VERNE MILLER GETS AWAY

11/1/1933 - After months of hunting in the aftermath of the Kansas City Massacre in which government agent Raymond J. Caffrey, officers W. J. Grooms & Frank Hermanson, Police Chief Otto Reed, and bank robber Frank Nash are all killed, the FBI believes it has found the man that orchestrated the bloodbath, lawman turned murderer Verne Miller, and are set to make an arrest.

                               
                                         Moments after the shooting ends

Connecting through a tip nightclub waitress Bobbie Moore to Miller's girlfriend, Vi Mathias, the members of the Chicago branch of the FBI put the Sherone Apartments where the women are living under surveillance, with Special Agent John Madala posing as an traveling auditor moving into a nearby unit.  Three days later, on Halloween, a man wearing horned-rim glasses with a sandy mustache shows up at the apartments.  Is it the sought after Miller?

                           
                                                    Verne Miller

Madala contacts his headquarters and soon the building and street outside are full of hiding law enforcement officers ... some wanting to storm the unit Miller appears to be inside, others wanting a 100% identification before arresting the man when he comes out.  With Melvin Purvis out of town, the senior agent in charge is Ed Guinane who decides on accosting the man when he leaves the apartment with a plan in which a hand chopping motion will unleash six agents now inside Madala's apartment to swarm into the hallway, while the agents outside will be signaled to stream inside by Guinane waving a jacket at them from the apartment window.  Actors in their places, the wait then begins ... and as tensions mount, lasts into mid-afternoon of the next day.  As if an episode of the Keystone Kops was unreeling, accompanied by Mathias in a pair of green silk pajamas, the suspect finally leaves the apartment and is immediately identified as Miller (through a ventilation shutter looking out on the hallway by FBI secretary Doris Rogers and Agent Edward Notesteen, both of whom knew Miller from his days in South Dakota), but at the exact wrong moment ... Guinane who is to receive the hand motion to swarm the corridor has stepped into the living room.  Miller, sensing eyes on him and hearing yelling from inside the apartment he just passed takes off running towards the floor's elevator.  Attack now confirmed with shouts of "It's Miller!", the door to Unit 211 flies open ... and becomes a logjam as all six officers in the room try to get through at the same time.  Out in seconds, they run down the hall, find no one at the elevator, and almost shoot a man that just happens to also be in the corridor ... Miller has taken the stairs!

                            
                                  Mathias and her daughter Betty - 1928

Outside, agents see a man exit the building that looks like Miller, trot over to Bobbie Moore's Auburn and then get into the car's passenger seat.  They do nothing however because no jacket has been waved from the apartment window above ... no jacket waved because Guinane has become caught up in the excitement in the hallway and has forgotten to give the signal.  Action finally begins downstairs when a number of agents come bursting out of the apartment building chasing after Miller.  Unleashed finally, Agent Lew Nichols jumps out of his hiding place on the street as the outlaw begins to drive away, running alongside the vehicle and ordering it to stop ... and is rewarded for his alacrity and awareness to the situation by being fired on by Miller (both shots miss).  Shot at, Nichols returns fires, Agent Allen Lockerman springs from the car he has been waiting in and empties his revolver at the vehicle, and a state trooper fires two machine gun bursts at the Auburn ... all miss doing vital damage to Miller (traces of blood are found later in the car), but do take out the rear window and make the holed vehicle unfit to drive in the rain.  

                                                 
                                                               Miller

Despite overwhelming forces being arrayed against him, Miller has escaped ... a result that causes J. Edgar Hoover to become livid when he hears the news!

DILLINGER AND FRIENDS VISIT GREENCASTLE

10/23/1933 - After raiding police stations in the towns of Auburn and Peru ... raids in which what will be called the First Dillinger Gang gains possession of three Thompson submachine guns, a teargas gun, two .38s, a .30-caliber Springfield rifle, a Winchester semi-automatic rifle, a shotgun, two sawed-off shotguns, a 12-gauge automatic shotgun, a .32-caliber automatic pistol, two .45 Colt automatics, five .38 Special revolvers, a .44 Smith & Wesson revolver, a Spanish .25-caliber automatic pistol, a 9mm German Luger, ten magazines of machine-gun bullets, three badges, a pair of handcuffs, twelve bulletproof vests, two boxes of shotgun shells, and numerous rounds of ammunition ... Russell Clark, Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, John Hamilton, and John Dillinger make a major cash withdrawal from the Central National Bank of Greencastle, Indiana.

             
                              Pierpont                                        Clark
                  
                                                         Makley
                                
                                                           Hamilton
                                
                                                              Dillinger
      
                                             The Central National Bank

Job timed to coincide with its coffers being full due to the "old Gold" weekend homecoming activities at nearby DePauw University, on Monday, at 2:45 in the afternoon a large black Studebaker double-parks in front of the Central National.  All wearing overcoats against the chilly day, and to hide their weapons, five men exit the vehicle ... Dillinger, Pierpont, Makley, and Clark enter the bank, while Hamilton takes the outside Tiger position near the front door as the gang's lookout (when an elderly foreign woman walks out the door while the robbery is in progress, the outlaw tells her to go back inside to which she replies, "I go to Penny's, you go to Hell" ... stupefied  Hamilton will let the woman go about her business).  As planned, they enter at just the right moment, elderly security guard Len Ratcliffe has just climbed down from a new steel cage constructed over the front door and is in the building's basement stoking the furnace.  Pierpont begins the action by asking Assistant Trust Officer Ward Mayhall to change a twenty dollar, and when he is told to go to another window, pulls a .45 Colt on the man and loudly declares to one and all that a holdup is now in progress and that no one should press any alarms.  At the announcement, the rest of the outlaws pull their guns and immediately begin plundering the establishment.  Stylish as always during a heist, with Makley and Clark keeping their weapons trained on the bank's dozen employees and ten customers, holding his machine gun at the ready, Dillinger vaults over a chest high counter into the loan teller's area and begins filling a muslin sack with money, while at the same time, Pierpont convinces Cashier Harry Wells to open the vault.  Plenty of money to be found, the gang fills it's sacks with over $74,000 (including $400 in half dollars, $200 in quarters, and eighteen silver dollars) in the less than five minutes they are in the bank.

                                     
                                                                  Pierpont

A professional job, but not quite a perfect one.  Makley misses seeing bank employee William Styles slip out of a side door, where once free, he attempts to find some nails to puncture the tires of gang's driverless escape vehicle, and failing that (unbeknownst to Styles, the back seat of the car contains boxes of nails and tacks that the gang plans to use if they are pursued), foolishly calls the Greencastle police to report the in-progress robbery ... foolishly because the office of the County Sheriff is in the courthouse right across the street!  As Dillinger, Pierpont, and Makley are exiting the bank's front door they encounter grocer Rex Thorlton entering, and when the man reaches into his back pocket for the cash he is about to deposit, thinking he is drawing a weapon, Pierpont cracks him over the head with his pistol ... the only violence that takes place during the job.  And they miss by only a minute, Catherine Tillotson of DePauw's treasurer's office, arriving to deposit even more money in the bank.  Robbery complete, the last flaw in the day's activities almost results in unexpected disaster for as the gang drives slowly away, they are horrified when their escape from town is blocked by a random freight train lumbering slowly past ... back tracking, they use an alternate route and soon vanish, headed towards Chicago to spend some of their loot on that big city's "good life." 


                                                                  Dillinger

The robbery is the biggest payday of John Dillinger's short and violent career.

PRETTY BOY GOES UNDER

10/22/1934 - Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd's reign as Public Enemy #1 concludes on a farm in Ohio just three short months after it began with the death of bank robber John Dillinger.

                           
                                 Pueblo, Colorado mug shot of the Pretty Boy

Far from his home turf of Oklahoma, bad luck, slick roads, driving too fast, fog and a car wrecking telephone pole all conspire to put Floyd and his partner, Adam Richetti, afoot in unfamiliar Ohio territory.  Spotted by suspicious locals while waiting for their girlfriends to have their damaged vehicle fixed, and then confronted by gun toting peace officers, Richetti is captured and Floyd flees into the woods.  

                               
                                              Richetti in custody

Word out that an armed criminal is on the loose in the area soon results in police, Federal agents, and armed citizens combining to comb the region in a huge manhunt that after two days finds the bandit at the farm of Ellen Conkle.

 
                                                   The Conkle Farmhouse

Tired and hungry after spending the weekend living on wild apples, pears, and berries, posing as a lost hunter though he is wearing a sweat stained dark suit, Floyd emerges from a nearby forest and pays the widow Conkle $1 for a last meal of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes, rice pudding, coffee, a doughnut, and a piece of pumpkin pie ... a feast Floyd declares "... was fit for a King." 

                                            
                                                         Ellen Conkle

Sustenance received, when Conkle's brother, Stewart Dyke, and his wife arrive, Floyd convinces the pair to drive him into the nearby town of Clarkson in their Model A Ford.  It is a little past 4:00 in the afternoon.

                                  
                                                  The Model A Ford

About to leave the farm, Floyd's luck runs out when two cars carrying four Federal agents led by Melvin Purvis and four local East Liverpool officers pulls up at the farm.  The only shelter a wooded area two hundred yards away, carrying a .45 automatic in his right hand, Floyd jumps out of the car and takes off through an open field towards the mirage of safety behind the farm.  Shouts of surrender ignored, using his .32-20 Winchester rifle, WWI sharpshooter Chester K. Smith sends a bullet into Floyd's right arm that drops the outlaw ... but only for a second.

                                    
                                        Posse with Smith second from left

Up again in an instant, Floyd begins another zig-zagging dash, flight that causes Purvis to order the rest of the posse to fire.  Hit again multiple times with pistol, rifle, shotgun and Thompson machine gun lead (a count later determines that ninety-three slugs have been sent his way), Floyd goes down once more and does not get back up.  Down, but not quite dead, when Purvis asks the dying outlaw if he is Pretty Boy Floyd, a name he never liked, the outlaw growls he is "Charles Arthur Floyd," calls Purvis a "son-of-a-bitch," and tries to draw his other pistol before dying, handcuffed, under the shade of a nearby apple tree he has been carried to (roughly fifteen minutes after being struck from damage to his lungs, ribs, and heart ... his last words are, "I'm going.").  Floyd is thirty-years-old.

       
                                       At the Sturgis Funeral Home in East Liverpool
                                     
                                        Part of crowd at the funeral home

That is the official story of Floyd's death, but an alternate tale surfaces years later.  In failing health, Smith, the gunner who hit Floyd first, tells a tale in which Purvis, enraged at being cursed out by the outlaw, orders agent Herman Hollis to "Fire into him!" ... which Hollis does, killing the bandit instantly with his Thompson (not around to be questioned, Hollis will perish the next month when he engages in a shootout with Baby Face Nelson). 

                     
                              Special Agent Melvin Purvis

Murderer murdered?  Backing up this version of reality, a female neighbor of Ellen Conkle will tell newspapermen about hearing two individual instances of shooting on her neighbor's farm the day of Floyd's death ... shootings that are separated in time by several minutes.

                
                                                         Some of the damage
                                 
                                                   Fingerprinting the corpse

Whatever the case, Floyd in death moves from Public Enemy to folk hero and legend.  On his body at death the outlaw is carrying $122 in cash, an assortment of coins, a car key, matches, a car key, a loaded .45 ammunition clip, a Gruen pocket watch, a good luck charm in the form of a silver half dollar attached to a pocket chain, and two apples ... negating a gunfighter myth, neither the coin or his watch bear notches for the men he has killed.  

Embalmed, Floyd's body is placed on public display in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, then buried at the town of Akins ... a funeral that draws a crowd estimated to number between 20,000 to 40,000 people!!!!!

                                   
                                           Charles Arthur Floyd

THE DUTCHMAN GETS HIS

10/23/1935 - One of the most famous hits in mob history takes place when thirty-four-year-old Jewish gangster Arthur Flegenheimer, better known as Dutch Schultz, and three of his men are gunned down at the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey.

                                         

                                                       Scene of the crime
                                         
                                                          The Dutchman

The murders are set in motion by Schultz's need to get rid of his nemesis, New York Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey.  Not a very good salesman, after discussing the pros and cons of killing Dewey for six hours (there is a plan, compliments of Albert Anastasia, to assassinate the man during his daily morning walk with a silenced pistol) with Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Abner "Longy" Zwillman, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and Meyer Lansky, the leaders of organized crime in New York City known as The Commission of which Schultz is a member, the gangster brings about his own death by refusing to accept the decision that is made to let the lawyer live.

                                         
                                                    Prosecutor Dewey

"Dewey's gotta go," Schultz screams over and over, upset that he is the target of the lawyer's investigation into selling restaurant "protection" policies, but when the irate mobster finally leaves, the men instead then vote that it is the Dutchman that must be go.

              
                              Lepke                                       Shapiro                            
                                   
                                                      Lucky  
                
                               Bugsy                                    Lansky
                                        
                                                         Zwillman

Anastasia, there already for his presentation on how Dewey could be hit, gets the assignment, and in turn gives the contract to a three-man death squad of his Murder, Inc. killers ... twenty-eight-year-old gunman Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss, twenty-seven-year-old gunman Charles "The Bug" Workman, and a driver that will be known to criminal history only as "Piggy."

                                      
                                                          Weiss
                   
                                                                   Workman

The stage is set for the Dutchman's murder when he as usual goes to his favorite restaurant that night for dinner, drinks, and back room business with a group of his associates (through the evening others will be present, like Schultz's wife, twenty-one-year-old Frances, but will leave before the bullets begin flying) ... Otto "Abbadabba" Berman, a mathematical wizard and numbers cruncher for the gang, bodyguard Bernard "Lulu" Rosenkrantz, and chief henchman Abe Landau.

                          
                                                              Landau

After numerous drinks and a dinner of steaks and fries, the men are discussing gang business at their normal back room table, the same spot they'd occupied nightly for three straight weeks, when at about 10:15 they are joined by the members of Murder, Inc.  A double whammy of death, Workman enters the restaurant, walks to the back and fires a .38 into the three men sitting at the table, Landau, Berman, and Rosenkrantz, while following, Weiss fires at the same group with a double-gauge shotgun.  Thirty-six-year-old Rosencratz takes seven hits from his chest down to his foot, Berman is hit six times on his left side, in wrist, elbow, shoulder, and neck (a bullet that exits through the side of his face), and Landau takes hits to his wrist, right arm, and shoulder (a bullet that exits through the right side of his neck, severing an artery).  Accurate targeting, only two bullets seem to miss, shattering a wall mirror.  Then making sure that they haven't missed anyone, Workman goes into the bathroom and confronts a man standing at the urinal peeing ... Dutch Schultz (an alternate tale has the bathroom events taking place first).  In the unequal battle that ensues, the mobster actually has only brought a knife to a gunfight, a 3.5-inch switchblade called a Chicago Spike.  Reaching for the weapon, Schultz is hit by one of the two bullets Workman fires his way before retreating ... a steel-jacketed .45 slug kept rusty on purpose to cause infection that goes into Schultz's chest, tears through his abdominal wall, and does massive damage to the mobster's large intestines, gall bladder, and liver.  While this is going on, amazingly, Landau and Rosenkrantz fight back, firing at the fleeing Weiss until both collapse from their wounds, Rosenkrantz on the restaurant floor and Landau outside, sitting on a trash can.  Also amazingly, Schultz zips himself up, and calling for help, stumbles to the murder table and collapses ... help request heard, Rosenkrantz gathers enough strength to lift himself from his position on the floor, go to the restaurant's phone booth, and call the local police switchboard for help, but not before actually demanding the frightened bartender make change for the quarter he is holding so the phone company won't receive a twenty cent bonus the frugal mobster doesn't think they deserve for a five cent call.  Not as big a penny-pinch as his bodyguard, when help finally arrives, Schultz tips the emergency personnel twenty bucks to take good care of his friends.

                               
                                                    The Dutchman

Taken to the hospital, the bullet-riddled men will linger for various amounts of time as police question them as to who has done the shooting (different members of a twenty-man operating team will spend 27 hours and 20 minutes trying to salvage the four men).  No one tells the police anything.  Abbadabba is the first to leave, exiting at 2:55 in the morning of the 24th, as dawn is breaking, Landau checks out a few hours later at 6:30, and Rosenkrantz, despite massive blood loss, lasts until 3:20 of the morning of the 25th.

Thought at first to not be mortally wounded, Schultz develops peritonitis, and fever fueled, babbles gibberish for hours (all of it taken down by a police stenographer) before succumbing at 8:35 in the evening, about twenty-two hours after being shot.  The gangster's last words are, "Max come over here ... French Canadian bean soup ... I want to pay, let them leave me alone ..."


                                                     Still lucid Dutch
                                
                                                 Adios Arthur

ANOTHER PUBLIC ENEMY #1 BITES THE DUST

10/12/1937 - The stupidity of the Brady Gang (Al Brady, Clarence Lee Shaffer, Jr., James Dalhover) is paid off in bullets and blood in Bangor, Maine.

      

Thinking they are in need of more firepower for a series of jobs they have planned for later in the year, in September the gang goes to Bangor and at two sporting goods stores, while claiming to be hunters, purchases two .45 automatics, three .32 Colt automatics and ammunition, while asking about extra clips and special weapon modifications, while ordering a third .45 ... not the typical weapons to go deer hunting with which of course starts the gang's downfall chain.  After they leave, suspicions aroused, Louis Clark, the clerk helping the men, goes to the owner of Dankin's Sporting Goods, Everett Hurd (who will receive $1,500 for the information he supplies), about the strange men, Hurd then tells the town's Chief of Police, Thomas Crowley, and eventually Crowley contacts the FBI (additionally, C.E. Silsbury of the Rice & Miller store, the establishment where the outlaws buy the Colts, also relates his story about the "hunters").  

                                            
                                                               Hurd

Could the boneheads possibly be the notorious Brady Gang?

                                           
                                           Al Brady, Public Enemy #1 - 1937

Further proof that the outlaws might be operating around Bangor is provided when a few days later members of the gang return and buy the .45 they ordered, purchase a rifle, and ask whether a tommy gun might be for sale (though sales of the weapon are illegal).  Thinking on his feet, Hurd tells the men he does have access to a machine gun, but it won't be available until later in the week ... later in the week when an ambush can be planned.  And planned it is, waiting for the gang when they foolishly come back to town are fifteen FBI agents, led by Special Agent Walter Walsh (who will be in Dankin's posing as a clerk), and fifteen Indiana (where the gang is wanted on murder charges) and Maine officers of the law.

               
                                                 Agent Walter Walsh

After twice driving by the store to make sure everything is on the up-and-up, at 8:30 in the morning the gang arrives at Dankin's to pick up their machine gun ... Dalhover goes into the store, Shaffer stands on guard at the entrance, and Brady waits in the back seat of the black Buick the gang is using.  Entering Dankin's, Dalhover asks Hurd whether the machine gun is ready, and before the owner of the store can respond, finds himself confronted by Walsh and the agent's two ready to fire pistols.  Instead of complying however, Dalhover swings around to fight and all Hell breaks loose.  Dalhover is knocked to the ground by Walsh, but the commotion draws the attention of Shaffer, who instantly draws his weapon and shoots into the store, wounding Walsh in the shoulder.  Weapon fired, the lurking snipers immediately respond with a barrage of lead which puts Shaffer down in the middle of the street.  At the same time as Shaffer is being shot, two agents accost Brady in the car.  Hands over his head, Brady appears to surrender, but as he exits the car door he rams into the arresting officers, draws his weapon, and begins to fire at targets of opportunity in the street ... a major mistake that results in him joining Shaffer in death.  

                       

All over in roughly four minutes, the dead outlaws are massacred in a Bonnie and Clyde style ambush that sees Shaffer and Brady hit over sixty times.  Overkilled, and wisely so, in the aftermath of the shootout, the gang is found to be carrying on their persons or have in the car and hideout the following weaponry: eight .45 caliber automatic pistols, seven .38 caliber revolvers, three .30 caliber machine guns with 350 shot belts, five .32 caliber automatic pistols, five .30 caliber rifles, one .30 caliber automatic rifle, two 12-gauge shotguns, one .45 caliber revolver, one .32 caliber revolver, two .22 caliber automatic pistols, tear gas grenades, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition (and yet they needed to buy ANOTHER machine gun?).  

   
                                                                   Street Fight

           
                                                            Brady and Shaffer
                          
                                            Downtown Bangor - 10/12/1937

Shaffer and Brady dead, Dalhover will soon follow them, frying in the Indiana electric chair in November of 1938 for the murder of Highway Patrol Officer Paul Minneman.  Over and out, the Brady Gang is no more!

                                        
                                               Al before his Bangor morning

LUCKY IS LUCKY

10/17/1929 - Salvatore Lucania, better know as the New York gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano, barely survives a really bad day.
                       
                                                                                                                    
                                                                 Lucky - 1931

While inspecting a load of heroin being smuggled into Manhattan at a local dock on the Hudson River, thirty-two-year-old Luciano is suddenly jumped by three gun pointing hoodlums and thrown into the back seat of a long, black touring car.  Handcuffed, mouth taped shut, for the next hour the car drives through the streets of Brooklyn while the mobster is beaten senseless with fists, blackjacks and pistol butts by the three men who took him hostage.  Softened up and unconscious, one attacker then finishes off Luciano by using a long-bladed knife to slash his cheek, ear, and throat, while another stabs the gangster through his expensive tweed coat in the back with an icepick ... a dozen times.  The one-way-ride complete, the assailants then drive out to Huguenot Beach on Staten Island and dump the body.

                                     
                                                           1936 mug shot

There is a problem though with the hit ... the men didn't kill Luciano!  The throat slash just misses the mobster's jugular vein, and none of the icepick thrusts hit any vital organs.  At dawn, mustering enough strength to finally go for help, Luciano staggers off the beach, and makes his way along a deserted street until he is found by beat cop named Blanke ... found only seconds before he collapses and is unconscious again.

                   
                            The later good life as the most powerful criminal in New York

Stitched up and saved at a local hospital (he will bear the scars of the attack the rest of his life, along with a lazy right eye due to his cheek wound), Luciano is visited by several New York detectives and grilled at his bedside for hours on one topic ... who did the beating and cutting.  True to the mob's code of silence, he answers all questions that he doesn't know and doesn't understand why anyone wouldn't like him.  The truth of who sent his attackers is never known, but over the years theories are developed that the orders might have come from Giuseppe Masseria, worried that his #1 lieutenant is growing too powerful, Salvatore Maranzano, to eliminate his rival Masseria's most valuable asset, or Jack "Legs" Diamond, a former friend trying to muscle in on Luciano's narcotics and prostitution rackets.  What is known is that all three mobsters will not die of old age ... Masseria is set-up by his henchman Luciano and assassinated in 1931 at the Nuova Villa Tammaro restaurant on Coney Island, Maranzano is killed in his Park Lane office in 1931 by a hit squad sent by Luciano that poses as government auditors to gain access to the mobster, and also in 1931, Diamond passes out after a night of partying and is shot three times in the back of the head by "persons unknown."  

                          
                                                     Masseria - Coney Island
                
                                                        Maranzano in his office
                                       
                                               Legs before the final hangover    

As for Lucky, he goes on to create "The Commission" which will run criminal activities in America from coast-to-coast for years (along with founding the Luciano Family of the Mafia, now the Genovese Family), and dies of a heart attack at the Naples International Airport at the age of sixty-four as he is on his way to meet with a Hollywood producer about making a movie about his life.   

          
                                              Lucky in retirement with his dog