The
Apprentice
True
to his word, Dillinger made a number of attempts to escape from the
Pendelton Reformatory -- each one unsuccessful, each one adding to
the time he would have to serve. Suddenly, he smartened up,
stopped rebelling, turned himself into a model prisoner and started
to focus on getting himself paroled.
Inside he made good friends with a man that would strongly
influence the rest of his life -- Harry Pierpont. Harry,
like Dillinger, was a handsome, soft-spoken young man who was gifted
in his relationships with the opposite sex. Pierpont was over
six-feet tall with blue eyes and sandy brown hair.
A year older than Dillinger, Pierpont had been in Pendleton once
before for stealing a car and wounding its owner. He had been
returned there after robbing a bank in Kokomo. After trying to
escape, Pierpont was transferred to the penitentiary at Michigan
City.
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Homer Van Meter |
Dillinger's excellent deportment earned him a comfortable job in the
prison shirt factory where he made friends with a tall, slender
prankster named Homer Van Meter. Homer was always
clowning around and was consistently and severely punished for it by
the guards. Homer was in for liberating several hundred
dollars from some passengers on a train -- that after car theft and
other minor charges. Van Meter, because of his obsessive
clowning, was considered a dangerous degenerate and was also
transferred to Michigan City.
Still married and very lonely, Dillinger wrote extravagantly
affectionate letters to his wife Beryl: "....Dearest we
will be so happy when I can come home to you and chase your sorrows
away and it won't take any kids to keep me home with you always for
Sweetheart I love you so all I want to do is just be with you and
make you happy...."
For someone as young as Beryl, the wait was intolerably
long. She divorced him in the summer of 1929. Depressed
as he was, he pulled himself together and enrolled himself in the
prison school. For once in his life, he studied hard and was
an excellent student.
When he was turned down for parole after five years in prison, he
requested a transfer to Michigan City where he would at least be
with his two friends, Pierpont and Van Meter. In July of 1929,
he got his wish.
While the Michigan City penitentiary was a depressing place,
Dillinger was initiated by Pierpont into the clique of the prison
elite -- bankrobbers. He had graduated from petty crime to a
master's program. This master's program was augmented by the
inclusion of Walter Dietrich, who taught Pierpont and his colleagues
the methods of Herman "Baron" K. Lamm, a Prussian officer
turned highly successful bankrobber.
The first step in the method was learning the layout of the bank
that was targeted, where the safes were and who was responsible for
opening them. The next step was rehearsal where every one was
given a specific job and a narrow time frame in which to complete
the job. The robbers must leave the bank within the scheduled
time, with or without the loot. The final step was the
acquisition of a very fast car and a well-rehearsed escape route.
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John Hamilton
(Toland) |
Pierpont's tightly knit group was composed of "Fat
Charley" Makely, a forty-four-year-old veteran bankrobber from
Ohio; John "Red" Hamilton, a tough, intelligent,
thirty-four-year-old bankrobber; Russell Clark, a young man who was
in jail for a single bank robbery; Dillinger and, later, Dietrich.
All but Dillinger had lengthy prison terms ahead of them and were
desperate to escape. Makely, the oldest and most experienced,
came up with a simple escape plan in which bribery was the
centerpiece. All that was needed was enough money to bribe a
few key guards, a few guns and a place to lay low.
"Pierpont approached Dillinger, who had served most of his
sentence. If he helped them escape, he could be the driver in
their bank-robbing scheme. Of course, such an escape would
cost a large amount of money and they would have to teach him how to
get it.
They promised to give him a list of the best banks and stores to
rob, and the names and addresses of reliable accomplices. He
would be told where to fence stolen goods and money; how to get rid
of bonds. He would, in short, know almost as much about bank
robbery as they did." (Toland)
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Harry Pierpont (UPI) |
The offer was irresistible to Dillinger and he readily agreed.
Dillinger now had a true vocation and a trade to learn. He was
paroled in May of 1933 because of good behavior and a petition from
his neighbors in Mooresville. The happy moment turned to
tragedy when he rushed home to be at the side of his stepmother who
was dying, only to arrive an hour too late to see her one last time.
A couple of weeks after he was paroled, Dillinger had lined up
two of the men on Pierpont's list, William Shaw and Paul Parker,
telling them both that his name was Dan Dillinger. Shaw and
his ex-con friend, Noble Claycomb had a group that called themselves
the White Cap Gang, which specialized in small, local robberies.
The first place they hit was a supermarket. All they got
was $100.
With such small pickings, Dillinger would never be able to get
his buddies out of the pen. Dillinger set his sites on his
first bank. It was beginner's luck. He, Shaw and Parker
knocked over the New Carlisle National Bank without a hitch.
Incredibly enough in the midst of the Depression, they walked away
with over $10,000.
But that was only the beginning, Dillinger and his colleagues hit
a drug store and another supermarket, coming away with $3,600.
In these two robberies, it became clear to Dillinger that his two
accomplices were incompetents. He started to contact other men on
Pierpont's list.
With Harry Copeland, a new accomplice, Dillinger drove to the
town of Daleville on July 17. Inside the tiny Commercial
Bank, teller Margaret Good spoke to the dignified looking Dillinger,
who had asked to speak to the bank's president. Margaret
explained that the president of the bank was not in.
Suddenly, she was looking at the long barrel of a gun.
"Well, honey," he told her, "this is a stickup."
For some unknown reason, Dillinger gracefully leaped over the
railing into the vault and helped himself to $3,500. Then he
told everyone to get inside the vault and he walked out. The
leap across the railing was a dramatic flourish that many would
remember. It also attracted the attention of Captain Matt
Leach of the Indiana State Police. It wasn't long before Leach
realized that the new bankrobber was John Dillinger.
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Mary Longnaker
& John Dillinger (Toland) |
When Dillinger had been in prison, one of his friends talked
continuously about his attractive sister, Mary Longnaker.
Dillinger drove to Dayton to meet her, suggesting that he could
arrange for her brother to escape. Mary was a good-looking,
twenty-three-year-old woman with young children and a husband that
she was divorcing.
Dillinger became completely infatuated with her and offered to
pay for her divorce. He pursued her continuously, trying to
wrest a commitment from her to be his girl.
"Honey," he wrote, "I miss you like nobody's business
and I don't mean maybe. I hope I can spend more time with you,
for baby I fell for you in a big way and if you'll be on the level
I'll give everybody the go by for you and that isn't a lot of hooey
either. I know you like me dear but that isn't enough for me
when I'm as crazy as I am about you. You may never get to feel
the same toward me as I do you in which case I would be better off
not to see you very much for it would be hell for me... Lots of love
from Johnnie."
Mary stayed somewhat noncommittal. She was already seeing a
decent man who would make a good husband and stepfather for her
children, but she didn't want to do anything that would ruin her
chances of her brother escaping from prison.
Captain Matt Leach was determined to get Dillinger. He got
a tip from Pinkertons that Dillinger had a girlfriend in Dayton, but
he didn't know who she was or where she lived, only that she was the
sister of a prison inmate. Leach asked the Dayton police for
help. A few days later in early September, 1933, Leach got the
address of the boarding house where Dillinger rented rooms on his
trip to Dayton. Police secretly opened the letters that he
sent to Mary in hopes of finding out when he would be visiting her
next. Two detectives moved into the same boarding house,
taking the rooms opposite Dillinger's.
Meanwhile, Dillinger and Harry Copeland continued to rob banks in
Ohio and Indiana, saving up the money to finance the prison break
for his pals in Michigan City. They got lucky on September
6. The Real Silk Hosiery payroll was at the State Bank of
Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis when Dillinger walked up to the
assistant manager and told him it was a stickup. The manager
looked up to see "Dillinger sitting cross-legged up on the
seven-foot-high barrier. A straw hat was tilted cockily on his
head and he was almost casually pointing an automatic."
(Toland) Incredibly they got almost $25,000. Dillinger
now had collected enough for the prison break.
With the help of two of Pierpont's women friends, Pearl Elliott
and Mary Kinder, he put the operation in motion. Pearl
couriered messages and paid bribes. Mary was to find an
apartment in which the escaped men would hide. Dillinger
bought guns and threw the packages containing the guns over the
prison wall near the athletic field. Unfortunately, an
inmate found them and gave them to the guards.
Pearl smuggled out a letter from Pierpont telling Dillinger how
to get another set of guns into the prison shirt factory hidden in a
box of thread. Dillinger made all the arrangements and the
prison break was set for September 27.
On September 22, he finally had time to visit Mary in
Dayton. The police, who had given up waiting for him, told the
landlady that if Dillinger showed up, she should call them
immediately.
Toland tells the story of Sergeant W.J. Aldredge of the Dayton
police who got a call shortly after midnight.
'"He's here," a woman cried out.
'"Who's here?" Aldredge asked patiently.
'"John Dillinger, you dumb flatfoot!'"
In no time, the detectives had barged into Mary's rooms and
arrested Dillinger. Now with his friends days away from
their daring attempt to break out of Michigan City, Johnnie Boy was
on his way back there.
