campbell, and Shotgun George Ziegler block the banker's Lincoln with their own black sedan.  At the same time, another vehicle containing Dock Barker, Volney Davis, and Alvin Karpis pulls up behind, boxing Bremer in. Jumping out of their car, Davis and Barker approach the banker with pistols at the ready.  "Don't move or I'll kill you," Dock orders.  Panicking though, Bremer does move, putting the Lincoln in gear and trying to butt his way out of the trap he is in, then as that fails, attempting to escape out of the passenger side door.  For his efforts, he is rewarded with a pistol whipping to his head that leaves blood all over the front seat of the car.  Violently subdued, Bremer is shoved back into his car and has his eyes covered by a set of goggles with their lenses taped so he can't see ... then all three cars, precisely following the speed limit, drive away and out into the countryside ... the kidnapping has taken less than two minutes, and not a single local has witnessed the event.


Site of the kidnapping   

Before Bremer is driven south, to a house just outside of Chicago in Bensenville, Illinois, where he will be held until a ransom is paid, he signs two notes which state the gang's demands with the hoodlum's using a St. Paul contractor named Walter W. Magee, a friend of the Bremer Family, as the contact point ... the payoff to return the banker is $200,000, the bills must be of the five and ten dollar variety only, none new, and none with consecutive numbers, the money is to be placed in two large suitcases, and when ready, the family is to place an ad in the Minneapolis Tribune personal column stating "We are ready Alice." 
 
                             
                                                                      Karpis
                                                           
                                                                    Sawyer

While a back and forth of notes, telephone calls, and newspaper ads goes on for days, the FBI investigation of the case is at first led by Special Agent in Charge of St. Paul, Werner Hanni, who places eighteen separate taps at the brewery and the Bremer homes in St. Paul ... and the gang's tensions grow.  Unlike with their kidnapping of William Hamm the previous year, this time they have a captive who constantly complains about the situation he is in and the conditions he must endure ... grumblings that cause Freddy to almost kill Bremer several times (surprisingly, the man who talks him down from his murderous intentions is his equally unstable brother, Dock ... greed overcoming ire).

                     
                                                                 Freddy Barker

Finally, despite protests from the FBI, on 2/6/34, $200,000 is readied for delivery (with every serial number documented) and given to Magee ... at a little after 7:00, he begins following the directions of the gang for where to drop the money.  First he is sent to a spot on University Avenue where a Chevy coupe has been left, instructions tell him to drive the car to the bus station in Farmington, a town roughly twenty miles south of St. Paul.  Arriving in Farmington, he next follows the 9:15 bus to Rochester through the towns of Cannon Falls and Zumbrota, until he sees four red lights on a hill ahead.  The signal to proceed three hundred feet further and turn on to a dirt road, doing as told to in the note he'd been left earlier, Magee stops when a car materializes behind him and flashes its headlights five times, removes the money from the Chevy, leaves it on the dirt track, and then follows the road to the small town of Mazeppa, before heading back to St. Paul.  The next day, after Bremer is allowed to shave and put into new clothes (the ones he wore since the kidnapping are burnt so the FBI will have no potential clues upon his return), a handkerchief is put over his eyes, he is placed on the back floorboards of a Buick the gang has stolen, and Karpis, with Dock in the front passenger seat, stopping once at a spot where they've left gas cans to refuel, drives the banker to Rochester, Minnesota, releasing him behind a downtown build at about 8:00 in the evening after telling the banker to count to fifteen before removing his blindfold.  Free at last, Bremer has been in captivity for twenty-one days. 

                                                    
                                                    Senior and son after release

The kidnappers are gleeful at the successful conclusion of their caper, but the crime will eventually prove to be the undoing of the Barker-Karpis Gang.  Unknown the Federal authorities previously, the band of robbers and killers will draw the full attention and wrath of the government when Inspector William Rorer, specially assigned to handle the investigation of the crime by Hoover, takes possession of four suspicious five-gallon jugs and a funnel a farmer has found on the side of a road just off Route 16.  Believed by their location and the date they are found to have been used in the drive that releases Bremer, one can contains a single clue on its side.  Despite the insistence of Karpis that their gloves are not to be taken off during the refueling, icy cold from the gasoline spilling on his hand, Dock had removed one of his gloves and left a single fingerprint behind (after arguing with Karpis that no one would find the cans, or if they did, know what they'd been used for) ... and with his name, the hunt that will end with all of the gang behind bars or dead begins.

                            
                                 The result of his own stupidity ... Dock on Alcatraz

EASTHAM CRASHOUT

1/16/1934 - Seeking a new partner after the arrest of W.D. Jones in November, and to assuage some of the still burning hatred for the penal facility that abused him during his two year stay there, Clyde Barrow orchestrates a deadly escape from the notorious Eastham Prison Farm.

           
           Eastham

Contacted by recently released burglar James Mullen on behalf of Clyde's former partner Raymond Hamilton (who is serving a 263-year sentence for the robbery and murder of grocer John Bucher), the plan for an escape from the prison is two loaded .45s will be hidden in an area where Hamilton can get to them while out on a wood and brush cutting work detail and on a designated day to follow, Clyde will support the break with his own weaponry and a getaway vehicle.  Simple, easy ... not!

                                       
                                                            Hamilton

Break agreed to ... pistols provided by Clyde are placed under a small bridge in a rubber tire inner tube by Mullen and Hamilton's younger brother Floyd, the weapons are retrieved by prison trusty Fred Yost, and then passed on to another member of the plot, thirty-one-year-old bank robber Joe Palmer (the third member in on the escape is to be former Clyde partner Ralph Fults, but when Fults is transferred to another part of the prison system, bandit Hilton Bybee takes his place).  Now armed, the crashout goes down the next morning.

                                       
                                                              Palmer

In the night, Clyde, accompanied by Bonnie and Mullen, drives his latest ride, a black Ford V-8 coupe, out to the spot he has selected for Hamilton to meet him at and the trio wait for dawn to arrive.  In the heavy ground fog of early Tuesday morning, Plow Squads One and Two are let out of Eastham and begin their work on the countryside.  Assigned to Squad Two, a group too far from the road to successfully flee, Hamilton switches places with another convict ... a change to the established routines of the prison which is immediately noticed by guard Olin Bozeman, who relays the information to the nearest shotgun carrying high rider, thirty-three-year-old Major Crowson.  Seeing what is coming, before Crowson can do anything about Hamilton, Palmer walks over, pulls his .45 and shoots the mounted guard in the stomach at point-blank range.  Grievously wounded, Crowson fires his shotgun as he falls from his horse but hits nothing.  More accurate with his weapon than Crowson, Hamilton then takes out Bozeman with a shot that hits the man in the hip.  Path now briefly open (the gunfire has alerted other guards that an escape is now in progress), the escapees run for the road knowing Clyde is close.  Seizing the sudden opportunity to also escape, Palmer, Hamilton, and Bybee are joined by a career criminal from Oklahoma named J.B. French, and by Henry Methvin, a twenty-one-year-old hoodlum from Louisiana serving a ten-year term for car theft and attempted murder. 

        
                                                                    Methvin

Supporting the flight of the convicts, Clyde, hearing the gunfire, fires his Browning Automatic Rifle into the air, an action that causes all the nearby guards to hit the ground and seek cover.  At the same time, Bonnie honks the Ford's horn to guide the escapees to the car.  Out of breath from there short run, the men soon show up at the vehicle (less French, who has veered away from the group and run in another direction ... and will be captured a few days later) and a problem with the escape is discovered ... the coupe can barely contain five individuals, and now there are seven that need its transportation.  Sardine time, everyone squeezes in and using back roads, Clyde makes his way to the town of Hillsboro where he gasses up, then it is off to the small burg of Rhome where fresh clothing is provided to the escapees by Clyde's brother L.C. and Floyd Hamilton, and Mullen leaves the group.  Ready to expand his criminal activities, the new Barrow Gang consists of Clyde, Bonnie, Raymond Hamilton, Joe Palmer, Hilton Bybee and Henry Methvin ... there will soon be more robberies on Clyde's resume ... and more murders!

                           
                                                             Clyde

In the aftermath of the escape, Major Crowson, his intestines punctured by the bullet Palmer sent into his belly, dies later in the month.  Incensed at the escape and death, guessing Clyde is probably responsible, the general manager of the Texas prison system, Lee Simmons, convinces the governor to let him hire a bounty hunter capable of finally putting the outlaw's reign of terror to an end ... and Simmons has just the man for job in mind, a forty-nine-year-old former Texas Ranger reputed to have killed fifty-three individuals in gunfights that he hires on February 10th ... lawman and gunfighter extraordinaire, Frank Hamer.

              
                                                                  Hamer

The beginning of the end for Bonnie & Clyde, Hamer is now on their trail, and the Judas that will betray them for a Texas pardon of his many crimes is now riding beside them in the person of Henry Methvin ... the outlaw lovers have 102 days left to live. 

      
                                                                         Headlines

PRELUDE TO A KIDNAPPING

1/12/1934 - Making final preparations to kidnap Edward Bremer in St. Paul, Minnesota, Alvin Karpis and the Barker brothers, Freddy and Dock, have their troops gather each night to discuss the upcoming snatch in the second-floor apartment of outlaw William Weaver at 562 Holly Avenue ... a group of cut-throats that besides Karpis, the Barkers, and Weaver includes "Shotgun" George Ziegler (real name Fred Goetz, a bank robber with mob connections that many believe was one of the killers at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre), Harry Campbell, a friend from the boys' young hoodlum days in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Volney Davis, Dock's murder buddy from the McAlester Penitentiary. 

                   
                                             Davis 
                                    
                                                       Campbell
                                     
                                                         Ziegler

Going to their nightly meeting Karpis and Freddy notice a man looking into a window next door and immediately believe the worst ... the authorities know the gang is in the area and are seeking their location.  Dock adds to the paranoia when he goes outside and sees a man standing on the corner without seemingly any purpose in being there.  Deciding to leave the apartment in pairs, the gang sends out Dock again to reconnoiter, and this time the bandit finds a car with two policemen in it parked in the alley.  Nerves on edge, Dock is sent out again, this time to move the gang's cars to in front of the building for a quick getaway, which is accomplished a few minutes later, with the police seeming to ignore the men's exit from the building.

                       
                                                           Dock

Arriving at Freddy's apartment safely, needing to know if the upcoming kidnapping is blown, the outlaw convinces Karpis that they must find out if the cops are on to them ... by returning to Weaver's apartment.  A recipe for disaster, that is exactly what they do after arming themselves with a machine gun and a .45 automatic pistol.  Arriving in the neighborhood once more just before 1:00 in the morning with Freddy driving and Karpis in command of the machine gun, the pair soon find themselves being followed by a car containing two men, one dressed in a uniform and wearing a peaked hat.  Cops!  Reacting as they always do in the presence of law enforcement officers, the men quickly pull around a corner, slam to a stop, jump out of their vehicle, and when the car following them turns the corner in pursuit, open up on the men inside.  Shooting from the hip, Karpis fires off an entire 50-round drum and Freddy empties his pistol ... then the trigger happy duo jump back into the Chevy they are using and return to Freddy's apartment.  Up all night waiting to hear news about the incident on the radio, they are instead greeted by silence ... a strange situation if cops have been gunned down on the streets of St. Paul.  The mystery is resolved in the morning when Dock brings in the newspaper ... Karpis and Freddy have wounded Roy McCord, an off-duty radio operator wearing his Northwest Aitlines aviator's uniform of a peaked hat and a dark jacket featuring brass buttons ... a uniform that in the dark could be mistaken for a policeman's outfit (the other man in the car is completely missed).

                           
                                                          Freddy
                      
                                                            Karpis

In a horrible case of triple mistaken identity, Freddy and Karpis attack the man following them because they believe he is a cop, and McCord is following the two public enemies because he believes they are the peeping toms who have been plaguing the neighborhood ... one of which the outlaws had seen earlier in the night looking in a window and mistaken for a cop, starting the chain of nearly tragic stupidity (the cop car in the alley was also looking for the peepers).  Wounded three times, McCord is lucky to survive his encounter with the desperadoes ... others will not be as fortunate!

                                    

THE BATTLE OF LAKE WEIR

1/16/1935 - Using information acquired through the arrests earlier in the month of Dock Barker and Bryan Bolton, looking for a locale that is the habitat of huge alligator named "Old Joe," at Lake Weir, Florida, agents of the FBI discover the latest hideout of thirty-three-year-old bank robber, kidnapper, and murderer Fred Barker, and his mother, Arizona Donnie Clark, who upon getting married and birthing four hoodlum sons, will become better known as Kate "Ma" Barker. 

             
            Ma and her youngest

Surrounding the two-story white clapboard house with green trim the pair has rented as Mr. and Mrs. Blackburn, Chicago Special Agent in Charge Earl Connelley positions a raiding team in the early morning darkness that consists of J.C. "Doc" White, Alexander Muzzey, Bob Jones, John Madala, Tom McDade, Daniel Sullivan, Jerry Campbell, G.C. Woltz, Charles Winstead (the agent thought to have fired the bullet outside the Biograph Theater that killed John Dillinger), Ralph Brown, S.K. McKee, T. Melvin, and J.T. McLaughlin. 

          
          Site of the shootout

Five men and Connelley take up positions on the west side of the property at a small guesthouse, four agents get behind a stone wall and cover the back of the house, two men set themselves up behind neighbor Frank Barber's home, covering the east side of the property, and the last two agents block traffic on the road, East County Highway 25.  At a little after 7:00 in the morning, Connelley steps out of his place of concealment and yells at the house.  "Fred Barker, come out!  We are Department of Justice agents and we have the house surrounded!" 

                       
                       View from the water

Silence greets the request.  After twenty minutes, still shouting for the occupants to come out, Connelley orders Muzzey and McDade to fire their tear-gas guns into the house.  Both shots miss the windows they are intended for and gas begins filling the yard outside the house (in the hours and events that follow, none actually make it inside the structure).  From inside the house a woman's voice can be heard asking, "What are you going to do?"  No response is heard, but a moment later the same woman's voice proclaims, "All right, go ahead!"  Connelley and his men believe it is Ma, okaying the surrender of her son.  They are very wrong in thinking so! 

                                   
                                   Inside on the ground floor

From a second-story window a burst of machine gun fire suddenly sweeps the yard ... a burst that is answered in kind by agents firing on the house and the battle is on!  For five minutes slugs fly with deadly purpose from bedroom windows and out of the front door (the agents respond by putting over 1,500 rounds into the house before the battle is over), then silence falls again.  In the lull, Connelly sends an agent back to the men's cars for more ammo and gas canisters.  They will be needed.  As crowds gather in the woods and on the highway near the property (there are three hundred residents living nearby), the agents and Freddy fire on each other in starts and stops for hours (additionally, Mrs. A.F. Westberry is fired on by both sides, asleep when the shooting begins, a bullet from Barker's gun sears through the thin walls of her neighboring home and strikes the headboard of her bed, and when she flees from that plight with her daughter, thinking she might be Ma Barker, she is fired on by Agent Brown ... thankfully for the woman, none of the rounds sent her way score hits) ... then, at around 10:00 in the morning the house goes silent once more.


The Barker's hideout

Shortly after 10:30, Connelley enlists the help of the home's twenty-five-year-old African-American caretaker, Willie Woodbury, to determine what is going on inside the house.  Entering the home by cutting open a locked screen door with a pocket knife, crying tears from the gas fumes he passes though, Woodbury calls out, "It's okay Ma, it's me.  They're makin' me do this!"  There is no answer.  Moving through the home, minutes later Woodbury appears at an upstairs window and calls down to Connelley, "They all dead!"  At the announcement, agents stream into the structure, guns at the ready just in case Woodbury is wrong ... but he isn't.

                   
                   Freddy

Upstairs, in the room Freddy usually slept in the agents find Ma in a curled-up position under a window in her house slippers, dead from a single slug that has hit her in the forehead.  Beside her in a growing pool of blood is her youngest son, finally killed by a burst of gunfire from the agents below that has cratered the outlaw's shoulder and chest eleven times ... and his head three!  Beside him is an empty machine gun, beneath him is a .45 automatic pistol, and in his pocket are four $1,000 bills.  The Barker portion of the infamous Barker-Karpis Gang is no more!

                                
                                Arsenal taken from the house

                       
                       Bullet damage to the house from the battle

That afternoon, J. Edgar Hoover holds a press conference to reap the benefits of his men's victory ... and to do damage control against any who might question why the FBI has killed a sixty-one-year-old grandmother with no criminal record.  And Hoover accomplishes his mission, deflecting criticism by depicting Ma as a criminal genius, a homicidal maniac that was the brains of the Barker-Karpis Gang, ordered her son to "Let 'em have it," and went to her death holding a still smoking machine gun.  They are all lies ... but without anyone alive or with credibility to testify otherwise, the myth and legend of Ma Barker is launched ... a tall tale that is still active to this day.

                             
                             At the morgue
                            
                           Freddy and Ma at rest

              
              Headlines
                                         
                                         Big news

Machine Gun Kelly behind bars, Bonnie & Clyde rubbed out, Dillinger killed, Pretty Boy Floyd dead, Baby Face Nelson gone, and now Ma Barker and her son Freddy destroyed, the focus of law enforcement agencies across the country now becomes Alvin Karpis ... and it will not be long before he responds to his pursuit with some gunfire of his own.

                                         

ALCATRAZ WINS AGAIN

1/13/1939 - Less than nine months after an escape attempt costs the lives of guard (Royal Cline, killed with a hammer) and a convict (Thomas Limerick, shot to death by tower guard Harold Stites), five prisoners decide to test Alcatraz again.

                                    
                                                             The Rock

Conceived by two murderers, Dale Stamphill and the notorious Arthur "Dock" Barker, the escape plot entails manufacture of personal saws capable of cutting through cell and window bars and a metal bar spreader, sneaking the saws and spreader through a metal detector called the "snitch box" and into the cell block, getting the saws and spreader to the isolation cells in D-Block where the weak bars have been found, breaking through the bars without being detected (and covering up the work that has been done until the men are ready to move), and moving to the water on a foggy night when the escapees have the least chance of being detected (little thought is given about what to do when they get to the water, the men believing they can craft a raft on refuse that dots the beaches of the island).  Along with Stamphill and Barker, in on the plot are a trio of rotten apples ... William Martin is serving a sentence for a post office robbery, Rufus McCain is in for bank robbery, and Henry Young is behind bars for bank robbery and murder.

                                
                                                   Martin, Stamphill, McCain
                               
                                                                Barker
                                   
                                                                 Young

Plan made, it takes months to execute its various requirements ... the saws are manufactured out of a large machine shop saw that is being scrapped, the saws and spreader are moved into the cell block by hiding them within a blade sharpener made for the guards to get more use out of the cons allotment of shaving razor blades, the equipment is moved into D-Block through use of a holed cell getting a new toilet and a crawl through the utility corridor dividing the cell blocks, the work on the bars is covered up using a mixture of paint and floor wax and a puttyish compound of tooth powder and paint, and Barker gets in a fight (sawing away on the bars of his new cell, the outlaw will hum "I'll be home for Christmas!") and Stamphill lets himself be caught with a knife so they get assigned to the isolation cell block.  Pieces all in place, the men then wait for a foggy night to make their break.

An omen of how things will go, the grey dark night the men need for their escape comes on Friday, the 13th.

                       
                       Area where the cons hit the water, now known as
                       Barker Beach

Waiting for the 3:00 head count by the guards to be concluded, the cons leave their cells through ten by sixteen inch gaps in the bars, crawl out of the cell block through an opening in the window bars fourteen inches tall and twelve inches wide, drop eight feet to the ground outside, slink past a guard tower, and make their way to the end of the island closest to San Francisco.  In the dark, seeking various flotation methods the group breaks up as escape discovered by a guard making his rounds, the prison's alarm siren begins to sound.  Five failures ensue.  Martin falls off a twenty foot cliff he is attempting to climb down and is captured in the water by Lt. Isaac Faulk and Deputy Warden Edward Miller.  While arguing whether they should try to take family hostages from the guards' living area,Young and McCain try to make a raft out of pieces of wood, broken chairs, their clothes and bed sheets, and are forced to surrender by Lt. Henry Weinhold.  And the worst fate befalls the team of Stamphill and Barker, the planners of the escape.   

                                
                                                      Arthur "Dock" Barker

Swimming for San Francisco, the tide pushes the pair back to shore where they are cornered by Officer Clifford Ditmer standing on an overlooking cliff with a machine gun and armed guards on the prison launch.  Ignoring calls for their surrender and the warning shots that are fired, the men scurry about seeking somewhere to flee ... movement that causes the guards to finally open fire on the men.  Stamphill is hit in the leg, an injury that will require a hospital stay in traction of eight weeks, followed by two weeks in a cast and then a stay of seventeen months in a solitary cell (Martin, McCain, and Young will also spend months in isolation cells).  But Barker gets it the worst ... also hit in the legs, he rises up in pain from the water, directly into the path of a bullet that goes through the outlaw's neck and exits at the corner of his right eye.  Taken to the prison hospital in a semiconscious state, the former public enemy's last words before dying at 5:30 in the evening the next day are, "I'm all shot to hell.  I was a fool to try it."

                 
                                                            Alcatraz Prison

Feet first free for Barker, there will be more death in the future because of the failed escape.  Brooding over the outcome of their attempt to leave Alcatraz, former friends McCain and Young will trade insults and accusations until finally their feud becomes violent.  In the prison tailor shop in December of 1940, Young takes a knife made from a sharpened spoon and stabs McCain multiple times in the stomach, killing the convict.  Brought to trial for murder, Young will escape a death penalty when his lawyers are allowed to use the harsh conditions on Alcatraz as an excuse for the killer's actions and a jury finds him guilty of only involuntary manslaughter (events that will be portrayed in bowdlerized fashion in the Hollywood movie Murder in the First starring Kevin Bacon as Young).

DILLINGER BECOMES A KILLER

1/15/1934 - Seeking to fund his upcoming winter vacation to Arizona (gang members Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, and Russell Clark are already partying there), on a chilly Monday afternoon, John Dillinger, John "Red" Hamilton, and an unidentified third man (the caper's driver) decide to rob the First National Bank of East Chicago ... with tragic results.

                              
                              First National - East Chicago

At around 2:45 a new black Ford V-8 Tudor sedan wearing Ohio plates double parks in front of the bank and disgorges Dillinger and Hamilton, wearing large overcoats to disguise that they have on armor vests.  Entering the establishment through two sets of double doors, upon reaching the lobby, Dillinger removes a machine gun from a black carrying case normally used for musical instruments, inserts a fifty-round magazine in the weapon and declares, "This is a stickup!  Everybody put your hands up!"  Over twenty employees and patrons receive the message, and with the assistance of Hamilton's pointing pistol and Dillinger's machine gun, the group is quickly lined up facing a wall ... but not before the Vice President of the bank, Walter Spencer, sitting at his desk, trips a silent alarm button with his foot that notifies East Chicago police headquarters, less than two blocks away, that a robbery is in progress. 

                                
                                Dillinger

While Dillinger watches the group of hostages (noticing a patron has left his money on a counter, the outlaw will advise the man to pick it up as he and Hamilton only want the bank's money), Hamilton raids the cages and vault of the bank, placing $20,736 in a large Federal Reserve sack.  Sadly, before he is done, members of the East Chicago police begin to arrive.

                                     
                                      Hamilton

Patrolman Hobart Wilgus is the first to arrive.  Thinking the alarm is just another malfunction of the recently installed system, Wilgus walks into the bank without unbuttoning his coat to provide access to his weapon and is immediately taken captive by Dillinger.  Seeing their companion grabbed, Detective Sgt. William Patrick O'Malley and patrolmen Julius Schrenko and Pete Walen back away from the bank's entrance and take up positions from which they can fire upon the bandits when they leave.  While they wait, a squad car pulls up and adds Captain Tim O'Neill, Captain Ed Knight, and Officers Nick Ranch and Lloyd Mulvahill to the ambush crew ... none of them though think to do anything about the driver in the idling double parked car in front of the bank.

                                             
                                             Dillinger, later in '34

Done with their robbery and knowing they have enemies waiting outside, Hamilton and Dillinger grab Spencer and Wilgus as hostage shields and the group walks out the front door.  Not wanting an innocent to be hit, the authorities hold their fire ... but only briefly.  O'Malley, holding his .38 revolver at the ready as he stands at the entrance of the next door Newberry's Five and Ten Cent Store, yells "Wilgus," causing the officer to suddenly dart away.  Presented with a now clear shot, O'Malley puts four bullets into the center of Dillinger's chest, staggering the outlaw ... and enraging him.  Protecting by the steel he is wearing, Dillinger pushes Spencer aside, swings his weapon at O'Malley and fires a disabling burst of lead at the lawman's legs while screaming, "You asked for it."  And O'Malley gets it too ... falling forward he is hit by eight .45 slugs, one of which passes directly through his heart and kills the forty-three-year-old officer instantly.  He leaves behind a wife and three daughters.  

                                                     
                                                     O'Malley

Then all hell breaks loose on the street.  Thinking he will grab the fleeing Wilgus, Hamilton steps away from Spencer and is immediately targeted by the other police shooters outside the bank. Despite wearing a bullet-proof vest, the deluge of lead finds the bandit seven different times in unprotected areas and he goes down, gravely wounded.  But not abandoned, while sweeping the street with slugs from his machine gun, Dillinger grabs his friend under the shoulder with his left arm and drags him to the waiting getaway car.  Leaving rubber on the asphalt of Chicago Avenue once Hamilton and Dillinger are inside, the Ford screeches away in a hail of bullets, hitting a parked car and having its passenger door fly open as it vanishes down the street (not safe yet, a pair of passing Indiana game wardens gives chase and fires on the vehicle), heading into Chicago.

           
           Murder weapon

In the aftermath of the robbery, $5,000 is spent on the services of an underworld doctor who treats Hamilton's wounds (and the nursing services of the bandit's girlfriend, Pat Cherrington) ... months later he will again be well enough to be wounded some more.  Leaving his partner behind, Dillinger picks up his girlfriend Billie Frechette, and the pair leaves town and heads south for Tucson, Arizona ... a destination that will lead to the destruction of the first so-called "Dillinger Gang" ... and when he is brought back to Indiana under arrest, the outlaw will face murder charges and the death penalty for the killing of O'Malley.

                       
                                      Under custody later in January