ALCATRAZ WINS AGAIN

1/13/1939 - Less than nine months after an escape attempt costs the lives of guard (Royal Cline, killed with a hammer) and a convict (Thomas Limerick, shot to death by tower guard Harold Stites), five prisoners decide to test Alcatraz again.

                                    
                                                             The Rock

Conceived by two murderers, Dale Stamphill and the notorious Arthur "Dock" Barker, the escape plot entails manufacture of personal saws capable of cutting through cell and window bars and a metal bar spreader, sneaking the saws and spreader through a metal detector called the "snitch box" and into the cell block, getting the saws and spreader to the isolation cells in D-Block where the weak bars have been found, breaking through the bars without being detected (and covering up the work that has been done until the men are ready to move), and moving to the water on a foggy night when the escapees have the least chance of being detected (little thought is given about what to do when they get to the water, the men believing they can craft a raft on refuse that dots the beaches of the island).  Along with Stamphill and Barker, in on the plot are a trio of rotten apples ... William Martin is serving a sentence for a post office robbery, Rufus McCain is in for bank robbery, and Henry Young is behind bars for bank robbery and murder.

                                
                                                   Martin, Stamphill, McCain
                               
                                                                Barker
                                   
                                                                 Young

Plan made, it takes months to execute its various requirements ... the saws are manufactured out of a large machine shop saw that is being scrapped, the saws and spreader are moved into the cell block by hiding them within a blade sharpener made for the guards to get more use out of the cons allotment of shaving razor blades, the equipment is moved into D-Block through use of a holed cell getting a new toilet and a crawl through the utility corridor dividing the cell blocks, the work on the bars is covered up using a mixture of paint and floor wax and a puttyish compound of tooth powder and paint, and Barker gets in a fight (sawing away on the bars of his new cell, the outlaw will hum "I'll be home for Christmas!") and Stamphill lets himself be caught with a knife so they get assigned to the isolation cell block.  Pieces all in place, the men then wait for a foggy night to make their break.

An omen of how things will go, the grey dark night the men need for their escape comes on Friday, the 13th.

                       
                       Area where the cons hit the water, now known as
                       Barker Beach

Waiting for the 3:00 head count by the guards to be concluded, the cons leave their cells through ten by sixteen inch gaps in the bars, crawl out of the cell block through an opening in the window bars fourteen inches tall and twelve inches wide, drop eight feet to the ground outside, slink past a guard tower, and make their way to the end of the island closest to San Francisco.  In the dark, seeking various flotation methods the group breaks up as escape discovered by a guard making his rounds, the prison's alarm siren begins to sound.  Five failures ensue.  Martin falls off a twenty foot cliff he is attempting to climb down and is captured in the water by Lt. Isaac Faulk and Deputy Warden Edward Miller.  While arguing whether they should try to take family hostages from the guards' living area,Young and McCain try to make a raft out of pieces of wood, broken chairs, their clothes and bed sheets, and are forced to surrender by Lt. Henry Weinhold.  And the worst fate befalls the team of Stamphill and Barker, the planners of the escape.   

                                
                                                      Arthur "Dock" Barker

Swimming for San Francisco, the tide pushes the pair back to shore where they are cornered by Officer Clifford Ditmer standing on an overlooking cliff with a machine gun and armed guards on the prison launch.  Ignoring calls for their surrender and the warning shots that are fired, the men scurry about seeking somewhere to flee ... movement that causes the guards to finally open fire on the men.  Stamphill is hit in the leg, an injury that will require a hospital stay in traction of eight weeks, followed by two weeks in a cast and then a stay of seventeen months in a solitary cell (Martin, McCain, and Young will also spend months in isolation cells).  But Barker gets it the worst ... also hit in the legs, he rises up in pain from the water, directly into the path of a bullet that goes through the outlaw's neck and exits at the corner of his right eye.  Taken to the prison hospital in a semiconscious state, the former public enemy's last words before dying at 5:30 in the evening the next day are, "I'm all shot to hell.  I was a fool to try it."

                 
                                                            Alcatraz Prison

Feet first free for Barker, there will be more death in the future because of the failed escape.  Brooding over the outcome of their attempt to leave Alcatraz, former friends McCain and Young will trade insults and accusations until finally their feud becomes violent.  In the prison tailor shop in December of 1940, Young takes a knife made from a sharpened spoon and stabs McCain multiple times in the stomach, killing the convict.  Brought to trial for murder, Young will escape a death penalty when his lawyers are allowed to use the harsh conditions on Alcatraz as an excuse for the killer's actions and a jury finds him guilty of only involuntary manslaughter (events that will be portrayed in bowdlerized fashion in the Hollywood movie Murder in the First starring Kevin Bacon as Young).

DILLINGER BECOMES A KILLER

1/15/1934 - Seeking to fund his upcoming winter vacation to Arizona (gang members Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, and Russell Clark are already partying there), on a chilly Monday afternoon, John Dillinger, John "Red" Hamilton, and an unidentified third man (the caper's driver) decide to rob the First National Bank of East Chicago ... with tragic results.

                              
                              First National - East Chicago

At around 2:45 a new black Ford V-8 Tudor sedan wearing Ohio plates double parks in front of the bank and disgorges Dillinger and Hamilton, wearing large overcoats to disguise that they have on armor vests.  Entering the establishment through two sets of double doors, upon reaching the lobby, Dillinger removes a machine gun from a black carrying case normally used for musical instruments, inserts a fifty-round magazine in the weapon and declares, "This is a stickup!  Everybody put your hands up!"  Over twenty employees and patrons receive the message, and with the assistance of Hamilton's pointing pistol and Dillinger's machine gun, the group is quickly lined up facing a wall ... but not before the Vice President of the bank, Walter Spencer, sitting at his desk, trips a silent alarm button with his foot that notifies East Chicago police headquarters, less than two blocks away, that a robbery is in progress. 

                                
                                Dillinger

While Dillinger watches the group of hostages (noticing a patron has left his money on a counter, the outlaw will advise the man to pick it up as he and Hamilton only want the bank's money), Hamilton raids the cages and vault of the bank, placing $20,736 in a large Federal Reserve sack.  Sadly, before he is done, members of the East Chicago police begin to arrive.

                                     
                                      Hamilton

Patrolman Hobart Wilgus is the first to arrive.  Thinking the alarm is just another malfunction of the recently installed system, Wilgus walks into the bank without unbuttoning his coat to provide access to his weapon and is immediately taken captive by Dillinger.  Seeing their companion grabbed, Detective Sgt. William Patrick O'Malley and patrolmen Julius Schrenko and Pete Walen back away from the bank's entrance and take up positions from which they can fire upon the bandits when they leave.  While they wait, a squad car pulls up and adds Captain Tim O'Neill, Captain Ed Knight, and Officers Nick Ranch and Lloyd Mulvahill to the ambush crew ... none of them though think to do anything about the driver in the idling double parked car in front of the bank.

                                             
                                             Dillinger, later in '34

Done with their robbery and knowing they have enemies waiting outside, Hamilton and Dillinger grab Spencer and Wilgus as hostage shields and the group walks out the front door.  Not wanting an innocent to be hit, the authorities hold their fire ... but only briefly.  O'Malley, holding his .38 revolver at the ready as he stands at the entrance of the next door Newberry's Five and Ten Cent Store, yells "Wilgus," causing the officer to suddenly dart away.  Presented with a now clear shot, O'Malley puts four bullets into the center of Dillinger's chest, staggering the outlaw ... and enraging him.  Protecting by the steel he is wearing, Dillinger pushes Spencer aside, swings his weapon at O'Malley and fires a disabling burst of lead at the lawman's legs while screaming, "You asked for it."  And O'Malley gets it too ... falling forward he is hit by eight .45 slugs, one of which passes directly through his heart and kills the forty-three-year-old officer instantly.  He leaves behind a wife and three daughters.  

                                                     
                                                     O'Malley

Then all hell breaks loose on the street.  Thinking he will grab the fleeing Wilgus, Hamilton steps away from Spencer and is immediately targeted by the other police shooters outside the bank. Despite wearing a bullet-proof vest, the deluge of lead finds the bandit seven different times in unprotected areas and he goes down, gravely wounded.  But not abandoned, while sweeping the street with slugs from his machine gun, Dillinger grabs his friend under the shoulder with his left arm and drags him to the waiting getaway car.  Leaving rubber on the asphalt of Chicago Avenue once Hamilton and Dillinger are inside, the Ford screeches away in a hail of bullets, hitting a parked car and having its passenger door fly open as it vanishes down the street (not safe yet, a pair of passing Indiana game wardens gives chase and fires on the vehicle), heading into Chicago.

           
           Murder weapon

In the aftermath of the robbery, $5,000 is spent on the services of an underworld doctor who treats Hamilton's wounds (and the nursing services of the bandit's girlfriend, Pat Cherrington) ... months later he will again be well enough to be wounded some more.  Leaving his partner behind, Dillinger picks up his girlfriend Billie Frechette, and the pair leaves town and heads south for Tucson, Arizona ... a destination that will lead to the destruction of the first so-called "Dillinger Gang" ... and when he is brought back to Indiana under arrest, the outlaw will face murder charges and the death penalty for the killing of O'Malley.

                       
                                      Under custody later in January

JOHNNY TORRIO DECIDES TO RETIRE

1/24/1925 - Twelve days after gunmen try to take out Al Capone by shooting up his sedan (an incident which will cause the mobster to procure a specially built, $20,000 Cadillac featuring bulletproof glass and a steel-armored body weighing seven tons), members of Chicago's North Side Gang go after Johnny Torrio, Capone's boss, in retaliation for the November murder of gangster Dion O'Banion.

                                 
                                    Big news in Chicago

Returning from Saturday business downtown, accompanied by his wife Anna, who has been shopping, and his chauffeur Robert Barton (on loan from associate Jake Guzik), forty-three-year-old mob boss Torrio arrives at the South Shore apartment he is living at (under the alias of Frank Langley), unaware that killers are waiting for him.  It is a little after 4:00 in the afternoon.

                               
                               Torrio

Watching from inside a gray Cadillac that has been parked just around the corner for an hour with its motor idling are the leaders of Torrio's bootlegging rivals in the North Side Gang ... driver Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci, and shooters Hymie Weiss (armed with a shotgun) and George "Bugs" Moran (carrying a .45 automatic).  When Torrio leaves the protection of the black Lincoln sedan he has been riding in the killers spring into action.

                                     
                                     Drucci
               
               Weiss
             
             Moran

Flanking the Lincoln at its nose and tail, Weiss and Moran open fire, hitting Barton in the leg and causing Torrio to drop the packages he is carrying for his wife and flee towards the front door of his apartment (where a horrified Anna stands watching) ... he gets a half-dozen steps before being hit numerous times.  A bullet from Moran's gun savages Torrio in the right arm, and as he spins around trying to reach for his weapon while stumbling backwards, the second barrel of Weiss's shotgun puts buckshot into the gangster's jaw, neck, chest and belly.  Down and incapacitated by his wounds, Torrio is helpless as Moran walks over and places his pistol to the mobsters head.  Click ... Click.  Moran's weapon is empty and as the killer tries to put a new clip in his automatic for a coup de grace, Drucci honks the horn of the Cadillac signaling his friends it is time to go because the delivery van of the Oriental Laundry Company has arrived on the scene and there are now too many intruders and witnesses about. 

                    
                               Torrio's bullet riddled Lincoln

The trio flees believing Torrio will soon die from his multiple wounds, but rushed to Jackson Park Hospital by an ambulance, the mobster will survive his perilous encounter with the North Side Gang.  Questioned by police he will claim not to know who his assailants were (and Barton or Anna also clam up to authorities).  Shaken to his core by the nearness of his demise, Torrio though does tell Capone who attacked him when he makes the decision to retire and turn over control of his underworld enterprises to his twenty-six-year-old friend.  A wise decision, Torrio will live to the ripe old age of seventy-five, while scores of others will soon perish in the mayhem his former lieutenant is about to unleash on the city of Chicago. 

                                   
                                   Torrio with scarf hiding his wounds
                                   
                                   The new boss

HANDSOME JACK GETS GUNNED

1/6/1934 - The group of criminals known as "The College Kidnappers" because their leader, Theodore "Handsome Jack" Klutas, attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign briefly in his youth, is put down by police officers working for Captain Dan Gilbert of the State's Attorney's office.

                             
                                                  Klutas

Born into a respectable family in 1900, Klutas creates a band of cutthroats that make most of their coin by kidnapping wealthy mobsters, gamblers, and bootleggers, members of society able to pay huge ransoms, but not inclined to ask for help from local authorities (Klutas also robs banks, has murdered two police officers, and is one of the first criminals that tries to alter his appearance and fingerprints through plastic surgery).  For the members of his gang, Edward Doll, Russell Hughes, Frank Souder, Gale Swoley, Ernest Rossi, Eddie Wagner, Earl McMahon, Julius Jones, and Walter Dietrich it is a lucrative occupation that nets the men over $500,000 in ransom fees.  It also eventually gains the group the ire of a very dangerous man ... Mr. Al Capone.

 
Capone

Not amused by having members of his organization kidnapped, Capone gunmen capture Julius Jones and give him a message from their boss for Klutas ... cease and desist or be killed.  Klutas does not take the bad news well, and in a classic case of wanting to shoot the messenger, decides Jones is weak for being caught and orders the execution of his own man.  Setting up a trap, the Klutas mob steals Jones' car, then the next day, masquerading as members of the police department, call their target with information where the vehicle can be located.  Wary, Jones notices Klutas gunmen stationed around the car and flees the scene before being fired on ... and makes the decision that will take the College Kidnappers down; caught between Capone's blood thirsty men and the killers in the employ of Klutas, he will betray his former partners for protection from the authorities.

Armed with the details Jones provides on the location of several hideouts, two squads of police led by Lt. Frank Johnson launch an afternoon raid on a brick bungalow at 619 South 24th Avenue in the community of Bellwood, Illinois, directly across the street from the home of the town's police chief ... in the bathroom they arrest a man in the process of shaving and in the bedroom they place into custody a man in the middle of dressing.  Neither crook is Klutas, but the man with his face covered in shaving cream is a major catch himself, former Baron Lamm bank robber and recent escapee from the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City (using guns provided by former convict John Dillinger) where he was serving a life sentence, Walter Dietrich (the other is Earl McMahon, wanted in a $50,000 jewel robbery).

           
                                                                  Dietrich

Then in hiding, the police wait to see if Klutas will show at the site. Four hours later a car pulls up at the curb in front of the building and Klutas gets out.  Ringing the bell of the front door expecting one of his men to answer, the outlaw instead finds Sergeant Joe Healy waiting on the other side holding a machine gun.  "Hands up!  Police Officers!"  Showing none of the intelligence that got him into the University of Illinois, Klutas instead decides to play quick draw and reaches under his overcoat for his pistol ... a move that results in the faster Healy pouring a burst of .45 slugs into the chest of the desperado.  Knocked backwards, Klutas falls off the porch of the bungalow and a bleeding mess, collapses on the sidewalk, dead at the young age of 34, ending the criminal activities of the College Kidnappers.

                    
                                                    News of the killing

TWO YOUNG BROTHERS LEAVE

1/5/1932 - Escaping from the murders of the six law enforcement officers they have just killed that will come to be known as the Young Brothers Massacre (or the Brookline Shootout), Jennings and Harry Young avoid the fire of Motorcycle Officer Cecil McBride, newly arrived at the brothers' farm as part of a rescue team, as they run through a field of corn to safety.  Behind them they leave a scene of chaos and irate Missouri authorities who soon put together a huge manhunt of city police departments, constables, railroad detectives, the state police, the American Legion, the National Guard, and any citizen willing to take orders and hoist a weapon.


                            
                                                              McBride

Moving to the place they will least be expected, the pair make their way into the nearby town of Springfield and steal a Ford Coupe ... then they are off for Texas where they have been running a major car theft ring.  Driving at high speed, the killers go into a ditch and wreck their vehicle near the town of Streetman, Texas.  Helped by passerby H. D. Carroll in removing the car from the ditch, the men abandon their transportation to the farmer who makes several discovery which he soon relates to the police ... the car contains a shotgun and a rifle and is missing its license plates (soon discovered nearby - Missouri 363-662).  Information relayed to Springfield, soon all of Texas joins Missouri in being on the lookout for the criminal brothers.  It does not take long for the bandits to be located.  

        
            The escape vehicle and Carroll

Hitchhiking their way south, the brothers make Houston and rent a room, but there their escape ends.  

                
                          The criminal Young Brothers (Paul not involved in the shootings)

Reading his Tuesday morning paper, carpenter J. F. Tomlinson is horrified to discover that the two men he has gladly rented a room in his house to the day before are the fugitive Young Brothers.  Calling Percy F. Heard, the Houston Chief of Police with the information, a raiding party is rapidly put together and sent to Tomlinson's bungalow at 4710 Walker Avenue.  This time the Youngs will be confronted by officers carrying revolvers, shotguns, machine guns, rifles, grenades, tear gas bombs, and gas masks.  Shortly after 9:00 am, gas bombs are thrown into the room the outlaws are occupying ... then Lieutenant Claude Beverly and Officers Peyton and Bradshaw go into action.  Fired on from a back bathroom, the lawmen answer with their own bullets and shotgun blasts until eventually they hear a weak voice announce, "We're dead, come on in."  And indeed the brothers are, killing each other instead of dying from the wounds inflicted upon them by the Houston police ... a brief 72 hours after callously murdering six Missouri lawmen eight hundred miles away, Harry and Jennings Young are themselves killed, and only their immediate family mourn the deaths.

              
                   Harry being transported to the hospital ... and the house on Walker Avenue

                
                                                        Swiss cheesed Jennings
                    
                                   Harry                                                Jennings

MAYHEM AT THE YOUNG BROTHERS' FARM

1/2/1932 - Tragedy strikes outside of Brookline, Missouri when a group of ill prepared lawmen launch a raid on the family farm of the Young brothers, criminals with records for burglary, theft, stealing cars and murder.

       
                                                   The Young farmhouse

Believing that sisters Lorena and Vinita Young's attempt to sell a stolen car in the town of Springfield is evidence that their brothers might be in the area, Greene County Sheriff Marcell Hendrix puts together a small posse of nine police officers and one civilian and at 3:30 in the afternoon sets off for the Young Farm in two cars, armed with only pistols, limited ammunition, and a tear gas gun with two shells.  Fanning out around the farm house believed to be housing outlaw brothers Harry and Jennings Young, Hendrix's raiding party consists of Deputy Wiley Mashburn, Deputy Ollie Crosswhite, Springfield Chief Detective Tony Oliver, Officer Sid Meadows, Officer Charlie Houser, Officer Ben Bilyeu, Officer Owen Brown, Officer Virgil Johnson, Officer Frank Pike, and a local named R.G. Wegman ... none are prepared for the carnage that is about to come their way.

                                  
                                           Harry                         Jennings

Investigating whether the house is occupied or not, after knocking, shouting, and trying doors has provided no results, Hendrix and Mashburn kick in the kitchen door ... and are almost instantly greeted by two shotgun blasts fired from close range by Harry, one that hits Hendrix in the right shoulder and chest, killing the sheriff, and the other that blasts off most of the left side of Mashburn's face, mortally wounding the deputy.

                              
                                     Kitchen door where Hendrix and
                                               Mashburn perished

Gun battle ... in the shooting that ensues as Johnson, Bilyeu, and Wegman return to town for help and more bullets (leaving in a hail of fire that blows out the windows of the car they are driving and wounding Johnson and Pike), the pistols of the remaining lawmen prove no match for the marksmanship of Jennings, armed with a Remington repeating rifle, or for Harry's Winchester 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun.  Seeking a target, Officer Houser is felled by a slug that hits him in the forehead as he peeks out from behind the tree he was hiding behind.  Officer Meadows suffers a similar fate when he is felled by a rifle round that plows through his brain just above his right eye.  Wounded by multiple shotgun pellets and a bullet through the shoulder, Detective Oliver stumbles into the open and is permanently put down by a bullet that destroys both his lungs.  Out of ammo, Officers Pike and Brown flee the scene and only Deputy Crosswhite remains to continue the fight ... but not for long.  Emptying his weapon into a window in the house, Crosswhite is eventually taken out too ... occupied by the rifle fire of Jennings, he is brutally killed when Harry creeps up behind him and shots him in the head from two feet away with his shotgun.

             
                                               Where Crosswhite was killed

                 
                                       The dead

No targets remaining alive, the brothers take weapons and money from the bodies scattered about the house, quickly pack bags, and then flee into the night ... just as help finally arrives from town.  The deaths are the worst single killing of lawmen in the 20th century and will not be topped until sixty New York City and Port Authority police officers perish in the utter madness of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.  As for the killer brothers, Harry and Jennings Young have all of three short days left to live before fatal police retribution finds them. 

DOCK FORGETS HIS GUN

1/8/1935 - Using information provided by a doctor in Toledo, Ohio about the recent marriage of one of his patients, twenty-four-year-old Mildred Kuhlmann, the FBI, led by Special Agent Earl Connelley, closes in on two Chicago residences hoping to arrest members of the notorious Barker-Karpis Gang.  After a week of watching, a raiding party of twelve agents surround the Surf Lane Apartments, believing the Mr. Esser inside unit G-1 is really bank robber, kidnapper, and murderer, Arthur "Dock" Barker ... and they are right!

                                             
                                                   Dock Barker

Ready, instead of needing to kick in any doors, at 6:30 in the evening Barker and his wife emerge from the apartment building and begin walking up the street.  Immediately the agents closest to the pair move in.  Pistol in hand rookie agent Alexander Muzzey yells, "Stick 'em up. We're federal agents!" as his partner, former Oklahoma City cop Jerry Campbell, produces a Thompson machine gun from under his overcoat, while three other agents also draw their weapons and box in the couple.  Not the sharpest knife in the kitchen, though caught, Barker however decides to flee, but before he can be gunned down he slips on a patch of sidewalk ice and falls face first into a pool of muddy slush.  Drug to his feet and put in cuffs, as Barker is hustled to a car for transportation to FBI headquarters downtown he berates himself, "This is a helluva time to be caught without a gun."  Indeed it has been ... but at the Pine Grove Apartments, which federal agents are also watching, a lack of weaponry, or willingness to use it, will not be the case.

                             
                                                             Dock in custody

Agents, agents, and more agents, over twenty arrayed for action, with Barker under arrest, Connelley shifts operations to the apartment building at 3920 Pine Grove Avenue and at 11:00 uses the call button for Apartment One North to order the surrender of its occupants.  After a few minutes, Clara Gibson, holding a brown Chow in her arms named Rex, emerges, soon followed by the wife of outlaw Willie Harrison, and then by bank robber Bryan Bolton ... all are put in custody without incident.  The fourth resident of One North, bandit Russell "Slim Gray" Gibson, decides however that he is not surrendering.

                                           
                                                           Gibson

Armed with a Browning automatic rifle, a .32 caliber pistol, and wearing a bulletproof vest, Gibson quietly slips out of the apartment building, goes down a flight of wooden stairs and then flees into a dark alley at the back of the structure ... an alley where twelve agents are waiting. Ordered to stop by Special Agent Doc White, the outlaw responds by opening up with his BAR and a short gun battle begins which Gibson violently loses ... no agents are hit by his rifle fire, but the bank robber is himself struck multiple times in the chest (his protective vest proves no match for the high powered rounds the FBI is using), stomach, and head.  Taken to the emergency room at the American Hospital on Irving Park Boulevard, Gibson goes out like the outlaw he had been ... queried by agents as to the whereabouts of his bandit friends Freddy Barker and Alvin Karpis, the desperado snarls, "Tell you nothing!" and dies in silence at 1:40 in the morning.

Successful raids that have removed three major public menaces from circulation, a bonus is provided when agents discover a map in Barker's apartment with an area of the state of Florida stupidly circled in red ... that information is in turn used in the questioning of a singing Bolton (frightened by federal interrogation techniques that include phone books forcefully applied to outlaw craniums) and agents soon begin a search of the Lake Weir region for killer Freddy Barker and his mother, Kate "Ma" Barker.  Unlike his older brother Arthur, Freddy will be armed to the teeth when he has his confrontation with the FBI.

                       
                                        Ma                                          Freddy