A PUNK NAMED STARKWEATHER

1/29/1958 - The mindless murder spree of teenage punk Charles Raymond Starkweather, aka Little Red, comes to an end outside the small town of Douglas, Wyoming. 

                                              

                                                           Starkweather

Skilled at nothing, ignored at home (he is the third of seven children in his family), teased about a speech impediment, suffering from a case of severe myopia, and sensitive about his red hair and runtish stature (he is 5'2" due to being born with the birth defect genu varum which has misshaped his legs), Starkweather grows up angry, a bomb ready to explode.  James Dean and a thirteen-year-old girlfriend named Caril Ann Fugate are the sparks that transform the nineteen-year-old into a killer.  Seeing Rebel Without a Cause, Starkweather tries to look and act like his new hero, James Dean ... and to show off for his impressionable young love.  But clothes and date nights require money not to be had from his job collecting trash from the streets of Lincoln, Nebraska, and in December of 1957 he turns to crime to put some green in his wallet.

                                              
                                                          Caril & Charlie

Two birds with one stone, when twenty-one-year-old gas station attendant Robert Colvert refuses to sell Starkweather a stuffed toy dog on credit, the teenager has a target to rob ... and a focus for his rage.  Returning to the business at 3:00 in the morning the next day, with a 12-gauge shotgun giving him moxie, Starkweather takes $100 from the cash register and forces Colvert to ride with him out into the snowy Lincoln countryside.  Finding a deserted area that suits his purposes, Little Red forces Colvert out of his car and then kills the young man with a blast of buckshot to the head.  The gas station attendant leaves behind a pregnant young widow.

                                             
                                                                 Colvert

Killing now recognized as a solution to any issue, Starkweather begins his rampage into infamy by savaging the family of his girlfriend on January, 21, 1958.

                                
                                                          Killer Punk

Waiting for Caril to come home from school, Starkweather gets into an argument about their relationship with her thirty-six-year-old mother Velda and her fifty-seven-year-old stepfather Marion Bartlett.  What exactly happened next will never be known, Starkweather claims Velda slaps him and when he hits her back, Mr. Bartlett comes at him with a claw hammer, while Velda then arms herself with a knife.  Maybe ... but what is known is that by the time Caril gets back from her classes, both her parents are dead from bullets discharged out of Starkweather's .22 hunting rifle ... and for reasons that could only govern the actions of a madman, Caril's half-sister, two-year-old Betty Jean Bartlett has been strangled and stabbed to death.

                   

                                                            Mr. & Mrs. Bartlett

                                         
                                                                Betty Jean

Lacking any remorse whatsoever, the pair then hide the bodies and play house for the next few day, stuffing their faces on potato chips, drinking Pepsi, listening to music, and watching television.  Eventually, when neighbors and relatives become curious about why the Bartletts haven't been seen in days, and the police come calling to investigate, the couple flees in Charlie's car, heading for the temporary refuge of a family friend, the farm of seventy-one-year-old bachelor August Meyer.  Meyer will not survive the visit.

                                   
                                                                 Massacre

Again Starkweather's story of events is that he killed Meyer because his former friend, who had known him since birth, attacked the killer ... for good measure, he also shoots Meyer's dog.

                                           

                                                               Meyer in his home

Next to be murdered will be sixteen-year-old Carol King and her seventeen-year-old boyfriend Robert Jensen ... a pair of teenagers that make the mistake of giving Charlie and Caril a ride after their car gets stuck in the mud.  For the act of kindness, Jensen is dumped in an abandoned storm cellar with six bullets in his head ... then, after not being able to rape King, Starkweather stabs her several times before shooting her once in the head.

                                                     
                                                                 Jensen & King

Hiding from the major manhunt that has started in the wake of the killings, the couple next decide to invade the Lincoln home C. Lauer Ward, a wealthy forty-seven-year-old businessman and friend of the governor who has the misfortune of being one of the people that Starkweather use to haul away garbage for.  Another outburst of carnage, forty-six-year-old Mrs. Ward is stabbed to death after making her killer pancakes and waffles, her small poodle Suzy has its neck broken, Mr. Ward is murdered by a shot to the head when he comes home from work, and their fifty-one-year-old maid, Lillian Fencl, is tied to a bed and stabbed to death. 

                       
                                                           Mr. & Mrs. Ward

                                              
                                                                   Fencl

Police and National Guard out in force, the FBI now involved, a $1,000 reward offered for info leading to a capture, yet somehow the couple manage to make their way north, driving all night, heading towards the paradise Starkweather believes the state of Washington to be.  They get as far as Wyoming.  Seeking to dump the Ward's black Lincoln, outside of the town of Douglas the pair discover a traveling shoe salesman from Montana sleeping in his Buick by the side of the road.  It will be thirty-seven-year-old Merle Collison's last day of life.

                                                 
                                                              Collison

Starkweather shoots Collison nine times, hitting the unfortunate salesman in the head, neck, and leg ... but a problem develops ... the killer is too stupid to know how to release the vehicle's special emergency brake.  Enter passing oil agent geologist Joseph Sprinkle.  When Sprinkle is flagged down and stops, Starkweather produces his rifle and threatens the man with death if he doesn't help him get the car in motion.  Seeing Collison's dead body in the front seat of the car, knowing what is coming his way, instead of complying the geologist grabs the rifle and a wrestling match begins for possession of the weapon.  Enter passing by Wyoming Deputy Sheriff William Romer.  Pulling over to see what the commotion on the roadway is about, he is immediately confronted by Caril screaming for the police to save her from a killer ... her boyfriend, Starkweather.  Sensing his imminent arrest, Starkweather runs to the Ward's car and flees back in the direction of Douglas, driving in excess of 100 miles per hour ... with now alerted local cops in close pursuit ... a pursuit which ends when the killer abruptly stops and surrenders after flying glass from a police bullet into the back window wounds him in the ear.   

          
                                                            In custody

Rampage over, eleven people dead, but there is still a trial for the public to endure in which Starkweather will claim Caril was a willing participant in the murders (most of which he states were committed in self defense), while she will counter that her boyfriend had a gun on her the whole time and she did nothing wrong during the entire murder spree.  Not buying the bologna, back in Nebraska a jury of twelve very sensible citizens finds both teenage punks guilty of first degree murder ... Starkweather is sentenced to death in the electric chair, but because she is only fourteen, Caril gets a lighter sentenced, life in prison (a sentence she will eventually have commuted, she is released from prison in June of 1976).

                                

                                                               Caril

                       
                                                         Death Row Punk

Classy to the end, upset at the betrayal of his girlfriend, the twenty-year-old James Dean wannabe makes an unusual last request ... asking that Caril sit in his lap when he is fried.  Request denied, he goes to the chair alone on June 24, 1959 ... dead at the age of only twenty.

                                                   
                                                             Starkweather

JOHN DILLINGER - SUPERSTAR CROOK

1/30/1934 - Returning to Chicago after his recently terminated vacation in Tucson, Arizona, the adventures of outlaw John Dillinger becomes the number one story in the country ... a position his saga will hold for most of the rest of his brief life.

  
                                                  Headed back to Chicago

Completing his long exhausting journey from the desert to big city concrete and steel, while handcuffed and under guard the entire time, the bandit is flown in a Bellanca Skyrocket monoplane on a fifty minute trip to the town of Douglas, Arizona, then is taken on an American Airways twin-engine Curtis Condor commercial flight to El Paso, Texas (where it is snowing), next goes from El Paso to Abilene, Abilene to Fort Worth, and Fort Worth to Dallas, before moving on to the cities of Little Rock and Memphis, and from Memphis travels north in a three-engine Trimotor to St. Louis ... and finally lands in Chicago after being with the birds for a full day..   

                   

Arriving in The Windy City at the Chicago Municipal Airport at around 6:10 in the chill of a frosty evening, Dillinger is welcomed to Illinois by a host of newspaper men, photographers, curious onlookers, and by one-hundred-and-fifty heavily armed members of the city's police force under the command of Dillinger Squad leader John Stege.  Then as if that were not enough cops to control any situation which might arise, two squads of Illinois state troopers and six squads of Indiana officers arrive to offer their assistance ... and better and better, as the thirteen car caravan holding Dillinger, accompanied by a dozen motorcycle patrolmen, heads towards Crown Point, Indiana with lights flashing and sirens blaring, it is joined by cop contingents from the towns of Hammond, East Chicago, and Gary.  Inside the Lincoln vehicle the outlaw is traveling in, Dillinger is threatened by Chicago gunfighter Lietenant Frank Reynolds with instant death if he or any of his criminal associates start anything.  An incident free ride, the bank robber survives the journey.

        
                                   Captain John Stege  

At Crown Point some five hundred people are on hand to greet the arrival of the jail's newest occupant as he is turned over to forty-three-year-old Sheriff Lillian Holley (serving out her slain husband's term in office) ... a mob of newspapermen and cops that the sheriff welcomes with sandwiches, coffee, and a half-barrel of beer.  Demanding face time with Dillinger, Holley okays an impromptu press conference in which the outlaw is given a chance to charm the world ... and chance given, the outlaw is more than up to the task. 

                          
                                                   Holley and friend

Dressed in dark trousers and a matching loose vest over a white, open-collar shirt, Dillinger, while chewing a stick of Wrigley gum, makes quips about being back in his home state, admits to being behind the recent Michigan City Prison breakout, claims he had nothing to do with the East Chicago bank robbery and murder of Sergeant William O'Malley, states very alive outlaw John Hamilton is dead, exaggerates the story of how he went wrong in Mooresville as a youth, identifies former friend Art McGinnis as the stool pigeon that set up the police ambush at Dr. Eye's office back in November, discusses President Roosevelt and the NRA's support of the banks of America, claims his Tucson lawyer has taken all his money, confesses to sending Matt Leach of the Indiana State Police a copy of "How to Be a Detective" for Christmas, faults Makley and Clark for the gang's Waterloo in Tucson, admits he owns five illegal machine guns, and identifies Frank Reynolds as his most hated enemy.  Asked how long it takes him to rob a bank, Dillinger boasts, "Oh, about a minute and forty seconds flat."  He also states, "I don't drink much and I smoke very little.  When you rob banks, you can't very well do a lot of drinking.  I guess my only bad habit is robbing banks.  Now you see fellas, I ain't such a bad guy at heart.  I try to be right."  The reporters documenting the session love it ... and the photographers get something special too!


                                                               The picture

Seeking a picture of the outlaw, his keepers, and the man that might send Dillinger to his death in the state's electric chair, Prosecutor Robert Estill, a free lance photographer calls out, "Bob, put your arm around him."  Weary from the trying journey from Tucson, responding to a pose request as he has done countless times before, without thinking of the ramifications Estill does as he is told, creating the "good pals" shot that will be on front pages across the country in the morning ... and end his political career (the prosecutor has aspirations to be the next governor of Indiana).  And mugging for the camera, the picture also gives Dillinger a chance to signal his underworld connections that he will pay whatever cost is required to have a weapon smuggled into the jail ... right arm on Estill's left shoulder, the bandit forms his fingers into the shape of a pistol.

                     
                                              Holley, Estill, and Dillinger
            
                                                 What me worry?
                                     
                                                          News

Headline stuff ... Dillinger incredibly will be able to dazzle the press and the public even more in a little over a month's time when he manages to break out of the so called "escape proof" Crown Point jail on March, 3rd ... using a wooden gun!

OFF TO HELL FOR AL

1/25/1947 - After spending his final prison years on Alcatraz and Terminal Island in the institutions' hospitals as his mind slowly deteriorates from the ravages of syphilis (picked up from spending too much time sampling the lovelies of the Chicago prostitution racket he oversees), his sentence reduced for "good behavior," crime lord Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone, is freed from prison to enjoy the rest of the few years he has left.  

                          
                                                        Al on Alcatraz

Out of the crime business, Capone returns to his mansion on Palm Island in Florida and spends the next eight years fishing, being with his family (his son will attend Notre Dame under the alias of Brown), raving (a favorite topic is that Bugs Moran is still trying to have him killed, though the gangster is incarcerated in an Ohio prison at the time), and hallucinating (a Baltimore psychiatrist who examines Capone in 1946 will say the former mob boss has the mental functioning of a 12-year-old child).

      
                                                         Madman Mansion

The beginning of the end for Capone comes at around 4:00 in the morning of Tuesday, January 21, 1947, when the gangster suffers a major stroke.  Final rites are given by Father Cloonan of the local St. Patrick parish, but surprisingly, after fourteen hours in a coma, Capone wakes up and asks to talk to his wife and son.  At first it appears that the mobster is "out of the woods" ... but on Friday, pneumonia comes fatally calling.  Lungs congested and his doctors, Kenneth Phillips and Arthur J. Logie, powerless to improve his situation, Capone grows weaker and weaker and finally dies, his family at his bedside (wife Mae will collapse with grief), from a heart attack on Saturday at 7:25 in the morning.  The infamous crime boss is only eight days beyond his forty-eighth birthday when he passes.  

Notorious from coast-to-coast, Monsignor William Barry of St. Patrick's allows the gangster to have a memorial service at the cathedral, but refuses Capone a Requiem Mass.  As for burial, Capone of course chooses Chicago for his final resting place.  On the afternoon of February 4, 1947, in four-degree cold, at Plot 48 of the Mount Olivet Cemetery (it has taken the sextons there over three hours to hack out a hole in the ground), between the graves of his father and brother, Al Capone is laid to rest in a bronze casket wreathed in a blanket of gardenias topped by fifty orchids.

 

In 1950, Capone and family are moved to the Mount Carmel Cemetery ... he is buried there still ... beneath a marker that states ... MY JESUS MERCY.  Indeed!
                                           
                

TUCSON TOAST

1/25/1934 - After having enjoyed ringing in the new year in Florida by shooting machine guns at the moon, the Dillinger Gang decides to continue to avoid the winter cold of the Midwest, and the ongoing hunt for them by the police, by spending some quality down time in Tucson, Arizona (a small town of 30,000 at the time).  It is a serious mistake which will destroy the gang, as away from the places they know best, the men let their guards down and act stupid.

    
                                                           1930s - Tucson

The first idiocy takes place when Harry Pierpont, sightseeing instead of paying attention to his driving, runs through a stop sign.  Seeing a nearby police car, he decides to brazen out his error by pulling over and chatting with the officers ... claiming he is being followed by a strange car, talking about the weather, discussing his recent stay in Florida, showing off his new Buick ... and also giving them the actual location he will be staying at, a tourist cabin on South Sixth Street.

                                       
                                                            Pierpont

The second is Russell Clark having too much to drink at a local watering hole, and when a salesman boasts about how dangerous he is because he is in possession of some sticks of dynamite, the outlaw has to top the bragger by discussing in detail the machine guns he owns.  Additionally, Clark and Charles Makley let their drinking companions see they are each armed with weapons they are carrying in shoulder holsters.

   
                            Clark                                                        Makley

The final goof occurs after the faulty oil furnace in the basement of the Congress Hotel, where Makley and Clark are staying, catches fire.  Taking a break from beating down the flames that has caused the evacuation of the hotel, firefighter William Benedict finds the two bandits trying to hoist a ladder up to the window of their third floor room, attempting to retrieve their "luggage."  Stating he'll get the men's possessions, Benedict and other firefighters kick in the door of Room 329 and rescue a number of suitcases and a large, heavy fabric box ... a box containing two disassembled machine guns.  Fire salvage not unusual, what follows is, Benedict and his crew are rewarded $50 for their efforts, a very large tip for the times ... enough so the moment remains in mind.  

                
                                                   Fire at the Congress Hotel

The incidents all come together in a disaster for the gang.  Sobered up, the salesman has reported his drinking encounter with Makley and Clark to the police.  And the authorities have also been told about Makley and Clark by Benedict ... back at the station relaxing while on break, the firefighter has turned a page in True Detective Magazine and been confronted by mug shots of the same men that gave him $50 for rescuing their luggage.  Responding quickly to the possibility that major criminal figures are in town, Police Chief C. A. Wollard immediately has search parties out scouring the city for the suspects.  It does not take long for the men to be found.

     
                                                       True Detective Magazine

Using information provided by the Congress Hotel  and the mover employed to take the men's luggage to their new place of residence, police put their attention on a rental home near the University of Arizona at 927 East Second Avenue.  Watching the home are Detectives Dallas Ford, Chet Sherman, and Mark Robbins, and Officers Jay Smith and Frank Eyman.  When Makley and his latest girlfriend, local nightclub singer Madge Ritzer, go downtown to pick up a shortwave radio the outlaw is having fixed at Grabbe Electric and Radio, four of the lawmen follow.  At the store, an unarmed Makley is arrested by Sherman without incident.  Brought to the jail, he at first insists he is a vacationing businessman named J. C. Davies ... a charade that fools no one.  Unaware that his friend has been arrested as he sips a beer back at the rental, Clark will not go into custody as easily.

                                          
                                      927 East Second Avenue

Returning to the outlaw hideaway, the police put together a simple plan to gain access to the house and anyone that might be inside ... Sherman will pose as a Western Union messenger with a special letter requiring personal delivery.  When Clark comes forward, Sherman draws his gun and attempts to arrest the outlaw, but instead of complying, Clark grabs the pistol pointed his way and begins a wrestling match for possession of the weapon.  Tussling through the front room, the pair end up in the bedroom with Clark about to obtain the gun (he also reaches under a pillow on the bed for the pistol he has left there, but comes up empty ... his girlfriend Opal Long has moved the gun under the mattress where she thinks it will be "safer") ... but help arrives in the form of his colleagues (one, Ford, has a broken hand compliments of Long slamming the door shut as the detective is attempting to enter the house) and Clark is eventually put in handcuffs after being clobbered over the head several times by the pistols of the lawmen.  Suspect in custody, the officers also confiscate from the mattress weapon, a .38 revolver, two other pistols, three machine guns, an automatic rifle, two bulletproof vest, handcuffs, brass knuckles, ammunition and $4,526.68 in cash ... and with the booty in hand, relieve Clark of any pretense that he is a law abiding citizen.  A mistake is made though when everyone escorts the bandit to jail ... no one is there to capture the leader of the gang when Pierpont walks up to the front door a short time later.

                                 
                                                 Another view of the hideaway
                                          
                                        Top - left to right - Dallas Ford, Chief Wollard,
                                        Harry Foley, Frank Eyman, Captain Smith, and
                                          Chet Sherman ... Bottom - left to right - Milo
                                           Walker, Kenneth Mullaney, and Earl Nolan

Seeing the front door wide open, furniture overturned and blood stains on the floor, Pierpont instantly puts two and two together, runs to his car, and drives back to where he and his girlfriend, Mary Kinder, are staying ... the Arizona Tourist Court on South Sixth Street.  Packing quickly, the outlaw pauses just long enough to make a call to local attorney O. E. Glover, hiring the lawyer to represent his friends.  The delay in leaving is just enough time for the police to arrive, remembering the strange tourist and deducing from a description of Pierpont that the two men might be the same person.  Following as Pierpont pulls on to the road, the police decide to see if they can play along with the con the outlaw has been running.  Flagging Pierpont over to the side of the road, Eyman claims the car needs an Arizona tourist inspection sticker ... which can be obtained at the local police station.  Thinking himself cool and able to con any cop, Pierpont, holding a .45 between his legs, allows Eyman into the back seat of his Buick so the officer can direct him accordingly over the streets of Tucson.  Arriving at the police station, Pierpont realizes he has been duped when he sees the confiscated luggage of Clark and Makley ... for a moment, he debates over whether to go for the gun hidden in his pocket, or the second weapon he is carrying in a shoulder holster, but Eyman, Chief Wollard, and Officer Smith are on him before he can fire either weapon and a third member of the gang is handcuffed and put behind bars (patting down Pierpont, they will find two more weapons on Pierpont for a total of four ... none of which the bandit was able to use).  Only John Dillinger still roams the streets of Tucson.

                                         
                                           More of the officers involved in the capture
                                             
                                                             Bandit Booty

Learning from their earlier mistake, a detail of police stakes out the house that yielded Makley and Clark earlier in the day ... and sure enough, not knowing his friends are in jail, Dillinger pulls up at the property with his girlfriend Billie Frechette later that evening.  Walking up to the front door, Dillinger is confronted by Officers James Herron, Kenneth Mullaney, and Milo Walker.  "Reach for the moon or I'll cut you in two," Herron yells ... and after a moment's hesitation, Dillinger does as he is told and is placed under arrest (in the Hudson the outlaw is driving and the home he has rented, police will find two machine guns, five hundred rounds of ammo, two shortwave radios, thousands of dollars in cash, two modified .351 Winchester rifles with Maxim silencers.  In a single day, without firing a shout, the Tucson police have captured the entire Dillinger Gang (except for John Hamilton who remained in Chicago nursing recent received bank robbery wounds).
 
                                                         Dillinger under arrest

For three of the gang, their capture is the beginning of the end.  Hauled back to Ohio to go on trial for the murder of Sheriff Sarber (the sheriff's revolver is found in the possession of Pierpont), Clark, Makley, and Pierpont will all be found guilty of the crime ... Russell will receive a life sentence, Makley will be killed while trying to escape of Death Row, and Pierpont will be electrocuted later in 1934.

                   
                    Arraignment - L to R - Clark, Makley, Pierpont, Dillinger, Frechette, Kinder

Out of jail for only a few months, it now seems Dillinger will either soon be executed for the killing of Sergeant William O'Malley earlier in January, or face life behind bars, but soon he will shock the world by escaping from the "escape-proof" jail in Crown Point, Indiana ... and there will be many more robberies, gunfights and deaths before 1934 comes to an end.

GUNFIGHT IN ATLANTIC CITY

1/20/1935 -  Using information discovered at the Lake Weir hideout of Ma and Freddy Barker, FBI agents descend on Miami, seeking the country's newest Public Enemy #1, Alvin Karpis.  In addition to keeping an eye on airline, bus, and railroad terminals, knowing the outlaw is traveling with his eight-months pregnant girlfriend, the authorities also check every hospital and maternity ward in the city. 


                                                                 Public Enemy #1

                                                
                                                                    Campbell

Returning to the rented home he is sharing with Delores Delaney at around 5:00 in the evening after a full day of deep sea fishing for mackerel with his bank robbing partner Harry Campbell, Karpis is told of the killings of Ma and Freddy and makes immediate plans to flee Miami ... given the name of the Dan-mor Hotel in Atlantic City by underworld cronies as a safe haven, Campbell and Karpis will drive through the night to Atlantic City, while Delaney and Campbell's girlfriend, Wynona Burdette, take a train north (they beat officers showing up at the train station by minutes and check-in at the hotel ahead of their boyfriends).

                                           
                                                                  Delaney
                                               
                                                                  Burdette

Driving through the night in the black two-door Buick sedan Karpis has recently acquired from the Ungar Buick Company, the outlaws arrive in Atlantic City shortly after midnight on 1/19 and check into the Dan-mor on the city's Kentucky Avenue, a short three blocks from the boardwalk and the ocean ... the girls are in Room 400, the men just across from Delaney and Burdette in Room 403.  It appears they have escaped the heat that has arisen from the deaths of Ma and Freddy, but the red-hot intensity of the manhunt for Karpis has followed the group north.

                                        

While the group spends the day buying winter clothing and sees the sites (and Delaney's medical condition is checked by a local doctor), in Miami, the FBI has discovered the house on 85th Street in which Karpis and Delaney have been living as Mr. and Mrs. Green. Among the papers left behind in the pair's haste to get out of town is a description of the Buick Karpis has driven to Atlantic City, and the car's license plate number ... a number that is quickly sent to police department's up and down the eastern seaboard.  At 3:25 in the morning, Officer Elias Saab, out walking his normal beat, checks in from a street phone box and is told about the alert for the car.  Expecting nothing, he continues his patrol by entering the Coast Garage on Kentucky and is shocked when he finds the very vehicle he has just been told to be on the lookout for.  Finding out the owner of the car is staying at the Dan-mor, near dawn a group of cops sweeps into the hotel and begins questioning its manager, William Morley.  Luckily for Karpis, Morley's wife thinks the police are there to question him about his pregnant unmarried lady friend and she wakes the outlaw, dressed in only his long underwear, and takes him into an unused room next door to discuss the morality of the issue.  Exiting the room, Karpis finds himself confronted by three police officers ... who fail to recognize the bandit for the menace he poses.   

                               
                                                                  Karpis

As the cops try to use a passkey and enter his room, speaking loudly so Campbell will wake and be ready, Karpis claims to be a salesman and states he and his friend were partying the night before, apologizes for any noise they may have made, and offers to get his hungover friend out of bed.  When seconds later the door suddenly opens, Karpis jumps inside the room, slamming the door behind him.  It is closed for only a few heartbeats.  Pounding on the door while Mrs. Morley uses her passkey on its lock, Campbell suddenly yanks the door open and starts firing with a machine gun at anything that has the misfortune to be in the hallway, or adjacent rooms ... his first bullet knocks the ring of keys out of Morley's hand, others cause the cops to scramble away to cover and safety, and one slug pierces the wall of Room 400 and strikes Delores Delaney in her right leg.  Moving quickly while Campbell holds the police at bay, Karpis throws on a pair of pants, shoes, and an overcoat, arms himself with an automatic, and grabs the other two women out of their room.  The group then uses the hotel's back stairs to reach the street.  While the women wait, Karpis and Campbell run across the street and unable to find their Buick (already in police custody), steal a green Pontiac someone has foolishly left the keys in.  Spotted, they again trade lead with members of the local police department but manage to get away ... but not with the women who because of the cold have gone back inside the hotel where they are both soon arrested.  Alvin Karpis will never see the soon-to-be mother of his child again.

                                

Fleeing the city, with Karpis driving and Campbell watching for trouble with the machine gun, the car bumps along a set of railroad tracks out into the countryside where the pair wait until night, and then in a pouring rain the bandits make their way to Camden, New Jersey where they fill up with gas.  Believing the attendant has recognized them as wanted outlaws, their next order of business becomes finding a new ride ... which the duo does outside of Quakerstown by flagging down and kidnapping thirty-one-year-old Philadelphia psychiatrist Horace Hunsicker and stealing his Plymouth sedan.  Driving west all the rest of the night and the next day on back roads, the threesome eventually reach a small town outside of Akron, Ohio, where Hunsicker is released.

                                                      
                                                              Escape vehicle

Then using the underworld contacts the pair have in Toledo, Ohio, the bandits vanish.  The girls each receive five year sentences for harboring in the aftermath of their arrest in Atlantic City, and while awaiting prison, Delaney gives birth to a baby boy she names Raymond in a Philadelphia hospital.  As for the father, he roam the country from Michigan down to the Gulf Coast, rob a mail truck, a train, and become one of the first criminals to stage a getaway using an airplane, before being captured in New Orleans in 1936 (Campbell is arrested a week later in Toledo).  Sent to Alcatraz for his many crimes, the former public enemy will have the dubious honor of spending more time on The Rock, twenty-six years, than any other prisoner.

                                           
                                                              Karpis - 1936
                     
                                                                     Older