PRISON BREAK IN KANSAS

5/30/1933 - Under the cover of Memorial Day celebrating, eleven convicts (their crimes include murder, kidnapping, robbery, and assault) stage a breakout from the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing.  

Using four .38 caliber automatics smuggled into the prison in a bale of sisal used in the manufacture at the facility of whisk brooms by their friend, bank robber Frank "Jelly" Nash (soon to be captured by the FBI and become a victim of the Kansas State Massacre when a band of his friends try to free him from the men returning him to Leavenworth Prison), during a prison baseball game that is tied 2-2 in the sixth inning, a group of desperadoes led by master criminals Harvey Bailey (responsible for stealing $200,000 from the Denver Mint in 1922 and $1,000,000 from the Lincoln National Bank in 1931) and Wilbur Underhill (serving life for a series of robberies and three murders), take Warden Kirk Prather hostage, along with guards John Sherman and L.A. Laws.

         
                                                              Frank Nash
                                  
                                                    Wilbur Underhill
             
                                                     Harvey Bailey

As the prison break wildcat whistle alerts the entire town, using their hostages as human shields, the inmates convince the officers in the guard tower in center field to give up their weapons and a door key to the structure, elements of the escape that allow the convicts to climb up the tower, enter, and then lower themselves to the other side using an extension ladder they have confiscated from the twine shop.  Every man for himself, loose on the free side of the prison's walls, the group of outlaws in possession of the hostages made up of Underhill, Bailey, "Big Bob" Brady, and Jim Clark, steal the car of prison farm superintendent W.W. Woodson (during the theft Bailey is shot in the knee by a local vigilante) and flee across the state line into the densely wooded forests of Oklahoma's Cookson Hills, but not before releasing their prisoners and giving them $5 for bus fare back to Lansing (showing he is a thief but not a killer, Bailey prevents Underhill from murdering the men for pleasure).  

Out, but not for long, the men immediately go back to doing what they know best ... creating a havoc of kidnapping, robbery and murder (the first is on the night of 5/31, when WWI hero, police officer Otto Durkee, finds the men stealing a spare tire for their getaway car, a killing that leaves a widow and two children in its wake), a crime wave through the Southwest that lasts for several months of 1933, until one by one, the escapees are all caught or killed (Clark and Brady are captured near Tucumcari, New Mexico, Bailey is arrested by the FBI at a Paradise, Texas, hideout farm as the G-men search for Machine Gun Kelly, and while on his honeymoon, after foolishly using his real name, Underhill is killed in Shawnee, Oklahoma, when he engages in a gun battle with federal agents, state troopers, and local police that surround the cottage he is staying in).

A BRADY GANG KILLING

Fleeing their robbery of $2,528 from the Goodland Stateland Bank of Goodland, Indiana, on May 25, 1937, the Brady Gang (a cocky Al will say his criminal escapades will one day make Dillinger look like a piker), consisting of Public Enemy #1 Al Brady (26), Clarence Lee Shaffer, Jr. (21), and James Dalhover (30), add a killing to the list of their crimes for the day.

      

Using backroads to return to their base in Baltimore, Maryland, about 15 miles outside of Goodland the bandits observe officers of the law waiting for them near the village of Royal Center.  Stopping, the trio open fire on the roadblock, then reverse course and drive rapidly away, actions that immediately draw a chase response from Indiana State Police officer Paul Minneman and Deputy Sheriff Elmer Craig of nearby Cass County.  But fleeing is not the gang's normal method of conducting themselves when confronted by police, throwing lead is, and upon arriving at the first crossroad on their escape route, they park behind a church and prepare an ambush for their pursuers.  Stopping at the crossroad and beginning to exit their vehicle to read the tire tracks in the road seeking which direction the outlaws have fled, the officer instead discover that the gang hasn't fled at all when both men are struck by a barrage of rifle and machine gun bullets from the trio of bandits.  In the hail of lead, Minneman is hit over twenty times and mortally wounded (a tough one, he somehow survives for two days before leaving behind a wife with their as yet unborn daughter) and Craig is seriously wounded.  Then showing thievery fills every fiber of their being, the killers pause to rob the officers and their vehicle and add to their bank loot, two pistols, a shotgun, a medicine kit, two holsters, a pair of handcuffs, and the officers' wallets. 

                 
                                           Paul Minneman

      

                                                  Present day site of the killing

After the killing and the looting of their victims, the Brady Gang makes it safely back to Baltimore without any further mayhem, however the target on all their backs is now even bigger than it was before and by the end of the year they will be no more ... on October 12, 1937, in Bangor, Maine, Brady and Shaffer foolishly decide to shoot it out with over thirty members of the Bangor police force, the Indiana State Police, and the FBI ... a decision that results in the outlaws being fatally hit by over 60 bullets.

         

                      Brady (foreground) and Shaffer in Maine

And arrested before he can be gunned down too, Dalhover pays for his many crimes and also the killing of Minneman, when in 1938, he receives the dubious honor of being the last man to get cooked in Indiana's electric chair. 

COLORADO BLOOD BATH

After weeks of planning and scouting, on 5/23/1928, at roughly 1:00 in the afternoon, the Fleagle Gang consisting of brothers Ralph and Jake Fleagle, George Abshier, and Howard Royston, hits the First National Bank of Lamar, Colorado.  

                            
                                   Jake (L) & Ralph (R) Fleagle

A chaos of violence takes place almost immediately when 77-year-old Bank President A.N. Parrish ducks into his office, grabs a single-action Colt .45 out of his desk that he calls "Old Betsy" and opens fire on the robbers.  In the melee that ensues, Royston is hit in the jaw by a slug from Parrish's gun, screaming customers and clerks are wrestled to the ground by the bandits, the establishment's clanging alarm is triggered, and with the outlaws returning fire, the bank president is killed, along Jaddo Parrish, the son of the president and an employee of the bank who is shot when he goes to the aid of his father.  The ammo blasting over for the moment, the gang gathers up a booty of loot in pillow cases they have brought for the caper that includes $10,664 in cash, $12,400 in Liberty Bonds, and almost $200,000 in commercial paper (checks, promissory notes, and certificates of deposit).  The murders and robbery take all of six bloody minutes.  

The desperadoes then flee in a 1927 four-door blue Buick Master Six with two hostages, one-armed teller E.A. Lundgren (noting he is a cripple and deciding to show a modicum of mercy, he will be pushed out of the car as it leaves town) and bank clerk Everett Kesinger ... and almost immediately find themselves in another gun battle, this time a car chase shootout involving Sheriff L.B. Alderman and his deputy.  Rifle fire trumping the lawmen's pistols, the exchange of hot lead ends when a bullet pierces the radiator of the sheriff's pursuit car and the robbers safely reach the Kansas farm of Jake Fleagle, where to cover their tracks, they shoot Kesinger in the back of the head (despite the teller's pleas that he is married and a father of two children) and in a nice thank you for your services, also execute Dr. W.W. Weinenger, a medical practioneer the gang kidnaps to tend to the facial wounds of Royster.

Site in Kansas where Dr. Weinenger's body and car are discovered

The murder of the good doctor however proves to be the gang's undoing, because upon locating the death car of the physician (it will be spotted from the air by a Colorado National Guard plane searching the border area between Colorado and Kansas), despite attempts by the Fleagle brothers to wipe away all incriminating evidence, a single fingerprint missed on a window of the vehicle is found ... just enough for law enforcement to eventually identify the miscreants and take action (crime historians consider the case the first in which a murder is solved through analysis of fingerprint evidence).  Ralph Fleagle, George Abshier, and Howard Royston are captured, found guilty, and have their necks stretched at the Canon City Prison in Colorado, while Jake Fleagle chooses to go for his gun when the law finally find him in 1930 (over a million wanted posters of the killer are distributed across the United States that offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture) on a train in Branson, Missouri, a mistake that results in bullet holes in his stomach and neck that send him to the city morgue.

     
                                   Jake Fleagle after being shot
            
                                    Fleagle posse members

Crime solved and gang destroyed, beyond their murderous escapade in Colorado and its aftermath, the Fleagle boys are still remembered for two reasons; treasure hunters to this day seek the never recovered loot from the robbery, and because liking the sound of the name, Al Capp will christen one of his villains in the Li'l Abner comic strip, Evil-Eye Fleegle!  

THE DEATH OF BONNIE & CLYDE

5/23/1934,  - "Gone But Not Forgotten," just like Clyde's tombstone says!  Betrayed by gang member Henry Methvin and his family in exchange for not being prosecuted for numerous Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas crimes that include murder, notorious outlaws Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow are ambushed at 9:15 in the morning by a heavily armed posse consisting of Arcadia Sheriff Henderson Jordan, Deputy Paul M. Oakley, Texas Deputies Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton, and Highway Patrolman B.M. Gault that is led by legendary former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (reputed to have killed over 53 men in gun battles while being wounded 17 times).


            The posse ... top L to R, Hinton, Oakley, Gault ... bottom L to R, Alcorn, Jordan, Hamer

Hired three months before to track down the bandit duo after they are responsible for the murder of a prison guard when they spring a group of their convict friends from Eastham Prison Farm in Texas, Hamer makes the right decision in selecting a wooded country road between the towns of Gibsland and Sailes in Louisiana for his attack.  

                                          
                                 The narrow lane where the ambush takes place

Driving a stolen Ford V-8 with Arkansas plates, the unaware outlaws (Clyde is wearing a dark pair of sunglasses while driving in his socks, Bonnie is munching on a ham-and-cheese sandwich as she reads a motion-picture magazine) make the fatal mistake of stopping along the road to assist Methvin's father Ivan, who pretends to be changing a flat tire.  Known for shooting his way out of trouble, no request of "SURRENDER!" is made, and when Clyde seems to sense trouble and shifts the car into gear, the posse unleashes a deadly fusillade upon the duo from their automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols ... 167 bullets that turn the Ford into a metal Swiss cheese hearse (hit 45 times, Clyde loses a hand in the slug shredding of his left side, while Bonnie is holed 23 times, the holes are so numerous that the local undertaker, C. F. Bailey has difficulty keeping embalming fluids in the dead bodies).

             
                                                          Death car
             
                                                            At the morgue

The law finally triumphant, the wrecked car and its bloody contents (besides the corpses, police find the Ford contains license plates for 17 different states, Clyde's saxophone, a Kodak camera, numerous maps, clothes, and an arsenal that includes three Army rifles, two sawed-off shotguns, a revolver, eleven pistols, and 2,000 rounds of ammunition) are taken to the nearby town of Gibsland, where the presence of the infamous bandits causes schools to empty and businesses to shut down for a day of morbid partying (beer prices go up from 15 cents to 25 cents, and a concession of ham sandwiches sells out), and when word of the killings swirls through the region, swelling the population from 2,000 to 12,000 in a few hours.

                 
                                                     Headlines
                    
                                    Some of the car's booty

As Bonnie Parker stated in her poem, The Trail's End ... "Some day they'll gone down together) ... May 23, 1934 is that day!

                   
                                                     Happier times

THE DILLINGER DEAD

While much of the country might have enjoyed reading about the exploits of various Public Enemies during the '30s to escape their own Depression woes, rooting for the cops or the robbers as if fans at a sporting event, the reality was that the bullets sent flying by both sides were all too real.  Here is the toll in human carnage that the Dillinger crime wave produced!

#1 - 9/30/1933 - Having fallen out of the faulty back door of one of the cars stolen in the crash out of the Michigan City Penitentiary that his former cellmate John Dillinger has engineered, James Jenkins (he is also the brother of Dillinger's first post prison girlfriend, Mary Longnacker), makes the mistake of shooting at an Indiana farmer on vigilante duty looking for the escapees.  The convict misses with a round from his revolver, but Benjamin Kanter doesn't with a blast from his .20 gauge double-barreled shotgun that takes out a fatal portion of Jenkins skull.

#2 - 10/12/1933 - Returning the favor of busting their friend John Dillinger out of the Lima, Ohio, jailhouse he has been residing in since his capture in September, recent Michigan City escapees Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, and Russell Clark confront Sheriff Jesse Sarber, pretending to be law enforcement agents seeking Dillinger's transfer.  Charade seen through, when Sarber asks to see the men's credentials and reaches towards the pistol in his desk drawer, Pierpont pulls his own .38 and shoots the sheriff in the abdomen (a femoral artery severing mortal wound), and insult added to injury, as the dying officer struggles to rise, Makley cracks him over the head with the butt of his revolver ... and all of it takes place in front of Sarber's wife, Lucy, at the jail having dinner with her husband.

                                       
                                                                Sarber
                                           
#3 - 12/14/1933 - Tipped off that Dillinger Gang members might be having their cars serviced at Tower Auto Rebuilders in Chicago, 42-year-old Sgt. William T. Shanley, operating alone as a shift change takes place, attempts to arrest John Hamilton and his girlfriend Elaine Dent when the pair arrives at the shop to claim their green convertible.  Quicker on the draw, Hamilton fires a bullet into Shanley's chest, killing the decorated law man, a twenty year veteran of the Chicago police force who leaves behind a wife and four children.

                                                  
                                              Sgt. William Shanley

#4 - 12/20/1933 - Tragedy strikes in front of the France Hotel in Paris, Illinois, when Dillinger Gang getaway driver Eddie Shouse tries to flee a group of Indiana state police.  Opening fire on the outlaw, Lt. Chester Butler accidentally hits 24-year-old rookie Trooper Eugene Teague in the head with a .32 caliber, double-ought buckshot blast, killing the in the wrong place at the wrong time officer instantly.

                                              
                                         Trooper Eugene Teague

#5, #6, #7 - 12/22/1933 - And the lead keeps flying two days later!  No questions asked, incensed at the recent deaths of Shanley and Teague, believing members of the Dillinger Gang are trapped in a local Chicago apartment, members of the specially formed Dillinger Squad, led by Captain John Stege and Sgt. Frank Reynolds, with their guns blazing, burst in on small-time hoodlums Louis Katzewitz, Charles Tattlebaum, and Sam Ginsburg.  The result, three dead Jewish felons.

#8 - 1/15/1934 - Responding to a silent alarm set off at the First National Bank of East Chicago, 43-year-old Sgt. William O'Malley finds a position outside from which to fire and awaits the exit of whoever has made the mistake of thinking they can successful rob the institution.  Taking his shot when the human shield John Dillinger is behind jumps away from his captor as the men exit the bank. O'Malley sends four .38 slugs into the chest of the robber, but the outlaw has come prepared for just such a situation by wearing a bullet-proof vest.  Angered at the attempt on his life, Dillinger staggers back, screams "YOU ASKED FOR IT," and sends an eight bullet burst of Thompson sub-machine gun fire at the officer.  Aiming to wound, Dillinger fires low at the legs of O'Malley, but instead of crippling him, kills the lawman when he falls forward into the line of fire and takes a round directly in the heart ... a slug that creates a widow and three fatherless daughters.

                                      
                                                 Sgt. William O'Malley

#9, #10 - 3/16/1934 - On the run after helping Dillinger escape from the Crown Point jail on March 3, 29-year-old black murderer Herbert Youngblood is betrayed by a friend and cornered in a Port Huron, Michigan, store.  Thinking he is surrendering peacefully when he gives up the gun Dillinger gave him during their escape earlier in the month, Youngblood suddenly pulls a backup .32 and opens fire on Sheriff William L. Van Antwerp and his three deputies.  In the hail of bullets that fly about the store, Van Antwerp, and Howard Lohr are wounded, while 47-year-old Charles Cavanagh, hit in the chest, dies later that evening at a local hospital (leaving behind a wife and child).  The officers do not however go down without a fight and in the melee Youngblood takes ten slugs to the body, lead which turns him into a corpse four hours later.

                                  
                                  Cavanagh          Youngblood

#11 - 4/3/1934 - Having located the hideout of Dillinger Gang member Homer Van Meter using a phone number found in a St. Paul apartment Dillinger and Billie Frechette have abandoned after a gun battle, FBI agents set up an ambush using the black cleaning lady, Leona Goodman, that has been sent there by a mysterious local underworld character to remove an assortment of criminal odds and ends that include a machine gun stock, dynamite fuses, three notebooks filled with getaway maps, and lots of ammunition.  Setting up in the woman's home and showing they are just as criminal and dangerous as the men they are hunting, when unarmed bank robber Eddie Green shows up to claim the booty and is identified by Goodman as the individual that hired her, without any orders to surrender, he is blasted in the back by the machine gun fire of two agents as he tries to make his way back to his car and his waiting wife.  Mortally wounded by a bullet to the head, the delirious Green will be "questioned" in his hospital room by the FBI until 4/12, when he finally mercifully passes away at the age of 35.

                                 
                                                 Eddie Green

#12 - 4/22/1934 - Done enjoying the regular one-dollar Sunday night dinner special and convivial after supper drinks, three slightly tipsy locals, 35-year-old Mercer CCC camp worker Eugene Boisneau, 28-year-old gas station employee John Hoffman, and the CCC camps 59-year-old cook John Morris, exit upper Wisconsin's Little Bohemia Lodge in the company of resort workers George Baszo and Frank Traube.  Ready to return home, Hoffman, in the company of Boisneau and Morris, starts up his Chevrolet, cranks up to full volume the vechicle's powerful radio, puts the car in gear and begins to drive away from the lodge.  But it is a short journey that is brought to an abrupt and deadly end when FBI agents (Melvin Purvis, Hugh Clegg, W. Carter Baum, and Jay C. Newman), spooked by two barking dogs, mistaking the men for the Dillinger Gang that is inside the lodge, and responding to fear of an escape when orders to stop which the vehicle's occupants can't hear are ignored over the din of the radio, open fire on the Chevy with pistols and machine guns, holing its side window, door, cowling ... and its occupants.  Tragedy, Morris is wounded by four bullets in his shoulder, Hoffman receives a gunshot wound to his right arm and thigh and glass cuts from the exploding car window all over his face, and Boisneau, the middle passenger in the front seat is killed outright from multiple bullet hits.  And warned by the gunfire, the Dillinger Gang, Dillinger, John Hamilton, Baby Face Nelson, Homer Van Meter, and Tommy Carroll escape into the pitch black night.


The car Boisneau, Hoffman, and Morris were in at the Little Bohemia Lodge

#13 - 4/22/1934 - Fleeing FBI agents at the Little Bohemia Lodge, Baby Face goes in search of a car he can steal to escape the area and in his hunt creates more carnage. Bad timing, as the volatile killer is about to leave the home of Alvin Koerner's home with a number of hostages, a car carrying three lawmen pulls up to investigate a rumor that Dillinger Gang members might be in the area.  In the area indeed, Nelson springs from his hiding place and with the words, "I know who you sons-a-bitches are and I know you're wearing vests so I'll give it to you high," opens fire on FBI agents Jay Newman and W. Carter Baum, and Constable Carl C. Christiansen with a .45 automatic that has been custom converted into a machine gun pistol holding thirteen rounds.  An uneven one-sided gunfight, Christiansen is wounded by five bullets, Newman will survive a slug that glances off his head (dazed, the agent will empty his pistol at Nelson as the outlaw flees in the agent's car), and 29-year-old W. Carter Baum (upset at contributing to the death of Boisneau earlier in the evening, the rattled agent will forget to take the safety off his pistol when the encounter with Nelson takes place) will perish as a result of three rounds that hit him in the neck, above the bullet proof vest, just as Nelson had proclaimed. 

                                                     
                                                   W. Carter Baum

#14 - 4/23/1934 - Seeking haven with the St. Paul underworld after the shootout the previous night at the Little Bohemia Lodge, Homer Van Meter, John Hamilton, and Dillinger instead become involved in another gun battle.  Driving a stolen blue Model A Ford coupe, the car's Wisconsin license plate, B92652, is spotted by Minnesota police officers, and as if Hollywood had written the script, a high speed chase with multiple bullet exchanges takes place.  Trading volleys over 50 miles of road (with Van Meter driving, Dillinger will knock out the rear window of the car and fire at the officers with a .45, almost hitting Deputy Joe Heinen in the head) with the bandits, Deputy Norman Dieter will send out a slug from his .30-30 rifle that punches through a fender, the spare tire, the rear seat and drills directly into Hamilton's lower back.  Superior driving skills eventually allow the gang to escape, but on the run with a whole country looking for them they are not able to get the medical help Hamilton needs, the grievous wound turns grave when gangrene sets in, and the desperado dies in terrible pain on 4/30.

                                                   

#15, #16 - 5/24/1934 - A little after 11:00 in the evening, investigating a tip that Dillinger has been spotted in the area (there are also rumors that they are seeking a payoff to look the other way while the wanted man hides in their area of responsibility, and that they are set up to prevent them from testifying about graft in the department), East Chicago detectives Martin O'Brien and Lloyd Mulvihill make the mistake of pulling over a red paneled delivery truck.  Purchased for $637, hiding in plain sight, unbeknownst to the lawmen, the vehicle has been the home of John Dillinger and Homer Van Meter for past three weeks.  Pulling alongside to query the driver as to why he is driving about the remote section of town that is often used as a lover's lane (and a dump for stolen vehicles), without warning the officers are hit multiple times in the head and neck with a fatal barrage of machine gun spray compliments of Van Meter, firing from the passenger seat of the truck.  And again the tragedy ripples outward in pain and grief ... 44-year-old O'Brien, a 14-year veteran of the department leaves behind a wife and three children, while 28-year old Mulvihill also leaves a widow behind and six young children.

                                            
                                           Mulvihill                 O'Brien

#17 - 6/7/1934 - On the way to visiting his girlfriend's mother, 38-year-old Dillinger outlaw Tommy Carroll and Jean Delaney stop in Waterloo, Iowa, to put gas in their tan Hudson and have a bite to eat.  Unfortunately for the criminal, he has the misfortune to have his gas pumped by a nosy attendant who finds multiple license plates hidden under a floor mat of the car.  Reward wanted, the police are called and find the suspect vehicle parked in front of a local tavern where Carroll has stopped for a beer before continuing his journey (a bad spot, the tavern is right across the street from the police garage).  Accosted by Detectives Emil Steffen and Paul E. Walker as he and Delaney return to the car, Carroll tries to draw his .380 Colt automatic but is knocked down by a right cross to the chin by Walker.  Scrambling to his feet, the bandit continues to try to pull his weapon as he runs away ... all the warrant the officers need to put four bullets into the gunman's back, mortal wounds that will take his life at the town's St. Francis hospital later that day.  

#18 - 6/30/1934 - A typical summer Saturday in South Bend, Indiana, explodes into violence.  In a downtown area full of shoppers and people meeting for lunch, 29-year-old policeman Howard Wagner is directing traffic at the intersection of Wayne and Michigan Streets when the sound of gunfire (the firecracker popping noises of an outlaw unleashing a stream of machine gun fire into the ceiling of the nearby Merchant's Bank) draws his attention.  Moving toward the disturbance with his gun holstered and his whistle in his hand, he is greeted by Dillinger Gang member Homer Van Meter, assigned to control the street as his job in the robbery.  Seeing the policeman's hand moving towards his weapon, Van Meter pumps a rifle bullet from his Model 1907 Winchester .351 (modified to fire on fully automatic) into Wagner's abdomen which rips apart his right kidney, a wound that will cost the young officer his life within 30 minutes of the hit being taken.  Like many others, Wagner leaves behind a widowed wife.

                                 
                                    Wagner 

#19 - 7/22/1934 - John Dillinger is gunned down outside the Biograph Theater by Federal agents and East Chicago police.  Or was he?  This death will be the subject of a future commentary.

                                      
                                                     Dillinger

#20 - 7/27/1934 - Seeking information about his activities helping Dillinger hide while receiving plastic surgery (and if he has knowledge of the whereabouts of still at large gang members Homer Van Meter and Baby Face Nelson), underworld gopher James Probasco is questioned at the FBI headquarters on the 19th floor of Chicago's Banker's Building ... questioning that results in Probasco deciding to throw himself out a window to his death at the first moment he is alone, or questioning that includes being dangled out a window by his feet by his interrogators (several individuals over the years testify that they indeed did get such treatment themselves).  Unwilling to upset the government or ask questions that might cause them to be dangled too, a coroner's jury rules Probasco's death a suicide.

                        
                                           James Probasco

#21 - 8/23/1934 - Killer Homer Van Meter makes the mistake of leaving his robbery assets in the hands of "friends" in the St. Paul underworld.  Seeking traveling money to flee to Mexico from his deposits, Van Meter discovers instead that his bankers have ratted him out to authorities so they can keep his money ... a determination the outlaw makes when he is greeted at the agreed to exchange site at a Ford car dealership on Marion Street and University Avenue by Chief of Police Frank Cullen, former Chief Thomas Brown, and two police detectives all heavily armed and with their weapons already drawn.  Fleeing, like his friend Dillinger, Van Meter only makes it to a nearby ally ... a dead end ally that becomes an abattoir when the police practice overkill on the criminal and empty their guns into Van Meter (his family describe the event as the authorities using Van Meter for target practice), hitting the Swiss cheesed outlaw over 50 times with shotgun, machine gun, and pistol fire. 


            Van Meter awaiting trip to morgue with crowd of well wishers

#22 - 9/22/1934 - Aware that there will be no outside help available to spring them from their prison cells now that their friend John Dillinger is dead, Ohio State death row inmates Charles Makley and Harry Pierpont decide to try bluffing their way to liberty using fake guns they have carved out of soap and covered with black shoe polish.  The stunt gets the desperate men out of their cells, but not off death row when the guards of the facility decide to shoot it out with the duo ... no shocker, real rifle bullets trump wishful thinking and Makley dies of extensive internal hemorrhaging from wounds to his thorax and abdomen, while Pierpont survives but is gravely wounded.

           
                                                         Makley

#23 - 10/17/1934 - Shot to pieces during his attempt to escape his fate in September, bank robbing killer Harry Pierpont is strapped to a gurney, transferred to the Ohio State Prison at Columbus electric chair and given the juice for the 1933 murder of Sheriff Jesse Sarber ... the appropriate outlaw adios, the bandit leaves at the age of 32 years and 4 days old.

                                                 
                                                       Pierpont

#24, #25, #26 - 11/27/1934 - Baby Face Nelson, Sam Cowley, and Herman Hollis shoot it out in Barrington, Illinois.  These deaths will be the subject of a future commentary.

                        
                               Participants in the Battle of Barrington

DILLINGER PAROLED

Conned!  

                 
                   Michigan City

Responding to a parole petition signed by 188 good citizens of Mooresville, Indiana, that include the county sheriff, the court clerk, auditor, treasurer, recorder, assessor, former victim, grocer Frank Morgan, and the sentencing judge Joe Williams, Clemency Commissioners Delos Dean and Tom Arbuckle vote to approve (for unknown reasons the third member of the commission abstains) the release of Indiana State Penitentiary prisoner #13225, who is then serving a 10-20 year sentence for a botched 1924 armed robbery.

                                           
                                               Michigan City Inmate

Due diligence done, on May 10, 1933, Democrat Governor Paul V. McNutt signs the order ... and unwittingly turns loose an embittered convict that has vowed to make the state and society pay for a list of perceived wrongs that include receiving the maximum sentence for his crime though told he wouldn't if he plead guilty, seeing his older partner in crime, John Singleton, the man who talked him into committing the robbery receive a lighter sentence, having years added on to his sentence for a series of minor infractions, being stuck behind bars when his wife, Beryl Ethel Hovious is granted a divorce by the same judge that sentenced him to prison, and though his parole papers are signed, being kept incarcerated in a red tape snafu until May 20, just long enough so that he arrives home thirty minutes too late to say goodbye to his dying step-mother.  Make up for lost time and get even his sole focus, unbeknownst to authorities, the convict they have released has spent his almost nine years in jail studying how to become a bank robber, taught by a set of hardened criminals that includes "Handsome" Harry Pierpont, Charley Mackley, Russell Clark, John "Red" Hamilton, and Homer Van Meter ... outlaws he will soon join in unleashing a fourteen month crime wave on the Midwest that will include two escapes from jail (one using a whittled wooden pistol), a ten man prison break, the robbery of a dozen banks of roughly $500,000 in assets (worth over $7 million by the standard money valuations of today), weapon stealing raids on three police stations (along with bullet proof vests), several shootouts with law enforcement officers, and over twenty violent deaths ... future Public Enemy #1 (the first to be designated so by the FBI), John Herbert Dillinger is free to do as he says upon being put behind bars, "I'll be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get out."

               
                                              Dillinger

THE BATTLE OF ALCATRAZ - 1946

After years of planning, at 1:40 in the afternoon of May 2nd, 1946, six violent convicts (killers and robbers sentenced to a total of 283 years behind bars plus 3 life sentences), leader Bernard Paul Coy (a 45-year-old bank robber from Kentucky), Joseph "Dutch" Cretzer (the former West Coast bank robbing Public Enemy #4 of the FBI's Most Wanted list serving a life sentence for the murder of a U.S. Marshal during an attempted escape while being sentenced in court for other crimes), Sam Shockley (a mentally disturbed bank robber and kidnapper with an IQ of only 54), Miran Thompson (a Texan desperado serving life plus 99 years for robbery, kidnapping and the murder of a Amarillo police officer with a record of eight successful escapes from other prisons and jails), Marvin Hubbard (a robber and kidnapper from Alabama), and Clarence Carnes (a 19-year-old bandit and murderer from Oklahoma know as the "Choctaw Kid") launch an escape attempt that will plunge the federal prison on Alcatraz Island into the bloodiest day in its history.

               
                        Shockley                               Coy
     
         Thompson                                                     Hubbard
                          
                                            Cretzer
                                                      
                                                           Carnes

While confederates distract or take captive cellblock guards, Coy climbs to the top of the three tiered building, and using a short metal tube with a nut and bolt (it has taken over a year to smuggle the pieces necessary to make the device out of the prison's metal shop), spreads the bars of the gun gallery cage (foolishly considered a "safe" convict, Coy has spotted the flaw of unanchored-in-concrete upper bars while spending years going about his daily rounds of sweeping the floor and handing out books and magazines from the prison library), drops down between the bars (sweat, grease, and months of dieting get him skinny enough to accomplish the tight squeeze), and after a furious fist fight with the officer on patrol (Officer Bert Burch who has been distracted by Shockley setting his D-Block isolation cell on fire), acquires the weapons (a pistol, rifle, bullets, and several gas grenades) and keys deemed necessary for the escape.
                                           
Where Coy climbed

Everything seemingly in place for the first successful escape from the Rock (all of the eight previous attempts result in failure with six men killed and sixteen captured survivors placed in solitary confinement), Coy's plan (to use the gallery keys to exit the locked cellblock, then with the captured guards as shields, move to the dock where Cretzer has arranged to have a boat waiting) goes awry when the correct exit key can't be found (breaking the standing rules of the prison, Guard Bill Miller has kept the key in his pocket instead of sending it back up to the protected gun gallery after letting a group of convicts into the yard for their post-lunch exercise period).  As time slips away (the Cretzer boat leaves when the prisoners don't show up on schedule) in the search for the right key (Miller will hide it in the release basin of the toilet of the cell to which he is confined) and trying to unjam the door to the yard (jammed in an attempt to see if another key will open the door), alternate plans are arrived at (leave on the guard boat, break into the family compound and take guard families captive as bargaining chips off the island, negotiate an escape threatening to kill their captives) that prove equally unsuccessful.  Responding to the threat to his prison, Warden James A. Johnston sends men into the gun gallery to re-seize control of the cellblock, but his action only leads to bloodshed as Coy's and Cretzer's accurate rifle and pistol fire drives back the guards (4 are wounded and veteran Officer Harold Stites is killed).

                                 
                                  Death Cell

Enraged that the warden has refused to cooperate with their intentions to vacate the premises, and egged on by Shockley (seeking revenge for past wrongs received at the hands of various guards) and Thompson (thinking he won't get the chair if there are no witnesses to his participation in the escape attempt), Cretzer guns down the group's 9 hostages (fired upon at almost point blank range, 2 men are missed entirely and feign death, Officer William Miller is killed, and the rest are seriously wounded but survive due to the efforts of Carnes sneaking back later to apply First Aid) and then his rage not yet assuaged, the crazed Public Enemy goes looking for the man he blames for the failure of the escape ... Bernie Coy (Coy in turn is outraged when he finds Cretzer has killed the unarmed guards, and he begins a cellblock hunt for his former friend).

Power cut, in the darkness that descends on the prison after sunset, a squad of determined guards, covered by officers with sub-machine guns in the gun galleries above, rescue their comrades (and another guard will be wounded by Cretzer firing a pistol from the position he has climbed to atop the cellblock), but unsure of the situation within with Coy, Cretzer, and Hubbard still loose (knowing that escape is not possible, Shockley, Thompson, and Carnes are in their cells when the rescue squad throws the switch that relocks the individual units) and not willing to put any more of his guards at risk, Warden Johnson requests the help of armed troops in restoring order to his prison ... assistance WWII hero General "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell is very glad to provide the next day in the form of two platoons of battle hardened U.S. Marines who treat the prison as if it is a fortified bunker on Iwo Jima, attacking with grenades lowered through holes drilled in the ceiling, concrete pulverizing mortar shells, bazookas rockets, and rounds and rounds of suppressing rifle fire (while thousands of San Franciscans watch the action from Fisherman's Wharf).


Attacking the cellblock
                
                 Watching the Battle of Alcatraz
Assaulted for a full day, all three desperate convicts seek the seemingly only safety to be found in the cellblock, the utility corridor between the cell rows ... exactly the place where authorities want them to be.  Cornered, the battle is brought to an end by guards unleashing fusillade after fusillade into the narrow passage, a barrage of bullets that finally ends the lives of Coy, Cretzer, and Hubbard sometime on the morning of May 4th.
            
                  Left to right ... Hubbard, Coy, and Cretzer

Order restored, the immediate toll of the failed escape attempt is 2 dead guards, 3 dead prisoners, 11 wounded guards, and 1 wounded prisoner. 

       
       Guilty ... Carnes, Shockley, and Thompson

Carnage not over though, later, the three convict survivors of the escape plot will also face retribution, going on trial for the deaths of the guards ... guilty as charged, Thompson and Shockley will be sentenced to death and executed in the San Quentin Prison gas chamber on December, 3, 1948, while Carnes is spared death for his efforts to keep the guards alive after their shooting by Cretzer ... spared to serve an additional 99 years on top of the life and 99 years to which he had previously been sentenced (surprisingly, he will eventually be paroled in 1973, unsurprisingly he will violate the conditions of his parole twice and will die in prison of AIDS at the age of 61 in 1988).