Monday, July 22, 2019

THE OFFICIAL VERSION

7/22/1934 - Fittingly, it would seem, excessive hubris, betrayal, and a law enforcement ambush all combine on a sweltering Chicago Sunday night (in the midst of a horrible record setting heat wave, seventeen citizens of the Windy City will perish from the high temperatures the day before, and an additional thirty will succumb to the 100+ degree weather on Sunday) to violently snuff out the short life of Public Enemy #1, the man known as "The Jackrabbit" for his many escapes from justice, John Herbert Dillinger, Jr.
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Dillinger

The most wanted man in the country following his escape from the Crown Point Jail, several bank robberies, and two shootouts with members of the Federal Division of Investigation (today's FBI), hiding in plain site after recovering from plastic surgery to remove three facial moles, eliminate age lines, change his fingerprints, and fill in the dimple in his chin (a $5,000 job, reacting to eating a full breakfast just an hour before and the ether fumes he is given as an anesthesia, the outlaw swallows his tongue and briefly stops breathing), Dillinger spends his last day on earth at the home he has hidden in since the 4th of July, the North Side apartment of a chunky forty-two-year-old divorced immigrant from Romania who becomes a prostitute and madam in America, Ana Sage (born Ana Campanas in the Black Sea village of Komlos), that she also shares with her unemployed son, twenty-three-year-old Steve Chiolak, and the bank robber's new girlfriend, a slim twenty-six-year-old brunette divorcee, part-time waitress (at the nearby S & S Sandwich Shop) and fallen angel, Polly Hamilton.  Posing as a clerk at the Chicago Board of Trade named Jimmy Lawrence, Dillinger spends the morning in front of a roaring fan, reading the newspaper and thinking about the Monday meeting he'd scheduled with Homer Van Meter and Baby Face Nelson to discuss their next job, a Wisconsin train robbery (that would give the outlaws enough of a payday to flee the country), then when Polly comes home sick in the afternoon from her shift at the sandwich shop, he puts her to bed with fan air rushing over her and gets her ice cream from a nearby deli; feeling better later, the trio of Polly, and Dillinger have an early dinner of baking powder biscuits, mashed potatoes, greens, gravy, and fried chicken (a Dillinger favorite, but not the smartest meal to cook when its over 100 degrees), wash the dishes and put the plates away before playing pinochle.  At about 8:30 in the evening, having made his decision on which gangster movie he wants to watch, Little Miss Marker starring Shirley Temple at the Marbro on West Madison Street or Manhattan Melodrama featuring Clark Cable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy at the Biograph on North Lincoln Avenue, the trio leaves the apartment and Dillinger points them around the corner towards the nearer of the two movie theaters on North Lincoln ... the group will be seeing MGM's Manhattan Melodrama.
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Sage
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Hamilton
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The Biograph

Walking the short distance to the theater, Ana is attired in a white blouse and orange skirt (that will appear red under the marquee lights of the theater), Polly is dressed in a white blouse, a tan skirt, tan hose, and white open sandals, while a dandy black mustached Dillinger (his hair has also been dyed black) is in a fresh pair of size 34 white Hanes briefs with blue stripes, a pair of lightweight grey slacks held up by a black belt with a silver buckle, black silk socks held up by red Paris garters, white buckskin Nunn Bush shoes, a white kenilworth broadcloth shirt, a grey tie flecked with red, and a pair of non-prescription clear glasses, all topped off by a white straw boater hat.  In his pockets and on his person, Dillinger carries getaway money of over $3,000 (later at the morgue, thanks to a pair of greedy East Chicago cops, the sum will be subtracted down to $7.70 ... a five dollar bill, two singles, and seventy cents in change), wears a gold ring with a ruby stone, a La Corona-Belvedere Cuban cigar, keys to the apartment, a money clip, a gold pocket watch with Polly's picture inside attached to a gold chain with a tiny knife on it, a white handkerchief with a thin brown border, and in his right pants pocket, safety on, a fully loaded Colt 380 automatic pistol with an accompanying clip of extra ammo.  Arriving in front of the theater at about 8:36, the presentation having already begun, Dillinger pays for everyone's admission, a whooping ninety cents, then escorts the women through a glass door to the right of the tiny ticket booth.  Inside, cooled by air that is fanned over large blocks of ice and then pumped into the theater, Ana finds a single seat near the back of the Biograph, while Dillinger and Polly settle down in two adjacent seats in the third row, near the screen, and after a long kiss (and promises of more later), begin enjoying Manhattan Melodrama, the tale of two childhood friends who grow up to be on opposite sides of the law, and in love with the same woman, unaware that a host of killers have gathered outside.  The feature is ninety-four minutes long, but with newsreels and trailers the entire presentation lasts two hours and four minutes, with egress from the theater falling at 10:35 if everything is watched.
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Dillinger Before Plastic Surgery
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Movie Poster

Pushed into the role of Judas Iscariot by the hope her help will halt her eminent deportation back to Romania as an undesirable personage, along with reward fever over a potential payout of $25,000 in reward money for delivering Dillinger, Sage has agreed to finger the outlaw, helped along by her lover of many years and sometimes business partner, corrupt East Chicago police detective, Martin Zarkovich (along with Captain Timothy O'Neil, there are rumors in the criminal underworld of Chicago that the pair set up the January bank robbery in which Dillinger kills detective Patrick O'Malley while escaping the job, have harbored a hiding Dillinger and members of his gang, and have sent detectives Martin O'Brien and Lloyd Mulvihill to their deaths at the hands of Homer Van Meter when they find out too much about the pair's corrupt deeds).  On July 21, after requesting the outright murder of Dillinger by members of the Chicago police's Dillinger Squad, and being refused the day before by its captain, John Stege, O'Neil and Zarkovich convince new Chicago SAC (Special Agent in Charge) Samuel P. Cowley (a Mormon from Utah sent to Chicago after one too many mistakes being made in the hunt for Dillinger by the former SAC, Melvin Purvis; the latest being allowing Helen Gillis to lose her FBI tail and link up with her husband, Baby Face Nelson), and Melvin Purvis that they have a source willing to give information on the location and movement of Public Enemy #1 for considerations, Ana Sage.  Later that night, with the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover aware of the maneuverings of his agents (he will soon be receiving calls from Cowley in the library of his home in Washington D.C. as the plot to pinch Dillinger advances), in the company of Zarkovich and O'Neil, Sage meets with Purvis and Cowley at a secluded spot on the shores of Lake Michigan and tells the tale of Dillinger's time at her apartment, and of his probable plans to take her and Polly to a movie at the Marbro the following evening, and that she will call when the outlaw's plans become more definite.
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Zarkovich
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Captain Tim O'Neil At Left - With East Chicago Sergeants Peter
Sopsic, Walter Conroy, And Glen Stretch - All Will Be Present At
The Dillinger Killing
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Cowley

Sunday morning the long wait begins as the take-down team begins assembling at the FBI headquarters on the nineteenth floor of the Bankers Building in downtown Chicago ... leaves and vacations are canceled ... in all, nineteen Federal agents will participate in the arrest, assisted by five members of the East Chicago police force.  As the day advances and no call from Sage is received, the officers begun to believe the whole thing is just another false alarm in their hunt for the fugitive, those thoughts change however when Sage calls a little after 5:00 in the evening (slipping away after she claims to need butter for the fried chicken dinner she is preparing) and says Dillinger is at her apartment.  Fast and cryptic in nature, she says again that she will let them know what movie they are going to when she knows.  And again the men wait.  At 7:15 they receive their next call from Sage, destination still unknown, Dillinger will either be taking in a movie at the Marbro, or mentioned for the first time, one at the Biograph.  Immediately, Cowley sends two agents to reconnoiter this new possible destination.  Shortly afterwards, everyone crams into Purvis's office for a final meeting ... Cowley introduces Zarkovich who talks about Dillinger's plastic surgery and what the two women who will be accompanying him look like, then Purvis tells everyone that Dillinger is wanted alive, but not to risk any of their lives accomplishing that goal.  Still unsure which theater Dillinger is headed for, when the meeting breaks up, Purvis and Agent Ralph Brown (his pockets stuffed with nickels for calling in updates) head off to the Biograph, while Zarkovich and Agent Charles Winstead head to the Marbro ... Cowley will stay behind at headquarters taking the calls from both groups, ready to send the balance of the team to whichever site Dillinger chooses.  And then more waiting takes place, until at 8:36, Purvis spots Dillinger and his two female companions at the Biograph box office, information which is quickly communicated to Cowley, and then on to Hoover.
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Purvis

Nerves jangling not wanting his prey to escape again, Purvis buys a ticket for the show and goes inside, evaluating whether Dillinger can be taken from behind as he is engrossed in the movie, but in the darkness of the crowded theater, he can't even see where Dilinger is sitting, and that idea is quickly discarded.  Returning outside, he asks the girl selling tickets how long the movie lasts and is given the information.  After about twenty minutes, other agents start arriving and taking up positions around the theater and when Cowley shows up from headquarters with more men plans are finalized as to the teams positions on the street, and that the signal to close in on Dillinger will be Purvis lighting a cigar.  By 9:30 all the players are in place, surrounding all the entrances and exits of the Biograph.  Nervous, knees shaking, Purvis bites off the end of a cigar and chews on the tabacco, while twice more asking the ticket girl how long the movie is.  She in turn reacts by telling her manager about about the man and how the street is full of men in suits despite the heat, wondering if the theater is about the be robbed.  The information, coupled to a report from the employee responsible for the theater's cooling system that their are numerous men in suits in the alley behind the Biograph, causes the manager, Charles Shapiro to call the District 37 police station on nearby Sheffield Avenue.  At 10:20 two squad car sedans show up in the alley and several men carrying weapons accost the agents in the alley ... the local police have arrived, and are soon sent on their way when the Feds say they are on a stakeout and require no assistance.  Ten minutes later, three plainclothes detectives arrive out front and begin receiving the same information (they are still out front when Dillinger leaves the theater).  Incredibly, whether worried about a leak taking place or the glory of a bust having to be shared, the Chicago police have not been told an operation to take down Public Enemy #1 is taking place in their city.
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Dillinger Squad Leader - Captain John Stege

Inside the movie theater, Dillinger enjoys the movie immensely, taking special delight when his only career is referenced as the Blackie Gallagher character played by Cable tells district attorney William Powell why he shouldn't be invited to his friend's wedding, "Remember what happened to the district attorney in Chicago just for having his picture taken with some gangsters having dinner."  Unaware of what is waiting outside, he also sees his fate put into words as Cable is led off to his execution, "Die the way you lived, all of a sudden.  Don't drag it out.  Living like that doesn't mean a thing."  Movie over, Dillinger tells Polly he really liked the film, remaining briefly in his seat to let the experience wash over him.  House lights on, he and Polly then make their way up to where Ana has watched the film.  Hat back on, Polly takes Dillinger's left arm as they leave the theater, while Ana stays to the right and slightly behind the outlaw.  Turning to their left, only a few feet away, the trio walk by Purvis standing in the doorway of the Country Club Tavern where hunter and prey make brief eye contact.  Cigar shaking in his mouth, Purvis lights up and everyone begins closing in on Dillinger.  For a few steps the outlaw is unaware of his danger, but then something alerts Dillinger and he tenses, glancing around the street.  Making a quick decision, he decides his best escape route will be up the alley and in the blink of an eye, he moves away from Polly and Ana, moves in that direction as if ready to break into a sprint, and pulls the automatic from his pocket.  A wasted effort, as his pulls his pistol six shots ring out, all sent in his direction.  Agent Charles Winstead fires three times, Agent Clarence Hurt fires twice, and Agent Herman Hollis fires once   Four of the shots hit the outlaw, two creating only grazing wounds, one, going through his chest at a sideways, downward angle and punching out of his body beneath the left rib, and a fatal round that rips into the base of Dillinge's neck, mangling a vertebra as it severs his spinal cord, before going through his brain stem and exiting out of his cheek, just below his right eye (in a return to the trigger happy times of the Little Bohemia Lodge raid, two innocent bystanders, Etta Natalsky and Theresa Paulus, are also struck ... Natalsky in her upper left thigh and Paulus in the hip).  Dead on his feet, Dillinger spins, staggers forward, and falls into the alley, shattering his eyeglasses and snapping the brim of his straw hat.  The Jackrabbit will be running no more
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Winstead
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Hurt
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Hollis

For a moment there is silence at the scene, then the area becomes a circus of citizens screaming, yelling, dancing, posing for pictures and trying to get as close to the corpse as they can (meanwhile, Ana and Polly slip away, return to the apartment, and then throw their former roommate's sub-machine gun, pistol, ammunition and a bullet proof vest into Lake Michigan), some dipping articles of clothing into the bank robber's blood, with members of law enforcement trying to keep a modicum of control over the situation as word quickly passes around the mob, "THEY GOT DILLINGER!"  Local police informed, Hoover called by Cowley from inside the Biograph, soon the world is aware and the news will be the front page story around the globe the next morning.  Alley cleaning begun almost immediately, accompanied by five Federal agents and three members of the Chicago police, the corpse is put on a stretcher and driven to the Alexian Brothers Hospital, where it is laid on the lawn until Dr. Walter Prusaig comes outside, puts a stethoscope to Dillinger's chest and pronounces the obvious, "This man is dead."  It is 10:55 in the evening.  The body is then transported to the Cook County morgue on Polk Street where another circus begins of law enforcement agents and citizens all gathering to see the famous outlaw in repose (Dillinger's old nemesis, Sgt. Frank Reynolds of the Dillinger Squad will take the opportunity to shake the body's hand).  Put in an elevator and brought down to the basement, Dillinger receives an autopsy from Dr. Charles D. Parker (who is also a newspaper reporter)and Dr. Jerry J. Kearns, is prepped for burial, and under the supervision of Professor D. E. Ashworth, five students of a Chicago embalming class are allowed to make plaster death masks of the former desperado.
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Circus
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Transport
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Dillinger's Blood
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How Not To Conduct An Autopsy
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Making A Death Mask
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Death Mask
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Toe Tag Blues
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The Ghouls Have A Look

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 22, 1903, the celebrity criminal is thirty-one-years-old at the time of his death outside the Biograph Theater..
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Dillinger

















Monday, July 8, 2019

SOAPY DIES DIRTY

7/8/1898 - Wild West mob boss and con artist supreme, Jefferson Randolph Smith II, better known as "Soapy" Smith for his penchant for the flim-flaming of city crowds with bars of soap supposed to contain paper money "prizes," dies in the city of Skagway, District of Alaska, during a gunfight that goes down in history as the Shootout on Juneau Wharf.
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Soapy

The bad seed of a family of wealth and education (the family comes to America from England in 1760 ... a grandfather is a Georgia senator and plantation owner, his father is an attorney, and there are other family members that become lawyers, doctors, and a minister), Jefferson Smith is born on November 2, 1860, in Coweta County, Georgia, near the town of Newman.  The Civil War which starts soon after the boy's birth ruins any chance of the youth leading a normal life, and finances in tatters, the family transplants to Round Rock, Texas in 1876.  Left to his own devices when his mother dies in 1877, Smith begins his career as a bunco artist in Fort Worth, Texas the same year, finding a formula that pulls together other miscreants into a gang of thieves and shills bent on separating the frontier unwary from their hard earned assets, to the extent that the teenager from Georgia is soon known as the "king of the frontier con men."  Modus operandi successful for over two decades across the West, Smith uses his gift of gab to sell bars of soap from a display case on a tripod for $1 (worth no more than five cents) to marks that think they might get the lucky bars that have dollars hidden inside their packaging, but have actually been switched through sleight-of-hand ... only shills, secret members of Smith's gang, ever win (the sobriquet "Soapy" becomes attached to Smith when an arresting policeman can not recall the first name of his catch and writes "Soapy" down in police logbook).  The winnings are then used to finance bigger cons, buy legitimate businesses, pay off his gang (including intimidation types like gunman and Wyatt Earp friend, John "Texas Jack" Vermillion), and buy protection from the local authorities ... and the crook enhances his ability to operate by keeping the local citizenry out of his bunco games while making "loans" to poorly paid police officers and feeding the destitute locals.  And if things should get too hot between a town's law and order faction, with his motto "Get it while the get'ins' good," Smith and company simply pull up stakes, move to a new frontier town, and set up operations again.
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Soapy
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Texas Jack

The first town to get the full Soapy experience of rigged businesses and games, overseen by over 100 gang members, is Denver, Colorado.  Arriving in what will become Colorado's capitol in 1879, Smith is king of the town's underworld activities by 1882 and owns a saloon and gambling hall on the southeast corner of Market and Seventeenth Streets called the Trivoli Club (the establishment will bear the Latin warning, "Caveat Emptor" ... indeed, "Let The Buyer Beware!" ... it is also close to Union Station, where "marks" are immediately recognized for fleecing), sets his younger brother Bascomb up operating a cigar store that fronts for dishonest poker games, runs a fake stock market investment firm called The Exchange, and commands his minions from a business office he sets up in the town's Chever building (delightful characters like "Reverend" John Bowers, "Professor" William Jackson, "Big Ed" Burns, and "Sure Shot" Tom Cady).  And he also maintains a secondary, secret life in which he is loving and faithful husband to Mary Noonan, and a doting father to the couple's children (when the secret is exposed by a local newspaper, Smith shows his displeasure by fracturing the skull of the paper's president, Colonel John Atkins, with a walking stick ... put on trial for attempted murder, he will of course be acquitted).  Two assassination attempts, his personal notoriety for drinking and gambling, and the efforts of the community's reformers to police saloons and gambling cause Soapy and company to leave the burgeoning city in 1892 for the wide open revels of a new mining town in the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado, and Creede becomes the next spot for the criminal to plunder.
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Soapy In Action
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Denver Base Of Operations 

Using Denver prostitutes to secretly buy up main street lots, Soapy soon has Creede under his thumb.  Never a dull moment for a silver camp running 24/7, during the conman's one year reign, Smith will own or lease out prime real estate in the area, his brother-in-law, William Sidney "Cap" Light becomes the town's deputy sheriff, he fights off another assassination attempt that costs gang member Joe Palmer a shot off thumb, he opens up a pleasure palace called the Orleans Club, and for a dime, sells viewings of a fake petrified man he claims miners dug out of the nearby mountains (a ten foot tall statue called McGinty).  Business good (at one point, Smith controls thirty-nine of the forty saloons in town, the sole holdout is a bar named the Denver Exchange run by gunfighter Bat Masterson), Soapy nonetheless leaves his latest conquest when he hears the political scene in Denver has changed and many in the city would like to have him operating once more (and just in time as many of the properties Smith owned, including the Orleans Club, are burnt to the ground in the summer of 1892).  More of the same for both good and bad, Smith's second run in Denver includes Soapy briefly becoming a deputy sheriff (who loves removing protesting losers from his establishments, clashing with Colorado's new governor, Davis Hanson Waite over authority in the city in a battle that goes down in the history books as the "City Hall War," and trying to swindle Mexican President Porfirio Diaz into hiring a foreign legion of American toughs full of Smith Gang members, overseen of course, by Smith himself (an $80,000 scam that nearly comes to fruition).  Governor not a fan, new underworld rivals surfacing, and attempted murder charges pending, Soapy pulls up stakes again in 1895.  He resurfaces in the Klondike in 1896 (there are stops before in Dallas, Houston, Cripple Creek, Butte, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland) and begin's operating in the gold mining gateway of Skagway in 1897, just as the rush to the area is getting underway.
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Creede, Colorado - 1892
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Just Another Con
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Fire Damage Cleanup
Governor Davis Waite, 1894
Governor Waite

Business as usual, in the tent city of Skagway (first known as , Smith and company put the town's deputy U.S. marshal on the payroll, starts a charity to feed the hungry (including stray dogs), pays for a town watchman out of his own pocket, runs his organization out of a saloon called Jeff Smith's Parlor (a small former bank building that is only a 18 feet by 40 feet space), and enhances his gang's conning operations by creating a telegraph site that sends and receives no messages (an actual telegraph line to Juneau will not begin functioning until 1901) for $5 a pop (a bargain for the naive, wanting to inform those back home that they have found pay dirt), but is instead used to identify marks for immediate fleecing of one sort or another.  When a vigilance committee is formed by locals to deal with the lawless situation in the city (the "Committee of 101"), Smith counters the move by forming his own law and order outfit, which has 317 members within its rolls.  ... and to cater favor and make sure he remains in charge, when the Spanish-American War breaks out in 1898, Smith receives the approval of the United States War Department, and President William McKinley to form a military unit called the "Skagway Military Company," with the command of the men as the group's captain.  Riding a gray horse at the head of his company during the town's 1898 celebration of the Fourth of July, Smith helps preside over the holiday from atop a grandstand where he sits beside the territorial governor and other local and state officials, unaware that he has only four more days to live.
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Early Skagway
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To The Gold Fields
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Members Of The Smith Gang
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Headquarters - 7/4/1898

The trouble begins when a sourdough named John D. Stewart arrives in Skagway on July 7, and wants to convert some of his Dawson gold dust in to currency (about $2,700.00 carried in a canvas pouch ... a sum worth roughly $78,302.00 in 2018)) into more manageable currency, but runs into some of Smith's men, John L. "Reverend" Bowers, W. E. "Slim-Jim" Foster, and Van B. "Old Man" Triplett.  Jeff Smith Parlor booze, games of three-card monte, and a need to see the actual gold dust to continue with the fun end of course with Triplett absconding with Stewart's pouch.  Unlike most marks though, Stewart protests, first to Deputy U.S. Marshal Sylvester S. Taylor (on Smith's payroll), next to U.S. Commissioner Charles A. Sehibrede (stationed in the nearby town of Dyea), and then to anyone who will listen to his tale of woe ... with some folks who hear Stewart's story, willing to help the old miner get back his money, the local vigilance committee revives and calls a meeting for that day.  First planned to take place at Sperry's Warehouse in town, the meeting is adjourned until later when hundreds of upset citizens show up at the too small venue ... the followup will take place later in that night at a bigger warehouse on Juneau's Wharf (the wharf extends almost a half mile into the bay, is between 15 feet to 20 feet wide, and stands between 6 feet and 10 feet over the town's tidal mud flats and gravel beach), a location that can also be more easily protected from Smith and his followers.  As unrest in the town starts to mount, Smith makes his way about Skagway, promising some people to see that Stewart gets his poke returned, and to others claiming the miner lost fair and square at a game of chance and he doesn't deserve recompense in any form, and certainly not from Smith.  He becomes incensed when he finds out the Committee of 101 has resurfaced and is going to look into Stewart's complaints.
The four wharves at Skagway
Wharf Area - Juneau Wharf Is Second From Left
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Last Pcture of Soapy - 7/7/1898

Enraged when he is told by William Saportas, a reporter for the Daily Alaskan, that the vigilance committee is meeting, and in his cups, Smith grabs a Winchester Model 1892 .44-40 rifle and his Colt double-action revolver, and with a handful of his armed gang following, leaves the Jeff Smith Parlor and makes his way down to the wharves, thinking he can break things up with his intimidating presence.  At around 9:15 in the evening, Smith arrives at the Juneau Wharf, tells his men to wait, then stalks out on to the structure carrying his rifle on his shoulder, pointed upwards.  On the boardwalk, he orders two guards out of his way (the men jump down to the beach), makes his way past two more guards, ship's captain Josias Martin Tanner and White Pass and Yukon Railway employee Jesse Murphy, then finally confronts Frank Reid, a 54-year-old former bartender at the Klondike Saloon, who tells him he can not advance further.  A harsh argument of seconds ensues and then suddenly words are not enough for either man.  Bringing his rifle off his shoulder, Smith tries to club Reid in the head with the weapon, but the guard manages to block the blow and grab the rifle's barrel, yanking it away from his head and downward with his left hand while pulling his own revolver with his right.  "My God, don't shoot," Smith proclaims, but Reid ignores the admonition and pulls the trigger of his gun ... which doesn't fire due to a defective round.  Then the men fire on each other almost in unison.  Freeing his rifle from Reid's grip, Smith fires on the guard, who in turn, fires again at the conman, now with bullets that actually work.  In the quick exchange of lead, Reid takes a bullet to one leg and a mortal wound to his lower abdomen and groin (in great pain, it will take him twelve days to die) from another, while Smith is hit in the left arm, the left thigh just above the knee, and in his left side.  Confrontation not quite complete, guard Murphy rushes over, wrests Smith's rifle from his grip and turns the weapon on its owner, firing an immediately fatal bullet into the gang leader's heart.  Close to more casualties as armed men begin pulling their weapons all about the wharf (the vigilance meeting breaks up at the sound of gunfire outside), Smith's associates quickly vanish into the night when a voice yells, "They have killed Soapy, and if you don't clear out quick, they will kill you too."  Soapy Smith's hold on Skagway has been broken ... the conman is 37 at his death.

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Frank H. Reid
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Conrontation
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Death

In the aftermath of the shooting, over twenty of Smith's gang are rounded up, put on the steamship Tartar, and sent south to Seattle, sent on their way with the warning that they will be shot on sight if they are ever seen in the Skagway region again (attempting to escape, "Slim" Jim Foster is almost lynched to death by a mob that gathers at the jail, saved at the last moment by a detachment of U.S. Army infantry that Sehlbrede has brought to town to police the city).  Bowers, Foster, and Tripp are all arrested and sent to Juneau to serve prison sentences that ranged from one to ten years, and the missing poke is given back to Stewart, short $600 of its original total, discovered of course during a search of Soapy's Jeff Smith Parlor.  As for the two combatants, Reid is buried in the local cemetery under a large monument that reads, "He Gave His Life For The Honor Of Skagway," while Smith is buried nearby beneath a rough board that reads simply, "Jefferson R. Smith, Age 38, Died July 8, 1898."  Simple graves, that are visited by thousands every year as over 1,000,000 tourists a year now seek out the former mining town from the luxury of their cruise liners ... and Smith gets annual celebration ever year on the anniversary of his demise ... in Skagway the citizens gather at Soapy's grave and drink champagne provided by members of Smith's family, and the Magic Castle nightclub in Hollywood, California, throws a Soapy Smith Party featuring costumes, magic shows, and charity gambling every July 8. 
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Corpse
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Autopsy
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Posed For Viewing
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Funeral
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Big News

Skagway Memorial Marker
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At Soapy's Grave
Soapy Smith in his Skagway bar
Soapy In Skagway - Center, Hat In Hand

The Shootout on Juneau Wharf, Skagway, Alaska ... 7/8/1898!


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