THE BARKER-KARPIS GANG KILLS AGAIN

8/30/1933 - Murderous as always when pulling a robbery, members of the Barker-Karpis Gang heist a payroll in South St. Paul and bullets go flying again!  After watching the routine for weeks of money bags being delivered from the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, the gang (Alvin Karpis, Freddy Barker, Doc Barker, Byron Bolton, Charlie Fitzgerald, and Fred Goetz) attacks at 9:45 in the morning.  Guards and carriers surprised and surrounded, wielding a sawed-off shotgun, Doc Barker yells "Stick 'em up," at police guard Leo Pavlak and the officer complies, but when Fitzgerald fires his weapon to get the attention of one of the police officers, the tipsy Barker, thinking he is under attack, yells "You dirty rat son-of-a-bitch" and puts a mortal load of shotgun pellets into Pavlak's head.

                                       
                                                           Arthur "Doc" Barker

And with that gunfire, everyone else cuts loose too with the weapons they are carrying, including a bystanding railroad signal man who will wound outlaw Fitzgerald in the leg.  In the ensuing maelstrom of lead released chiefly by the machine guns of Freddy Barker and Bryan Bolton, Officer John Yeaman, who has been sitting quietly in his car waiting for his partner, is seriously wounded when he takes a bullet that goes through his cap and hits him just above his right eyebrow, along with hits to the shoulder and neck that will have him carrying twenty-five bullet fragments in his body for the rest of his life.

                                               
                                                           Freddy Barker

Guards down, bank messengers Joe Hamilton and Herbert Cheyne wisely abandon the money sacks they had been carrying ... treasure the gang is quick to scoop up.  Then, sweeping three blocks of the city with suppressing machine gun fire, the gang roars out of town in an heavily armored black sedan driven by Karpis (in his autobiography he will describe the robbery as "a good day's work) with the fruits of their bloody 10 minutes of labor ... $33,000 in cash and bonds.

                  
                                                              Alvin Karpis

The local newspaper compares the robbers to Jesse James and calls them "cool and reckless."  Reckless indeed, on the force only four months, Patrolman Leo Pavlak leaves behind a widow and four children.

                                        
                                                                   Pavlak

HOMER VAN METER GOES BYE-BYE

8/23/1934 - Another member of the Dillinger Gang, Homer Van Meter, bites the dust, or in Homer's case, lots of dirty street alley grime, and again, betrayal by "friends" plays a crucial role in the killing.

                   
                                                           Michigan City Con

Hiding out in wilds of Minnesota in the aftermath of John Dillinger's death the month before (he is wanted on bank robbing and murder charges), in anticipation of leaping over the Canadian border, Homer Van Meter visits St. Paul to retrieve some of his bank robbing loot that is being held by that city's underworld, by some accounts estimated to be in excess of $10,000, but crooks being crooks, a number of parties decide to keep Van Meter's money and split it among themselves necessitating the need for the outlaw's demise.

    
                                                                   Outlaw

Unaware that he has been put on the spot, at 5:12 in the late afternoon, Van Meter, wearing a blue serge suit and a straw hat, steps out of an auto dealership where he has been looking at new cars, fully expecting to meet Jack Peifer of the local gaming house the Hollyhocks Club, a pal and one of the men holding his money.  Instead, tipped off, four crooked cops that include the town's former Chief of Police, Detective Tom Brown, and the current Chief of Police, Frank Cullen, are on hand with their guns at the ready, two sawed-off shotguns and two Thompson sub-machine guns, all fully loaded.  At the words, "STICK THEN UP," Van Meter instead starts running, while drawing a .38 Colt automatic and firing two shots over his shoulder at his pursuing antagonists.  A bad decision, it is a pursuit that lasts only a handful of seconds and steps because the bandit turns into a blind alley and is instantly trapped.  Turning to fire or to flee in another direction, Brown's shotgun blows Van Meter into the air, and when the bandit comes down and tries to continue the fight despite having a mangled hand and almost severed arm, the cops show they are fully aware of the meaning of the word overkill by emptying their weapons at, and into the desperado ... a tornado of lead, the outlaw's gun will be found ten feet away from his body by the time the firing ends!

  
                                                 Awaiting transfer to the morgue

At the morgue, Van Meter will be found to have $923 hidden in the pocket of his pants, another $450 hidden in a money belt, a gold Bulova watch on his wrist (how the police missed scooping up this booty remains a mystery to this day), and fifty bullets in his body ... so many hits that when his body is turned over to his family for burial, they will declare that his corpse looked like the St. Paul Police Department had used it for target practice!

                 
                                                            Holed Homer

Additionally, signs of Van Meter's unsuccessfully attempts to disguise himself are noted ... the outlaw had dyed his brown hair black, grown a mustache, had his fingertips burnt by acid to remove his fingerprints, a tattoo reading "HOPE" had been whittled on, and injected to alter his appearance, there is wax under his facial skin.  What isn't found is the money bag eyewitnesses say Van Meter was carrying and that his girlfriend, Marie Conforti, claims contained at least $6,000 in cash.

                       
                                                                      Headlines
                                               
A messy end for John Dillinger's best friend since their days at the Pendleton Reformatory in Indiana, Van Meter had ironically told friends and family he didn't intend to someday end up dying in a dirty alley ... exactly the way he actually does die though!!!!!!!!!!!