DEBACLE AT LITTLE BOHEMIA - #1

4/22/1934 - Just outside of Chicago, trying to determine what their next move should be, for the first time in three weeks the members of the Dillinger Gang reunite, meeting over grilled steaks and drinks at the Fox River Grove restaurant of underworld character Louis Cernocky's Crystal Ballroom.   

Underworld Hangout

With the weekend approaching it is decided that the group needs a safe place to relax and plan their next job.  The where is supplied by Cernocky when he says he knows of an isolated location in the midst of its off-season that wouldn't have a lot of visitors or large police presence to worry about, a spot in the pine forests of upper Wisconsin with good fishing run by an emigrant friend from the Austro-Hungarian province of Bohemia, a former bar and nightclub owner with ties to many Chicago racketeers named Emil Wanatka ... if the gang wanted a safe spot away from all the hunters seeking their captivity or deaths, waiting only 400 miles distant, the men should make a visit to the Little Bohemia Lodge on Little Star Lake in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin.

The Lodge

Sold by Chernocky's tales of the location and his friend's many adventures during the Prohibition years, and given a letter of introduction to Wanatka saying the gang should receive premiere treatment, the group decides that Little Bohemia will indeed be their next destination, and after eating breakfast and running various last minute errands, on Friday morning the outlaws and their girlfriends, a party of ten, begin heading north in a spread out caravan of four cars ... Baby Face Nelson (calling himself Jimmie during the visit to Wisconsin) and his wife, Helen Gillis, in a Ford sedan, Tommy Carroll and his girlfriend Jean Delaney Crompton in a Buick coupe, in a black Ford V-8 driven by St. Paul bartender and gang gopher Pat Reilly, Homer Van Meter (using the alias of Wayne), his girlfriend Marie "Mickey" Conforti, and Conforti's black Boston bull terrier puppy, Rex, and John Dillinger (with his hair dyed red), John Hamilton, and Hamilton's girlfriend Patricia Cherrington in yet another black Ford sedan.  
  
Baby Face & Helen

Carroll

Van Meter              
  
Hamilton, Patricia and Dillinger

The journey into Wisconsin is uneventful with one exception ... near the small town of North Leads, Wisconsin, Nelson collides with another car on the road and is forced to leave the vehicle behind for repairs while he and Helen make the rest of the journey north in Carroll's Buick.  With the Van Meter group arriving first at around lunch, the entire gang is checked in by 5:00 in the afternoon (again the only problem comes from Nelson, who throws a hissy-fit for not being put in the room that has been allocated to Dillinger), and after walking the grounds and formulating an escape plan (after putting down a few seconds of suppressing fire, everyone is to exit the back of the lodge, move down the ten foot embankment to the lake, and follow the shoreline to the right), ready for dinner and an evening of cards.  Paying $500 for the weekend, Carroll and Nelson are put up in a three-room cabin off the main building, while the rest of the gang receive small rooms on the second floor of the lodge.

Little Bohemia Lodge Cabin

Built in 1931 and situated on acres of forested land with Little Star Lake behind, the Dillinger Gang's latest hideout is a two-story log building (and accompanying cabins) 600 feet and out of sight from the nearest road, U.S. 51 ... on its main floor are a kitchen, dining room, bar, and large recreation area, while upstairs are a series of rooms either looking out on the gravel parking lot, or to the rear, on the lake.  The outlaws and their girlfriends are the only guests ... but soon the site will be swamped with unwanted company.
Public Enemy #1

The visit starts off well enough, with forty-seven-year-old Wanatka, his wife Nan, and employees, twenty-six-year-old George Baszo and twenty-three-year-old Frank Traube, at first pleased with the friendliness and money being spent by their guests (though there is some minor grumbling at the weight of the luggage the men carry upstairs, luggage containing ammunition and several Thompson sub-machine guns), but that begins to change when during a poker game that evening in which the innkeeper participates, Wanatka notices all the men are carrying weapons in shoulder holsters. Two-and-two put together, and recent newspaper photos checked, Wanatka soon comes to the conclusion that he is harboring John Dillinger and his gang ... a fact which the bank robber verifies the next morning in the kitchen when Wanatka confronts the outlaw as to his identity (Dillinger tells him they have no intention of causing any problems and will be gone in a day or so).  Alternating between fears of going to jail if the authorities find out or losing their life savings if the place is shot up, and dreams of collecting the wealth authorities have put on the bandits' heads, Wanatka and his wife decide to contact the FBI about their guests.  But how?  The outlaws listen in on every phone call, hover about conversations, and demand information on every visitor to the lodge ... they are alert and just waiting to unleash their weapons should they be betrayed.  

Along with keeping an eye on the Wanatkas, Saturday has the gang shooting at tin cans, playing catch with a borrowed baseball (eight-year-old Emil Jr. abandons the game with the gunmen when Nelson burns every throw into the boy's mitt, hurting his hand), more card games, and watching the sky begin to snow ... and Pat Reilly leaves on a mission for the gang, returning to St. Paul for money, ammunition, and to take a sick Patricia Cherrington to a doctor.  An opportunity to let the authorities know about the menaces staying at the lodge finally presents itself to the innkeepers by way of a local birthday party Emil Jr. is to attend, and risking life and limb, despite Baby Face Nelson lurking about, a message for help is written and smuggled to Nan Wanatka's brother-in-law, Henry Voss, using a pack of passed about Marvel cigarettes that an alert is secretly hidden within. 

Faked photo - Super-imposed head of Dillinger
on guest standing beside Wanatka

Message received, to avoid the outlaws listening in on the region's party line, Voss drives fifty miles away to the town of Rhinelander. There he first contacts a local real estate agent who gives him the number of his U.S. Marshal father in Chicago, H. C. W. Laubenheimer ... and when Laubenheimer is contacted, he passes the information on to the man running the FBI's Windy City office, Special Agent in Charge, Melvin Horace Purvis, Jr. 

Purvis

"The man you want most is up here," Voss tells Purvis at around 1:00 in the afternoon on Sunday, along with other details about Dillinger and his confederates.  Purvis says he will meet Voss at the Rhinelander airport, the nearest plane stop to Manitowish Waters, at around 6:00 in the evening, and for recognition purposes, Voss should wear a handkerchief around his neck.  That bit of business done, Purvis next contacts his boss, J. Edgar Hoover in Washington D.C., gets a green light for the Wisconsin raid, and then begins coordinating the government's attack on Dillinger and his buddies with the Special Agent In Charge of the St. Paul office, Hugh Clegg.  Sunday suddenly disrupted, agents gather in Chicago and St. Paul, arming themselves with pistols, machine guns, and gas grenades ... Clegg arranges a thirty-five-cent-per-mile plane charter from Northwest Airways that will take him, Inspector William Rorer, and three other agents north, Agent Werner Hanni and three other men with fear-of-flying issues will drive to the lodge from St. Paul, and Purvis, with eleven of his Chicago men, will make the three hour flight to Rhinelander in two planes.
Thompson

Twenty-one heavily armed men intent on putting an end to the John Dillinger Gang are on their way to the Little Bohemia Lodge ... what they actually almost end though is the reign of Hoover at the Department of Justice.       

DON'T GO TO LUNCH WITH LUCKY!

4/15/1931 - At around 3:00 in the afternoon, the year-long Castellammarese War for control of the New York City Mafia comes to an abrupt and violent end with the sudden death of forty-five-year-old mob boss Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria in the Coney Island restaurant of Gerardo Scarpato, Nuova Villa Tammaro (named for the owner's mother-in-law, Anna Tammaro).

                               
                                           Masseria

A back-and-forth blood bath lasting over a year in which dozens on both sides are killed and allegiances shift between Masseria and his opponent, forty-five-year-old Salvatore Maranzano (the war is named for Maranzano's town of birth in Sicily), the conflict ends when the chief lieutenant of Joe the Boss decides his team is losing ... a totally unacceptable conclusion for Charles "Lucky" Luciano!

                
                                          Maranzano

Losing money and prestige as a result of the ongoing war, and fearful he might be the next to lose his life, Luciano secretly contacts Maranzano and sets up a meeting to inquire what will be necessary to end the hostilities between the two bands of Italians.  Taking protective muscle along with him in the form of the vicious Jewish killer, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Luciano and Marazano meet on the neutral ground of the Bronx Zoo ... and quickly come to the conclusion that there is only one way to establish a lasting peace ... the intractable Masseria has to go.

                              
                                        Luciano

And so Luciano schedules a strategy session with Masseria at the mobster's favorite restaurant, Nuova Villa Tammaro ... a place where the Mafia leader feels safe and can spend a lazy relaxing afternoon discussing policy.  Strategy however takes a secondary place to glutton as Masseria gorges himself for nearly three hours a a last meal of Italian appetizers, entrees, red wine, and multiple desserts (Luciano meanwhile picks at his meal).  Then stuffed to the gills, the gangster dismisses his four bodyguards and decides to lighten his first lieutenant's wallet with a few costly hands of pinochle.

            
                                          Deadman Lunch Site

Keeping a discrete watch on the time, at 3:00 Luciano excuses himself from the table and goes to the bathroom, and surprise-surprise, no sooner is he gone than some of his friends show up to pay their respects to Joe the Boss.  A Hall of Fame who's-who of gangster thuggery, the killing squad of up-and-comers that descends on Masseria consists of Bugsy Siegel, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, and Joey Adonis ... all already multiple time killers (outside, driving the team's getaway car is Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova, an underboss in the Morello crime family).  Firing revolvers wildly as they run into the restaurant, the hitmen murder a wall of the restaurant with fourteen bullets ... and sadly for Masseria, actually accurately place six .32 and .38 slugs into the mobster's body too ... a lethal dose of lead to the head, back, and shoulder that puts the mobster on the ground, mortis, bleeding all over while still holding the Ace of Spades he was waiting to play upon Luciano's return.


 
                      Siegel                                                         Genovese
              
                                                    Anastasia
                          
                                                  Adonis

Over in seconds successfully, the only hiccup in the kill is the driving abilities of Terranova.  Car loaded with murderers in a hurry to vacate the scene, Terranova risks becoming a victim himself when he stalls the team's getaway car twice, causing a very upset Siegel to not risk a third unexpected stop by shoving The Artichoke King aside and handling the rest of the escape himself.

                                     
                                                 Terranova

Back at the restaurant Luciano gives a Academy Award worthy performance, acting shocked and upset at the death of his boss, and claiming he saw nothing and knows nothing about the crime when he is questioned by the police ... clueless about a murder he has orchestrated to perfection.  With no evidence otherwise the death goes in the New York City Police Department's unsolved file and the true killers will not be identified until Joe Valachi turns squealer in the 1960s and testify's to who pulled the triggers on Masseria, by which time most of the culprits are long gone.  

              
                                                           Joe the Boss
                                  
                                                            Pinochle

The war is over, but seeking power and huge, greedy fortunes, the killing goes on and on and on.  Rewarded with control of a crime family of his own, Luciano soon turns traitor again when he grows disgusted that his former ally has proclaimed himself the "Boss of Bosses" and discovers Maranzano has hired Irish goon Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll to remove him now that the gangster has become a too powerful rival.  And once again Lucky is lucky, beating Marazano to the punch when Bo Weinberg, Red Levine, Anastasia, Siegel, and Adonis (a group put together by his friend Meyer Lansky), posing as government agents and police officers, manage to murder Marazano in his 9th floor downtown office.  Masseria out, Maranzano out ... the murders make Luciano to most powerful gangster in the United States.

                                  
                                                       Murder News

ONE LAST TIME WITH THE FAMILY

4/6/1934 - Deciding to take a weekend off from robbing banks and getting in shootouts with the police, the most wanted criminal in the United States escapes to what should be the most dangerous spot in the country for him, his father's farm just outside of Mooresville, Indiana ... Public Enemy #1, John Dillinger, has come home to visit his family one last time.

              
                                                     Dillinger

Sneaking on to the property shortly after midnight, Billie Frechette softly knocks on the back door of the family home and when John Sr. answers, asks if the coast is clear for a visit from Junior.  Affirmation given, Billie fetches the outlaw from his hiding place in the barn, and with a laugh and hand shake, a three day reunion of the Dillinger Clan begins.  Parking his Thompson sub-machine gun, Junior introduces Billie as his wife and talks with his father into the wee hours of the morning, pausing only to move the Hudson Terraplane he'd parked on a dirt road behind the farm into the barn.

                       
                                                         Billie

In the morning other members of the family get a chance to enjoy their brother's presence when they get up to see what is for breakfast ... eleven-year-old Frances and fifteen-year-old Doris receive heart felt kisses and hugs, while twenty-year-old Hubert is greeted from behind with fingers stuck into his back and a demand to "Stick 'em up!"  The prodigal son is indeed home!  Most of Saturday then consists of Junior and Hubert working in the barn on the Hudson, fixing the fenders Billie had damaged escaping their St. Paul apartment, and applying a coat of Duco lacquer to the car's four tires, changing them from an attention grabbing cream color to solid black.  In the evening, the two brothers decide they will go on an adventure together, traveling to Leipsic, Ohio, for Junior to give money to Harry Pierpont's parents to help pay for his bank robbing partner's murder trial and conviction appeal.  A wasted trip, after a three hour journey in which Dillinger gives his brother a blow-by-blow update on his activities, the pair discover the Pierponts have moved ... and it is a wasted trip that almost has disastrous consequences when Hubert takes over the driving duties so that Junior can get some much needed sleep.

                
                                                       Dillinger Senior

Unfortunately, Junior isn't the only one that takes a nap, and at around 4 am, east of Indianapolis, Hubert nods off just over the Hamilton County line and slams into the slow moving rear of a pickup truck full of the horseradishes belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Manning.  The truck loses a rear wheel and goes into a ditch, while the only weeks old Hudson (it has less than 1,400 miles on it) spits off the front passenger side tire, blasts across the northbound lane of U.S. 31, explodes through a wire farm fence, and plows 300 feet through a field full of tree stumps, missing them all.  Amazingly, all the parties involved escape serious injury and when the Mannings go into nearby Noblesville for help, the two Dillingers take off cross country.  Three miles into their hike, Junior finds a haystack to hide in (accompanied by the machine gun he's liberated from his destroyed vehicle) and Hubert hitches a ride into Indianapolis, grabs his Chevy, and hurries back to his brother's hiding place (marked with a handkerchief tied to a wooden fence-post off the nearby road so Hubert can find the right spot to stop for his brother on his return).  By 9 am the men are safely back at their father's farm, but it is a safety that disappears rapidly when a machine gun magazine is discovered in the wrecked car, a wrecked car missing the license plates Junior has removed, and state police and FBI agents begin swarming through the area.   

                         
                                        The Dillinger homestead

Cool as always despite the accident and the growing police presence in rural Indiana, Junior lays on the living room couch, cradling his machine gun under a blanket, resting the leg he injured shooting his way out of his St. Paul apartment, and spends the morning laughingly reading about his exploits from a pile of newspapers his father has collected.  He also sends his girlfriend and brother on a mission to procure another car, which the pair does, purchasing a new black Ford V8 in Indianapolis with $722 in cash (out of fast Hudsons, salesman C. J. Hart convinces Billie to go with the Ford as the next best thing).  Word out that the wayward son is in for a visit, after church, more family members arrive for a day of socializing and eating ... Junior's older sister, Audrey Hancock, the woman that raised him when the outlaw's mother died when he was a child, Audrey's husband Emmett, their sons Fred and Norman, their daughters Alberta and Mary, and Fred's wife Bernita.  A beautiful spring day of sun, blue skies, and cotton candy white clouds, the most famous member of the Dillinger family receives a manicure from beauty shop grad Mary, goes for walks in the woods with Mary and his father (sensing he is nearing the end of his run against the authorities, Junior goes over funeral arrangements with Senior, requesting that he be buried next to his mother), chats about his recent escape from Crown Point using a wooden pistol, denies killing Officer O'Malley in East Chicago, flies kites with the younger members of the family, and sits down to a feast featuring salad, fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, hot biscuits with honey and preserves, and for those with room, which he has since it is a favorite dessert, freshly made coconut cream pie.   

                                                
                                                   Hubert

And the most wanted man in America poses out back for pictures ... with his girlfriend Billie, with members of the family, and with his two best friends ... the lucky wooden pistol from his Crown Point jail break, and his always at the ready, Thompson sub-machine gun.

                     
                                        Dillinger and friends

              The Dillingers - Audrey, Frances, Junior, Doris, Hubert, and Senior
                            
                                           Billie & John

The fantasy of normalcy finally is brought to an end shortly after 3:00 in the afternoon by three warning signs that it is time to run once more ... filled with gawkers, too many cars are driving by on the road, US 267, that borders the Dillinger property (and among them is indeed a vehicle containing two armed government agents), an airplane circles and buzzes the farm (it is an innocent National Guard training flight out of nearby Stout Field), and a road commissioner unexpectedly shows up at the front door wanting to discuss a local highway improvement project.  No night to cover the withdrawal as it did Junior's entrance, deception is used instead to achieve a clean exit; a three car caravan leaves the farm at the same time and heads in three different directions ... Audrey and her husband leave first and turn left towards Mooresville, Senior leaves second and turns right, and in the third car, Billie drives with Audrey's daughter Mary beside her and Alberta in the back seat, while Junior, armed with his trusted Thompson, hides beneath a blanket on the floor in back ... and the plan works perfectly, no one follows the car containing Billie and Junior.  

                  
                                                    Most Wanted

New to the area and operating on only a few hours of sleep since driving up from the Cincinnati field office at 2:00 am, young agents J. L. Geraghty and T. J. Donegan are completely frazzled by a long day of driving repeatedly by the Dillinger proper (there is nowhere to park and observe the farm without giving away that they are FBI agents) and chasing after Hubert as he runs errands in Mooresville for Junior ... so much so that when they pass a car parked on the side of the road to the town of Plainfield, they fail to recognize the grey suited man in his thirties standing next to the vehicle stretching his legs is Public Enemy #1, John Herbert Dillinger, Jr.

                            
                                           After the tumult

A Harry Houdini of narrow escapes and getaways, the next day at the Tumble Inn in Chicago, Junior will again display his potent magical powers, becoming invisible in the presence of over a dozen government agents under the command of Melvin Purvis.  Sadly though, Billie has no such powers, and the couple, fresh from their happy experiences at the Dillinger family reunion, will never be together again after she is placed in custody inside the bar while trying to arrange a new hideout for her boyfriend ... the boyfriend waiting on the street just outside. 

CLYDE'S LAST KILLING

4/6/1934 - Fleeing the Grapevine, Texas, double homicides of the week before's Easter Sunday, shortly after midnight, Clyde Barrow finally tires of hours of the day's driving through torrential rains and pulls off on the shoulder of State Road near Commerce, Oklahoma, a thoroughfare that links that city's downtown with a local mining district.  Then he, his girlfriend Bonnie Parker, her rabbit Sonny Boy, and their traveling companion Henry Methvin, settle in for some much needed sleep ... so needed that the tired group is still there on Friday morning when local authorities drive out of town to investigate a report of drunks parked on State Road, near the Lost Trail and Crab Apple mines.

                     
                                              1930s Commerce, Oklahoma

Drunk miners sleeping off binges a common occurrence in the area, Commerce Chief of Police Percy Boyd and Town Constable Cal Campbell expect their trip down State Road to result in nothing more than a ticketing that will result in the coffers of the town being increased slightly.  Thirty-five-year-old Boyd is a law-and-order professional, a year into his duties of watching over Commerce, while the sixty-year-old Campbell is but one more example of a citizen struggling with the nationwide effects of the Depression ... a widower, when his lucrative contracting job fails, needing to support five children, with the help of his neighbor's votes, he takes the $15-a-week job as town constable to make ends meet.  Sadly, both men are very wrong in their estimation of the morning for instead of confronting harmless drunks, they will be coming face-to-face with extraordinarily dangerous outlaws.

                    
                                  Bonnie Parker                              Clyde Barrow

At roughly 9:00 am, Clyde spots the lawmen approaching and takes the option he actually prefers to gun fighting when encountering local authorities ... flight.  Starting the group's latest ride, a stolen new black Ford V8 Deluxe sedan, the outlaw throws the car into reverse, intent on gaining some distance for a rapid U-turn which will allow him to power away from the authorities, but the road, turned into a muddy bog by the previous day's downpour, will have none of it and sliding off the slick track and into a ditch, the car sinks into grasping mud up to its wheel rims.  

                                  
                                        1934 Ford V8 Deluxe Sedan

Amused by the driving debacle they have just witnessed, the lawmen park their car and casually walk toward the Ford ... unconcerned as to its occupants until Campbell thinks he spots someone in the vehicle pointing a pistol in his direction and makes the fatal mistake of drawing his weapon and firing, an action that sparks an extremely one-sided firefight.

                               
                                                       Campbell

Following the lead of his companion, Boyd also pulls his gun and as he does the doors of the Ford fly open and Clyde and Methvin, both wielding deadly BARs (Browning Automatic Rifle), unleash a hail of slugs at the lawmen.  In the gunfire that lasts only seconds, Campbell is killed instantly when he is hit in the chest by a bullet that severs his aorta, and Boyd is knocked unconscious when a round hits him in the left side of his head.  Immediate threat responded to, the problem that must next be solved is how to flee the group's just concluded most recent killing.  And once more, Clyde finds a weaponry solution to his difficulties!  

                
                                                                 BAR

Boyd lifted to his feet (his head wound is superficial) and thrown in the back of the Ford, using his rifle as a recruiting tool, Clyde forces a group of onlookers, drawn by the sound of gunfire from the mine and nearby farms, to help free the car from the mud.  Push-pull-push for forty minutes, Clyde threatens to kill everyone if his ride is not freed, but the armed intimidation and muscle provided are powerless against the grip of Mother Nature until a truck driven by Commerce resident Charlie Dobson arrives on the scene.  Using a length of heavy chain and foot to the floor truck torque, the filthy Ford is finally liberated and the very agitated gang, with Boyd their latest backseat hostage, heads off for the Kansas border.


                                                             Scene of the crime

On the road again, Friday's drive away from Commerce includes Clyde and Methvin having to stop, only three miles away from where they've left Campbell in the mud, to help a pair of farmers move their road blocking vehicle out of another Oklahoma bog (as Bonnie watches Boyd with a shotgun), a stop at a stream so Bonnie can clean up and bandage Boyd's head wound, Clyde honestly discussing the Joplin shootout of the previous year with his captive (though he lies about his involvement in the Grapevine killings), compliments given on the accuracy of the lawman's shooting (Clyde tells Boyd he almost brought him down with a bullet that just buzzed by his head), worries about a plane flying overhead pursuing the group (it isn't), a stop for gas, a stop so that Clyde can steal the change out of a gum machine (though Boyd offers the bandit the $25 he is carrying), Fort Scott diner food bought with the gum loot, and Boyd's bloody attire being replaced by a Clyde shirt and tie, and a suit coat from Methvin.  The full day for Boyd finally ends around midnight when the lawman is released in the country to the southeast of Fort Scott.  Pleased that he has survived his ride, and knowing the killing of Campbell and his kidnapping will be front page news, before the outlaws drive off Boyd asks Bonnie what she'd like him to say to the press about her.  "Tell them I don't smoke cigars," she responds ... and that message is indeed passed on to reporters once the lawman is safe and the interviews begin, pleasing Bonnie immensely when the information is featured in almost every story dealing with the Commerce shooting and it's aftermath.  It is one of the few delights the young twenty-three-year-old Texan has left.

                                       
                                                           Boyd

Unbeknownst to the outlaw couple, they have only forty-eight more days before they will join Campbell in death ... betrayed on a lonely Louisiana road for a pardon by their trusted traveling companion and his family, thief and multiple murderer, Henry Methvin.  

                                            
                                                        Methvin

ANOTHER NOTCH FOR PRETTY BOY

4/9/1932 - Oklahoma loses an outstanding lawman when bounty hunter Ervin Andrew "Erv" Kelley is gunned downed by bank robber Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd on a small farm outside of the town of Bixby.

           
                                                      Pretty Boy Floyd

Putting bad dudes behind bars for over a decade as a McIntosh County sheriff and the Checotah police chief, by the time Texas born Kelley retires at the young age of only forty-six to run a gas station, he has put together a law & order resume which includes arresting scores of miscreants ... moonshiners, escapees, car thieves, six killers, and fourteen bank robbers ... all without firing a shot (and he dresses the part too, famous for the white cowboy hat and cowboy boots he wears while on the job).  The Depression makes things hard though for even gas station owners, and with visions of collecting the $4,000 in rewards offered for the capture of the twenty-eight-year-old Floyd, Kelley comes out of retirement to chase down one last criminal.

                       
                                          Kelley

With the cooperation of the Oklahoma State Crime Bureau, using information gleaned from informants as to the movements of the bank robber, Kelley puts together a plan that he believes will have an excellent chance of success ... he will nab Floyd while he is at his most vulnerable and making a sneak visit to see his former wife and their seven-year-old son.  Accompanied by one of his former deputies, William Counts, the pair covertly follow Ruby Floyd and her son from their residence in Tulsa to the home of Ruby's parent's, the Hardgraves, near the small community of Bixby.  After identifying Ruby's destination, watching the Floyd's park on the property of Cecil and Gladys Bennett and then walk to her parent's place, believing she might possibly be at the isolated farm to secretly meet her husband, the two men quickly contact waiting reinforcements for the coming confrontation with Floyd.  

                                            
                                      The Floyds

By evening, along with Kelley and Counts, the group surrounding the area includes Crockett Long, an agent with the State Crime Bureau, A. B. Cooper, a private detective operating out of Oklahoma City, Sheriff Jim Stormont of Okmulgee, Tulsa police detectives M. L. Lairmore and J. A. Smith, and two deputized local farmers.  The nine men are a formidable group and by 8:30 in the evening they are all in position, with Kelley, armed with a silenced sub-machine gun and .38 pistol, taking what he believes is the most dangerous spot, behind a chicken coup about fifteen feet away from a corral gate leading on to the property.

                     
                                                     Kelley

Ready to receive Floyd, the group waits, and waits, and waits ... and waits.  "Looks like a washout," appears to be the posses reward for spending a cold night outdoors with the frogs and hoot owls of Oklahoma and at about 2:15 in the morning, Cooper, Stormont, Lairmore, and Smith are given the okay to go into Bixby for coffee and sandwiches at the town's all-night diner.  And as Fate often moves in these situations, no sooner are their positions abandoned than a dark green Chevrolet drives down the road leading into the Bennett Farm ... a Chevy containing outlaw George Birdwell, and his outlaw partner, Pretty Boy Floyd.

       
                                                       Thompson with silencer

Slow motion seconds to death, when Floyd gets out of the car to open the gate on to the Bennett property, Kelley steps out from his hiding place and into the Chevy's lights, exclaiming "Stick 'em up!" Caught cold, with most outlaws the command would end with a peaceful surrender, but Floyd is not a typical criminal and he reacts as a rattlesnake would, striking in less than the blink of an eye.  Drawing and firing before Kelley has even finished with his order, Floyd gets off seven shots with his .45 automatic, and hits the bounty hunter five times ... once in each knee, a round below the lawman's right arm, and two lethal slugs that explode into Kelley's left side.  Dead in a pool of his own blood, Kelley goes out game though, firing a fourteen bullet burst from the twenty-one shot magazine of his machine gun even after crumbling to the ground.  It is a dose of lead that almost kills Kelley's quarry ... Floyd is hit in the right hip by a round that could have caused serious damage if it hadn't been deflected by a pistol the outlaw is carrying, a second slug almost takes off his privates, nipping his scrotum and coming to rest in his right thigh, a third bullet slams into his right calf, and a fourth bit of metal pierces his left ankle.  Picked up by Birdwell and put in the car, the desperadoes vanish down the road, heading southwest, by the time the closest posseman, Counts, can make it over to the gate, over a hundred yards away from his position (the two farmer deputies claim both their weapons jam, and neither gets off a shot). 

             
                                                         Wanted

Moving through a state filled with hundreds of very upset lawmen, bounty hunters, and vigilantes, the pair manage to find a doctor in the town of Seminole willing to do patchwork on underworld patients for a nominal fee.  Stitched up (the doctor will leave the bullet in Floyd's ankle) and given meds for his many pains, Floyd is well enough by the 21st of the month to move on to his next robbery, assisting Birdwell in removing $800 from the small First State Bank of Stonewall, Oklahoma.  Wanted for multiple robberies and multiple murders, the reward for the outlaw is increased to $7,000!

                                  
                                                    Rest in Peace

Four days after his murder, the well loved Kelley goes into the ground at a funeral officiated by a Baptist preacher and attended by over 3,500 mourners (reported by newspapers of the time as the largest gathering for such an occasion since Oklahoma became a state), including law enforcement contingents from Okmulgee, Tulsa, and Muskogee, the entire county attorney's office of Muskogee, and a host of Indians that drop coins into Kelley's casket as a sign of friendship.  Still remembered to this day in various Oklahoma locales, Kelley is survived by his wife Dessie (who receives $50 from the Oklahoma Police Officers' Association, a far cry from the $4,000 her husband was after), two daughters, Edna and Marie, three sons, Donaly, John, and Erv, Jr., and his brother Harve.

                               
                                                       Floyd

Floyd has a little over two years left to live