But Beth Green’s knowledge wasn’t limited to Dillinger. Eddie Green did business with the Barkers, and his wife knew everyone in that gang as well. She quickly filled the sizable gaps in the FBI’s knowledge of its structure. She identified every gang member and his girlfriend, including Karpis’s teenage paramour Delores Delaney, whom Green described as “a poor dumb little thing.” For the first time agents learned of Harry Sawyer’s role in St. Paul’s criminal web, and his role as Bremer’s “finger man.” Green described Louie Cernocky’s place outside Chicago as a rendezvous point for both gangs.
At least initially, Beth Green’s encyclopedic knowledge did the Bureau little good, in part because Hoover didn’t have enough men to chase down all the leads. The Bureau’s resources were stretched to the breaking point, as Pop Nathan pointed out in a call to Hoover that week. Hoover had no choice but to put his trust in Melvin Purvis.
“Well, son, keep a stiff upper lip and get Dillinger for me,” Hoover told Purvis in a handwritten note, “and the world is yours.”
12
DEATH IN THE NORTH WOODS
April 10 to April 23, 1934
Dillinger was devastated by Billie Frechette’s arrest. In the days afterward, he searched his mind for a way to rescue her. She was too heavily guarded at the Bankers Building, he could see, but the papers said she would soon be transferred to St. Paul to face harboring charges. He decided to attempt a rescue en route. It would be a firefight, and for that he wanted bulletproof vests.
The night Billie was arrested, Dillinger walked through the backdoor of Louis Cernocky’s tavern in Fox River Grove. Cernocky grilled him a steak and handed him a bottle of whiskey, which Dillinger took to a basement bedroom. The gang had agreed to relay messages via Cernocky, and the next day the Nelsons, who had reunited with Tommy Carroll and his girlfriend in St. Paul, arrived. By the next evening, Wednesday, April 11, Van Meter and Hamilton showed up, too, with Pat Cherrington in tow.
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None of the men were wild about Dillinger’s idea of rescuing Billie, but Van Meter knew where they could find vests.
At 1:15 that Friday morning, a fifty-four-year-old police officer named Judd Pittenger was standing on a corner in downtown Warsaw, Indiana, thirty miles west of Fort Wayne. Warsaw was a sleepy town, and Pittenger, as its night patrolman, walked a sleepy beat: the odd prowler or vandal was the only break in his normal predawn routine. But when Pittenger turned at the sound of footsteps, he found two men in raincoats pointing submachine guns at him. He would later say he recognized one as Dillinger; the other was Van Meter.
“We want your vests,” Dillinger said, “and we mean business.”
Pittenger grabbed the barrel of Dillinger’s gun and struggled with him a moment, until Van Meter jammed a tommy gun into Pittenger’s back.
“Leave loose,” Dillinger said. “We don’t want to kill you.”
Van Meter snatched Pittenger’s pistol from its holster and whacked him twice over the head with it.
“Don’t hit me any more,” Pittenger yelped.
“Don’t hit him,” Dillinger said.
Dillinger ordered Pittenger to take them to the police station. They wanted access to the department’s weapons closet.
“I don’t have the key,” Pittenger said.
“Who has the key?” Dillinger asked.
“I don’t know,” Pittenger said.
“Don’t be a fool,” Dillinger said. “We don’t wanna be forced to kill you.”
“I don’t want you to kill me,” Pittenger said. “I have a couple of kids at home.”
“That’s the reason we don’t want to kill you,” Dillinger said.
With a sigh, Pittenger reached into his pocket and handed over the key. They marched him to the deserted police station and up a set of stairs to the weapons closet. While Van Meter covered Pittenger, Dillinger took out three bulletproof vests and two pistols.
1
Within hours Matt Leach had roadblocks thrown up all over northern Indiana. Vigilantes sprang from their beds to man them. All the efforts were in vain. By daylight Dillinger was safely back in Chicago, where the evening papers carried the news that Billie would be transferred to St. Paul at any moment.
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Locked away in the FBI’s nineteenth-floor conference room, bathed in hot lights and interrogated around the clock for two long days, Billie gave Purvis nothing, and he was happy to send her to St. Paul for trial. In Indianapolis, Earl Connelley was having no better luck with Dillinger’s relatives. He rounded up and browbeat Hubert Dillinger and several of the cousins, but none seemed to know where Dillinger was hiding. One, Fred Hancock, helpfully suggested they check Arizona.
What they needed, Purvis saw, were better informants. The ones they had were offering plenty of tips; unfortunately, almost all were worthless. The Detroit SAC, Bill Larson, spent that week working one talkative snitch in Muncie. Purvis sent men to Muncie, Fort Wayne, Elkhorn, and South Bend checking the man’s stories; none panned out. An informant Earl Connelley had hired, the onetime insurance-company snitch Art Maginnis, had been sent to hang around the Dillinger filling station, but his leads were no better. By the time Dillinger raided the Warsaw station Friday morning, Maginnis had Connelley on a fruitless stakeout in Louisville, Kentucky. Purvis talked to Washington and suggested they post a $5,000 reward for information leading to Dillinger’s capture. Hoover vetoed the idea.
The Warsaw raid suggested to Purvis that Dillinger was still close; without Billie, the chances he would take another Florida or Arizona vacation seemed slim. That weekend Purvis drove to South Bend and then to Muncie checking more dead-end tips. By the following Monday, April 16, Hoover was growing impatient. They were charging off into the countryside without a plan, without discipline. What they needed, Hoover saw, was an orderly system for analyzing leads. That Wednesday, Hoover told Purvis to quit running around Indiana and stay in Chicago. Connelley and the other SACs were to clear all leads through Purvis and telephone him at least once a day. The very next morning they got the word that Dillinger had been seen in Sault St. Marie.
While Purvis, Connelley, and their men scrambled across Indiana and northern Kentucky in search of him, Dillinger remained in Chicago. A light rain was falling that Saturday, the day after the Warsaw raid, when Art O’Leary went to meet him at the corner of Belden and Campbell Avenues. When O’Leary saw Dillinger standing across the street, he tipped his hat to signal that he hadn’t been followed. When Dillinger did the same, O’Leary crossed the street and got into his car. Dillinger climbed behind the wheel, his hat tugged so low it obscured his face. Two men O’Leary didn’t recognize were sitting in the back, and for a split-second he feared he had stepped into a trap.
“Johnnie, is it you?” he asked.
“Of course it’s me.”
“Take off your hat.”
Dillinger laughed as he doffed his wet hat and introduced O’Leary to John Hamilton. O’Leary shook his hand, noticing the missing fingers. Dillinger made no effort to introduce Van Meter. It was a fast meeting. Dillinger wanted O’Leary to tell him how Billie would be taken to St. Paul. He said he would call on Monday for details.
2
No one thought Dillinger’s idea of rescuing Billie was sound; both Van Meter and Hamilton had tried to talk him out of it. Least enthusiastic by far were O’Leary and Louis Piquett. The two men agreed between themselves that they would make no effort to ascertain details of Billie’s trip to St. Paul.
O’Leary was nervous when he met Dillinger at 4:00 Monday afternoon at the corner of North and Kedzie Avenues. (Dillinger had left a cryptic phone message, “32 west and 16 north,” and O’Leary had figured it out.) Pat Cherrington climbed into the backseat to let O’Leary in front; Hamilton sat with her, a submachine gun in his lap under a blanket. When Dillinger expressed his disappointment that O’Leary had come empty-handed, O’Leary urged him to have faith in the courts.
“Will Mr. Piquett go to St. Paul and help defend her?” Dillinger asked.
“I’ll have to speak with him, but I’m sure that he will.”
“That’s fine, Art; give him this five hundred dollars.” Dillinger produced a roll of bills. “By the way, did you hear anything more about the doctor who does the plastic surgery?”
“Yes,” O’Leary said. “Lou says his name is Dr. Ralph Robiend.”
“Did you find out what he charges?”
“It’ll cost you five thousand dollars.”
“Five grand? Don’t you think that’s pretty high?”
“Not when you consider how dangerous it is,” O’Leary said. “Hell, don’t you realize you’re the hottest person in the whole United States?”
3
Dillinger reluctantly accepted the fact that Billie was out of his reach; the FBI soon ferried her to St. Paul, where Piquett arrived to help defend her. Alone now, robbed of the woman he wanted to marry, Dillinger fell into a deepening funk. His mood would only have darkened had he known the FBI, acting on an anonymous tip, was already looking for Dr. Ralph Robiend.
If Dillinger was heartsick, John Hamilton’s mood was even bleaker. With each passing day he grew more fatalistic. He kept saying he would die soon. On several occasions he mentioned how badly he wanted to see his sister in his hometown of Sault St. Marie before he died. Dillinger tried to dissuade him, but the more Hamilton stewed, the more he wanted to go. Dillinger had gotten to say good-bye to his family: why couldn’t he? With a sigh Dillinger agreed to go along.
On Tuesday, April 17, Dillinger strapped on one of the new bulletproof vests, jammed a pistol into his shoulder holster, and climbed into his Ford V-8. That morning, his eyes scanning side roads for speed traps, he followed Hamilton’s car out of Chicago into Indiana. As the two cars drove north into Michigan, Dillinger spent the day alone with his thoughts. Beside him, where Billie had nestled, lay a pair of binoculars and a Thermos filled with cold water; in the backseat a row of guns sat in their cases.
At nightfall, the two cars stopped for gas at a station outside Sault St. Marie, at Michigan’s northern tip. As the attendant filled his tank, Dillinger stood in his overcoat in a light rain, his gray fedora pulled down over his forehead, watching the man’s every move. He didn’t want to be here; this was stupid.
“You’re a long way from home,” the attendant said, noticing the Minnesota plates. “What line of business you in?”
“Clothing salesman,” Dillinger said.
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When night fell they drove into town. At 8:30 Hamilton’s thirty-nine-year-old sister, Anna Steve, answered a knock at the kitchen door of her frame house at the top of a steep hill on 14th Street. It was Pat Cherrington. “Are you Mrs. Steve?” she asked, and Mrs. Steve nodded. “Now don’t be afraid, don’t say a word,” Cherrington said. “I’ve got a surprise. There’s someone here who wants to see you.”
A moment later Hamilton materialized from the darkness, carrying a machine gun wrapped in a blanket. Dillinger was right behind him, holding a rifle. At the sight of her brother, whom she hadn’t seen in seven years, Mrs. Steve began to cry. Hamilton held her and said they couldn’t stay long. Wiping away her tears, Mrs. Steve said she wanted to go out and buy steaks to celebrate, but Dillinger shook his head and urged her to cook what she had in the house. Shooing her three children upstairs, Mrs. Steve prepared a dinner of bacon, eggs, and toast, and ate it with the trio at the kitchen table as they reminisced about Hamilton’s childhood. Afterward both men shaved. Mrs. Steve took out a pair of clippers and gave the men quick haircuts.
4
For the first time in weeks Hamilton seemed happy. He was home; it was all he had left. Around ten, the kitchen door swung open, startling both men, who grabbed their guns off the table. But it was only Mrs. Steve’s eighteen-year-old son, Charles Campbell. Dillinger lowered his gun. “Charles, this is Johnnie,” Hamilton said. He didn’t have to say more.
Everyone adjourned to a sitting room, where young Campbell watched the two men closely. Hamilton made a clicking sound when he breathed, the result of his earlier wounds. Dillinger, still walking with a limp, remained on edge. He sat by a window saying little, reading a newspaper between peeks outside. After a bit, Hamilton sent his nephew to fetch one of his boyhood friends, a man named Paul Parquette, who came over and was stunned to find himself face-to-face with the country’s most-wanted man. It was an awkward moment, a parody of a reunion; no one knew what to say, so Hamilton showed his old pal how his machine gun worked. This was far too chummy for Dillinger, who rose around eleven and announced it was time to leave. Hamilton begged for just one night to sleep in his sister’s house. But Dillinger said it wasn’t safe. The FBI was out there somewhere, he said, watching.
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As they gathered their guns, Mrs. Steve began to cry. Not knowing what to say, she handed her brother a jar of venison to take. Hamilton held her for a long moment and softly kissed her cheek. “Bye,” Hamilton said. “I hope we see you again.”
They wouldn’t. The last time Anna Steve saw her brother, he was walking down the muddy hill away from her house; Hamilton left his car behind for her as a gift. At the bottom he slid into Dillinger’s car and drove to the town of St. Ignace, only to find they had missed the last ferry across Lake Michigan. Dillinger found a hotel where they could stay the night, and Cherrington signed them in.
5
Purvis’s men were alerted by one of Mrs. Steve’s neighbors, but by the time they reached Sault St. Marie the next day, Dillinger was gone. The agents, accompanied by local deputies, raided the Steve home and led Hamilton’s sister and her son away in handcuffs. In Washington, Hoover had no sympathy for their plight; he wanted a message sent to anyone who would harbor dangerous criminals. For Mrs. Steve, the price for a bacon-and-eggs dinner, two haircuts, and a three-hour reunion with her brother was three months in a federal women’s prison.