John Dillinger

The Terror Gang

They were initially called The Terror Gang because of their boldness and impudence.  Once Dillinger had been freed, they all headed back to Chicago to put together the most organized and professional bank robbing scheme ever devised in the county.  One thing they needed was the very best in guns, ammunition and bullet-proof vests.

What better place to get such equipment than from the police themselves.  A week after Dillinger's escape from the Lima, Ohio, jail,  he and Pierpont decided to hit the enormous police arsenal in Peru, Indiana.  A month earlier, Dillinger and Homer Van Meter posed as tourists there and asked what the local policemen had in the way of fire power if the Dillinger Gang ever showed up in those parts.  The officers proudly showed the two "tourists" the kinds of weapons they would use against the Terror Gang.

Captain Matt Leach (UPI)

Late on the evening of October 20, 1933, Pierpont and Dillinger entered the arsenal, subdued three lawmen and made off with several loads of machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, ammunition and bullet-proof vests.  When this loot was added to the guns and ammunition they had stolen earlier from an Auburn, Indiana, police station, they were ready for business.

Law enforcement officials were outraged at the brazenness of the gang.  Captain Matt Leach, who was afflicted with a serious  stutter,  wanted to try a bold approach of his own.  He knew that both Henry Pierpont and John Dillinger were men with very large egos.  Often the gang had been referred to in the newspapers as the Pierpont Gang.  What if Captain Leach could persuade reporters to start calling it the Dillinger Gang instead.  Maybe a leadership fight would break out amongst the gang members and they would split up.  The newsmen agreed to his proposal.

Toland says that there was never a struggle for leadership, despite the spate of stories that started to appear calling Dillinger the leader: "Pierpont knew [the stories] were false and he was too grateful to Dillinger to be jealous.  Dillinger, however, read and reread every story and even saved the clippings; but instead of becoming boastful, his manner and dress became more conservative.  The gang lived quietly in expensive Chicago apartments, the men drinking only beer and little of that.   According to Pierpont's code, a crime not only had to be committed without the benefit of drink or drugs but prepared in sobriety...the men would sit around the living room discussing future plans much like any group of respectable businessmen.  Usually Pierpont assembled their various ideas.  Sometimes it would be Makley.  But everyone had a chance to voice an opinion, no one overriding a majority."

Jay Robert Nash in Bloodletters and Badmen agrees: "There was no real leader... Pierpont was the most daring and nerveless of the group, but his impulsiveness oft-times outweighed his considerable intelligence.  Hamilton was the old pro.   Whenever any bank job was discussed, he could offer the soundest advice based on experience.  Makley and Clark, for the most part, listened.  Pierpont appreciated and more or less encouraged Dillinger's role as leader...telling him that [the name Dillinger] was both euphonic and memorable since it reminded everyone of the pistol, derringer."

With their finely-honed precision system for bank robbing, they executed the first target in their plan on October 23 when they pulled up to the Greencastle, Indiana, Central National Bank.  Hamilton stayed outside the door to watch, while Pierpont, Makley and Dillinger went inside.  Using "Baron" Lamm's method, they already knew the inside of the structure well since they had cased the bank thoroughly a few days earlier.

Dillinger, the showoff, leaped over a high counter into the teller's cage and started to scoop up money, while Pierpont and Makley made sure that nobody moved.  Hamilton, standing by the door with a stopwatch so that they didn't overstay their five-minute time limit, looked up to see an elderly, foreign-born woman walk out of the bank.  He told her to get back inside.

Completely disregarding the gun had in his hands, she walked calmly by him, saying "I go to Penney's and you go to hell!"

Jay Robert Nash tells the story of the farmer standing at the teller's cage with a stack of bills in front of him.  Dillinger saw the money and asked, "that your money or the bank's?"

"Mine," the farmer told him.

"Keep it.  We only want the bank's."

With no other surprises or any gunfire, the gang left the bank with almost $75,000 -- an enormous sum in those Depression years.

There was something in Dillinger that set him apart from the rest of the gang.  He just couldn't stop poking the police in the eye.  Sometimes, it was something as simple as walking up with his girlfriend to a cop and taking his photograph or asking directions.  Other times, it was directly antagonistic, such as when he called up Captain Matt Leach of the Indiana State Police shortly after the Greencastle robbery and joked, "This is John Dillinger.  How are you, you stuttering bastard?"   Dillinger did this kind of thing to Leach more than once, which simply increased his motivation to get Dillinger.

Things became too hot in Chicago.  One of the former gang members, Ed Shouse, who had been kicked out of the gang for drinking and making advances to the girlfriends of the other gang members, was caught by the Chicago police and told them that Dillinger was being treated for a minor skin condition by a Dr. Charles Eye.  The "Dillinger Squad" of the Chicago Police lay in wait outside Dr. Eye's office, but when Dillinger came to see the doctor again, he saw suspicious cars outside the office and narrowly escaped capture.

The gang moved to Milwaukee where they planned the robbery of the American Bank and Trust in Racine, Wisconsin.  On November 20, 1933, the good-looking, well-dressed Henry Pierpont confidently walked into the bank with a roll of paper under his arm.   Then he pasted up a big Red Cross poster in the picture window of the bank, which happened to block the tellers' cages from being seen from the street.  Mrs. Henry Patzke, the bookkeeper noticed, but didn't think anything of it.

Shortly afterward, Dillinger, Makley and Hamilton walked into the bank and went up to the window where Harold Graham, the head teller stood.  "Go to the next window, please," he told them.  Graham had heard someone say that it was a stickup, but the phrase was often bantered around as a joke.

Makley repeated his order more forcefully, "Stick 'em up!"  Graham made a sudden movement and Makley fired, hitting Graham in the elbow and hip.  Graham fell and set off the silent alarm that rang in the police station.

Pierpont ordered everyone to the floor, flat on their stomachs, while Dillinger got the cashier and bank president to open the vault.  Shortly afterwards, two policemen walked to the bank, expecting that this was just another false alarm, like many other ones before it.  When they walked into the bank, Pierpont relieved one of them of his gun and told Makley to "get that punk with his machine gun!"

Makley fired at Sergeant Hansen and wounded him twice, but not too seriously.  It was enough to start a panic: women inside the bank were screaming hysterically, a crowd was gathering outside and armed men were appearing from police cars.  They grabbed several hostages, but only two -- Mrs. Patzke and the bank president -- went with them in the getaway car.  Not long after, the two hostages were let go unharmed.

The take from this complicated robbery was a mere $27, 789.  But it was enough to allow them to spend part of the winter in Daytona Beach.  Then in January of 1934, Dillinger and Hamilton together headed towards Tucson, Arizona by way of Indiana. 

On January 15, the two of them robbed the First National Bank of East Chicago, Indiana.   While Hamilton was gathering up the money, Dillinger saw a cop outside.   Actually there were four cops outside, three of whom were in plain clothes.   They were there because the bank vice president had pressed the silent alarm.   With a couple hostages as shields, Dillinger and Hamilton left the bank.   Patrolman William Patrick O'Malley had a clear shot at Dillinger and took it, but didn't wound him because of the bullet-proof vest.  O'Malley kept on shooting, finally Dillinger shot back and hit O'Malley right in the heart.

Dillinger helped Hamilton, who had been wounded, back to the car and the two of them made it back to Chicago with over $20,000 in cash.  It was a poorly planned, unnecessary adventure with big costs.  Dillinger had killed his first man and Hamilton was badly wounded.

The gang finally met up in Tucson, but it couldn't have been more of a disaster.  Even though they thought they could successfully pose as tourists, the police started watching them almost from the start.  First Makley was arrested, then Clark.  Had the police left men at the house they had rented, they would have caught Pierpont and Mary Kinder an hour later when they went to the house.  Pierpont saw some blood and figured out what happened.  He arranged for a local lawyer to represent the two that had been caught.

Just by chance they caught Pierpont from a description that a neighbor had given when he saw Pierpont go up to the house where Makley and Clark had stayed.  On Pierpont they found a piece of paper that he fought bitterly and vainly to swallow.  It was the address of the place Dillinger and Billie were staying.  It was just a matter of time before they came home and were arrested.

"In the space of five hours, without firing a shot at the cost of only a broken finger, the police of a relatively small city had done what the combined forces of several states, including that of America's second largest metropolis, had tried so long and so unsuccessfully to do." (Toland)

The news media poured into Tucson.  Considering what a spot the gang members were in, they didn't seem to be taking it too hard.  Dillinger enjoyed the attention:   "We're exactly like you cops," he told Milo "Swede" Walker, one of the policemen who arrested them.  "You have a profession -- we have a profession.  Only difference is you're on the right side of the law, we're on the wrong."

When the governor of Arizona came to visit them, Pierpont and Makley chatted with him amiably.  Pierpont had only good things to say about the policemen who arrested them.   "I think Frank Eyman was a swell fellow not to shoot me... There are two kinds of officers -- rats and gentlemen.  You fellows are gentlemen and the Indiana and Ohio cops are rats...If all this had happened in Ohio, we'd be laying on a slab.  They'd have murdered us."

The capture of the gang touched off a huge jurisdictional war between Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio.  Indiana desperately wanted to send Dillinger to the electric chair for the murder of Patrolman Patrick O'Malley.  Ohio wanted the same for Pierpont and the others who raided the Lima jail.

Reporters put aside the stories of the jurisdictional battle for a much better one:  a marriage license had been issued to Mary Kinder and Harry Pierpont.  Mary told reporters:  "I love Harry Pierpont.  He has always been gentle and kind to me... I realize that after we arrive in Indiana, we may never meet again, for the law intends, if possible, to 'burn' him on a murder charge.  That's why I want to marry him and when the vows are taken by us we will be united forever -- in spirit at least.  If the worst comes, I shall love him more even in death than life."

Harry Pierpont had asked for the license, but Mary could not sign it because she was not legally divorced from her husband.  Later that day, she asked another inmate what had happened to Pierpont.  The inmate told her that Harry, Makley and Clark were being extradited to Ohio.  "Oh, my God," she said softly.

Dillinger was sent back to Indiana's Crown Point "escape-proof" jail to await trial for the robbery of the East Chicago, Indiana, bank robbery and the murder of Patrolman O'Malley.  Clark, Makley and Pierpont were sent back to Lima, Ohio, to answer for the death of Sheriff Jess Sarber.   It looked pretty bleak for the Dillinger Gang.