The Kidnap Years: by David Stout (popular books of all time TXT) 📗

In the spring of 1934, the adventures of the Barker-Karpis desperadoes intersected with those of John Dillinger, the dashing bandit and escape artist. The confluence of events happened in part because Volney Davis was acquainted with people in both criminal camps.

On March 3, Dillinger escaped from the jail in Crown Point, Indiana, where he had been taken after being captured in Arizona. He was supposed to stand trial for the killing of a police officer during a bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana. (The Dillinger gang had also been linked to the slaying of a Chicago police officer.)

In effecting his escape, Dillinger cowed jail guards with what was later thought to be a fake pistol whittled from a block of wood and blackened with shoe polish. The feat added to the bandit’s dashing image. But Dillinger made a big mistake. He stole the sheriff’s car and drove it across a state line, from Indiana into Illinois, on his way to Chicago. Thus, he violated the recently passed National Motor Vehicle Theft Act, which made it a federal offense to transport a stolen motor vehicle across a state border.

The act had added to the responsibilities of the FBI, which Hoover welcomed. It had also put Dillinger squarely in the director’s sights.

Then came one of the worst debacles in the history of the FBI.

The bureau got a tip that Dillinger, “Baby Face” Nelson, and several gangster companions had stopped at a remote vacation spot known as Little Bohemia Lodge in north Wisconsin for a rest. Hoover authorized his then-favorite agent, Melvin Purvis, to gather a posse and capture Dillinger—or maybe killing him would be better.

Purvis assembled some agents and secured some heavy weaponry, and the caravan headed to the northern reaches of Wisconsin. On the bitter cold Sunday night of April 22, 1934, the lawmen surrounded the cabins where Dillinger and friends were staying. After a while, the FBI men saw a car departing. The driver had the car radio on, so he probably did not hear orders to stop. The agents fired on the car and killed a thirty-five-year-old man who worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Two other men in the car, also innocent civilians, were wounded. The commotion aroused the bandits in the cabins, and in no time, the night was lit up with gunfire. An FBI agent was killed, and Dillinger and his crew escaped through the woods.

Trigger-happy agents had killed an innocent man, an agent had been slain—and the outlaws had escaped. It soon became clear that there had been inadequate coordination between the federal men and locals on where to put up roadblocks. The raid was a fiasco.

Even in that era of less aggressive reporters, the Little Bohemia Lodge disaster generated a lot of criticism of Hoover and his bureau. A gibe from Will Rogers, a prominent humorist and commentator of the era, must have been especially stinging for the director: “Well, they had Dillinger surrounded and was all ready to shoot him when he came out, but another bunch of folks came out ahead, so they just shot them instead. Dillinger is going to accidentally get with some innocent bystanders some time, then he will get shot.”144

And yet Little Bohemia may have created opportunity as well. As the New York Times reported two days after the shootout, “Aroused by the latest escapade of the bandit John Dillinger, President Roosevelt has requested early enactment by Congress of a sheaf of bills greatly enlarging the police powers of the Federal Government.”145

The proposals, several of which found their way into law, made bank robbery a federal offense, made it a federal crime to kill an officer of the federal government, and in general lessened whatever protections criminals still enjoyed by crossing state lines. And it gave yet more responsibility to the FBI, which was becoming a national police force.

Was Hoover living a charmed life?

The not-so-subtle message that filtered down to FBI agents after Little Bohemia was simple: kill John Dillinger. There was scant sentiment among lawmen for capturing the bandit, who was known to be traipsing across the Midwest, and subjecting him to a “fair trial.”

Not long after Little Bohemia, Volney Davis got a surprise visit at his home in Aurora, Illinois, near Chicago. Dillinger and a bandit pal, Homer Van Meter, had come to call, dragging along John “Red” Hamilton, another Dillinger confederate who had been gravely wounded in a gunfight in the flight from Little Bohemia Lodge.

Dr. Joseph Moran was summoned, but he refused to treat Hamilton, perhaps because he saw that Hamilton’s wounds had turned gangrenous and were fatal. But Davis agreed to keep Hamilton in his house, caring for him as best he could until he passed away. When he did, Dillinger, Doc Barker, Van Meter, and Davis are said to have buried him in a gravel pit near Oswego, Illinois, though there are conflicting versions of this bit of gangster lore.

The last confirmed sighting of Dr. Moran alive was in a club in Toledo in July 1934. His drinking had gotten the best of him, and he was heard bragging to Doc Barker and a few associates about his value to the gang and the power he thought he had over them because of the tender care he provided.

Not long afterward, he left the club accompanied by some gang members and was never seen alive again. Later, Alvin Karpis claimed that Arthur and Fred Barker killed the doctor and buried him in a lime pit in Michigan. But Fred Barker reportedly offered a different clue in talking with other gang members: “He’ll do no more operating. The fishes have probably eat him up by now.”

His remark hinted at a more accepted version of Dr. Moran’s fate: that Karpis himself and Fred Barker took the doctor for a boat ride on Lake Erie, killed him, and dumped him overboard. Fourteen months later, a badly decomposed, fish-nibbled body washed ashore on the shores of Crystal Beach, Ontario, minus hands