DEATH ON THE STREETS OF SOUTH BEND

6/30/1934 - Downtown South Bend, Indiana, is transformed into what resembles a drunken cowboy Saturday night in Dodge City when the Dillinger Gang comes to town to make a large withdrawal from the city's Merchant's National Bank ... death closing in on the members of the gang, the robbery will be the last for Public Enemy #1, thirty-one-year-old John Dillinger, his Indiana State prison pal, twenty-eight-year-old Homer Van Meter, and psychopathic outlaw runt, twenty-five-year-old Lester Joseph "Baby Face Nelson" Gillis.

 

Dillinger & Van Meter

Nelson

Planned for over a month with the gang meeting late at night at an abandoned schoolhouse northwest of Chicago to discuss the operation ... the escape route is driven several times, six men are chosen to participate in the heist (the other three are never officially identified and some crime historians believe Pretty Boy Floyd and his partner, Adam Richetti, participate in the robbery) with three going into the bank for the establishment's cash and bonds, two patrolling the street in front of the bank (a portent of what is to come, Van Meter and Nelson, the two most trigger happy members of the gang, are selected for the task), and a driver who will wait outside of town for the gang in a second escape vehicle, bullet-proof vests are procured for $300 a pop, the inside of the bank is cased by a disguised Nelson, assignments are rehearsed, weapons cleaned and readied, and a tan Hudson four-door sedan is stolen from Butler Motors of Chicago to provide transportation into and out of the town.  It is a warm summer morning when the gang pulls up in front of the bank at 11:32.

Site of the Robbery

Double parking the Hudson next to the parked 1928 Ford of a local teenage named Alex Slaby, the outlaws get out of the car and take up their positions, dropping the pillowcases hiding their weapons.  And things begin going wrong.

Inside, over thirty people, workers and patrons, are going about their business within the bank when Dillinger enters and shouts, "This is a stickup!  Everybody stand still!"  His problem though is that some of the people inside the bank don't hear the warning, and others, believing the announcement is a prank, ignore the outlaw ... ignore the outlaw until he unleashes a burst of fire from his sub-machine gun into the plaster ceiling of the building ... which causes an immediate response of arms being raised in surrender, screaming, and people dropping to the floor and running to areas that might be safe from the outlaws (a number will lock themselves in the bathroom and not leave until the gang is gone and well on its way back to Illinois).  Crowd cowed (a random ricochet wounds patron Bruce Bouchard in the hip, the only casualty that takes place inside the bank), Dillinger and his two companions then begin looting the establishment's five teller cages, dumping cash and bonds into the pillowcases formerly reserved for the gang's guns ($28,000 in all, less of a score than the outlaws were expecting).

Dillinger

Outside, a curious Slaby gets out of his car to investigate the vehicle now blocking him in on the street, and discovers the men have left its motor running.  Figuring a robbery is in progress, Slaby reaches inside the car and is about the remove the keys from the ignition when Nelson confronts the youth.  "What the HELL do you think you're doing?" growls the murderous bandit, pointing his machine gun at Slaby, who yells "NOTHING!" as he hears the Dillinger's gunfire from inside the bank and immediately runs away and takes shelter in the nearby Colip Brothers Appliance Store ... inside, he also begins looking for a phone to call the police.

Officer Howard Wagner

Walking his beat through downtown, twenty-nine-year-old South Bend patrolman Howard Wagner reacts differently to the popping sounds coming from the bank, and runs towards the noises ... an action that brings him to the attention of Homer Van Meter, positioned in front of the Nisley Shoe Store with a nasty bit of weaponry; a Model 1907 Winchester .351 rifle modified to fire on full automatic, with a sawed off barrel, and over-sized magazine, a Thompson fore grip, and a Cutts compensator to prevent the gun from kicking upward during firing.  In the process of unsnapping the flap of his holster as he approaches the bank, Wagner is hit by lead from Van Meter's weapon, with one fatal round tearing into the policeman's abdomen, destroying his right kidney, and then punching out his back. Collapsing in a pool of blood between two parked cars, Wagner bleeds out and is dead within 30 minutes of being hit by Van Meter, leaving a widow to mourn his passing.

Modified Winchester

And Wagner is just the first victim of the gang's visit to South Bend ... in the next ten minutes bullets fly and up and down the streets of the Indiana town famous for being the location of Notre Dame college. Caught by the gunfire sent Wagner's way, local meat market owner Samuel Toth has the windshield of his car blown out and is grazed in the head by a wild round, jewelry store owner Harry Berg pops out of his place and shoots Nelson in the back, a hit that just pisses off the outlaw (his body armor saves him) and has him target the shop with bursts from his Thompson (all of which miss Berg, but non-fatally hit a patron, Jacob Solomon, in the leg and stomach), Superior Court Bailiff Charles Fisher has his car shot up driving through the intersection in front of the bank, leaving the bank, one of the unknown outlaws is hit by fire from Officer Neils Hanson in the shoulder and jaw, used as a shield, banker Delos Cohen takes a slug in his left leg, just above his ankle, hostage Perry Stahey is wounded three times by police fired bullets, and Detective Edward McCormick seriously wounds Van Meter with shotgun blasts as the outlaw gets into the gang's escape car (while his partner, Detective Harry Henderson fires his service revolver at the bandit.

Wild West For A Day!

And there are fisticuffs too.  Temporary losing his mind, sitting in his family's car in front of the Strand Theater as slugs fly about, sixteen-year-old Joseph Pawlowski suddenly decides to take out Baby Face Nelson!  Timed perfectly as Nelson is firing at the police. the youth approaches the outlaw from his blind side, jumps on Nelson's back, and cuffs the badman about the head while screaming to anyone who might be listening, "Shot him!  Grab Him!"  Already perturbed by being shot by the jeweler, Nelson grabs Pawlowski off his back, throws the tough teenager through a plate-glass window, and then unleashes a burst of automatic fire at the youth.  Saving his life, one bullet passes through Pawlowski's palm and the shock and pain causes him to faint ... and down and not moving, Nelson turns away and begins firing at the police again (the hand wound will not hinder Pawlowski in the slightest and he grows up to become a concert violinist and symphony conductor), believing he has killed his assailant.

Nelson

Vacating town with a squeal of tires, the police attempt to chase the gang down, but are thwarted by the outlaws possessing a much more powerful and faster ride ... Officer Sylvester Zell gives up when the truck he commandeers in downtown South Bend can't keep up with the Hudson, riding his motorcycle at its top speed of 80 mph, traffic officer Bert Olmstead gives up when his 1929 Harley fries its engine, Detectives Lucius LaFortune and Fred Miller make it forty-five miles southwest to the town of Knox where roofing nails thrown in the road by the bandits blow out two of the pursuing car's tires, and Patrolman Peter Rudynski and Arden Kline don't even make it out of the downtown area ... their 1930 Studebaker police cruiser has a gas line go bad and dies in the middle of the street!  Safe after changing to their other escape vehicle and making it back to Chicago, but not for long, the bandits will soon get a dose of what they gave to Officer Wagner ... Dillinger is assassinated by the FBI and members of the East Chicago police as he leaves the Biograph Theater on 7/22/1934, Van Meter's turn comes on 8/23/1934 when he is betrayed by the corrupt police he has been paying to keep him safe in the city of St. Paul, Minnesota (wanting to keep the $10,000 the outlaw has given the men to bank, they hole the killer with 50 bullet wounds), and Baby Face Nelson is mortally wounded on 11/27/1934 during a gruesome shootout with FBI agents on State Highway 12 near the town of Barrington, Illinois (but not before he kills thirty-one-year old Special Agent Herman E. Hollis and thirty-five-year-old Inspector Samuel P. Crowley despite being hit 17 times by the two Federals).

Dillinger in Death

Van Meter in Death

 

Hollis & Crowley

Baby Face Nelson in Death

Almost over, the beginning of the end of the Dillinger Era starts on 6/30/1934, with the public enemy's last bank job!

THE KANSAS CITY MASSACRE

6/17/1933 - Death comes to Kansas City, Missouri, in the form of a Saturday morning shootout in the parking lot of the Union Station railroad depot that leaves five men dead ... and serves as a springboard for J. Edgar Hoover expanding the powers of his Bureau of Investigation (soon to change its name to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI) into the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world.

Union Station - 1933 

The arrest of career criminal Frank "Jelly" Nash is the catalyst that sets in motion the acts that result in the massacre.  First arrested in 1913, 46-year-old Nash is a bad apple with a lengthy criminal resume that includes shooting a partner in the back for a $1,000 in loot (he receives a life sentence that is reduced to 10 years when he convinces the warden at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary that he wants to join the Army and fight in WWI ... and he does, fighting at Belleau Wood before the war ends in 1918), safe cracking using explosives, robbing banks and trains with the Al Spencer Gang, escaping from the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, (given a trustee pass to run an errand for the prison, Nash simply doesn't return once outside the walls of the facility), helping orchestrate the 1931 Leavenworth escape of seven inmates, and robbing a number of banks with Thomas Holden, Francis Keating, Harvey Bailey, Machine Gun Kelly, Verne Miller, and members of the Barker-Karpis Gang.  Fearing the heat that will result from the Barker-Karpis Gang's kidnapping of brewery mogul William Hamm, Jr., in Minneapolis in June of 1933, Nash chooses to hide under the name of Moore in the outlaw friendly city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his third wife, Frances, and her daughter.

Nash

Tipped by an underworld informant that Nash is in Hot Springs, two Bureau of Investigation agents from Oklahoma City, Frank Smith and Joe Lackey, and Otto Reed, the police chief of McAlester, Oklahoma (brought along because he knows Nash by sight), find the rumor to be correct (despite Nash disguising himself by growing a mustache, putting on weight, and covering his bald head with a black toupee) and arrest the outlaw at a known hangout for criminals residing in the city, the White Front Cigar Store (an establishment where cigars and 3.2 beer are sold, games of pool can be played, and shady characters can usually relax with one another) run by a crook named Dick Galatas.  Caught, but can Nash be held in a region full of his friends and fellow criminal associates ... stopped by a posse of lawmen that have been told by the corrupt head of the Hot Springs police department the federal agents and Reed are actually outlaws and Nash is a kidnapped businessman (the men are allowed to proceed when they show their identification), the men decide that driving all the way back to Leavenworth Prison to return Nash to his sentence is too dangerous, they decide to instead transport their captive by train, and then in Kansas City, drive the last 30 miles to the prison with a police escort.  Catching the Missouri Pacific Flyer in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the alternate plan seems to be working as the lawmen and their prisoner ride north through the night into Missouri, unaware that a series of phone calls initiated by Galatas will result in a very unfriendly welcoming committee meeting them at the train station in the morning.

 

Smith & Reed

"Free Nash" the message being sent out from Hot Springs, the captured outlaw's best friend, WWI hero and former lawman turned robber and hit man for hire, Verne Miller, gets the news out of Arkansas and determines his buddy will not be returned to prison. Too big a job for just one man, he too gets on the phone and recruits two shooters to assist him in releasing Nash from custody.  The trio of gunmen, armed with Thompson sub-machine guns are all waiting in the parking lot of Union Station when Nash and his escorts arrive from Arkansas.

Miller

Leaving Nash handcuffed to the upper berth in Drawing Room A of Car 11, Lackey leaves the train in search of the new officers who are going to assist in moving the outlaw ... and finds them immediately, waiting on the platform for the railroad station ... twenty-nine-year-old Mormon, Reed Vetterli, the Special Agent In Charge of the Bureau's Kansas City office, thirty-year-old Agent Ray Caffrey, and two Kansas City policemen, Frank Hermanson and Bill "Red" Grooms.  After briefing the men on the outlaw and the plan to get him to Leavenworth, Lackey returns to the train, and minutes later the seven men escort a handcuffed Nash (with Caffrey holding a .38 pistol to the felon's back) through the station and out to the two cars awaiting his transportation.

 

Vetterli & Caffrey

  

Grooms & Hermanson

Arriving at the cars, Caffrey unlocks the passenger door of his two-door Chevrolet and the men start positioning themselves for the journey to Leavenworth ... Lackey gets in the back, but when Nash starts to join him in the rear of the car, orders the outlaw to sit up front.  Nash does as told and climbs into the front seat as Smith and Reed join Lackey in the back.  Outside the car, Grooms and Hermanson stand facing each other next to the vehicle's right front tire, with Vetterli ready to get in front once Nash is settled, with Caffrey moving to the front of the car, making his way over to the driver's door.  It is at this moment that they are accosted by three men standing only fifteen feet away, holding sub-machine guns.

Inside Union Station

"Up!  Up!  Get your hands up!" one of the gunmen calls out, but Grooms instead pulls his pistol and fires a shot at one of the intruders.  "Let 'em have it!" one of the gunners calls out and all three of the men open up on the lawmen ... and accidentally, Nash too!  Grooms and Hermanson die instantly in the fusillade, dancing like puppets being jerked about as they fall to the ground from multiple bullet strikes.  Up front, Nash screams "No!" and then his head explodes (one theory of the event is that the gunners kill Nash, thinking he is a lawman because he is sitting in the front seat ... another has Nash being killed when Reed tries to go into action and his shotgun goes off prematurely and hits the outlaw in the head), as does the head of Reed in the back seat.  A bullet grazes Vetterli in the left arm, he goes down, and then is instantly up and running back towards the station for help as bullets chase him out of the parking lot.  Lackey tries to raise his shotgun and fire, but before he can he is hit by three bullets and slumps down in the back of the car, pretending to be dead, as does an unhit Smith, his head between his knees.  Seconds later one of the gunners is beside the car and calls to his companions, "Everyone's dead in here."  Rescue botched, the killers leave the parking lot as Mike Fanning, a policeman on duty at the station, fires on the sedan they use for their exit.

Newspaper Diagram

Swiss Cheese Chevrolet

Moments Afterward

Four dead lawmen, one dead outlaw, one wounded killer, and two wounded officers in less than thirty seconds ... the Kansas City Massacre, as the event will come to be known, is over.  

Dead Nash

Only the second agent death in Bureau history, in the aftermath of the killing Hoover will start having his agents carry guns and vow to bring the perpetrators of the murders to justice.  And a sort of justice does come their way ... Dick Galatas, Herbert Farmer, Louis "Doc" Stacci, and Frank Mulloy will all be found guilty of conspiracy in setting up the crime, get sentenced to two years in a Federal penitentiary, and are fined of $10,000 (the maximum allowed by the law at the time). Verne Miller, the thirty-seven-year-old leader of the gunners will avoid capture by the Bureau, but is beaten to death and left in a ditch outside of Detroit, Michigan, in 1934 by unknown members of the underworld, both for screwing up the escape, and for the massive amount of heat the government brings to bear on the criminal world of the Midwest seeking the culprits behind the massacre.  

Miller - WWI

Based on a single latent fingerprint found in the basement of Miller's Kansas City home on an empty beer bottle, the Bureau goes after Adam Richetti (source of the print) and his bank robbing partner (both known to be in Kansas City at the time after they release kidnapped Polk County Sheriff Jack Killingsworth there), Oklahoma's infamous Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd.  In October of 1934, they catch up with both men in Ohio ... thirty-year-old Floyd is gunned down in a field as he tries to escape a group of lawmen that includes the man that brought John Dillinger's career to an end, Special Agent Melvin Purvis (Floyd denies involvement in the massacre with his dying breath ... and rumors persist to this day that he is executed after he is wounded and surrenders), while Richetti surrenders, goes to trial, and found guilty, is executed on October 7, 1938 at the age of twenty-nine.

Richetti In Custody

Pretty Boy In Death

Guilty punished ... or were they?  While many believe the official story as told by Hoover's Bureau (because of course the government NEVER lies to its citizens), to this day there are other historians that tell a different tale ... one in which Floyd and Richetti are framed for the crime (arguing a lack of evidence, trial process errors, the fact that of the 12 witnesses that see the killers before the murders, only one identifies Floyd as being one of the shooters, witness testimony being changed as being one of the shooters, and the fact that the incident does match anything close to what Floyd did in his criminal career either before of after the massacre) by a Bureau hungry for revenge and a closed case, and that the true killers, Kansas City hoodlums Maurice Denning and William "Solly" Weissman (as identified by underworld figure Blackie Audett in his 1954 expose, Rap Sheet) get away with the crime!  All the players gone ... no one will ever know for sure who pulled the triggers beyond Miller.

Kansas City - 6/17/1933