The Dicksons
Born in Topeka, Kansas, Bennie is the handsome, intelligent child of respected Topeka High School chemistry teacher. Athletic, as a youngster he wins distinction as an amateur featherweight boxer (125 pounds). Loved, with a middle-class upbringing, Dickson's future seems bright, until he pulls a teenage prank stealing a car, and caught and brought to trial, has a belligerent judge sentence him to a long stint behind bars at the Kansas State Reformatory in Hutchinson. There instead of being rehabilitated, he learns the skills necessary to become a bank robber. Out, the youth becomes a car thief and bank robber, and processed the next time when caught, as an adult is sentenced to serving time at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Paroled in 1937, Dickson is back in his home town, contemplating what to do next when at a local rollerskating rink, an arrow from Cupid's bow unexpectedly hits him in the heart.
Missouri State Pen
Also born in Topeka on August 25, 1922, Stella grows into a beautiful teenager that attracts a lot of male attention, most of it very unwelcomed. In 1937, only 15-years-old, she is violently raped by a stranger passing through town, acquires a case of gonorrhea from the sexual encounter, and then takes grief from the community that she is promiscuous when news of the event is released. Contemplating leaving Kansas for California and the potential to get into the picture business, she is enjoying an evening of rollerskating with friends when she meets Dickson, posing as an insurance salesman from Chicago named Johnny D. O'Malley. Love at first sight, Dickson soon tells Stella his true identity, but before the new romance can blossom further, he is forced to flee to warmer climes when he assaults a driver's license examiner. Knowing Stella loves California, he makes a beeline there, and when law enforcement ignores the young outlaw's departure, sends money to Stella to join him in the Golden State. Star plans not working out though and missing family back in the Midwest, the pair are soon in motion, headed back east to a Lake Benton cottage in Minnesota owned by Bennie's father (they will also spend time at a cabin in Lake Preston, South Dakota). Married by a police judge in Pipestone, Minnesota, in 1938 the honeymoon of the Dicksons becomes a week's long sojourn of walks in the woods, love making, a driving and shooting lessons for Stella. Money low and Stella ready to help her hubby with his craft, on August 25, 1938, the duo heads south to the town of Elkton, South Dakota, where the Elkton Corn Exchange Bank awaits. It is Stella's birthday and she is 16-years-old.
Benny & Stella
At about 2:00 in the afternoon, a mud splattered 1936 Ford bearing California license plates pulls up in front of the bank and the Dicksons exit their ride ... Stella is in men's overalls, her blonde locks are tucked into a straw hat, and she is wearing ark sunglasses while holding a machine gun wrapped in newspapers. Also dressed in coveralls, Bennie pulls out a revolver and announces to the two employees on duty (cashier Robert Petschow and bookkeeper Elaine Lovley), "This is a holdup. Do exactly as I say and there will be no trouble and nobody hurt." Bennie then puts money from the teller's cage in a white sugar sack and then waits for the time-lock vault to open at 3:00. Apparently missing the lesson on getting into and out of the bank that is being robbed as soon as is possible, worried at what is taking so long, Stella leaves her protective position out front and the Dicksons spend the next thirty-five minutes waiting on the vault, taking twenty individuals that enter hostage, including the institution's president, L. C. Foreman, robbing the wealthier looking hostages of their personal cash, and even returning a $20 bill to one of the bank's customers that had dropped it on the floor. Once the vault opens, the thieves take the rest of the money on hand, put the hostages inside, lock them in (the hostages escape eventually by flipping an emergency switch which sets off a red warning light in a nearby store, then slowly exit town using a system of backroads to reach an area in Minnesota near the town of Tyler, $2,174 richer than when they entered Elkton. Happy birthday, Honey ... the pair get rid of the car and their overalls, buy new clothing and a new car and spend the next two months drifting about just enjoying themselves, from Minnesota down to Topeka.
Corn Exchange Bank
Now wanted by the FBI for robbing a federally insured bank, the Dicksons have troubles once again with their time management skills when they hit the Northwest Security National Bank of Brookings, South Dakota on October 31, 1938. Thinking to take advantage of the hangovers induced by the previous day's annual Hobo Day (the homecoming celebration for the town's South Dakota State University), the Dickson's arrive at the site of their next heist 35 minutes before the bank opens at 9:00 in the morning (this time, hoping to throw the authorities off that they are the same couple who robbed a bank two months before, Bennie is dressed in a grey herringbone suit, has glasses on, and wears a brown hat, while Stella sports a salmon-colored coat over a stylish green dress ... Bennie has a shotgun and Stella carries a pistol), forcing their way inside when assistant manager John Torsey leaves to buy a Coca-Cola from the nearby Tidball's Drug Store. Incredibly, discovering once more that a vault they want to rob is time locked, the pair convince the four employees inside the bank that they will be killed if they let on a robbery is taking place and another long wait begins for the Dicksons (who cut the wires underneath the tellers' cages that can send alarms to buzzers in the pool hall and clothing store next door) ... a wait in which no one will notice the pair loitering about despite over two hours passing and over 100 customers entering the downtown establishment (and in another crazy "Robin Hood" moment, admiring the topcoat of an employee, during a moment when no customers are inside, from the cash he is stealing, Bennie buys the article of clothing for $25). Vault finally open, its contents are quickly stuffed into a large white pillowcase (seventy-five pounds worth of loot) and the outlaws leave town, this time with two hostages providing cover, the vice-president and assistant manager of the bank, hanging on to the car from its running boards. After a few blocks when no pursuit shows, the men are dropped off, Stella scatters roofing nails in the road to delay any posse, and the couple easier makes it back into Minnesota with $17,529.99 in cash and coin, and $29,640.50 in securities.
Northwest Security National Bank
Over $50,000 in loot from two different robberies in a matter of only a few weeks, J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI recognizes the couple has the potential to another power trophy for the government agency and with a Thanksgiving holiday escape from a Topeka campground that includes a hail of law enforcement slugs Bennie is able to drive through (he takes a grazing wound to the head getting away and Stella escapes through the woods and the couple reunite at an emergency rendezvous outside of Topeka the next day), a high-speed pursuit over rural Michigan roads in which Stella earns the nickname "Sure Shot" Stella (this time she receives a grazing wound to the head) for shooting out the left front tire of the police car (causing the vehicle to go into a ditch), taking three farmers hostage in stealing two cars as they make their way into Indiana, the couple soon finds themselves at the top of the FBI's criminal pyramid, Public Enemies #1 (Bennie) and #2 (Stella), a national story for the daily newspapers (the FBI's publicity apparatus running at full speed, there will be over 1,000 "news" releases during the nationwide hunt for the couple). Despite the law enforcement heat, driving slowly south in the "new" car they purchase for $40, the pair elude all posses and are able to reach their destination, the city the pair plan to retire to, New Orleans. Safe and unknown there, Bennie then makes the mistake that has brought so many crooks to ground ... he decides to visit underworld contacts he has in the town of St. Louis and sets up a meeting with the sister of one of his former cellmates, a woman named Naomi, a woman who is also a paid informant for the authorities.
Stella Practicing Her Bonnie Pose
Wanted Poster
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Meeting a woman dressed in brown (not as memorable as a woman in red or orange as happened in the FBI's Dillinger case five years before) at the Yankee System Hamburger Stand near the Forest Park region of St. Louis, Bennie leaves the diner at about 7:00 in the evening, carrying dinner for Stella, who is parked, waiting for her husband, about a block away and quickly realizes he has been setup as four FBI agents close in on the outlaw (led by Special Agent Gerald B. Norris shouting for the fugitive to surrender). Running, fumbling for his gun (he is carrying two .38 pistols i the pockets of his coat), Bennie Dickson is gunned down (a different story eventually surfaces however, trying to claw his way into a locked apartment building so he can flee up its stairs, Dickson actually never pulls his pistols and is fatally shot in the back four times by one of the agents ... an outcome explained in private FBI documents, the autopsy report, and testified to by a Yankee System waitress, Gloria Cambron, the killing is also witnessed by Stella who drives away an emotional mess) trying to escape from arrest.
Headlines
Leaving the scene of her husband's killing, Stella puts the car the Dickson's have been using in a garage, then believing she too will soon be gunned down, begins hitching rides towards Kansas City to see her mother for a final time. Suspicious of Stella, one driver turns her in as being the fugitive the FBI is looking for and the next day when she arrives in Kansas City, she is arrested by the FBI as Easter shoppers walk the downtown streets of the city (only about a block away from the St. Luois headquarters of the FBI). Caught, Stella becomes once again the sixteen-year-old she is (upon her arrest, Stella is found to be unarmed, is carrying $70 in cash, is wearing three rings, one of which is her seven diamond wedding ring, has a key to an apartment in New Orleans, and a scrap of paper bearing a poem written by her dead husband, "In the eyes of men I am not just, But in your eyes, O life, I see justification, You have taught me that my path is right if I am true to you.") ... two confessions are made and signed (the sixteen-year-old is alone and without the guidance of a parent or a lawyer, she does however have her teddy bear, which she holds on to throughout her brief trial), one placing the blame for everything on the shoulders of her deceased husband. Less than a week after her capture, Stella is extradited back to South Dakota to go on trial for armed robbery (on charges that could bring a life sentence behind bars to the young woman). Justice sought, Stella's lawyer, Chet Morgan, reaches a plea agreement that has Mrs. Dickson plead guilty to the two bank robberies in exchange for a sentence of two concurrent ten-year terms at the United States Women's Reformatory in Alderson, West Virginia. Sentence begun on August 29, 1939, the 17-year-old is a model prisoner who causes no problems for her keepers, and she is paroled from prison in 1946 at the age of only 24. Free and still young, in the years that follow her incarceration, Stella returns to Kansas and becomes a flight attendant, takes care of her disabled brother, marries twice (they both end in divorce), and eventually settles into a quiet life as a KMART clerk. Eventually pardoned fully by President Nixon, Stella dies of emphysema in 1995 at the age of 72.
Arrested
Mostly forgotten now, the criminal partnership is remembered in a handful of magazines and books, pieces of their resume show up in the Hollywood noir film, Gun Crazy, the couple is the inspiration for the Heist Brewing Company of Brookings, South Dakota (now out of business) and as comic book cartoons ... but once upon a time, they had a whole nation on the lookout for their whereabouts!
Movie Poster
Comic Books
4/6/1939 ... the day matters because of the FBI's killing of Bennie Dickson and the subsequent capture of his 16-year-old bride!
The Dicksons
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