PRETTY BOY REMOVES THE ASH BROTHERS

3/27/1931 - Woman, jealousy, squealing to the authorities, weapon availability, and outright dislike all combine to cause a double homicide in Kansas City, Missouri.

                            
                                               Kansas City - 1930

Hiding out in the city, after escaping a prison term in Ohio by jumping out of a train, is the soon to be notorious outlaw, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd.  Floyd's partner, Willis "Billy the Killer" Miller, is also notorious, having murdered his own brother in a saloon over the love a woman and having a predilection for fondling his revolver when not firing it.  Dangerous solos, the two as partners in crime are trouble just waiting to happen ... and the first folks to have it happen to them are the Ash Brothers, Wallace and William.

     
                                                         Floyd

Two thugs involved in running narcotics, gambling, and making a buck here and there by informing to the police about the activities of local criminals, Wallace and William are the sons of Sadie Ash, a former Sunday school teacher turned all-around tough cookie by the Depression who runs a boardinghouse known to take in crooks, supply loose women to its patrons, and be amenable to gambling at all hours.  Catering to the underside of society, Miller and Floyd become regulars at the establishment, drawn like bees to honey by two wild loving women that reside there, Beulah Baird, and her sister, Rose Baird.  Creating difficulties to any love blossoming however, the two sisters are married to the Ash boys.

                                         
                                                     Sisters

Though separated from their husbands, Wallace and William consider the women to be their property and are less than pleased when they take up with Miller and Floyd (Rose finds herself falling for Miller, while Beulah is taken with Floyd, so taken that it is she that gives the outlaw the nickname "Pretty Boy").  Bad mojo, harsh looks and words are exchanged more than once and it is only matter of time before murder will be applied to someone.  Things finally come to a head when a series of police raids hit the neighborhood ... raids that seem to be initiated using insider information and that almost result in Floyd's capture at a speakeasy.  The outlaws are not happy! 

                                       
                                                 Beulah

Receiving a phone call from Beulah on the 25th that the girls would like to meet and discuss a reconciliation with the brothers, Wallace and William head out in their Chevy for a rendezvous with their women, telling relatives instead that they are going to a spot on Eighth Street and Grand Avenue to listen to the merry radio antics of Amos & Andy.  The sequence of events that follows that night are a mystery, what is known however is that the men show up on the 27th in a muddy ditch in a rural area of Rosedale, just across the state border in Kansas.  Both Ash brothers sport large bullet holes in the back of their skulls, and nearby, their blue Chevy is parked, evidence removed, burnt to a crisp.  Not Floyd's style, the executions do fit the personality of Miller, and though a witness states that on the night of the murders she saw Floyd and Miller in a car following Wallace and William, the crime is never officially solved.  It is the first time in Floyd's career a murder is laid at his door ... it will not be the last though!

                                      
                                                        Floyd

Their burdensome husbands gone, the lovebirds are free to enjoy their new romances with Miller and Floyd ... but not for long.  In April they will decide to vacation in Kentucky, and while shopping in the town of Bowling Green, the foursome find themselves in a sudden gun battle with authorities that costs Miller his life, sends Officer Ralph "Zibe" Castner to the morgue, puts Beulah in a local hospital with a serious head wound, and gets Rose arrested.  Only Floyd makes it out of town.

               
                                 Wanted  

Fleeing back towards his Oklahoma stomping grounds, the outlaw is just getting starting with the many criminal acts that will make him a legend ... he has three years left to live.

NITTI HITS NITTI

3/19/1943 - Mobster killings come in many forms ... the Chinese menu of mayhem finales to select from has icepicks through the ear, bullets to the heart and head, throat cuttings, strangulation, being set on fire, being blown to bits by a bomb, feet in cement swimming lessons, stabbings, and beatings ... all good for getting a crook gone ... Frank Nitti though goes out on this day in a unique manner, not content to let other hoodlums do the dirty work for him, the leader of Chicago's Outfit offs himself (not thrown off a roof by Kevin Costner as portrayed in the ludicrous movie, The Untouchables)!

                        
                                         Nitti

Rags to riches to morgue, Nitti begins life in the small town of Angri in Italy in 1886 as Francesco Raffaele Nitto.  When he is seven, the future gangster comes to America with his family.  In Brooklyn he will quit school after the seventh grade, work as a pin setter in a bowling alley, a factory worker, and a barber ... and also become friends with members of another immigrant family that lives nearby named Capone.  After a brief stint of lawlessness in Texas, by 1918 he is in Chicago, living on South Halsted Street and supporting himself and wife through ill gotten gains acquired as a jewel thief, fence, and liquor smuggler ... and as a liquor smuggler he soon comes to the attention of the powerful gang of racketeers being run by Johnny Torrio, and his second in command, Al Capone.
  
                                
                                                       Torrio
                  
                                                    Scarface

A rocket of illicit achievement, under the tutelage of his Brooklyn neighbor, Nitti quickly moves from body guard to running Capone's booze smuggling and distribution operations, earning himself the nickname of "The Enforcer" along the way for the intelligence to be found in his planning.  When Capone is sent off on income tax evasion charges, Nitti becomes a part of a criminal triumvirate that keeps the operation of The Outfit rolling ... Nitti heads operations, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik's tops administration, and Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo is in charge of enforcement.  It is a power structure that works quite well in transitioning the mob from liquor and into gambling and other vices when Prohibition ends.

     
                           Guzik                                                     Accardo

The fun ends in 1943 when Nitti's plan to use the threat of union troubles to extort money out of Hollywood studios blows up in his face.  Sent to be the mob's special movie thug, goon Willie Bioff is instead caught by the FBI and indicted for tax evasion, extortion, and racketeering ... offenses the crook chooses to mitigate by informing on his Chicago pals, a decision that means big trouble for The Outfit.  At a meeting at Nitti's home to discuss what to do after indictments are issued against the leaders of the mob, Accardo and underboss Paul "The Waiter" Ricca flex their muscles ... it was Nitti's plan, Nitti's lieutenant, so Nitti should do the right thing and take the fall for the scheme.

                        
                                  Bioff  

Claustrophobic, dreading going to prison for a second time (like his boss Capone, he goes behind bars due to income tax evasion, but only for a eighteen months), upset by the failure he has mistakenly orchestrated, and suffering from health issues, Nitti broods on his future and decides on a permanent solution for his troubles.

                     
                                   Nitti with brush

On the day before the mobster is to appear before a grand jury, Nitti has a peaceful breakfast with his wife, but when she leaves for church, he puts his final operation in motion.  Downing shots of whiskey that soon have his courage up, he loads a .32 revolver, puts the weapon in his pocket, and goes out for a stroll, seeking a location that won't be mussed by his blood and brains.  Five blocks from home, legs wobbly, he decides a railroad yard would be the perfect place for the goodbye he has planned ... a plan that almost goes awry when Nitti, staggering about, is almost turned into a pancake by a passing freight train.  Safe for seconds, the gangster pulls his pistol out and goes to work.  It will take him three shots to put himself out of his miseries ... the first misses his head entirely and only holes his hat, the second goes through his jaw, exits out of the top of his head and puts another hole in his fedora, and the third final turns him into a corpse, entering behind Nitti's right ear and mangling his brain.  Taken away for processing, an autopsy reveals that the gangster's alcohol level is 0.23 at the time of his death.  A suicide on a branch line of the Illinois Central railroad, the one-time leader of the Chicago mob leaves at the age of fifty-seven. 

 
                                                       Goodbye

 

LEPKE LOSES HIS LIFE

3/4/1944 - A first in American crime takes place at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, when a mob boss actually receives death for the host of crimes he has committed ... the zapped unfortunate is the notorious Jewish racketeer, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter (the nickname comes from a variation on "Lepkeleh," Yiddish for "Little Louie").  

                         
                                                   Sing Sing Prison

First coming to the attention of authorities when he is arrested for breaking and entering (and found wearing mismatched stolen left shoes), Lepke grows up hard and wild on the streets of the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York after the death of his father and abandonment of his mother.  Using fear and intimidation lessons learned in Brooklyn and during his two early stays at Sing Sing (muscle is supplied by his hulking childhood friend, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro), in his twenties the gangster begins building a crime empire by taking over unions associated with the garment businesses of New York City.  It is a lucrative association that brings the crook millions of dollars from blackmail, theft, and tribute, and opens the doors to other criminal activities (Lepke will become the kingpin of the narcotics racket in America).  Collect, control and protect, Lepke's organization requires numerous killers for its maintenance, and from that need springs what becomes the enforcement arm of organized crime, Murder, Inc.

                     
                             Lepke                           Shapiro    

Led at first by the extremely hot tempered Bugsy Siegel, the gang of murderers Lepke comes to command are a mixed group of Jewish and Italian thugs that are headquartered at a seemingly innocent candy store in Brooklyn named Midnight Rose's.  Taking contracts from a special phone at the back of the business that will see the group kill between 400 to 1,000 individuals in the '30s and '40s, the hit men get a regular salary, an additional fee of from $1,000 to $5,000 for each death they precipitate, medical coverage as required, and the services of the finest defense lawyers in New York if they are arrested.  Lepke's chief lieutenants in running the organization are the trusted Shapiro and Mafioso murderer Albert "The Lord High Executioner" Anastasia, while receiving assignments are a cast of sociopaths that includes Abe "Kid Twist" Reles (a master of the technique of driving an ice pick through the ear of his victims), Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss (said to hold the group's record for most murders at over 100 killings), Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein (a joking dolt, he will ask the judge in his murder case if he can pee on his leg), Mendy Weiss (in one murder he participates in, the owner of a candy store will be shot seventeen times), Charles Workman (the thug that will take out Dutch Schultz and three of the gangster's men in 1935 at Newark's Palace Chop House), Albert "Tick-Tock" Tannenbaum (the killer that partners with Bugsy Siegel to take out Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg in Los Angeles), Harry "Happy" Maione (so named because he always wore a scowl on his face), Frank "The Dasher" Abbandando (a connoisseur of fine cars and clothes, and raping young women), and Louis Capone (the owner of an Italian pastry shop who dabbled in murder when he wasn't busy with his baking).

                   
                                      Louis Capone
                 
                                       "Happy"                                  "The Dasher"
                   
                        "Pittsburgh Phil"                              "Tick-Tock"
                                             
                                                          Weiss

At the height of his criminal career, Lepke is one of the most powerful gangsters in the country (his friend, Lucky Luciano, is the other) and is pulling in $50 million a year.  The success however puts a huge target on his back, one that can be quantified to a reward of $50,000 for information leading to his arrest, and with state and Federal prosecutors gunning for his hide, the mobster goes into hiding ... he will grow a mustache as a disguise, spend time in a home with secret panels and hiding holes, run all his business decisions through Anastasia, Reles, and Shapiro, and constantly be on the move.  Weary of being on the run, convinced by a group of his fellow crooks that a deal is in place that will allow him to only face lesser Federal charges, Lepke's downfall begins when he lets radio personality broker his surrender to FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1939.

                            
                                      Winchell

Days into captivity he discovers there is no deal in place whatsoever ... wanting his lucrative rackets, he has been betrayed by Luciano and mob boss Thomas Lucchese.  Now under the control of the authorities, Lepke is first sentenced to 14 years behind bars on narcotics charges, then is turned over to New York Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey, who wins a racketeering case against the mobster that adds another 30 years to life to the crook's guilty time.  A worse betrayal and sentence however occurs when Reles is arrested for a number of murders, and realizing he will be put to death if found guilty, decides to instead become a government witness and testify to the crimes of his fellow killers in Murder, Inc., and their leader, Lepke (union thug Max Rubin also saves his own skin by squealing on the mob boss).

                             
                                                     Reles

Put on trial in 1940 by the state of New York for the 1936 murder of candy store owner and former truck union executive, Joseph Rosen (the gangster fears Rosen will go to police with tales of transportation strong-arming), Lepke, along with Mendy Weiss and Louis Capone, the two thugs that carried out the contract killing, are found guilty and sentenced to death.  

                             
                                        Capone & Weiss

Guilty, but not without power and resources still, Lepke fights the conviction for four years ... years that also allow him to achieve a measure of revenge against his enemies.  Moey "Dimples" Wolinsky, the Lepke "friend" that convinces him to surrender to Hoover at the behest of Luciano is turned into Swiss cheese while dining in a Manhattan restaurant, and although under the 24-hour protective custody of six police detectives, Reles is located at the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island and flung to his death from the window of his sixth-floor room. 

         
                                  Reles after being launched

Appeals used up, unwilling to sing himself for a lesser sentence, two-day stay over, in 1944 it is finally time for Lepke to receive what he has doled out to so many over the course of his criminal career ... death.  After a last meal of salad, shoestring potatoes, and roast chicken (also ordered by his subordinates), within minutes of each other, first Capone, then Weiss, then Lepke are fried into passing on the Sing Sing Prison electric chair.  

                             
                                       "Old Sparky"

When it is his turn, Lepke has no last words and jumps into the chair as if he is eager to move on ... he is forty-seven-years-old when his heart is stopped by the state of New York.

         
                                   Louis "Lepke" Buchalter

THE END OF HERBERT YOUNGBLOOD

3/16/1934 - The brief spotlight shining on black outlaw Herbert Youngblood comes to an abrupt and violent end in Port Huron, Michigan, thirteen days after he helped John Dillinger escape from the jail in Crown Point, Indiana.

                                   
                                                         Youngblood

Facing murder charges, on March 3rd the outlaw decided to assist Dillinger in the public enemy's "wooden gun" escape from the Crown Point jail, first controlling hostages with the thick handle of a toilet plunger, then after weapons are confiscated, with the menace of a fully loaded Thompson sub-machine gun.  Escape successful, at a streetcar stop in Chicago on Western Avenue, Dillinger gives Youngblood $100, thanks him for his help, and the two men say goodbye and part ways ... for Dillinger, it will be back to bank robberies, shootouts with authorities, and lots of headline news.  Youngblood however has only a couple of weeks left to live.

                              
                                       Dillinger with a real and a fake weapon

Making his way northeast from Chicago, Youngblood hides within the colored community that has established itself in Port Huron to work in the foundries on the south side of town.  Called the "Gateway to Canada" and located at the south end of Lake Huron, the town is the perfect spot for an outlaw that might need to cross the border at a moment's notice.  Sadly though for Younblood, he doesn't hide well at all and won't have even a second for fleeing when he is finally discovered.  Finding a need to boast about helping Dillinger escape, during his few days and nights in Port Huron the outlaw drinks wildly, flashes a large bankroll about, and tells one and all in the colored saloons about town that without him the public enemy would still be behind bars.  It is a formula made for disaster.

                        
                                                       Port Huron Postcard

And disaster indeed does strike on the 16th when an intoxicated Youngblood makes a nuisance of himself in a small grocery store belonging to Mrs. Pearl Abraham.  Knocking over products and displays as he stumbles about and declares himself a "badman," the outlaw's foolery in refusing to pay for a pack of cigarettes eventually results in the owner's son calling the police.  Three officers, Sheriff William L. Van Antwerp, Deputy Sheriff Charles Cavanaugh, and Deputy Howard Lohr, soon arrive to find out about the disturbance and put an end to it.  Removing a .38 automatic from the belligerent drunk he finds in the store (given to the outlaw by Dillinger during their escape from Crown Point), Cavanaugh corrals Youngblood and the lawmen relax slightly, thinking the arrest will be a routine one.  Youngblood has other ideas though, and now fancying himself a bad-ass like his Crown Point buddy, instead of submitting to custody he pulls a concealed 10-shot .32 Savage automatic out of an unchecked pants pocket, and despite the odds against him, begins blasting away.  

                         
                                                         .32 Savage

In the slugfest which follows as all four men unload their weapons, Cavanaugh receives mortal wounds from hits to both of his lungs, Van Antwerp and Lohr take damage to their chests (both men will recover), Eugene Fields, the son of the store's owner, gets a flesh wound in his shoulder, and Youngblood is struck ten times.  Taken to the emergency room of the nearest hospital, Youngblood passes away four hours later, but lingers on long enough to do Dillinger one last favor by lying to authorities, telling questioning lawmen that he left the public enemy just the day before as the desperado was about to leave the United States and enter Canada (Dillinger however is in Mason City robbing its bank, and by nightfall will be back in his hiding place in St. Paul, Minnesota).  Over and out, Youngblood is only twenty-nine-years-old when he makes his bullet holed exit.  

                                     
                                                    Cavanaugh

Forty-seven-year-old Cavanaugh, a twenty-two-year veteran of the police force, leaves behind a wife and a child.

DILLINGER VISITS MASON CITY - PART TWO

3/13/1934 - After fifteen minutes at the First National Bank of Mason City, Iowa, the Dillinger Gang has collected a group of over thirty hostages to use as human shields in their departure from town.  

                             
                                               The bank building

The chink in their armor though is the sterling marksmanship of elderly judge John C. Shipley.  Grabbing an old six-shot revolver from his desk on the third floor of the bank building, the judge leans out the window of his office, takes deliberate aim, and fires a shot at one of the robbers on the street below.  No fool, Shipley then withdraws back into his office, just in time.  In front of the bank, surrounded by hostages, John Dillinger jumps with pain as he is suddenly struck in the right shoulder by a bullet from above.  Wheeling quickly, he raises his machine gun and blasts away at the window he believes he has been shot from, but his assailant has vanished.

                 
                                      Dillinger   

Shuffling inside individual circles of hostages, Dillinger, Tommy Carroll, Baby Face Nelson, Eddie Green, Homer Van Meter, and John Hamilton make their way to where John Paul Chase is waiting in their getaway car, a large dark blue Buick stolen the year before in Chicago.  Continuing the animosity between the gang and Mason City, Green fires a round at a jeweler gawking at the proceedings from in front of his store (the bullet misses) and Judge Shipley goes back into action.

         
                                               Escaping in style

Leaning out of his office window again, the judge lines up a new target, one he deems important because the man is carrying a large white sack stuffed with money.  Carefully aiming so as not to harm a hostage. Shipley pulls the trigger of his revolver again, and again scores a hit.  Two for two on holing outlaw right shoulders, continuing the bad day he is experiencing of tear gas fumes, slow moving bank employees, and being forced to leave behind over $200,000 in cash, the victim of Shipley's excellent aim is Hamilton, a veteran of being wounded during robberies who has just recovered from the hits he took robbing an East Chicago bank in January.  He is lucky however, in that like his friend Dillinger's hit, the wound is more painful than it is life threatening.

                      
                                                   Hamilton

Outlaws back in the Buick, as if the getaway is part of a circus act or fraternity stunt, the men force a cadre of hostages to cling to the sides and rear of the vehicle, and to sit inside with the outlaws ... a mob in motion that witnesses to the escape estimate as being in the realm of from twenty to twenty-six individuals on and in the sedan.  Moving at only 10-15 mph on a winding route through the city (they will actually stop at the Kirk Apartments and let off one of their hostages, Minnie Piehm, when the woman yells at the outlaws that they are passing her home), Baby Face Nelson still feels the need to continue firing on the citizens of Mason City.  Unaware that a robbery has taken place, Clarence McGowan is out for an afternoon drive with his wife and five-year-old daughter when he encounters the bandits on the road.  Moving up to pass the slow moving vehicle covered in people in front of him, McGowan comes under attack from Nelson's machine gun.  Firing out of the back of the Buick (several slugs pass through druggist hostage Carroll Mulcahy's wind blown lab coat), .45 slug fragments hit McGowan in the abdomen and knees, and one more Mason City resident is on his way to the town hospital.  And Mr. Baby Face is not done with his attempts to inflict mayhem on the locals. 

                         
                                                             Nelson

Reaching the city limits, Nelson orders a fast stop, gets out, and attempts to fight it out with the police cars that are following the slow moving gang.  It is a murderous and suicidal idea that Dillinger will have no part of, and with his order to Nelson to get back in the car, he takes over what had been the gun crazy shooter's gang.  Frustrated he is not being allowed another opportunity to trigger his machine gun, the killer squirt contents himself with throwing roofing nails all over the road ... including under the tires of the gang's own car.  Once more Dillinger is the voice of calm for the gang, and noticing the potential danger, has Nelson quickly correct his mistake.

               
                                        Mr. Thompson's invention

Eventually the gang is back at the gravel pit where they met earlier.  Fully snowing now, they shed most of the freezing hostages there and their getaway picks up speed as they distance themselves from Mason City.  For Nelson, the highlight of the escape will be almost 
hitting Mason City Police Chief E. J. Patton with rifle fire when the lawman's vehicle comes too close to the fleeing bandits.  For the rest of the gang the favorite moment is taking care of a fundamental need of life ... eating.  Seeing hostage Bill Schmidt is only holding on to the Buick with one hand while the other clutches a large bag, the bandits do what bandits do and steal the sack away from the young man ... and to their delight discover Schmidt is a delivery boy for a Mason City deli and the bag is full of roast beef, chicken salad, and pastrami sandwiches, and a number of sliced pickles.  Chow time, between continuing to monitor the pursuit behind them and count how much cash they have acquired from the First National, the gang devours every scrap of food in the bag!  Two hours into their escape they are finally free of pursuit and drop off the last two hostages.

                            
                                                        Outside Afterwards

By 11:00 in the evening the gang is back in St. Paul, tired, bleeding, and richer than they were at the start of the day by $52,000.  Safe in a city where they pay the cops to look the other way, the next priority for the gang is to immediately get Dillinger and Hamilton patched up.  Using contacts they have with underworld kingpin Harry Sawyer, the two wounded outlaws are routed to fifty-year-old Dr. Nels Mortensen by Pat Reilly, a twenty-seven-year-old Irish-American bartender who does odd jobs for the gang when not pouring drinks at a local watering hole called the Green Lantern. 

                                         
                                                   The Sawyers

Masking how they actually came by their wounds with a cover story about a downtown gunfight with drunks, the two men are quickly patched up and sent on their way.  For Dr. Mortensen, the president of Minnesota's Board of Health, the visit is a costly one.  For helping the criminals and not reporting their visit, when the FBI finds out about the doctor's midnight callers they decide to make him an example for others who might be tempted to do the same ... blasted in local newspapers for his actions by the Department of Justice, the doctor will go to trial on harboring charges and spend a year behind bars for his few minutes of medical work (though to his dying day at the age of eighty-seven he will claim he did not know that one of his patients was John Dillinger).  As for Mr. Reilly, when he is caught in June, he too goes on trial for harboring and will be fined $2,500 and sent off to the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma, for twenty-one months. 

Vanishing in plain sight once more, John Dillinger and Homer Van Meter will once more be front page news at the end of the month ... when they engage in a gun battle with Federal and local officers of the law at St. Paul's Lincoln Court Apartments.

DILLINGER VISITS MASON CITY - PART ONE

3/13/1934 - Still fresh from his "impossible" escape out of the jail in Crown Point, Indiana, on a cold Tuesday afternoon in which snow flurries dance about in the air, John Dillinger and his bank robbing associates hit the First National Bank of Mason City, Iowa.

                            
                                                     Mason City

Plans made to maximize the take and ensure the safety of the gang, days before the stick-up, Eddie Green and Homer Van Meter, while staying at the local YMCA, have checked the fortitude of the massive seven-story building the bank is located in, walked Mason City's downtown square, noted business foot traffic and the police presence in the area, and studied the features of the First National's principle employees.  Green even goes up to the door of the home of fifty-nine-year-old Assistant Cashier Harold C. Fisher and pretends to be a lost salesman so he can memorize the details of the man's face ... a bank worker known to have been entrusted with the combination to the establishment's vault.  Casing of the small town of twenty-five-thousand complete, everything looking sweet, boldness personified, the jug men discount any potential danger that may come from the armored guard cage inside the First National and Van Meter makes a long distance call to St. Paul from the Mulcahy Prescription Store, a business across the street from the bank, telling the gang the heist is on.  Ripe for the picking, the gang expects to have a payday in excess of $250,000!

                                 
                                                        Green
              
                                                     Van Meter

In a deserted quarry near the community of Hanford, Van Meter and Green meet up with their confederates from Minnesota ... John Dillinger, John Hamilton, Tommy Carroll, John Paul Chase, and Baby Face Nelson.  Reunited, the men pile into a large, dark blue stolen Buick with its back window knocked out for easier machine gunning, a vehicle stocked with weapons and sacks of roofing nails, and make the short drive four miles north into Mason City.  It is 2:30 in the afternoon when the car double parks behind the bank.  Each man with an assignment as always, Chase, armed with an automatic rifle, stays with car, Carroll and Nelson, carrying machine guns, take up positions outside the building, Dillinger, holding a Thompson and dressed dapper for the event in a gray suit, gray Fedora, gray overcoat and striped silk muffler, stations himself at the entrance to the bank, and Green, Van Meter, and Hamilton enter the First National to plunder its assets.

                                             
                                                          Chase

Setting up to shoot newsreel footage of the bank, local cameraman H. C. Kunkleman is told by Carroll, "Hey you!  If there's any shooting to be done, we'll do it.  Get that damned thing out of here!"  Kunkleman complies with the order and quickly packs up his equipment, but Carroll is only partly correct as to the shooting ... citizens and police officers will soon be participating in the activity too.

                         
                                                        Carroll

The first rounds fired, in what will be a Wild West style afternoon for Mason City, come from the outlaws.  Attention required of the over forty patrons and employees within the First National, attention is immediately gained when Green discharges his machine gun into the ceiling.  "Hands up!  Hands up!  Everybody on the floor!"  Unwilling to be taken hostage, instead of following orders, bank president Willis Bagley bolts into the nearest office and locks himself in, actions that cause an extremely upset Van Meter to fire his Colt .45 automatic through the room's wooden door.  Fortunately for Bagley though, the rounds only crease the banker's sleeve and vest and he will be left alone for the rest of the robbery.

In his armored cage on the second level of the bank, thirty-three-year-old guard Tom Walters responds to the shooting in the lobby below with firing of his own.  Taking aim, following robbery protocol, Walters fires as an eight-inch tear-gas canister directly into Green's back ... an act that causes the bandit to hit the floor, jump up, grab bank executive R. L. Stephensen as a shield, and angrily begin spraying the cage with .45 slugs from his machine gun, rounds that crack and splinter the bulletproof glass Walters is positioned behind, with one bullet ricocheting through the gun slit and furrowing the guard's chin and right ear.  Injured and fearing he will hit an innocent as visibility decreases below him because of the spreading gas, the guard is out of the battle.  

Meanwhile, the fume spewing gas canister seemingly becomes a prop in a Marx Brothers movie as it rolls about the floor and a group of hostages take turns kicking it away from where they are laying.  And adding to the mounting chaos in the lobby, from the second level of the bank, auditor Tom Barclay grabs a tear-gas candle, lights the device, and throws it down among the robbers and hostages.  Trying to summon help, on the second floor switchboard operator Margaret Johnson, crawls into a storage area, opens a window and calls down to the first person she sees, a short man in tan overcoat standing at the mouth of the alley next to the bank, "Hey you!  Don't you know the bank is being robbed?  Get some help!"  Looking up, Baby Face Nelson responds with a grin and a presentation of his machine gun, "Lady, are you telling me?"

                            
                                            Nelson

Coughing and wiping tears from his eyes, as Green and Van Meter prowl about watching the hostages, Hamilton grabs Fischer and sets about raiding the vault.  Fischer however prevents the robbery from being the huge payday the gang is expecting.  Opening the barred door to the area holding over $200,000, the cashier uses a bag of pennies as a doorstop hoping for exactly what happens ... greedy for loot, Hamilton picks up the bag and the door swings closed, and the outlaw, not knowing he can walk right in, has Fischer transfer bags of money out through the bars separating the two men, a process which the cashier does as slowly as he can, and in which he selects money bags containing one-dollar bills.  Despite repeated pleas to his partners that they stay "just another minute," eventually Hamilton will be forced to flee with only $52,000.

                         
                                    Hamilton

Outside, as more and more people are drawn to the downtown area as word spreads that the bank is being robbed, mayhem stalks the streets in the form of a maniacal Baby Face Nelson.  Laughing and talking to himself, Nelson fires on a reporter from the Mason City Globe Gazette, shoots up a large Hudson sedan that makes the mistake of driving by, blasts a row of parked cars, sends a volley of bullets into the second story of a hardware store, and then guns down Raymond L. James, the Mason City school board secretary, when the man doesn't obey his order to "STOP" quickly enough as he strolls down the sidewalk near the bank (the hard of hearing James will be rushed to a nearby hospital after the robbery and recover from the two wounds he takes to his legs).  And adding insult to injury, he also fires on Tom James, when the younger man rushes to his father's aid (the son is luckily missed).

Feeling a little feisty and frosty himself as he gathers hostages off the street, Dillinger gets in the action by plugging the radiator of a motorist who tries to pass the line of cars the outlaws have stopped on Federal street, and keeps Patrolman James Buchanan, carrying a shotgun and revolver, pinned down behind a Civil War Veterans boulder monument in the park across the street from the bank.  "Come out from behind there and fight like a man!" the bandit shouts, but Buchanan is having none of it.  "Get away from that crowd and I will!" the officer retorts.

                            
                                                              Dillinger

Fifteen minutes at the bank and all hell is breaking loose in Mason City ... it is time to go.

TO BE CONTINUED ...