John Dillinger

The New Gang

Prosecutor Robert Estill (middle) and John Dillinger (right) (Wide World Photos)

Back in Indiana at the Crown Point County Jail, Dillinger was a major celebrity.  Reporters had even talked Indiana's Prosecutor Robert Estill into posing for a picture with his arm around Dillinger.  For a man who was seeking the death penalty for a famous criminal, it showed very poor judgment and was the subject of much criticism.  However, it seemed that everybody -- senators, judges, a governor -- had come to see John Dillinger, the folk hero, and wanted to have their picture taken with him.

Rumors circulated constantly that other gangsters were going to mount a raid on the jail to free Dillinger. 

The local newspaper quashed the rumors the best it could:  "All of these rumors, however baseless, had the tendency to tighten the guard around the jail until it is now as impregnable as the Rock of Gibraltar .There will be no jail delivery; there will be no kidnapping; there will be no repetition of the Lima, Ohio, jail delivery."  National Guardsmen patrolled outside Crown Point jail.

One of the unanswered questions was Hamilton's whereabouts.  Dillinger kept telling police that Hamilton had been killed, but no one believed him.  His lawyer, Louis Piquett, was as unique as his client.  Piquett had never attended law school, but was able to eventually pass the Illinois bar exam and became a prosecutor in Chicago.  He was terrific with juries, but this case would be a really tough one.  There were too many eyewitnesses that saw Dillinger kill O'Malley.

Dillinger saw only one way out for himself.  Whatever the outcome, it couldn't be much worse than what the courts had in store for him.

Dillinger holds wooden gun used in escape (Wide World Photos)

On March 3, 1934, Sam Cahoon, an elderly jail attendant unlocked the door to the cell block to let the trusties in for the morning cleanup.  Dillinger stuck a gun to his stomach and ordered him into the cell.  Then he told Cahoon to call Deputy Sheriff Ernest Blunk and put him in the cell with Cahoon.  Dillinger had Blunk call Warden Lou Baker, who also fell into the trap Dillinger set. 

With machine guns taken from the warden's office, Dillinger and another prisoner, Herbert Youngblood, a black man awaiting trial for murder, captured a dozen guards.   Then they herded a couple of hostages into the sheriff's car and they drove like mad all the way to the Illinois state line where they released his hostages with a few dollars.

The irony of the whole thing was that the "gun" that allowed Dillinger to escape from the "escape-proof" jail was a crudely-carved piece of dark wood.  In this daring escape, only one big mistake had been made.  It took Dillinger some time to realize it:  by taking the sheriff's car across the state line, he had broken a federal law.  This was just what Hoover had been waiting for.  Now, Dillinger was in the sights of the national police whose jurisdiction did not stop at the state line.  Even more serious, he was in the sights of one of the most determined lawmen ever -- J. Edgar Hoover.

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Lester Gillis (Baby Face Nelson) poster

Dillinger went straight to Chicago so he could form a new gang and get some money quickly.  Unlike the original gang in which members were carefully chosen, Dillinger needed men fast.  John Hamilton was second in command.  They chose Lester Gillis, known as "Baby Face Nelson," to join up with them.  Nelson was a mentally unstable, trigger-happy psychopath who killed for the pleasure of it.  He was a short, young man with an explosive temper who had been part of the Capone gang. Homer Van Meter, Dillinger's friend from the Pendleton Reformatory and Michigan City was brought in as well.  Van Meter brought in two others, Eddie Green, a very experienced bank robber and Tommy Carroll, a expert gunman.

Eddie Green (Maccabee)

The new gang relocated itself to the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.  Eddie Green was an excellent "jugmarker," a man who evaluated bank targets and recommended which ones to rob.  Green had already selected the first target and on March 6, 1934, a few days after the Crown Point escape, the new Dillinger Gang hit the Security National Bank and Trust in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. 

While the robbery went off without a hitch, there was one event that bore the signature of the inveterate comic, Homer Van Meter.  Jay Robert Nash tells the story of how Tommy Carroll stood in the street outside the bank with a machine gun in his hands.   "By the time Dillinger and the others came out of the bank, Carroll had lined up Sioux Falls' entire police force, including the chief.

Thousands of spectators milled around the bank, bemused.  The good citizens thought the robbery was part of a film being made.  A Hollywood producer had been in town a day previous telling everyone that he intended to make a gangster film there.  The "film producer" had been Homer Van Meter.

After dashing off with $49,000, Dillinger got several miles out of town when he stopped the car and sprinkled roofing nails all over the road.  "That ought to slow them up," he said.  And it did.

This was the first robbery where Dillinger had been the undisputed leader.  Ironically, authorities in Sioux Falls did not believe it was Dillinger who robbed the bank.

When Dillinger got his share of the money, he called his lawyer, Louis Piquett, and asked him to use the money to pay Pierpont, Makley and Clark's attorneys.  Mary Kinder was to be the courier.  Mary called the number that Piquett had given her and arranged to meet Van Meter.  Van Meter gave her $2,000 in cash, but wouldn't let her know where Johnnie was.

Pierpont's trial was a circus.  He was led into the courtroom in shackles and surrounded by machine-gun wielding guards.  His mother had testified that the day of Sheriff Sarber's death, her son was home with her on her farm.  However, Ed Shouse, the treacherous gang member from Chicago, provided surprise testimony against Pierpont when he took the stand.

Toland tells how the prosecutor accused Harry of engineering $300,000 in bank robberies in the short time he was out of jail.  "'I wish I had,' Pierpont told the court.   'Well, at least if I did, I'm not like some bank robbers -- I didn't get myself elected president of the bank first.'

"The crowd burst into laughter and the judge ordered the last few lines stricken from the record.

"'That's the kind of man you are, isn't it?' prodded [the prosecutor].

"'Yes," retorted the prisoner, encouraged by the audience response.   "I'm not the kind of man you are -- robbing widows and orphans.  You'd probably be like me if you had the nerve."

The prosecutor demanded the death penalty.  The jury deliberated less than an hour before determining that Harry Pierpont was guilty as charged.  There was no recommendation for mercy.

Back in the Twin Cities, jugmarker Eddie Green sent the gang off again a week later to the First National Bank of Mason City, Iowa.  The bank's vault reputedly contained more than $240,000 -- a veritable fortune in those days.  On March 13, 1934, Assistant Cashier Harry Fisher looked up to see who was causing all the commotion.  Three well-dressed men -- Van Meter, Green and Hamilton -- were waving guns at bank president Willis Bagley.  Guard Tom Walters saw what was going on and fired a tear-gas pellet into Eddie Green's back.

Green grabbed a hostage to use as a shield.  "I said everybody down!," he yelled and fired a burst of shots over everyone's heads.  He also aimed at Tom Walters and hit him.

Hamilton ordered Cashier Harry Fisher to pass him money through the locked, barred door.  Fisher started with the $1 bills.  Hamilton could see the stacks of bills just inside the vault.  Hamilton told him to open up the door, but Fisher told him he couldn't because he didn't have the key.  He continued to hand him stacks of $1 bills.

Outside Dillinger was lining up hostages on the sidewalk.  After five minutes, he yelled to Van Meter to tell the men inside that it was time to leave.  Hamilton told Fisher to give him the big bills, but Fisher kept on handing him the little denominations.   Van Meter told Hamilton that they were going immediately.

"It's hell to leave all that money back there," he said.  Of the $200,000, Fisher had only passed him about $20,000.  Hamilton picked up a huge bag of pennies, grabbed a human shield and left the bank.  Once inside the getaway car, Dillinger had the hostages lined up on the running boards.  Loaded down with human shields, the car could only travel at 15 miles an hour.

Suddenly an older woman, Miss Minnie Piehm, who had been hanging on the car desperately, yelled, "Let me out!  This is where I live!"  Dillinger let her off and the car proceeded slowly forward like a local service bus.

The police followed, but did not get too close, fearful of starting a gun battle in which the hostages on the running boards would be injured.  Periodically, Nelson fired his machine gun at them, but eventually the police gave up and stopped following.   Some thirteen miles later, they released the hostages, frozen from the cold ride. 

The robbery had netted the bandits some $52,000.  Hamilton was very upset that he hadn't just killed Fisher the cashier and not let the cashier make such a fool of him with the small bills.

Dillinger was making plans to get enough money together to leave the country.  He knew that his extraordinary luck could not hold much longer.  He did not want to end up like Pierpont, Makley and Clark.  Makley, like Harry Pierpont, got the death sentence.  Clark got life in prison.  There was no chance that Dillinger would be able to spring them this time.  The prison was guarded like Fort Knox.

FBI agents in St. Paul got a tip that a man of Dillinger's description and called himself Carl Hellman was living with a woman who looked a lot like Billie Frechette.  On the evening of March 31, 1934, two FBI agents knocked at Hellman's door.  Billie answered and told the agents that her husband Carl was sleeping.  They wouldn't go away, so she went into the bedroom and woke up Dillinger, who quickly dressed and grabbed a machine gun.

While the FBI agents waited, Homer Van Meter came up the stairs.  Van Meter told them he was a soap salesman.  When the agents wanted proof, Van Meter took one of them downstairs to show him the soap samples he supposedly had in the car.  When the two men reached the first floor of the apartment building, Van Meter pulled a pistol on the agent.

"You asked for it, so I'll give it to you now!" Van Meter told him.

The agent ran through the door and Van Meter followed him, shooting.  The agent shot back and Van Meter went back to the safety of the apartment building.  By this time, Dillinger was spraying the upstairs hallway with a machine gun, while the other FBI agent hid in the hallway.

Billie ran out of the apartment house with a suitcase, followed by Dillinger and the machine gun and sped off in a car.  Van Meter had hijacked a truck and escaped to Eddie Green's apartment in Minneapolis.

Hoover sent one of his best men, Hugh Clegg, to St. Paul to take charge of the Dillinger case.  An emergency effort was launched to find any other Dillinger safe houses.  They found one in St. Paul and kept it under constant surveillance.   Eventually a woman showed up to clean the apartment.  When the FBI agents questioned her, she told them that a man was going to her home that night to pay her.   Agents waited until Eddie Green showed up and told him to surrender.  Green didn't surrender until the agents had shot him several times in the head.  Green, in terrible pain, gave the FBI the names of the other gang members in exchange for some pain medicine.   A week later, he died of infection.

On April 5, Dillinger astonished his father by showing up at the Mooresville farm with Billie.  His father warned him about the FBI agents that were lurking around, but Johnnie had taken precautions.  The next day the couple drove to the Pierpont farm to give Harry's parents some money for legal fees, but the farm was deserted. Then Dillinger went to the offices of an Indianapolis newspaper, brazenly read about his various adventures and ordered some copies to be sent to his father.

Next they went to Chicago, but shortly after they arrived, FBI agents arrested Billie when she went to her favorite tavern.  Dillinger called Louis Piquett to defend her and went to Fort Wayne to hide out with Homer Van Meter.  Based on a suggestion from one of the lesser known members of the gang, the group decided to hide out in the resort called Little Bohemia, but only after they had raided the Warsaw, Indiana, police station for some guns, ammunition and bullet-proof vests.