A BIG SCORE IN DENVER

12/18/1922 - At 10:40 on a chilly December morning, one of the most notorious crimes in Colorado history takes place outside the Denver Mint.

                           
                                       U.S. Mint - Denver, Colorado

Most noted for creating coins for the government, the Mint's vaults, located on Colfax Avenue in the Mile High City, also serve as protected storage for any overflow of currency from the small Federal Reserve Bank in the Interstate Trust Building, nearby at 16th and Lawrence ... an added function of the establishment that has somehow become known to a deadly group of professional bank robbers.  A job planned down to the second (a trademark of German bandit Herman Lamm and his proteges, Harvey Bailey and Eddie Bentz), just as $200,000 in ten, eighteen inch long, eight pound packages of five dollar bills has finished being loaded into a mesh-wire cage on the back of the bank's pickup truck for transfer, and the Mint guards have gone back inside their building, a curtained black Buick touring car pulls up and disgorges three black-masked men.  The robbery is on!

                          
                                                Bailey

"Hands Up!"  Two bandits armed with shotguns take up positions behind telephone poles and begin firing when their order is not immediately complied with, while the third outlaw, armed with a pistol, moves the money packages to the gang's getaway car (a fourth outlaw stays behind the wheel of the vehicle and in some accounts there is a fifth bandit).  The gunfire of the crooks is in turn answered by the truck's bank guards and by government agents within the Mint ... a bullet melee that lasts all of ninety seconds, one of which is fatal for sixty-four-year-old Special Officer Charles T. Linton of the Federal Reserve, who takes a point-blank shotgun blast to the chest in the exchange of gunfire (prior to his employment with the Reserve, Linton is a member of the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office for over twenty-six years, the veteran lawman leaves behind a wife and two sons).  Heist complete, the Buick roars away down Colfax with one outlaw bleeding from a hand wound as he continues to fire his shotgun from the running board of the fleeing car, while another hit thief slumps over in his seat.  A truck is sideswiped leaving the scene of the crime, but the Buick is not harmed enough to stop its flight and the gang soon vanishes into downtown Denver, their escape a success despite Colorado immediately beginning the biggest manhunt in the state's history (it is believed the robbers flee to St. Paul, Minnesota).

                                               
                                                       Linton

Eighteen days later, the bloody getaway car is found in a residential garage at 1631 Gilpin Street ... found containing the frozen corpse of the only participant in the robbery to ever be officially identified, thirty-six-year-old outlaw Nicolas "Chaw Jimmie" Trainor (on parole from the Nebraska State Penitentiary), dead from a massive shotgun wound to the bandit's jaw.  In February of 1923 another discover in the case is made when Secret Service agents raiding a bandit hideout in Minnesota locate $80,000 of cash from the robbery, and an additional $73,000 of bonds taken in a raid on a Walnut Hills, Ohio bank ... loot thought to be in the region for underworld laundering by the criminal kingpin of the region, Daniel "Dapper Dan" Hogan.

                        
                                                      Dapper Dan

Federal authorities will announce the crime has been solved in 1925, but no details about any of the participants are released, and in 1934, Denver Police Chief A. T. Clark claims five men and two women were responsible for the robbery, all stated as being dead or already serving life terms in prison, but again no names or details of the bloody day in front of the Denver Mint are provided to the public.  Other than for Trainor, who the men in the masks were remains a mystery to this day! 

                                        
                                                  Next day headlines

UNDERHILL, UNDERGROUND

12/30/1933 - The honeymoon of Wilbur Underhill, known as the "Tri-State Terror" and "Mad Dog" to authorities, comes to an abrupt and bloody end when a posse made up of federal, county, and city law officers finds the robber and multiple murderer enjoying newly married bliss at a rented cottage in Shawnee, Oklahoma (paid for by loot the outlaw has robbed on his November 18th wedding day from a bank in Frankfort, Kentucky, and a Coalgate, Oklahoma bank plundered on December 13th).

                                     
                                                        Underhill

Tipped off that Underhill, his new bride Hazel Jarrett Hudson (a sister of the outlaw Jarrett Brothers), bandit Ralph Roe, and Roe's girlfriend Eva May Nichols are staying in the small house located at 606 West Dewey Street, an arrest party led by Federal Special Agent Ralph Colvin takes up positions around the clapboard structure in the foggy dark of cold early winter morning ... a raiding party of fifteen men heavily armed with shot guns, machine guns, tear gas rifles, and pistols.  Sneaking up to a bedroom window at the back of the building to determine if their quarry is present, the team of Colvin and Oklahoma City Detective Clarence Hurt spot Underhill in long underwear standing at the foot of a bed his wife is sitting upon just as a neighborhood dog begins barking, causing the outlaw to look out the window.  "This is the law Wilbur.  Stick 'em up!" Hurt yells, and for a moment it appears the bandit is going to comply, but as he begins to raise his arms, Underhill instead quickly whirls around and grabs a specially modified automatic Luger pistol attached to a 31-slug magazine from a nightstand ... then all hell breaks loose.

Hurt responds by firing a tear gas canister into Underhill's chest, knocking the bandit down for a moment, Colvin follows that action up as chemical fumes cloud the room by emptying the clip of his machine gun through the window in three bursts of bullets that hole walls, destroy furniture, shatter a mirror, and chase the outlaw into the bathroom where he returns fire as his wife lies screaming on the floor.  Better safe than sorry, the other officers about the building hear the crash of gunfire and also trigger their own weapons at the house, causing the cottage to shake (over two hundred rounds will smash into the fragile building).  In the barrage that takes place, Roe, sleeping in an adjacent bedroom to Underhill is hit by wounding .45 rounds in his left arm and shoulder, but his girlfriend Nichols is hit even harder.  Jumping out of bed screaming hysterically, the crazed women runs toward the front door and is hit twice in the stomach by machine gun slugs, falls, gets up, runs out the door and goes down again in the muddy front yard when another burst of gunfire hits her in the foot.  She does not get up from her second fall and will eventually die from her wounds at the town's nearby Municipal Hospital.

                                     
                                                         Ralph Roe

The next to tempt Fate going out the front door is Underhill who is equally unlucky.  Hit by numerous rounds fired by the four officers watching the front of the property, the outlaw, wearing only socks and his underwear, crashes to the ground in puddle of mud making his exit.  Prey down, the men move warily forward to place their victim in custody ... but are shocked anyway when the bandit suddenly leaps up and runs into the darkness between two neighboring houses.  Meanwhile, responding to the firing at the front of the house, Colvin and Shawnee Night Chief Frank Byrant leave the backyard and almost run into Underhill as the outlaw makes his exit ... and are surprised that he does not go down when they empty their machine guns at the fleeing killer.

                        
                                 Underhill after an earlier encounter with the law

Gunfire over, Roe surrenders, crawling out of the front door where Oklahoma County Deputy Sheriff George Kerr handcuffs the wounded desperado and then arranges for his transportation to same hospital to which his girlfriend has been taken (Underhill's wife is arrested too, somehow managing to survive the gun battle unscathed).  But it is Tri-State Terror that the posse really wants and soon a house-to-house sweep of Shawnee begins with an additional twenty-four law officers joining in the search for the outlaw, along with bloodhounds from the state prison at McAlester.  The animals however are not needed, for shortly after 7:00 in the morning, R. A. Owens, the manager of a second hand furniture store, calls police headquarters to tell the authorities that a man in only his underwear has broken into the business at 509 East Main Street.  Target located once more, in two cars a six-man posse rushes to the store and finds Underhill laying helpless on a blood-soaked bed, his empty Luger on the floor beside him ... despite suffering from shotgun wounds peppering his body and .45 slugs hitting him in the head, right arm, back, and right leg, with the top of his left ear shot off, the almost naked outlaw has run sixteen blocks through the night's cold in a desperate, but vain attempt to escape his pursuers.  Another temporary patient for the hospital, Underhill is too far gone to save and finally succumbs to his many wounds on the 6th of January at 11:42 in the evening ... his last words are alleged to be, "Tell the boys I'm coming home."

                                
                               "Mad Dog" Underhill

Back at the scene of the gun battle, law enforcement agents find $5,300 in negotiable bonds from Underhill's Frankfort bank job, enough ammunition to start a small war, a Luger with a folding stock, two .45 automatic Colt pistols, a .38 revolver, and in the car parked in the cottage's garage, a .30-.30 rifle, a sawed off Winchester .12 gauge pump action shotgun, a double-barreled shotgun pistol, and a tin pail full of roofing nails suitable for giving flat tires to any pursuit vehicles that might be chasing the bandit ... evidence that a true "mad dog" criminal has finally been put down!

A POINTLESS CHRISTMAS KILLING

12/25/1932 - While making a quick visit to Dallas on Christmas Eve, Clyde Barrow is talked into taking on a new partner in his assorted criminal activities, sixteen-year-old family friend William Daniel "W.D." Jones, who has been hero worshiping the outlaw for months .

                           
                                           Teenage menace Jones

Not waiting to break his new associate in slowly, the next day as a form of initiation, Clyde, with Bonnie waiting in their car, takes Jones into a Temple, Texas grocery store to rob the place.  Jones freezes however at the reality of armed robbery (his prior offenses have been petty thefts and stealing unoccupied cars).  Returning to their vehicle, Clyde is merciless in his browbeating of the wannabe bad boy, so harsh that Jones asks to be taken back home ... a suggestion Clyde takes very poorly, stating that if Jones wants to go home he'll have to steal a car to get there in ... a car Clyde will select.

     
                              Clyde and some of his equipment

Unhappy with his failed protege, to embarrass Jones, Clyde selects a Model A Ford roadster he spies as Bonnie drives the streets of Temple ... a car extremely difficult to start, requiring the driver to along with turning the ignition key, pull out the choke while at the same time using both feet to press down on the accelerator and clutch pedals.  Sure enough, Jones fails to start the car and Clyde takes his place behind the wheel to show the floundering rookie how a real thief operates.

                              
                                                      Jones in 1934

Unfortunately, all the commotion brought on by trying to start the vehicle by this time has drawn the attention of the Christmas celebrating family the Ford actually belongs to ... the family of twenty-seven-year-old Doyle Johnson, the new father of a baby girl.  Seeing two men in the car, Henry Krauser, Johnson's father-in-law, Krauser's son Clarence, and Johnson's wife rush on to the front yard demanding to know what the two men are up to.  Clyde responds by jumping out of the car and brandishing his .45 revolver at the group, saying he will fire on the first person who moves forward.  With the family cowed, he then jumps back into the vehicle and again begins playing with the ignition of the Ford.  

                                       
                                               Jones and Barrow - 1933

It is tragically at this point that Johnson wakes up from the nap he has been taking in a very Grinchy and belligerent mood.  As Bonnie pulls up next to the roadster in the gang's speedy Ford V-8 and demands that the men abandon their car theft, Johnson, trying to protect his ride, runs outside, reaches through the driver side window and grabs Clyde around the neck.  "Get back man or I'll kill you!"  Johnson ignores the warning from the oulaw begins strangling Clyde, and sure enough, the bandit brings his weapon up and fires several rounds into his assailant, the mortal slug a bullet that severs Johnson's spinal column.  Free of the grip around his neck, Clyde roars down the street in the Model A, followed closely by Bonnie.

     
                                                                Clyde Barrow

It is the fourth murder Clyde participates in (his first is the killing of the man who rapes him while he is at Texas' infamous Eastham Prison Farm ... a twenty-nine-year-old convict serving ninety-nine years for a variety of crimes named Ed Crowder who will have his head bashed in by a lead pipe) and its utter pointlessness is immediately on display ... only a few blocks away Clyde ditches the vehicle he has killed to steal and the men vanish in the Ford V-8 driven by Bonnie (and there will be no more discussions about Jones leaving, with his involvement in the killing he is now well past saying goodbye and going home).  A menace to citizens and lawmen alike, the desperado is all of twenty-two-years-old when he takes Johnson's life ... and only two weeks away from murder number five, the shotgun killing of Fort Worth Deputy Malcom Davis.

             
                                  On the road - W.D. Jones and Bonnie Parker

NO MORE BARON LAMM

12/16/1930 - In a cornfield near Sidell, Illinois the criminal career of forty-year-old Herman "Baron" Lamm comes to a bloody conclusion due to a series of unlucky mischances.

                                                 
                                                         The Baron

Called by many criminal historians the "father of modern bank robbery," the German born Lamm brings his experiences in the Prussian Army to his criminal endeavors in America, creating a precise military system of robbing banks called "The Lamm Technique" that includes meticulous study of the site of the job and its employees, creation of and practice driving numerous escape routes, each member of his gang being given a specific assignment, keeping the heist to a time schedule using stopwatches, the hiring of shady race car drivers for his getaways using the fastest vehicles available, attacking with superior weaponry like Thompson machine guns, and multiple rehearsals of the crime to come using full-scale mock-ups of the establishment being hit.  For thirteen years Lamm's methods work like a charm and he and his men take over a million dollars out of Midwest banks.  No plans or practice though can overcome the series of events that take place after Lamm and his gang (seventy-one-year-old G.W. "Dad" Landy, getaway driver W.H. Hunter, twenty-six-year-old gunman Walter Dietrich, and James "Oklahoma Jack" Clark, dressed in overalls and a lumber jacket) withdraw $15,567 from the Citizens State Bank of Clinton, Indiana.    

          
                             Dietrich                                                     Clark

Chaos for the group begins when the local barber, carrying a shotgun to go bird hunting with a friend, is mistaken for an armed vigilante.  Reacting quicker and more wildly than he should, Hunter hops a curb making an escaping U-turn and blows out a tire on the gang's Buick sedan.  Alternate transportation necessary, Lamm and his men then seize the first car that comes along ... a vehicle that can only travel 35 miles-per-hour because a governor has secretly been placed on the motor by the son of the car's owner to prevent his elderly father from driving too fast.  Next up the gang boosts a truck ... a truck which soon dies for lack of water in its radiator.  Another car taken, another car abandoned, the outlaws' last theft is a car that only has one gallon of gas in its soon dry tank.  While all that madness has taken place, the gang has crossed from Indiana into Illinois, machine gunned to death Vermillion County Deputy Sheriff Joe Walker when the lawman tries to stop the men outside the small town of Dana, and finds itself being chased by hundreds of law enforcement officers and heavily armed upset locals as airplanes search the local highways for them from above.  Near the town of Sidell the gang's running finally stops and their bad luck continues when they try to steal the car of Leo Moody, an act of desperation that the belligerent farmer responds to by procuring his rifle and immediately firing on the bandits ... gunfire that like a magnet draws the posse pursuing the outlaws to the farm.  Surrounded by over two hundred men in the cornfield of the property, a massive one-sided gun battle takes place in which Hunter and Lamm are killed, a wounded Landy commits suicide to avoid a return to prison, and Dietrich and Clark eventually surrender.  The Lamm Gang destroyed, the legacy of the Baron however lives on when Dietrich and Clark, serving life terms in the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City, make a deal to teach Lamm's bank robbing techniques to a young fellow convict if he will include them in the escape he is planning ... an inmate named John Herbert Dillinger.

      
                                                 The Baron's protege  

JOHN HAMILTON KILLS A COP

12/14/1933 - Bad timing and the quick draw skills of thirty-four-year-old Canadian-born outlaw and recent Michigan City escapee John Hamilton (aka "Red" or "Three Finger Jack" because the index and middle finger of his right hand are missing due to a childhood sledding accident) cost the city of Chicago one of its finest.  

                                         
                                                          Hamilton

Tipped off that members of the Dillinger Gang are using a green convertible for their escapades about town, the Chicago Police Department tracks the suspect vehicle to the auto shop of Carl A. Blomberg, where it has been in recently for repairs on a faulty muffler.  Told to notify the police if the car should return for more work, the shop owner does exactly that when Hamilton brings the Auburn cabriolet in for straightening of one of the vehicle's fenders, a five dollar job.  Telling the outlaw he doesn't have the right tool for the work, Bloomberg sends Hamilton to Tower Auto Rebuilders at 5320 Broadway ... and then is on the phone with authorities as soon as the bank robber leaves his building.

                     
                                        Nice wheels for cruising Chicago

Cruising in the vicinity of the repair shop, Sergeant William T. Shanley, Patrolman Martin Mullen, and Patrolman Frank Hopkins receive a radio call from Chief of Detectives William Schoemaker to find and stakeout the vehicle, and arrest whoever comes calling for it.  Parking about a block and a half away so as not to give the game away, Mullen stays with the squad car while Shanley and Hopkins wait inside the shop ... and wait, and wait, and wait.  At around 4:00 in the afternoon, the hour the night shift comes on duty, so they can end their day and go home, Shanley sends Hopkins to tell Mullen at the car to call headquarters to bring on another team to continue the surveillance.  And sure enough, moments after he is alone, accompanied by his current girlfriend, Elaine Dekant (unaware that she is dating a notorious criminal, Dekant believes her boyfriend is the son of wealthy family that has just come into his inheritance), Hamilton walks into the shop to reclaim his ride.  A twenty-year veteran of the police force, whether worried that his prey will escape if he waits for backup, or eager to receive his second hero award from the Chicago Tribune (earlier in his career he had been honored for entering a dark store and single-handedly arresting a pair of safecrackers), Shanley accosts the pair as soon as they walk up to the convertible.  Telling Hamilton to keep his hands out of his pockets, the sergeant begins patting down the outlaw for a weapon ... a weapon that is drawn in a rattlesnake quick blur of motion from a hidden shoulder holster and fired twice into Shanley's chest.  

                                                          
                                                              Shanley

Leaving his victim in a rapidly spreading pool of blood, Hamilton narrowly misses Hopkins as the patrolman returns from the call to headquarters, abandoning his girlfriend and escaping through a nearby vacant lot.  Taken to nearby Edgewater Hospital, forty-three-year-old Shanley will die from his wounds fifteen minutes later ... the thirteenth Chicago police officer to perish in the line of duty in 1933, the sergeant will leave behind a widow, two sons, and two daughters.  As a result of the killing, two days later Captain John Stege is given authorization to create and command what becomes known as the Dillinger Squad ... a group of 40 hand-picked police marksman divided in to two working shifts for 24-hour coverage of their only mission (the other shift is run by Sergeant Frank Reynolds, an Irish cop already successful in twelve deadly gunfights with local criminals) ... shoot to kill any member of the Dillinger Gang they locate.

          
                Stege and helpmate

Reading about local developments in the newspaper, the central members of the gang decide disguises might be in order and dye their hair ... Hamilton, Russell Clark, and Harry Pierpont all becoming dark brunettes, while Dillinger goes red up top and also begins growing a mustache.  And just to be on the safe side until the town cools off a bit, they all decide to take a holiday vacation far away from Chicago and head off for some beachside rest and relaxation in Florida.

TOMMY CARROLL'S GUN GETS NOTCHED

12/11/1933 - Considering St. Paul to be too hot for the time being after Tommy Carroll is almost caught be police at his apartment building (he manages to jump out of a window and flee the scene), the Baby Face Nelson Gang consisting of Nelson, Nelson's wife Helen, Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll, and Chuck Fisher head south for and extended vacation in San Antonio.

         
                                               Tommy Carroll

All goes well until a busybody madam of a local whorehouse, trying to score brownie points that will assuage her own illegal activities, calls a local detective to tell him that she has spotted a machine gun in the car of a recent frequent patron from "up North."  The tip is in turn passed on to the Special Agent in Charge of the San Antonio field office of the FBI, Gus Jones.  An initial check of the apartment where Carroll and Fisher are staying however finds nothing out of the ordinary, but when the madam once more calls with a new tip about a "gangster" coming over to take one of her girls out horseback riding, two detectives, Henry C. Perrow (some accounts also have the officer named as H.C. Perrin) and Al Hartman decide to investigate ... a decision only one of them will live to regret.

                                                  
                                                          Jones

When ex-boxer turned bank robber Carroll arrives in a cab and picks up his "date," the two officers follow in their unmarked car.  The wary outlaw though notices the car following behind and in the middle of downtown San Antonio, only a half a mile or so from the Alamo, he orders the cab driver to stop.  Leaping from the vehicle, Carroll is instantly in flight, running around a corner and up an alley ... a dead end alley.  Behind him, fifty-six-year-old Perrow, carrying a sawed-off shotgun, and Hartman, armed with his service revolver, race into the alley after their quarry and with no out for anyone, a one-sided gun battle takes place.  Before he can react at all, Carroll's first bullet strikes Perrow, a fifteen year veteran of the police department, right between the eyes, killing the detective instantly and accurate firing continuing, the outlaw's next shots shatter the right wrist and elbow of Hartman (Hartman will crawl out of the alley and empty his pistol at Carroll, but the wounds and distance allow the killer to escape without a scratch).  

                            
                                                          Carroll

Enemies down, Carroll then jogs out of the alley and after using his gun to commandeer a ride from the driver of a pickup truck who has the misfortune to be passing by at the wrong moment, is soon on the road north, headed back to St. Paul, vacation over (the rest of the gang also flees town at the news of the shootout ... all but Fisher that is, he is a little too tardy relocating and Jones will arrest the crook, starting the bandit on his way to a term in Leavenworth Prison on already existing robbery charges).

                                       
                                               Perrow

Justice delayed but not negated, the next year, 1934, Carroll will again be confronted on a city's streets by officers of the law with much different results ... last stop Waterloo, Iowa, at the age of only thirty-three.

               

BABY FACE NELSON - CORPSE

11/27/1934 - Baby Face Nelson's reign of a month as America's Public Enemy #1 comes to a violent end in Illinois.  

                                     

The subject of a nationwide manhunt since the October death of Pretty Boy Floyd, Nelson is spotted in Wisconsin at a hideout he has patronized in the past, the Lake Como Inn.  Under surveillance by the FBI, Nelson avoids a gun battle when agents at the inn fail to identify the killer (sunlight on the black Ford's front window and dust from over a week on the road obscure views into the vehicle, also occupied by Nelson's wife, Helen, and the outlaw's partner, John Paul Chase) until after the wary bandit reverses course and heads back towards Chicago ... avoids a gun battle for the moment.  Realizing who they have just encountered, FBI field office in Chicago is quickly telephoned and agents hit the roads north of the city looking for the outlaw ... and around 3:00 in the afternoon, roughly thirty minutes later they find him headed south!  Matching the Illinois license plate they've been given as they head up Highway 12 (a parallel two-lane strip of blacktop separated by a grass median), 639578, Special Agents Bill Ryan and Agent Tom McDade make a U-turn in their Ford coupe and begin following Nelson's vehicle ... a maneuver that insanely causes the outlaw to make two U-turns of his own that quickly put the killer in pursuit of his hunters.

                     
                                        Lake Como

"Pull over!" Nelson yells as he comes abreast of the agent's car ... an order that is ignored.  Instead, as driver McDade crouches to stay out of the line of fire, Ryan empties his pistol at the Ford of the outlaws ... action which is answered by Nelson firing his pistol at the agents as he drives with one hand, while Chase targets the FBI car with bullets from a .351 automatic rifle.  

                                
                                                      John Paul Chase

Miraculously no one is hit in the lead exchange except the cars of both parties ... windows are shattered and the radiator of the Ford Nelson is driving is holed.  Narrowly missing a collision with a milk truck, the FBI agents put finally are able to put distance between themselves and their pursuers, sand pull over to make a stand against the outlaws further down the road ... but the public enemy and his companions never make an appearance for they have become engaged in another shootout, this time with thirty-five-year-old FBI Inspector Samuel Cowley and thirty-one-year-old Special Agent Herman Hollis.

                                   
                            Cowley                              Hollis

Coming upon the moving gun battle, the northbound car driven by Hollis makes its own U-turn and is soon upon the outlaws as their car falters from the radiator hit.  Approaching a roadside park, Nelson suddenly pulls off the highway and skids to a halt on a dirt road.  Hollis responds by slamming on his brakes and cars at rest, in front of a score of witnesses at the Standard Oil and Shell gas stations on the other side of the road, the lawmen and outlaws engage in a firefight that seems scripted by Hollywood.  From a distance of roughly 150 feet, Nelson and Chase blaze away with a Thompson machine gun and .351 automatic rifle, while Cowley and Hollis answer with a machine gun of their own (Cowley) and shotgun pellets and pistol fire.  In the exchange, Nelson is the first to be hit, and whether angered by his wound or realizing the hurt is fatal, he then does the unthinkable ... leaving the protection of the car he steps into the open and stalks forward to better target his adversaries.  Firing the automatic rifle so fast that witnesses believe he is using a machine gun, Nelson somehow manages to stay erect despite being holed seventeen times ... six .45 slugs from Cowley hit the outlaw in the stomach and chest and eleven shotgun pellets perforate both his legs.  Erect long enough to place mortal bullets in Cowley's chest and stomach (Cowley and Nelson have almost identical fatal wounds to their shredded intestines), then as Hollis runs for the slim protection of a nearby telephone pole, put a killing round in the agent's head (along with W. Carter Baum at Little Bohemia, Nelson still holds the dubious honor of killing the most FBI agents in the line of duty ... three).  Hollis is survived by a wife and young son, Cowley leaves behind a wife and two sons.

                       

Firing at an end (almost, as the outlaws leave, off duty Patrolman William Gallagher, hearing the noise of the battle at the Shell station where he is selling tickets for an American Legion benefit, grabs a rifle and as Nelson and company exit the scene, fires on the fleeing vehicle), Nelson then gets into the FBI men's car and backs it up to his own vehicle where Chase transfers their weapons to the new ride and takes over the driving responsibilities from his bleeding partner as they head out again for Chicago (hiding in a ditch during the battle, Helen Gillis is picked up just before the group vacates Barrington).  True to form, Nelson goes out like lived later that evening, the cliche of an outlaw adios, only real through and through ... after telling his wife to say goodbye to his mother, the killer recites the names of his brothers and sisters, begins to cry when he tells his wife to give a farewell to their children and then passes away after whispering, "It's getting dark Helen.  I can't see you anymore."  

                     
                                                          Headline stuff
             
                                                       At the morgue
             
                                                   After the autopsy
            
                                                   Lawmen and their prize
                          
                                                                  Adios

The murdering outlaw is twenty-five-years-old when his violent life comes to its not unexpected conclusion.