THE FIRST NATIONAL OF FAIRBURY GETS HIT

4/4/1933 - Proving that no business in the Midwest is safe from their depredations, the Barker-Karpis Gang leaves its St. Paul lair and travels south to the town of Fairbury, Nebraska ... they have business to conduct at the First National Bank.

                                   
                                                      Fairbury

The gang is a loose confederation of outlaws that varies from job to job and for the Fairbury raid the band consists of eight robbers using two cars ... Eddie Green, a freelance "jug marker" known for his abilities to scout potential scores, Alvin Karpis, a former child marble champion now known for his cool under duress, Fred and Dock Barker, the murderous children of Missouri hillbilly, Kate "Ma" Barker, Frank "Jelly" Nash, a master thief who will be the catalyst of the Kansas City Massacre that is but a few months away, Jesse Doyle, a burglar friend of Fred Barker and Karpis during their days together inside the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing, Volney Davis, an Oklahoma badman buddy of Dock's, and con man Earl Christman.

                           
                                                        Fred Barker
           
                        Dock Barker                                   Alvin Karpis
  
                                                Frank "Jelly" Nash

Election day Tuesday, Fairbury wakes up wondering how the vote will go on whether to allow the Bonham Theater to open on Sundays ... it is a town with no idea it is about to be visited by some of the most murderous individuals in the annals of thievery.  Shortly after 9:00 in the morning, a dark Chevy sedan driven by Fred Barker, and a dirty Buick under the control of Jesse Doyle, pull up in front of the First National Bank and the gang immediately sets about plundering the establishment.

                      
                                                The Bonham

Employees and patrons forced to go face down on the floor or be shot, teller F. P. Conrad is so shocked to have a machine gun thrust in his face that he starts his day off with an upset stomach, compliments of swallowing his chewing tobacco.  Searching for the president of the bank to open the vault, the outlaws settle for the duo of Cashier R. S. Wifley and Teller Frank Nelson to provide access to the bank's major assets and it takes the gang only a few minutes to reward themselves for their morning's work with $25,700 in cash and $125,7000 in securities and bonds.  Time to leave, the exiting will not be as easy as the entering was for the thieves.   


                              
                                                      Chopper

Unknown to the gang, on the very day and time they have chosen to rob the bank, across the square in the courthouse, the town's sheriff and deputy sheriff are meeting with a machine gun salesman, discussing upgrading the police department's firepower.  Alerted by a downtown businessman that the bank is being robbed, the trio grab up "samples" and engage the outlaws in a shootout.  In the lead that flies, the bandits blow out a side-street window of the bank to provide easier access to their cars, weapon pitchman Glen Johnson is wounded, Deputy Sheriff W. S. Davidson is hit in the ankle, and human shield hostage bank employee Keith Sextron is struck five times but survives.  Using hostages on the running boards of their escape cars, the Barker-Karpis makes a rapid departure from the city, but does not leave Fairbury unscathed ... in the melee in front of the bank, gunman Earl Christman takes a bullet to the stomach, a wound demanding immediate medical attention.

                            

Fifteen miles out of town the gang switches cars, leaving the vehicles used to raid Fairbury behind, and a group consisting of Doyle, Davis, and Dock Barker take Christman to the nearest safe haven where he might be able to get the doctoring he needs ... the Kansas City, Missouri, home of lawman turned outlaw, Verne Miller.  But there will be no recover for the wounded badman and days after arriving at Miller's place, Christman dies and the gang buries him in an unmarked grave outside of town.  Caring complete once Christman passes, Doyle, Davis, and Barker then head north to the gang's headquarters in St. Paul ... there they get their cuts of the money from the bank job, and along with their other criminal confederates, begin planning an even bigger job, the kidnapping of brewery magnate, William Hamm, Jr.

                    

As for the election, in the tumult of the robbery, most citizens forget to vote and lacking the necessary clout required for change, Fairbury's theater remains closed on Sundays.

THE SCHEMER AIN'T SO SMART

4/4/1927 - Vincenzo D'Ambrosio, better known as Chicago mobster Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci because of the intelligence he brings to planning crimes, shows his dunderhead side when he allows his temper to get the best of him and gets into a fistfight with a police officer ... a police officer holding a gun.

                                
                                                      Drucci

In the middle of a war with Johnny Torrio's and Al Capone's South-Side Gang for control of Chicago's rackets, at the tender age of only twenty-nine, Ducci already has created a darkly impressive criminal resume which includes robbery, bootlegging, kidnapping, the attempted murder of Torrio in front of his home (Torrio is seriously wounded and decides to retire), two failed attempts of the life of Capone (in one, the gangster's car is shot to pieces, in the other, the hotel Scarface uses as his headquarters), two gun battles with Capone shooters, and the murders of rival mobsters Angelo Genna, Anthony Genna, and Samuzzo Amatuna.

               
                          Samuzzo                     Angelo                Antonio

Seeking to get a politician in office friendly to their pursuits, the North Side Gang throws it support in the 1927 mayor's race at former mayor, William "Big Bill" Thompson ... support in the form of a massive strong-arm campaign against the followers of incumbent mayor, Democrat William Dever, breaking skulls and destroying places of business.  One ransacking too many though, when a watchman is beaten up and the office of a Dever alderman is trashed just days before the election, fighting intimidation with intimidation, the mayor has had enough and orders the Chief of Police to arrest the leadership of the North Siders on sight ... and young hot shot Detective Dan Healy, already the victor of quick draw contest with an holdup man, is very happy to comply with the order!

                  
                                                   Dever & Thompson

Roaming the city looking for gangsters to bust, Healy and a group of detectives in a squad car swoop in on Drucci as he is leaving the Hotel Bellaire in the company of two associates.  Things immediately turn ugly when Healy grabs Drucci's arm as he escorts the mobster to the car for transportation to court for a habeas corpus hearing (where the gangster's lawyer is waiting to post bond for his client's release) and the two men begin snarling and cussing at each other.  Once inside the car, the animosity continues and escalates.

                                                   
                                                 Detective Healy

"I'll get you. I'll wait on your doorstep for you," Drucci screams at Healy as he lifts himself on one leg and strikes forward at the detective.  "Go on, you kid copper, I'll fix you for this.  You take your gun off and I'll kick hell out of you!"  Having enough, Healy orders the car stopped and gets out and points his pistol through the back window at the gangster, demanding for Drucci to shut up and behave himself.  Instead, Drucci yells, "I'll fix you," and grabs Healy's right hand, trying to take the pistol away.  It is a mortal mistake!  Rather than releasing his weapon, the detective pulls the trigger four times, sending bullets into Drucci's arm, leg, and stomach.  Squad car now quiet, the destination of the vehicle now becomes the nearest hospital, but by the time Healy and company pull into the emergency entrance, their cargo has become cold slab material.

                         
                                Dead Drucci

One of the kingpins of Chicago crime, the sendoff of the temper tantrum dead mobster includes huge crowds outside the funeral house, a silver casket worth $100,000, flower adornments costing over $300,000, and a lavish burial at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.  Drucci gone, leadership of the North Siders passes to George "Bugs" Moran, a pebble in the shoe of Capone that the mobster finally decides to have removed on St. Valentine's Day, 1929.

    
                                                   Goodbye Vincent
                              
                                                         Casket Blues
                 
                                                       Drucci Departs

STOMPANATO GETS STABBED

4/4/1958 - Only days after the glitz, glamour, fame, and fortune of the movie industry is on display at the 30th Academy Awards (where Bridge on the River Kwai wins the Best Picture of 1957), Hollywood shows the world a far darker side of life in Southern California when he-man thug Johnny Stompanato is stabbed to death in the bedroom of a Beverly Hills mansion by fourteen-year-old Cheryl Crane ... the young daughter of screen legend Lana Turner.   

      
                                                    Johnny Stomp

Born in Woodstock, Illinois, in 1925, to a family of first generation Italian-Americans, Stompanato graduates from high school at the age of seventeen and then is off to war, becoming a rifleman in the 1st Marine Division and participating in that unit's heroic assaults on the Pacific islands of Peleliu and Okinawa.  After the war, he returns briefly to Illinois, where he works as a bread salesman, before abandoning his Turkish wife, Sarah Utish, and young son, John III, for the potential supposed magic of post-war Los Angeles.  In California, Stompanato translates his muscles, dark features, and history as a Marine into two activities ... he goes from being a $300-a-week bouncer in an underworld nightclub to being the personal bodyguard and moneyman for mobster Mickey Cohen (while going by the monikers of Handsome Harry, Johnny Stomp, John Steele, or Oscar Johnny), and he plays gigolo to a series of wealthy beautiful women, accepting their gifts, or when necessary, blackmailing them into placing their assets in his bank account.  Among the famous women that will get some of the Handsome Harry treatment are Zsa Zsa Gabor, Janet Leigh, June Allyson ... and Lana Turner.  

                            
                                                   Johnny

Discovered in 1936 at the Top Hat Malt Shop on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and McCadden Place by the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, William R. Wilkerson (not Schwab's Pharmacy as movie legends say), Lana Turner is only sixteen-years-old when she parlays her kismet moment of ditching a class at Hollywood High to treat herself to a Coke into a management contract with Zeppo Marx, a role in the Warner Brothers Production, They Won't Forget, and the sex symbol nickname, The Sweater Girl.  By 1957, Turner is a major star, sharing silver screen time with such film luminaries as Clark Gable, Gene Kelly, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Mickey Rooney, Kirk Douglas, and John Wayne.  She is rich, famous, and beautiful ... and unfortunately has a penchant for picking the wrong men to get involved with, already a partner in four failed marriages (eventually she will marry eight times), one of which, to actor and restaurateur Joseph Stephen Crane, produces her only daughter, Cheryl.   

                              
                                                    Turner

The latest bad boy, Johnny Stompanato, comes wanting sex, money, and insider movie information his boss Cohen can use to strong-arm the Hollywood studios.  Given the star's address and phone number by the mobster, in the spring of 1957, fresh from saying adios to husband #4 (Tarzan actor Lex Barker), she is suddenly bombarded by daily offerings of flowers and her favorite records by a handsome hunk of hot calling himself Johnny Steele, wooing that eventually results in an acceptance to meet for drinks ... and the drinks soon lead to multiple beddings and a relationship that runs extremely hot and cold.  There is love, gifts, passionate nights, then fights (including with others, waving a gun about in England, Stompanato will be disarmed violently by a young Sean Connery on the set of Turner's Another Time, Another Place), breakups, and reunions.  Watching from the sideline, Turner's studio, MGM, is not amused by the couple's antics at all.

      
                Airport Meeting - L to R - Unknown reporter, Lana, Johnny, Cheryl

The final breakup begins on Oscar Night.  Nominated for a Best Actress award for her portrayal of Constance MacKenzie in Peyton Place (Joanne Woodward will win for The Three Faces of Eve), knowing MGM will not be pleased and that she will be the talk of the town if she shows up at the event with Mickey Cohen's notorious bodyguard at her side, Turner decides to leave Johnny at home in Beverly Hills and instead takes her daughter Cheryl to the ceremony.  Alone, drinking while watching the event on television, growing jealous as his woman hobnobs with other celebrities, Stompanato gets angrier and angrier at his abandonment and by the time Turner arrives back at 730 North Bedford Drive (a new home for the couple and Cheryl) in the wee hours of March, 27th, the thug in his personality is ready rumble.  Featuring yelling, screaming, slaps, punches, tears, thrown objects, accusations, and lots and lots of threats, the fight the couple has lasts for days before finally culminating on the evening of April, 4th ... a Good Friday that isn't good at all for Turner, her daughter, and especially, not for Stompanato.

       
                         Turner kissing Best Supporting Actor winner Red Buttons

Finally having had enough abuse, Turner demands Stompanato leave the house ... a decision that causes a brutish reaction in which the former Marine threatens to kill Turner, Turner's mother, and Turner's daughter ... the same daughter that can hear the fight from the other side of Turner's bedroom door.  Having seen Stompanato in action before and thus fearing for her and her mother's lives, Crane runs downstairs and arms herself with the only weapon she can find, a large carving knife from the kitchen (a knife purchased just that day by Turner and Stompanato during a brief break in their battle).  Returning upstairs, the teenager beats on the bedroom door until Turner finally lets her in, and there she finds Stompanato in the process of leaving, clothing and hangers in his hands and draped over his body, sliding past Turner towards the door.  But to the frightened teenager's eyes it appears that Stompanato's upraised arm (holding a batch of heavy wooden hangers) is about the deliver a blow to her mother's head, and without discussion, Crane instantly reacts, stepping forward and punching her mother's boyfriend in his unprotected stomach ... with the hand holding the deadly carving knife.  "Oh my God, Cheryl, what have you done?" Stompanato asks painfully, and then, with his last words released, he does a small twitching pirouette, gasps, falls to the floor and dies in Lana Turner's bedroom.  

                
                                                Bedroom Johnny

Everything MGM feared from the relationship and more, the death is front page news around the world ... as is its aftermath, a scandal that includes Mickey Cohen releasing to the press two hundred salacious love letters between Stompanato and Turner (courtesy of a burglary Cohen funds of the apartment his bodyguard keeps for the nights he is spatting with his love or seeking some new strange), Stompanato's burial in a cheap coffin provided by Cohen, a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Stompanato's family against Turner (it will be settled out-of-court for an undisclosed sum) and the very public coroner's inquest into the killing (of the 160 seats in the Hall of Records, the largest courtroom at time time in Beverly Hills, 120 will be reserved for the press).  

                                       
                                        Mickey says goodbye

Murder, manslaughter, or justifiable homicide, for her daughter's defense Turner of course hires the best representation money can buy ... Jerry Geisler, the famous celebrity lawyer with a resume already containing previous scandal victories for Charlie Chaplin and Errol Flynn. 

       
                                            Crane at her hearing

And it is money well spent, because after a series of witnesses testify, the lawyer orchestrates the jury into taking only thirty minutes to absolve Crane of the killing, ruling Stompanato's death a justifiable homicide.  Crane goes free, but as she has done so many times on the silver screen, in real life too, the star of the inquest is Lana Turner.  Testifying for her daughter, Turner appears in court in a form fitting grey silk dress suit, accentuated by white gloves and a stylish hat, hair impeccably coiffed, makeup perfect, and tells the wrenching story of her days and nights with Stompanato (twice she breaks down on the stand, and leaving court later is, on the verge of a total collapse) ... testimony that helps insure her daughter escaping charges and having the opportunity for a positive future.  It is the performance of her lifetime!

  
                         Lana Turner - Movie Star Mommy In Court - 1958

THE MURDER OF EDDIE GREEN

4/3/1934 - Made aware as a result of Saturday's gun battle at the Lincoln Court Apartments that Dillinger and members of his gang have been hiding in St. Paul, Department of Justice agents fan out through the city and using a phone number found in the outlaw's abandoned unit, hit paydirt when they locate an apartment on Marshall Avenue that has recently been used by Homer Van Meter and Eddie Green.  At the hideout the authorities find an assortment of bandit paraphernalia ... a shoulder holster, a array of ammunition for a variety of weapons, a two-foot dynamite fuse, three notebooks full of getaway routes, maps of Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota, fourteen silver dollars, license plates, airline schedules, a stock for a Thompson sub-machine gun, and seven empty bank wrappers.  Processing the site, agents are still in the apartment dusting for fingerprints when Lucy Jackson and Leona Goodman, two black sisters who do household work for a host of St. Paul crooks, show up to clean the unit and retrieve a number of suitcases for their employer, a white man calling himself D. A. Stevens.  Questioning Jackson and Goodman, and threatening them both with multiple years of jail time if they don't cooperate, a plan soon forms to greet the mysterious Mr. Stevens when he comes to pick up his luggage from the women.

                                  
                                                    Eddie Green

Mr. Stevens is actually Eddie Green, a thirty-four-year-old bandit with the specialty of casing banks before their robberies, an outlaw that has sold his services to Frank Nash, members of the Barker-Karpis gang, Baby Face Nelson, and now Dillinger.

         
The FBI's plan to deal with Mr. Stevens is simple, stupid, and criminal ... upset at recent gunfights and escapes, on orders from Inspector William Rorer, instead of attempting to capture the man who comes to claim the suitcases from Goodman's home, agents of the Department of Justice will shoot him.  Returning to Goodman's Rondo Avenue home, an ambush is quickly set up featuring several agents hidden on the street, a gunner in an upstairs window of the house, and in killing positions on the ground floor, Special Agents George Gross and Edward Notesteen.  Ready to take care of business, Gross is armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun, while Notesteen carries a lethal shotgun.  For three hours the agents anxiously wait until finally, at 5:30 pm, a green Terraplane sedan pulls up to the address, parks across the street, and a man in a dark overcoat gets out.  It is Eddie Green (he is accompanied by his common-law wife, Bessie Skinner, who stays in the car reading a magazine and listening to the radio) come to claim his property.

          
                                                         Rondo Avenue

Moving to the kitchen door of the home, Green knocks and Goodman answers, giving the outlaw his suitcase.  However, before he can give the cleaning lady the $10 for the job that had been promised, Goodman shuts the door in his face.  Perplexed, Green pauses for a moment, then turns and starts back to his car.  Inside, Notesteen asks whether the man outside is the one involved in the apartment assignment.  When Goodman's assent is given, Notesteen yells, "Let him have it!"  Doing as commanded, Gross smashes the barrel of his weapon through the front room window and opens up on Green, firing off a burst of bullets that smash the outlaw's right shoulder and tear through the back of his skull, coming to rest above his right eye.  And just in case, to insure escape is impossible, Noteseen takes out the car's tires with his shotgun while the upstairs sniper blasts a hole in the Terraplane's radiator.  It is all over in seconds.  Searched as he lays bleeding on the sidewalk, Green is found to not be carrying a weapon and the government claims begin of furtive hand movements towards the outlaw's pants pocket that cause the shooting.  No gun, no request for surrender, and shot in the back ... the FBI tries to justify its actions after the fact, but the killing is, and remains, an outright murder.

                              
                                         Ancker Hospital - 1900s

Taken to nearby Ancker Hospital, Green lingers for nine delirious days of agony before dying ... nine days in which a government agent is at his bedside the entire time, taking down every word of his ravings for later analysis, and nine days in which rumors begin of medical treatments being withheld to elicit information from the wounded man (and agents will pretend to be doctors, lawyers, and members of the gang to keep the bandit talking).  Also, it is a period of time in which agents press Green's wife on the activities of her husband and his associates, pressing hard enough that she identifies hiding places, lists the members of the Dillinger gang and their girlfriends, and verifies the participation of the Barker-Karpis gang in the kidnappings of both William Hamm and Edward Bremer.  Green passes on the 12th, the first of the new Dillinger gang to go down, but not the last ... next up to meet his maker, by way of lawman slugs, will be Tommy Carroll.

                                   
                                               Dillinger poses for his family

The shooting and arrest are the end of St. Paul being a haven for bank robbing outlaws, and recognizing that fact, Dillinger leaves town as soon as the news breaks that Green has been shot.  Boldness personified, or stupidity, for a temporary hiding place he selects a location fraught with dangers ... the most hunted man in America, accompanied by his girlfriend Billie, the outlaw is now headed for a family reunion at his father's Indiana farm.

A BLOODY EASTER AT GRAPEVINE

4/1/1934 - Egg hunts and celebrations of Christ's resurrection are forgotten when tragedy and death come to the small Texas town of Grapevine on Easter Sunday ... and once again for the state, the deaths can be attributed to the bloody activities of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

                                   
                                                   Bonnie & Clyde

Not wanting the authorities to ruin the Easter they'd like to spend with family, the outlaw couple selects the town of Grapevine, twenty-five miles northwest of Dallas, as a meeting place.  Word sent to the Barrow service station in West Dallas by their outlaw pal Joe Palmer, the couple and their traveling companion, twenty-one-year-old recent Eastham prison escapee Henry Methvin, park in an area surrounded by farmlands, on a narrow dirt track called Dove Road, a hundred yards away from paved two-lane Highway 114, just outside of town.  Site for the rendezvous chosen, they then spend several quiet hours of the sunny day waiting for the Barrows and Parkers to show up ... Clyde takes a nap in the back of their stolen car, Bonnie becomes tipsy sipping whiskey as she plays with the rabbit she has bought as a surprise Easter present for her mother Emma, a hairy little beast she names Sonny Boy, and Methvin gets liquor hammered as he downs chugs of booze while acting as look-out, watching the road while cradling a Browning Automatic Rifle in his arms.  Their lazy afternoon abruptly ends at about 3:30, when three Texas State Highway Patrol motorcycle officers drive by.

         
                                                                  Methvin

The threesome of officers is composed of Polk Ivy, Hollaway Daniel Murphy, and Edward Bryan Wheeler ... senior officer Ivy, and four year veteran of the force Wheeler, are conducting a training run for Murphy, a rookie taking his first day out on patrol ... his first day, and also his last.  With Ivy in the lead as they roll along 114, all three troopers pass the spot where the outlaws are parked, but Wheeler, noticing a shiny black Ford sedan with yellow wire wheel rims there and thinking it might be motorists stuck in the mud and in need of help, turns around and heads up Dove Road, followed by Murphy (down 114, Ivy will finally notice his partners are no longer following him, but by the time he turns around the day's Easter tragedy has already taken place).  Aware that they will soon have company, a now wide awake Clyde arms himself with a sawed-off shotgun.  As he has done in the past, believing it will be easy to get the jump on the officers, he decides to take the approaching men hostage.  "Let's take them," he whispers to Methvin.  But Methvin, drunk and not with the Clyde long enough to know of his penchant for kidnapping policemen, interprets the command differently and as Wheeler pulls up and begins to dismount, heartlessly and without warning, opens up on the officer with his BAR.


                                                      Browning Automatic Rifle

Hit in the chest by multiple body devastating rounds, Wheeler dies instantly.  Responding to the assault on his partner, Murphy attempts to load and remove his service shotgun from its harness on his motorcycle, but before he can get off a shot he is blasted off his bike by shotgun pellets fired his way courtesy of Clyde, realizing instantly that a kidnapping is now out of the question.  Then Methvin, his blood up, walks over to where Murphy lays helplessly wounded in the road, and at point-blank range, fires several more rounds into the fallen officer.  The murder of both men takes less than ten seconds.

   
                                      Site of the killings

Plans for their Easter party shattered, bloody bodies in the mud, the three outlaws get back on 114 and race east, heading for what they believe will be the safety of another state, Oklahoma, stopping only briefly to tell what has happened when they see Clyde's brother and sister on their way to the now abandoned meeting spot.  Behind, the state explodes in outrage at yet two more murders that can be attributed to the outlaw couple, especially when one eye-witness to the killings, farmer William Schieffer, claims that Bonnie is actually the killer that shoots Murphy in the head after the rookie is blown off his motorcycle.  Papers across the state demand the pair's deaths ... and death is what they will soon get.  Easter Sunday, 1934, and Bonnie & Clyde have just fifty-two more days left to live ... sadly, it will be enough time for one more killing of a police officer. 

           
                                                    Clyde & Bonnie

On the day he is murdered, Trooper Wheeler is twenty-six-years old, survived by his parents and four siblings.  Future gone in the blink of an eye, newcomer Murphy is dead at the age of twenty-two, only days away from his wedding, scheduled for the 13th of the month ... at his funeral, his tearful twenty-year-old fiancee, Marie Tullis, attends wearing her no longer needed white wedding dress.

               
                                   Murphy                                       Wheeler

TROUBLE AT THE LINCOLN COURT APARTMENTS

3/31/1934 - On a cold, quiet Saturday morning at the Lincoln Court Apartments in St. Paul, Minnesota, many residents are content to stay in bed and laze their way into the Easter holiday weekend ... at least they are until cops & robbers gunfire breaks out inside and outside the building.

        
                                               Lincoln Court Apartments - 1934

That the morning calm is shattered with bullet bangs is a direct result of a single busy body (or good citizen depending on your point of view), Daisy S. Coffey, the landlord of the red brick, three-story, U-shaped, thirty-two-unit housing complex on South Lexington Avenue in one of the city's nicest neighborhoods.  Feeling that the activities of the renters in Apartment 303 are "suspicious," Coffey has taken her fears to the local office of the FBI and reported that the residents of the unit have frequent guests in, always use the structure's back door, seem to be up and about only at night, keep the window shades down, and refused to allow a caretaker in to replace a bathroom fixture.  Seemingly inconsequential information, with his office trying to filter through hundreds of tips trying to bring the Barker-Karpis gang to justice for their recent kidnapping of Edward Bremer, Special Agent In Charge, Werner Hanni, nonetheless decides to assign two of his youngest agents, Rosser L. Nalls and Rufus Coulter, to visit the apartment building.

                                                   
                                                              Hanni

Driving to the location that evening, the two agents check the neighborhood and watch the apartment for a short time ... the shades are indeed down, but not completely, and inside the unit a man and woman can be seen moving about, but behaving normally as far as can discerned.  Too late to interview the occupants, the agents decide to return the next day.

                                                  
                                                 1934 - FBI Badge

Inside the unit are Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hellman, a handsome couple that have been living quietly at the complex since March, 19th, paying $60 to rent the apartment for a month.  They dress well, go shopping, have friends over, and take in a movie now and then (Joe Palooka and Fashions of 1933 are two flicks they've recently viewed at the local theater down the block).  Doing well and wallet recently filled, Mr. Hellman has just treated himself to a new purchase from Pottoff Motors of St. Paul ... a fast, brand new black Hudson Deluxe 8 sedan with special cream-colored wire wheels.  Just a couple of seemingly average citizens, but Coffey's instincts were correct, the pair has a secret ... hiding in plain sight, Mr. Carl Hellman is actually the most wanted criminal in the country, Public Enemy #1, bank robber John Herbert Dillinger.
                                                    
                                  
                                                          Dillinger

Expecting a routine interview of no value and wanting to move on to more pressing concerns, the Federal agents arrive in two cars at the apartment building the next day, accompanied by sixty-five-year-old St. Paul police detective, Henry Cummings.  Nalls is there first and watches as two women and a man exit the building ... but he does not recognize them as Opal Long (bank robber Russell Clark's former girlfriend), Pat Cherrington (Opal's sister and the girlfriend of thief and killer John Hamilton), and bank robber John "Red" Hamilton.  The trio has spent the night in Apartment 303 and are on their way out for breakfast and to buy groceries.  As they leave, Coulter and Cummings show up.  It is agreed among the men that Nalls will stay outside and keep watch, while the other two go inside and talk to the Hellmans.  It is roughly 10:15 in the morning when the pair enter the building.  A short time after they do, a green  Ford V8 coupe pulls up across from the building and a thin, tall man in light brown gets out.  It is outlaw Homer Van Meter, come to show off to his friends the stylish fedora he has just purchased to match his overcoat.  He is armed, dangerous, and bullets are about to begin flying!

                  

Inside, the officers knock on the door of Apartment 303.  Making sure that the door is chained shut, in her nightie, a groggy Billie answers, forgetting for a moment she is using the alias of Hellman when Cummings and Coulter ask to see her husband Carl.  Cobwebs cleared, Billie lies and tells the men her husband is out, and when the men say they'll talk to her instead, she stalls for time and tells them okay, as soon as she gets dressed.  Running to the bedroom, she does indeed gets dressed, as does Dillinger in a grey suit, the pair also stuffing a large suitcase with clothes, money, and weapons.  Then they wait, minutes ticking by in the hope that gunman John Hamilton will return from his grocery shopping and lend his support to their escape.  Instead, in the hallway outside the apartment, trigger happy Homer Van Meter shows up.



                                
                                                            Billie

Taking the back stairs up to his friend's abode, Van Meter enters the third floor hallway and instantly recognizes trouble in the form of the two men standing in front of Dillinger's door.  Acting as if he knows his way around, the bandit walks by the officers and starts down the front stairs.  But suspicions up, Coulter asks Van Meter who he is and what he is doing.  The glib outlaw answers by claiming he is a soap salesman, which in turn causes Coulter to ask where his samples are.  "Down in my car," is Van Meter's quip as he hurries down the stairs.  Thinking something is amiss, Coulter decides to follow.  Reaching the lobby, the FBI agent is surprised to discover that the salesman is gone ... or so he thinks until he turns around and finds Van Meter in the shadows of the steps to the basement, .45 automatic in hand.  "You see this, asshole?  You want this?  Here it is!"  Saving his life though his quick reactions, Coulter jumps away from the stairwell and runs out the front door of the apartment building and across the snow covered lawn with Van Meter, firing his weapon, in close pursuit.  Making it around a corner to safety, Coulter pulls his own weapon and begins firing on Van Meter.  The outlaw, realizing his prey has now turned hunter and is firing from a better position, flees back into the apartment building and leaves by way of the back door.  Recognizing that the gunman is the same individual he watched park just moments before, Nalls responds to the gunfire by taking out Van Meter's mode of transportation, holing the wheels of the Ford with his pistol, then, while Coulter runs to a nearby drug store and calls for reinforcements, he watches the building for more trouble, unaware that more trouble is in the process of vanishing out the rear of the structure. 


                    
                                                           Van Meter

Upon hearing the gunfire below, Dillinger blindly fires a machine gun through the apartment door, almost hitting his neighbors, a minister and his wife.  Magazine emptied, the outlaw quickly reloads, opens the door enough for just the barrel of his weapon to protrude, and sprays the hallway with another dose of .45 slugs.  Cummings, valuing his life, hides in a small vestibule, then when the first barrage ends, flees down the front staircase.  Reloaded and ready to exit, Dillinger, carrying a machine with each arm, leads the way down the hallway to the back stairs, while Billie follows, using both hands to carry the couple's heavy suitcase.

                            
                                              Good Morning Coppers!

Outside, while Dillinger covers their escape, Billie crosses the alley behind the building, opens up the rented garage where they are keeping their Hudson, throws the suitcase into the vehicle and starts up the new car.  A new car which becomes used and abused quickly, as she bashes in its front fenders exiting the garage and then navigating the narrow alley.  Foot to the floor at first and then following the speed limit so as not to draw attention their way, the couple heads for the refuge of outlaw Eddie Green's nearby residence, leaving behind a trail of crimson ... a ricochet from Dillinger's own fire has gone through the flesh of the bandit's upper left calf (he will be treated later that night at a nurse's home for $90 by Doctor Clayton E. May, services for which the doctor will eventually serve two years in Leavenworth Prison, while having his medical licensed revoked).

                           
                                               1934 Hudson Sedan

Van Meter's escape is also successful, but not accomplished by means of the latest in luxury transportation.  Car crippled and covered by authorities now arriving on the scene, the outlaw takes off west down Lincoln, then jumps into a slow moving trash truck piloted by Bernard Kersten and his brother.  Removing his fedora and replacing it with a grungy work cap he "borrows," using his automatic as persuasion, the gunman has the brothers drive him away from the apartment complex.  Offering $10 to the brothers for their time and trouble (the men refuse the money), at the Ninth Street viaduct Van Meter takes his leave of the brothers, putting his fedora back on before vanishing into the surrounding residential neighborhood.  Thirty minutes later, he is safe at Eddie Green's, telling the tale of his gun battle and trash truck ride to his comrades.   

                  
                                                    Dillinger - Far Left

At the apartment, unaware of who they have stumbled on, the police miss out on a chance to capture John Hamilton when the bandit returns from his shopping expedition, and bank robber Tommy Carroll when he stops by at 2:00 in the afternoon to visit his criminal pals.  Sifting through the mass of evidence left behind, the authorities find a Thompson sub-machine gun packed in a special leather carrying case, a loaded magazine for the weapon, a one-hundred round ammo drum, a .351 automatic rifle, thirteen twenty round magazines for the rifle, a pistol converted into a machine gun, two bullet-proof vests, several silk nightgowns, a blonde wig, over a dozen pairs of female shoes, an assortment of dresses and woman's slacks, men's slacks and shirts, a sheep-skin lined leather jacket, a man's blue silk dressing gown, a large Chinchilla overcoat, a pair of trench coats, a topcoat, and an array of pistols   It is believed at first that Bremer kidnappers have been flushed from the apartment (the crime had taken place a few short weeks before only a block away), but a fingerprint on a Listerine bottle and three pictures left in Unit 303 quickly let authorities know who they almost corralled ... a picture of a sad little boy taken after his mother dies, a photo of the same boy at about 11 playing in a tree, and a third shot of the boy now grown into a young man in his Navy whites, all photographs of Public Enemy #1, John Dillinger. 

       
                                                        GET DILLINGER!

Front page headlines again ... in less than a month's time the bandit has escaped from an "escape proof" jail using a wooden gun, robbed two banks in South Dakota and Iowa, been wounded in the shoulder and leg, and escaped capture by means of a shootout in St. Paul, Minnesota.  It is good practice for what is coming for in the equally busy month ahead, the desperado will mourn the ambush death of his friend, Eddie Green, rob a police station of its weapons, attend a family reunion on his father's farm, survive a car crash, see his girlfriend captured in a bar by the FBI, engage in two more gun battles with the authorities (one in Wisconsin and the other in Minnesota), participate in a high speed chase, and help bury his outlaw friend, John Hamilton.  
                                                  
                             
                                        Desperado

A real life thrill ride, better than anything Hollywood could make up ... it is the stuff from which legends are made!