The
Lady In Red
After
the shoot out at Little Bohemia, the Dillinger Gang scattered in
several directions. Dillinger, Hamilton and Van Meter headed
toward St. Paul. Baby Face Nelson had run his car off
the road into a mudhole and proceeded on foot. Tommy
Carroll abandoned his car and ran away on foot.
The next morning, Deputy Sheriff Norman Dieter and three other
lawmen were stationed at the bridge over the Mississippi River just
south of St. Paul. He saw a Ford with three men start over the
spiral bridge. It was Dillinger and his buddies. The
chase was on. Van Meter put the accelerator to the floor
while Dillinger knocked out the car's rear window and started
shooting at the policemen who were chasing them. They escaped
from Dieter, but Hamilton got a bullet in the back.
They stole a car and drove off to Chicago with the badly wounded
Hamilton in the back seat. It took them almost two days to get
there and another few days to find a doctor who would treat
Hamilton. Unfortunately, gangrene had set in and he died a few
days later. They buried their friend in a gravel pit, pouring
lye on his face to prevent identification.
Dillinger and Van Meter found a hideout in Calumet City and
virtually disappeared. Many thought the pair had left
the country. Still, five states put a $5,000 bounty on his
head and Hoover offered a $10,000 reward.
Billie Frechette was sentenced to two years in jail.
Dillinger despaired of ever seeing her again, even though lawyer
Piquett was optimistic that he could get her out soon.
Dillinger decided that he need to have plastic surgery. Dr.
Loeser agreed to do it for $5,000. Dillinger wanted three
moles removed, a depression on the bridge of his nose filled in and
a scar on his lip and the dimple in his chin removed. They
almost lost Dillinger during the operation when the ether was
administered too quickly and Dillinger stopped breathing.
Afterwards, Dillinger was unhappy with his swollen face. A
caustic solution was applied to Dillinger's finger tips.
When then plastic surgery was completed on Dillinger, the doctor
began on Homer Van Meter. Neither of the two men understood
that it takes weeks for the swelling to go down after facial
surgery. Van Meter also had the tips of his fingers treated to
disguise his fingerprints.
While Dillinger was recovering, he heard that Tommy Carroll had
been killed when two Waterloo, Iowa, policemen shot him. Now
the gang was down to three members with Carroll and Hamilton
dead. The only ones left were Dillinger, Van Meter and Baby
Face Nelson.
That June, John Dillinger celebrated his thirty-first
birthday. Hoover had named him Public Enemy Number 1. He
became obsessed with getting enough money to get out of the country,
preferably to Mexico. One last robbery and that was it.
On June 30, Dillinger, Van Meter, Nelson and two friends of
Nelson went to the Merchants National of South Bend, Indiana.
They estimated that the bank was keeping as much as $100,000.
Inside the bank, the customers were frightened by the sight of the
guns and surged as a group toward the back of the bank.
Nelson's friend panicked and let loose a burst of machine gun fire
that attracted a lot of attention outside.
A jeweler in a nearby shop grabbed his revolver and started
shooting at Baby Face Nelson. Nelson went berserk and fired
indiscriminately into the crowd. A man was hit in the
leg. Then a teenager jumped on Nelson's back.
Nelson threw the boy into a plate glass window and started shooting
at him.
Patrolman were beginning to arrive. Dillinger and his
colleagues came out of the bank with three hostages, but the
presence of hostages didn't stop the police from shooting. In
the fire fight, Van Meter was hit in the head. Dillinger
shoved him in the car and they drove off. The police were
never able to catch up to them.
The take from the bank was disappointingly small, especially
considering the costs. Van Meter had been injured, a cop had
been killed and six bystanders had been wounded. Dillinger
only saw $4,800 from the robbery, not nearly enough to get him to
Mexico.
_________________________
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|
Anna Sage, "The Lady in
Red" (Wide World) |
Sure that he would never see Billie Frechette again,
Dillinger had taken up with a twenty-six-year-old waitress named
Polly Hamilton. He told her his name was Jimmy Lawrence and
that he was a clerk for the Chicago Board of Trade. Even
though she was teased about going out with a man that looked so much
like Dillinger, her new boyfriend was worth keeping. He gave
her a diamond ring and some money to have her teeth fixed.
Polly rented a room from a Romanian brothel keeper
called Anna Sage whose son lived with her in an apartment on the
north side of Chicago. Anna faced almost certain
deportation for her vice operations. In Polly and Mrs.
Sage's neighborhood, Dillinger lived like an ordinary citizen.
As usual, he was taking enormous risks. The stakes were so
high and the reward so attractive that many would be motivated to
betray him.
He couldn't control himself. He just had to
flaunt his presence to the police. One day, with Mrs. Sage, he
walked into the police station and started talking to the desk
sergeant. It wasn't long before Mrs. Sage was certain of his
identity. Perhaps he continued taking those risks because he
had already planned to leave for Mexico the next week.
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|
Polly Hamilton
(UPI) |
In mid-July, Anna Sage contacted a police officer she knew in East
Chicago, Indiana, named Martin Zarkovich. She hoped that by
cooperating with the law regarding Dillinger that she could get the
deportation charges against her dropped. Zarkovich told his
boss, Captain Timothy O'Neill who was handling the Dillinger case
after the death of Officer O'Malley.
The two men visited Captain John Stege of the Chicago Police
Department's Dillinger Squad to make a deal. They would give
Stege the information to trap Dillinger but only if Stege agreed to
kill Dillinger on the spot. Stege told the two men, "I'd
even give John Dillinger a chance to surrender," and suggested
that they leave his office.
The two Indiana policemen then contacted the FBI's Melvin Purvis
with the same deal. Purvis told Special Agent Sam Cowley,
who Hoover had put in charge of the Dillinger Squad in Chicago after
the fiasco at Little Bohemia. Cowley and Purvis seemed
receptive and wanted to know more, but Anna Sage wanted confirmation
that they would assist her in fighting her deportation and that she
would also receive the reward money on Dillinger's head.
Purvis told her the FBI would do what it could to help her with
the immigration authorities and that she would get a sizeable sum of
money if Dillinger were taken. Then Anna proposed a plan
to hand Dillinger over to the FBI. She would arrange for
Dillinger to take her and Polly to the movies the next day.
Once the deal was set, Hoover was notified. Dillinger was
to be taken alive, he ordered. He didn't even want the agents
drawing their pistols if possible, since bystanders could be killed
in the crossfire.
A tremendous amount of planning went into this new opportunity to
catch Dillinger. The FBI could not afford to botch it this
time. To minimize the chance of a mistake, the Chicago police
were not notified about the operation. However, the East
Chicago, Indiana, police were permitted to participate.
On Sunday, July 22, 1934, Anna Sage called the FBI at 5:30 P.M.
and told them that Dillinger had agreed to take her and Polly to the
movie that night, but she didn't know if it would be the Marbro
Theater or the Biograph. The agents had been counting on the
Marbro Theater, which is the only one that Mrs. Sage had mentioned
in their earlier meeting. All of their planning had been
around the layout and exits of the Marbro. Now, it could be
the Biograph -- which Agent Cowley knew nothing about.
Quickly, he sent some men to the Biograph to check it out.
At 7 P.M., Anna Sage telephoned again. She still didn't
know which theater and they were going to be leaving the apartment
shortly. Purvis and his colleague decided to sit in a car
outside the Biograph and look for the threesome. Zarkovich and
another agent would sit outside the Marbro.
Finally, it was clear that it was the Biograph as they watched
Dillinger approach with Polly Hamilton on his arm. Next to
them was Mrs. Sage, wearing an orange skirt that looked deep red in
the artificial lighting around the theater. The movie Manhattan
Melodrama would run two hours and four minutes.
Cowley and Purvis met together with the other agents. When
the movie was over, they reasoned that Dillinger and the two women
would probably take a particular route back to Anna Sage's
apartment. As they passed, Purvis would light a cigar to
identify them.
Around 10:30 P.M., the crowd started coming out of the
theater. Dillinger and his lady friends were some of the first
to emerge. Purvis lit the cigar and Dillinger looked at him
directly. Special Agent Hollis and Purvis closed in behind him
with their pistols drawn.
"Suddenly Dillinger reached into his right trouser pocket
and sprinted toward the alley in a partial crouch. By now
Dillinger had a Colt automatic in his right hand. Paying
no attention to Purvis's squeaky command to halt, he continued down
the alley. He must have known he had been betrayed -- and by a
woman.
"Hollis and two other agents fired at the fleeing
figure. One bullet went through Dillinger's left side.
Another tore into his stooped back and went out the right eye.
Dillinger dropped, his feet still on the sidewalk, his head in the
alley. Purvis leaned over, spoke to Dillinger.
There was no answer." (Toland)
When they got him to the hospital, he was already dead. As
the news spread, hundreds of people were dipping their scarves and
handkerchiefs into the pool of his blood outside the Biograph.
It was the end of a long, exciting, adventure movie.
Many people did not believe it was really Dillinger. The
body was too tall, too short, too heavy to be the real bandit.
It was an elaborate ruse so that the real Dillinger could escape to
Mexico. Finally, Dillinger's sister Audrey told authorities
that she could positively identify her brother by a scar on his
leg. She looked at the scar and said, "there is no
question in my mind. Bury him."
John Dillinger was gone, even if his myth lived on.
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|
John Dillinger at morgue (Toland) |
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The Dillinger Gangs, both of them, did not fare much
better than their leader in that year. Homer Van Meter was
gunned down in St. Paul in August. Charles Makley was
shot to death in a prison escape attempt in September.
Baby Face Nelson was shot by two FBI agents in November. Harry
Pierpont was electrocuted in November.
Russell Clark made parole in 1970 and died shortly
afterwards from cancer. Mary Kinder lived the rest of her life
in Indianapolis. James Clark served a life sentence in
Columbus, Ohio.
Anna Sage received $5,000 of the Dillinger reward
money, but Hoover reneged on his help with the immigration
authorities and she was deported to Romania.
