Dillinger’s Plastic Surgery on Pulaski Rd. (or Crawford Ave.?)

By the end of May, 1934, John Dillinger was hiding out in Chicago. Having robbed innumerable banks and broken out of jails twice during the last 12 months, he had become an internationally-known superstar criminal. Besides local and state authorities, almost the entirety of the newly-formed Division of Investigation (later, the FBI) was involved in efforts to hunt him down, dead or alive (but better dead). As “Public Enemy #1”, it was increasingly difficult to find friendly (or unsuspecting) help in evading the law. Dillinger knew he couldn’t continue dodging J. Edgar Hoover’s agents forever; drastic measures were necessary. The great bank robber’s most desperate attempt to evade capture took place here, at 2509 N. Crawford Ave. (now Pulaski Rd.), where he went under the knife to permanently change the face everyone in America now recognized.

January of 1934 saw most of the Dillinger gang wintering in Tuscon, Arizona, on the lam from a serious bank job in East Chicago, Indiana, where Dillinger himself is believed to have killed a police officer. Caught by local police, the famous criminal was extradited to Indiana and placed in jail at Crown Point, Indiana. It was there that he first hired Louis P. Piquett, a Chicago attorney known for close ties to the Chicago mob organization known as the “Outfit,” the remainder of Al Capone’s organization. Probably Piquett’s name was familiar among the crowd Dillinger ran with, or it may be that Piquett offered his services at a cut rate for this high-profile defense. Other have suggested that Dillinger was in some loose way connected with the Outfit, and may have met Piquett previously.

In any case, Piquett, who had no formal legal training but had passed the Illinois bar, became Dillinger’s counsel and best source of assistance after he broke out of Crown Point in March, 1934. Piquett’s presence may have been what drew Dillinger back to Chicago, instead of hiding out in his native Indiana or escaping into the Far West. Piquett’s law office on Wacker Drive was a common meeting place for the Dillinger Gang, although Piquett always denied that Dillinger hid out there while a fugitive.

It was Piquett and his co-counsel, Arthur O’Leary, who connected Dillinger with the makeshift operating room on Crawford Ave. In April, Piquett approached a low-level crook and bar owner, James “Cabaret” Probasco, about finding trained surgeons willing to perform the operation. Probasco, then in his 60s, had been a boxer and a liveryman in his youth and was trained in veterinary science. He had also been a major part of a serious diamond theft ring in the 1920s, serving as the main “fence” for stolen jewels. In 1924, his own wife, Clara, had testified against him to police, probably because her husband’s partner-in-crime was also his mistress, Florence. Despite Clara’s testimony, the case against Probasco fizzled thanks to the work of his attorney Louis Piquett, and he walked on charges of possession and sale of stolen property. Divorcing Clara, he remarried Florence, and went into the tavern business, opening up shop in Rogers’ Park, on Howard St. near Rogers Ave.

(Pictured: James Probasco)

When Piquett approached Probasco about helping his new client, John Dillinger, dollar signs flashed in Probasco’s eyes. He told Piquett he could find the surgical talent and the location, but for a high price, $5,000 (over $80,000 in today’s dollars). It took some convincing by O’Leary, but Dillinger finally agreed to the proposal, and went to work in early May, robbing banks to “earn” the fee.

To perform the surgery, Probasco looked for men with medical training, but who were also acquainted with the underworld. In Dr. William Loeser, he found his man. Loeser, a German immigrant, had trained at Northwestern University and ran a successful surgical practice until his arrest for violation of the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act of 1914, the first federal law restricting the manufacture and sale of cocaine and heroin in the U.S. Dr. Loeser was paroled in 1932, at which point he fled to Mexico, where he developed a technique to remove fingerprints, becoming his own first patient for the procedure, which involved acid treatment.

(Pictured: Dr. William Loeser)

To assist Dr. Loeser, Probasco found another surgeon, Dr. Harold Cassidy, who had a less shady past, but who was unable to pass up the opportunity to make a quick buck. Probasco promised $1,700 to Dr. Loeser and $1,200 to Dr. Cassidy. All that was left was to find an operating room. Legitimate hospitals were obviously out of the question, and neither of the two doctors was willing to use his own offices. Instead, Probasco opted for the least expensive option – his own apartment at 2509 N. Crawford Ave. Probasco’s wife and former jewel thief, Florence, had died young the year before, and he was currently living with a girlfriend, Margaret Doyle, but he felt she could be misled about the operation. So, on the evening of May 27, John Dillinger arrived at Probasco’s home and prepared for surgery the next day. Dillinger handed Probasco $3,000 in cash up front, with the remaining $2,000 to be paid after the operation.

The following evening, Piquett’s assistant Arthur O’Leary picked up the two doctors, and drove them to Probasco’s home, where they instructed Dillinger to remove his shirt and lie down in the bedroom. Dr. Loeser offered Dillinger the option of a local or a general anesthetic, and Dillinger chose the latter. While Loeser washed his hands in an adjoining bathroom, Dr. Cassidy administered the ether. Suddenly, Dr. Cassidy began yelling for help. Returning to the bedroom, Loeser saw that Dillinger had received too much anesthetic too quickly, and was choking on his own tongue. Quickly, Loeser located his forecepts and freed the blocked airways, saving Dillinger’s life.

But after that experience, Dillinger decided on the local anesthetic, which meant he was largely awake and in excruciating pain, for most of the procedure. For several hours, the two doctors removed a mole from his forehead, a dimple from his cheek, and changed shape of face, smoothing out the famous cleft in his chin, and erasing the seams in his cheeks using implanted kangaroo tendons. They also employed Loeser’s acid method to burn out his fingerprints.

(Pictured: Probasco's home at 2509 N. Crawford Ave. (now Pulaski Rd.) with a crowd of curiosity-seekers outside after Dillinger's death).

With the surgery a success, Dillinger returned to Probasco’s home on June 3, this time bringing with him a fellow gang member, Homer Van Meter, who also went under Drs. Loeser and Cassidy’s knives. Over time, however, Dillinger became unsatisfied with the operation. The science of plastic surgery was still in its infancy, the two doctors were not leading experts, and the circumstances under which they operated were primitive. Thus, Dillinger was still completely recognizable. After his death at the hands of Division of Investigation and East Chicago police officers (see this post for further details), an autopsy found identifying traces of his fingerprints remained, despite Dr. Loeser’s best efforts.

Anna Sage, the famed “woman in red” (she actually wore orange and white, but appeared to be in red under the glare of the Biograph Theater marquee) who turned in Dillinger to the feds, was most likely also the source of their information about James Probasco. A few days after Dillinger’s death on July 22, 1934, J. Edgar Hoover’s men picked up Probasco and took him for questioning to their offices on the 19th floor of the Banker’s Building at Clark and Adams streets. In a search of his apartment, agents found the evidence of the surgery: sleeping potions, acids, gauze, surgical scissors, and cotton were still in the medicine cabinet (likely, Probasco expected more work from other members of the Dillinger Gang).

Agents no doubt questioned Probasco intensely for hours, seeking information on Dillinger companions such as Van Meter and Baby Face Nelson, who were still at large. On July 24, lead investigator Melvin Purvis left Chicago for Washington to brief J. Edgar Hoover about Dillinger’s death and the continued investigations, leaving agent Samuel Crowley in charge of the work in Chicago. Crowley was known as a tougher interrogator than Purvis, and was willing to bend the rules (or worse) to get information out of suspects. In a case a year earlier, agents in the very same room where Probasco was being held, had dangled a mob suspect out the window by his ankles, 19 floors off the ground, in an attempt to make him talk.

In any case, July 26, 1934 saw James Probasco under questioning at the Bankers’ Building, and mysteriously, just a few minutes after agents left him alone in the interrogation room, Probasco stepped up from a chair to the window sill in the room, three feet off the ground, and leapt out the window, falling to his death on the pavement below. Because of the reputation of his interrogators, there has always been a strong suspicion that Probasco did not defenestrate willingly – at worst, Probasco would have faced no more than 30 months in jail for harboring Dillinger, hardly a sentence worth dying over – but the coroner’s jury ultimately ruled the death a suicide. At the time of his death, Probasco held over $72,000 in life insurance policies, with his sister the chief beneficiary, but almost all of the payout was void in the case of suicide.

Nevertheless, the feds apparently got enough information to locate Dr. Loeser, who turned state’s witness against Dr. Cassidy and attorney Louis Piquette. Piquett went on trial in a widely covered case for harboring a fugitive – Dillinger – but was ultimately found not guilty. Unfazed, prosecutors immediately put Piquett on trial for harboring Homer van Meter, using Piquett’s testimony at the Dillinger trial to trap him into contradictions on the stand. In 1936, Piquett was found guilty and sentenced to two years in federal prison. He was also fined $10,000 and disbarred in Illinois. In 1950, President Harry S Truman pardoned Piquett, and he applied for reinstatement to the bar, but died before a decision was made in 1951.

As a reward for his part in the prosecution of Piquett, Dr. Loeser was sentenced to only one day in prison for his crime. However, he also had to serve 18 additional months for leaving the country after his parole in the narcotics case. Dr. Cassidy received only probation, and served honorably in the army medical corps during World War II; however, after the war, however, he had a nervous breakdown and committed suicide in 1946.

Probasco’s apartment building at 2509 N. Crawford was demolished, and an extension was built from the building next door into the lot, numbered 2511 N. Pulaski. Even the name of the street has changed; within Chicago city limits, Crawford is now known as Pulaski Rd. The story of the name change is an interesting one.

On October 1, 1933, while Dillinger was languishing in jail in Lima, Ohio (from which he would soon be freed at the hands of his gang), Cook County civil service commissioner and former president of the Polish Women’s Alliance of America, Miss A. Emily Napieralski, appeared before Mayor Edward J. Kelly, petitioning him to support a change in name for Crawford Ave. to recognize the bravery of Polish general and American Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski. Poles have a long history in Chicago -- Napieralski’s family had arrived as pioneers in the 1830s – and the 1930s saw their political influence growing. Miss Napieralski told the Tribune,

My purpose is to bring about a closer brotherhood of man. Count Pulaski came to America and offered his services to George Washington. In giving distinguished service in the revolutionary war he lifted himself above any particular nationality, and his name should be remembered by all.

Neither Mayor Kelly nor the city aldermen wanted to be seen as anti-Polish, so there was strong support on the city council for the proposal. Understandably and unsurprisingly, however, businesses along Crawford Ave. were nearly uniformly opposed. They had spent heavily advertising their addresses, investments which would be lost if the name change was granted. Some businesses, such as Crawford Laundry and Crawford Grill, would clearly face serious problems.

Also opposed were grandchildren of Peter Crawford, the pioneer Chicago farmer for whom the street was named. Crawford had arrived in Chicago in 1844, and, for $15/acre, purchased the plot of land now bounded by Pulaski Rd., Kostner Rd., Cermak Rd., and 26th Street; his farmhouse home was at what is now 2230 S. Pulaski Rd. Crawford was one of the founders of the township of Cicero in 1857, and as early as 1863, the dirt path abutting the east side of his property, connecting Ogden and Archer Aves., was known as Crawford Ave. Chicago city street signs indicating the name of the street were posted in 1913. At the 1933 meeting of the city council where the name change was under consideration, Crawford’s grandchildren, John H. Crawford and Nettie Ferenson appeared, along with Chicago Historical Society leader Edward P. Brennan, who argued

“We have no Bowling Green, as has New York, no Commons, as has Boston; no Independence Hall, as has Philadelphia. All of our landmarks were wiped out by the fire. All we have left of historical significance is names, and the Historical Society is opposing the wiping out of the names of the families which helped build Chicago.”

Nevertheless, in December, 1933, the city council approved the name change to Pulaski Rd. by a vote of 34-12, rejecting compromises offered by the Crawford business group, such as renaming Augusta Blvd. in honor of Pulaski. You might expect that the business group would be bitter over the loss, but you probably wouldn’t expect them to wage an intense fight over the street’s name for the next 18 years, which in fact they did.

The Crawford business owners first took the city to court, arguing that over 75% of the owners of property along the street opposed the name change, and that the council’s actions flew in the face of Illinois’ home-rule precedent, by which decisions were localized to the greatest degree possible. The group won a temporary injunction in January, 1934, but an appeals court eventually sided with the city, and “Pulaski Rd.” street signs began to be erected in the summer of 1934. Most of these were immediately stolen by upset property owners.

The Crawford business group did not give up so easily, however. For three years, they continuously lobbied state lawmakers in Springfield, and in 1937, they got their wish: a state law was passed indicating that if the deed-holders of 60% of the frontage on any street petitioned city government to change the name of that street, their petition would be granted.

Polish groups that supported Pulaski Road immediately saw the implications and devised an ingenious solution. They found a tiny one-block street, Haussen Court, on the north side, where the majority of the property owners were of Polish descent, and petitioned the city to change the name of that street to Crawford. In doing so, they would effectively block any attempt to revert Pulaski Rd. to the name Crawford, since that would cause duplication in street names.

Mrs. Eda Haussen Bartels, an elderly lady who lived on one corner of Haussen Ct., and after whose father, pioneer farmer Fred Haussen, the street was named, was blindsided by the new plan and vigorously opposed it. The following year, in 1938, she passed away, and her physician loudly told the newspapers that her death “probably” resulted from worry about the name of her street.

The city corporation counsel took both petitions – for changing Pulaski back to Crawford, and for changing Haussen to Crawford – under advisement, and undertook a painstaking and lengthy survey of property on both streets to learn the precise boundaries of each owner’s lot. In 1939, the city announced the failure of both petitions. Pulaski Rd. had 147,207 feet of frontage within Chicago city limits, and the Crawford business group’s petition was short by 9,727 feet. Similarly, the Haussen Ct. petition would require 1,264 feet of frontage to pass, but was short by 90 feet.

The Crawford business group immediately went back to work, and managed to find additional Pulaski Rd. frontage property owners, more than enough to push them over the 60% mark, but the city refused to accept the supplementary petition, causing a return to court for all parties.

During this time, most Chicagoans continued to refer to Pulaski Rd. as Crawford Ave., despite the change. In 1944, a streetcar conductor who called out “Crawford” was attacked by a Polish rider, Michael Orzschkwsk, who grabbed him by the collar and threw him to the ground, yelling invective in Polish (a sympathetic court fined Orzschkwsk $1 and ordered him to pay the conductor’s tailoring bill).

The advent of World War II put the Crawford-Pulaski debate on hold for a few years. Nevertheless, the animosity between the groups was never far below the surface. A rather nasty 1945 letter to the editor in the Tribune, signed “Old Timer,” was symptomatic:

The wailing that is going on among the Polish groups of Chicago with regard to the establishment of the Curzon line as the eastern boundary of Poland arouses little sympathy among thousands of Chicago people who recall that these same Poles have made no move to restore Crawford avenue to the American public since they unlawfully annexed it in 1933 and changed its name to Pulaski road.

In 1950, the Crawford business group again sued the city, indicating they had a petition signed by owners of 60.4% of all the owners of Pulaski Rd. frontage supporting a return to the Crawford name. They asked the court to force the city to follow the 1937 state law. In 1951, Superior Court judge John Sbarbaro did just that, and so, after 18 years, Pulaski Rd. became once again Crawford Ave.

An intense battle between the two sides then took place, with Polish groups who supported the Pulaski name attempting to lure or threaten Crawford Ave. business owners to withdraw their names from the petition. The petitioners responded by pressuring these property owners to remain on the petition. Several petition signers filed withdrawals, and then withdrawals-of-withdrawals over the next year.

However, the return to Crawford Ave. was short-lived. On appeal in November, 1952, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the 1937 state law creating the 60% margin for a street name change was unconstitutional, reversing Sbarbaro’s ruling, and handing the property right to street names back to the city council, which swiftly ordered Crawford Ave. to once again become Pulaski Rd., the name it holds to this day. Outside of the city limits, however, such as in Lincolnwood and Skokie, the continuation of Pulaski Rd. is still marked as Crawford Ave.

Gangs of Chicago: Thomas "Buff" Higgins Leads the Wright Street Gang

By most accounts, 1893 was a banner year in Chicago. The World’s Fair exhibited the very best the city had to offer, including magnificent architecture, a harmonious blending of cultures, and a beautiful physical landscape, to millions of visitors. But in the shadow of the “white city” was a very dark city. Just a mile or two from the sparkling waters of Lake Michigan lay the Maxwell Street district, a neighborhood teeming with the most incorrigible criminals, young desperadoes scurrying through the filthy streets and rotting tenement buildings like vermin. Then as now, poverty and hopelessness bred desperation and hedonism, and young men with little to live for would die over even less. The most vicious of these men formed into street gangs which terrorized 14th Place, in those days known as either Wright Street). The leader of one of these gangs was Thomas “Buff” Higgins, who at age 23 was already a notorious figure and had been in and out of jail over 100 times. In the early morning of September 3, 1893, in a Peoria St. home, Higgins wrote the final chapter in his life in a frantic moment, igniting a city-wide debate on poverty, crime and punishment in Chicago.

“Buff” was a nickname, short for “Buffalo”, and possibly styled after the wild-west gunslinger star of countless dime novels, “Buffalo Bill”, whose human incarnation in William Cody had captivated Chicago in a series of performances at the World’s Fair that year. Born in Ireland in the early 1870s, Buff Higgins immigrated with his parents to Chicago at the age of 2. Like many of their countrymen, the Higgins settled in the Maxwell street district, where poor workingmen could afford a few square feet of space. Conditions in the neighborhood were poor, and it was no place to raise a family, but it beat starvation and religious strife in Ireland.

As a boy, Higgins attended the notorious Walsh School, which still exists today, where Irish schoolboys banded together against newer immigrant groups from Germany, Russia, Poland, and other Eastern European regions. Knives and even guns were commonplace in these schoolyard battles, and through them, Buff Higgins came to be an expert fighter; as the Tribune later described his upbringing, "Fighting came to him easily, and nature had given him a body well adapted for physical combat. Experience supplemented his natural ability as a fighter and it was not long before 'Buff' Higgins was a man to be feared by each and every one who happened to come into contact with him."

By age 14, Higgins had dropped out of school, and he descended into a life of crime, naturally falling in with some of the tough Irish street gangs that controlled 14th Place (then known as Wright St.), near the intersection of Sangamon Street, which was the location of so many battles with police that it became known as “Dead Man’s Corner”. Higgins’ first recorded arrest, at age 14, was for stealing grapes from a neighborhood fruit merchant. From that ignominious beginning, the following ten years saw Buff back in the city jail – or the “Bridewell”, as it was known – countless times for disorderly conduct, drunkenness, vagrancy, larceny, and assault. In 1891, Higgins was even implicated in the murder of a neighborhood laborer, George Scott, and the entire Wright Street Gang, in which he had become a chief member, was hauled into court.

Finally, in 1892, Higgins was sent to the state penitentiary at Joliet to serve a one-year prison sentence for robbery. When he finished his term in September, 1893, he returned to the neighborhood and shortly found himself in need of money. With two fellow members of his Wright Street Gang, Higgins planned a midnight robbery of an irresistible target.

(Pictured: Thomas "Buff" Higgins. The Tribune described him as "low browed and repulsive in features")

February of 1893 had seen the bankruptcy of one of the nation’s largest railroads, the Philadelphia and Reading, and other railroad companies were believed to be on the verge of collapse. Nowhere was the shock of these insolvencies greater than in Chicago, the heart of so many rail systems. In those days before federal deposit insurance, banks invested more conservatively, but were also more vulnerable to “runs” by depositors, who, hearing rumors of a bank collapse, all rushed to withdraw their savings, possibly exacerbating the feared collapse (see earlier posts here and here for more details on banking before FDIC).

Among those who withdrew their savings in cash during the “Panic of 1893”, as it was later called, was Mrs. Bridget McCooey, the wife of a Crane Bros. elevator factory laborer, and a resident of a hardscrabble working-class neighborhood west of the Loop, just north of “Bloody Maxwell”, where Higgins and company ran the streets. Mrs. McCooey withdrew the family’s life savings, around $400, and stored it in cash in their home at 153 Johnson St. (now 230 S. Peoria St., pictured above). Adjusting amounts for inflation over such long periods is difficult, since the quality and types of goods available for purchase have changed so tremendously (most people would rather have $1,000 to spend in the 2009 Best Buy catalog than $1,000 in the 1901 Sears catalog, even though the $1,000 in 1901 would in principle be “worth” much more than $1,000 in current dollars). Nevertheless, using ordinary measures of inflation, $400 in 1893 is the equivalent of around $10,000 in today’s dollars.

Perhaps Mrs. McCooey mentioned the withdrawal to a friend or neighbor, or perhaps a bank clerk had noted the unusually large withdrawal. In any case, word quickly spread around that a sizeable sum of cash was hidden somewhere in the McCooey home. Buff Higgins had found his target.

Around 2:00 a.m. on September 3, 1893, Higgins, joined by two fellow Wright Street Gang members, Harry “Sheeney Joe” Feinberg and Edward “Red” Gary, approached the McCooey home on Peoria St. The three men thoroughly rummaged through the home, overturning every cabinet and drawer, in search of the $400. Unknown to the robbers, Mrs. McCooey had decided a few days earlier that her bank was solvent, redepositing the cash they sought. Finally, there was only one place the trio had yet to look, the McCooeys' bedrooms.

Feinberg and Gary waited at the bedroom door, prepared for a quick getaway, while Higgins alone tiptoed into the bedroom of Bridget’s 42-year old husband, Peter. Higgins was opening a bureau drawer in the bedroom when he accidentally knocked over a chair, awakening the sleeping Mr. McCooey. What happened next would be replayed countless times in court. The Tribune describes the scene:

Springing to his elbow, half awake, [McCooey] was dazzled by the light of a lamp shining full in his eyes. The lamp was in the hands of a man who stood near the bed. Two other men were in the room near the door. A child would have known their errand -- robbery. As McCooey was in the very act of springing from his bed the man with the lamp flashed a revolver and fired. McCooey, checked in the midst of his spring, fell back beside his wife with a groan. The man with the pistol set the lamp on the floor and the three men ran out of the bedroom. Mrs. McCooey screamed her husband's name. He made no reply. She turned to him. His face and nightdress were covered with blood which was flowing from a wound in his left eye. Then she ran screaming from the house, crying: "Murder! They have killed my husband. Murder!"

A neighbor, awakened by Mrs. McCooey’s screams, ran the two blocks to the police station, and a squad of officers was sent out to search the slums for a killer. They knew it was more than likely that their murderer hailed from the Maxwell street district, so they began combing the streets around 14th Pl. and Sangamon carefully. At 5:00 a.m. four officers from the Maxwell Street Police Station were patrolling that infamous corner (another source says it was at 14th Place and Jefferson) when they heard a noise coming from the gutter below one of the vaulted sidewalks. The officers peered into the gutter and found Buff Higgins (apparently, Buff was one of the city’s clumsier criminals), lying on his back with revolver in hand.

Knowing Higgins had been released from Joliet just a few days earlier, and recognizing the robbery-gone-wrong as typical of the work of his ilk, the officers hauled Buff into the stationhouse for questioning. And it’s there that the writers of Higgins’ biography diverge regarding what happened next.

Under intense interrogation by police Captain Blettner, Higgins denied being a part of the crew that ransacked the McCooey home. Thinking he might react to the crime scene, officers brought Higgins back to the McCooey home, and had him face the forlorn family:

"Look at your work", scorned Capt. Blettner
"I did not do it, I do not know anything about it", replied Higgins, trembling.

Mrs. McCooey then rushed for Higgins, yelling "Is that the man who killed my husband? I shall kill him if he remains in my sight."

Officers subdued the distraught wife, but Higgins did not admit his guilt. Returning to the police station, however, under continued questioning, Higgins finally broke down and confessed, signing his name to a statement indicating he had committed the murder of Peter McCooey:

"I went in the house with two other men for the purpose of getting that $400 which I knew McCooey had. I was the first to go in, and the other two followed close behind. When we got inside we searched all the places where we thought the money might be, but we could not find it. I then went into the room where the man and his wife lay asleep and searched his clothes. There was only $1.65 in the pockets of his trousers. I was about to go out of the room when I made a noise which awoke the man. I saw him open his eyes and when he tried to get out of bed I fired the shot at him. I knew I hit him, because he groaned once and then all was still. The men with me heard the shot and jumped out of the window and ran away. I was not long in following, as I heard the man in the next room [a boarder at the McCooey home] getting out of bed. I went under the sidewalk at Jefferson and Fourteenth streets and staid there until the police arrested me."

Higgins’ own account of the confession, which he later gave in court, was quite different. In his version of the story, after returning from the McCooey home, the police stripped him naked and threw him into a basement cell at the stationhouse, where he remained for four days without food or drink. When he requested the presence of his attorney, A.J. Hanlon, the police refused. Finally, after four days, when Higgins was famished and devoid of all hope, the police captain appeared at his cell with a favorite Irish beverage, saying

"Buff, it is an outrage for you to be treated like this. You must be feeling pretty slim. Don't you want a bottle of whiskey?"

Higgins told the captain there was $0.50 in his clothes that he would happily trade for the liquor, and the captain complied, giving a bottle of whiskey to a man who hadn’t had a bite to eat in days. Buff Higgins was quickly in a state of delirious drunkenness. It was at this point, Higgins claimed, that the captain offered him his freedom. All he had to do was sign a statement declaring his innocence, and he would be free to go. Therefore, when the captain put a pen in Higgins’ hand, and pushed a sheet of paper in front of him, Buff was happy to sign, even though he was likely illiterate and had no attorney present.

In fact, the statement was a confession, and Buff Higgins had just signed away his life.
The police disputed this account, and claimed as evidence the fact that Higgins had similarly confessed to the coroner’s jury on the day after he signed his confession at the police station. But the Chicago police in those days were known for their brutal tactics, especially in crime-ridden immigrant wards like the Maxwell street district, so we cannot know for certain.

On November 29, 1893, just under three months after the crime took place, a jury returned a verdict of first-degree murder against Buff Higgins, and sentenced him to death. It was one of only three death sentences levied in Cook county that year. The others were against a Chinese laundryman, Junk Jack Lin, who allegedly murdered his cousin, and, far more famously, Patrick Prendergast, the assassin of Chicago mayor Carter Harrison. Prendergast was initially scheduled to meet the hangman’s noose on the same day as Higgins, March 23, 1894, a fact that sickened Higgins: Buff would be the first to admit he was a street gang member and a robber, but Prendergast was a lunatic. Higgins told a New York Times reporter, “When it comes my turn to shuffle off, I want Irish hemp and a green shroud [like Higgins, Prendergast was of Irish origin], but I draw the line on being compelled to pass out with Prendergast."

But Buff Higgins had one more ace up his sleeve. His attorney, A.J. Hanlon, petitioned the court for another trial based on new evidence, and on January 16, 1894, the court heard the motion. At this hearing, Higgins’ counsel placed into evidence the affidavit of one Joseph Kauper, an 18-year old neighbor of the McCooeys. Kauper’s affidavit indicated that he saw three men flee the McCooey home on the night of the crime, and that Buff Higgins was not one of them.

The prosecution in the case was stunned, but suspicious. Kauper was a dull boy (the Tribune indicated that “his answers to questions on the witness stand yesterday showed him to be dull of comprehension,” suggesting mild retardation), and why hadn’t he come forward with his story earlier? Under intense cross-examination at the hearing, Kauper broke down and admitted the affidavit was fraudulent. A friend of his, one Tim Collins, who was a politically-connected leader of a street-sweeping union, had apparently convinced him to sign the affidavit in order to “give Buff a lift”. Likely Higgins’ friends in the Wright Street Gang had put the screws to either Collins or Kauper -- or both -- to try to free Buff. But Kauper’s confession to perjury ended the last of Higgins’ hopes. "All right, I guess the jig's up with me now," he was heard to mutter in the courtroom after his motion for a new trial was denied.

Attorney Hanlon appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court for a stay of execution, which was denied on March 22. On hearing the news, the prisoner sighed,

Well, that's just what I expected. So my neck will crack Friday -- I'll hang. No use to tell me the Governor will interfere. Gov. Altgeld is out of the State. So is Lieut.-Gov. Gill, I understand...I haven't any money or influential friends behind me. Father Dore was with me this morning and gave me the consolation of the Catholic Church, of which I am a member.

In fact, Lieutenant Governor Joseph Gill did consider the case, but refused to interfere with the execution, and at noon on March 23, 1894, Buff Higgins was led onto the platform and a noose placed around his head. Prendergast’s execution had been stayed until July, so Higgins did receive one final wish, not to share the stage with the famed assassin.

Two Roman Catholic priests, including the aforementioned Father Dore, accompanied the Irishman in his last moments, placing a crucifix on his lips just before the hood was lowered over his head. The city’s newspapers delivered pages of purple prose describing the lurid death scene in the following day’s issue. Part of the Tribune’s description depicted the final moment for the terror of 14th Place: "Then there was a fall, as the rope stretched to its full tension with a sound like that from the heaviest string on the bass viol, 'Buff' Higgins had paid the penalty for murder."

Buff Higgins was only the third man executed in Cook County since the Haymarket defendants seven years earlier, but at least one hanging would take place every year in the county through the end of the decade. The rapidly-rising crime rates of the period inclined Chicagoans to take a sterner view regarding capital punishment. Perhaps the most remarkable fact of Higgins’ experience was the expediency with which his execution took place. Just three months passed between the crime and the conviction, and from thence it was less than another four months before all appeals were exhausted and the criminal was hanged. While capital punishment is still practiced in the U.S. today, the time between the crime and the execution typically stretches into decades. Even in Texas, the state where executions are most common, the average time between conviction and execution (not including time between the crime and the trial) is nearly 11 years. In California, the average prisoner under sentence of death waits 20 years before execution.

The last execution in Illinois took place in 1999. In 2000, then-Governor George Ryan (now federal inmate 16627-424) commuted the sentences of all prisoners then on death row after several were exonerated based on DNA evidence, suggesting widespread errors in policing and sentencing. Ryan’s successors in the governor’s office, Rod Blagojevich and Pat Quinn have maintained the moratorium.

Higgins' companions in the McCooey robbery eventually were caught. The police found Feinberg around the same time they arrested Higgins, while "Red" Gary managed to elude the law until 1895, when he was arrested for stealing the blanket off a horse. At his arraignment, he gave a false name, but an experienced detective recognized him. Both Feinberg and Gary served terms in jail for the robbery, and both continued criminal careers into the mid-1900s.

Peter McCooey’s home, pictured at the top of this post, is long gone, replaced by a condominium complex. The Maxwell Street slums where boys like Buff Higgins went bad is essentially gone, too, replaced largely by upscale condominiums and the University of Illinois at Chicago campus.

Kill Dillinger Here

It’s the ultimate Chicago crime scene: The Biograph Theater at 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., where John Dillinger’s fifteen-month crime spree across the Midwest, which turned him into one of the 20th century’s most famous criminals, ended in a nearby alley with two shots to the chest and one in the back of the neck.

Dillinger, an Indiana native of rural extract, had a hard-knock childhood after his mother died when he was only 3. As a teenager in the 1910s, he was a school-boy terror, and by 1924, he landed in jail under lengthy sentence for his part in a mugging. His partner in the crime, Ed Singleton, sold the 21 year-old Dillinger down the river, bargaining for a light sentence while Dillinger, who was not well represented at trial, got a stiff 10 to 20 years. For the next nine years, most of which was spent at the notoriously vile prison in Michigan City, Dillinger stewed in resentment over what he saw as an unfairly harsh punishment. At the same time, he studied hard at “crime school,” building knowledge and contacts among the hardened crooks surrounding him, including future partners in crime “Handsome” Harry Pierpont, Homer VanMeter, and John “Three Fingered Jack” Hamilton. Finally paroled in May, 1933, Dillinger’s next fifteen months would take him from Indiana farm boy to international celebrity.

Four months after winning his freedom, Dillinger helped smuggle a cache of weapons back to his colleagues in the Michigan City prison, who then used them to break out of the hated facility, where new, untrained guards had been recently installed as a part of a change in gubernatorial administration in Indiana. Just days before the breakout, Dillinger, who had spent the summer using his new-found criminal expertise to lead a bank robbing gang on expeditions in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, was captured and sent to jail in Lima, Ohio. His friends Pierpont and Hamilton, newly on the lam from Michigan City, returned the favor by leading a brigade to break Dillinger out, in the process killing the county sheriff, Jess Sarber, who lived in the prison complex (Pierpont would later meet his fate on the electric chair for the murder).

Dillinger and his gang, which included at various times not only the aforementioned Pierpont, VanMeter, and Hamilton, but also other criminal luminaries such as Harry Copeland and Lester “Baby Face Nelson” Gillis, would take a dollar where they could find it, but their primary targets in 1933-34 were banks. Their basic modus operandi was to leave a getaway driver on the street in a fast car, then enter the bank and calmly order everyone to the ground while they loaded up bags with cash. Surrounding themselves with human shields, they would then exit the bank, enter the car, and position their hostages on the sideboards as they drove off, making it extremely difficult for sharpshooting police to take a clear shot. In most of the rural and suburban locales they targeted, the police were armed with pistols, which were no match for the WWI-surplus Thompson submachine guns the Dillinger gang preferred. In addition, the police in these sleepy towns generally drove older model cars that were left in a cloud of dust by Dillinger’s 1933 and 1934 Ford Terraplanes, which could easily hit 80 mph. In those days before in-car radios, the police had little chance to catch up, and could not easily call a roadblock ahead (purportedly, Dillinger avoided banks in Michigan because police there were equipped with radios).

(Pictured: Three poses of John Dillinger. The description accompanying this series in the newspaper read: "The center picture, particularly, is characteristic of the killer's disdain of the law, his sneering, unchanging hate of the public and its institutions.)

Dillinger’s criminal career coincided with the nadir of the Great Depression. During 1933 and 1934, the national unemployment rate soared to over 25%. Real gross domestic product, a measure of the nation’s annual economic output, had fallen for four consecutive years, there of which were by double-digit percentages (by contrast, as of 2008, GDP has only declined in four years out of the last 34). Then, as now, the public recognized the downturn as a monetary phenomenon, and much blame and ire landed at the feet of bankers. Many Americans had suffered the humiliation of losing their homes and businesses to bank repossession, or had been turned down for additional credit, so Dillinger’s focus on banks gave him the aura of a robin hood figure, despite the fact that he spent most of his ill-gotten gains on himself and his girlfriends, not the downtrodden masses queued up at soup kitchens.

But despite his hardscrabble upbringing, his ability to make bankers tremble, and his almost supernatural ability to avoid police capture, it is doubtful Dillinger would have achieved much public acclaim without a particular legislative accomplishment of the New Deal – federal deposit insurance.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, was created as a part of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed by congress in June, 1933, and implemented as of January 1, 1934. Before FDIC, “runs” were a common feature of the banking system in the United States. When a rumor started that the local bank might be in financial trouble, some depositors would exercise caution by withdrawing cash. The sight of people withdrawing their deposits would further fuel the rumors of financial problems at the bank, leading others to take their money out of the bank. This process could quickly create a vicious circle, by which rumors of distress, which might not even be true initially, created a self-fulfilling prophesy as panic spread among depositors racing to the bank to get their deposits out before the bank’s reserves ran out.

By insuring deposits, FDIC broke the circle. Even if a bank truly was in distress, those withdrawing their deposits late would lose nothing; hence, there was no reason for a rush to withdraw first, no panic, and no bank run. For this reason, bank runs have been exceedingly scarce since 1934. But at the same time FDIC solved the problem of runs, it also created a set of perverse incentives for bankers, who no longer faced the disciplining force of possible financial ruin in making risky loans and other investments. Before FDIC, banks typically kept relatively high levels of reserves – currency on hand – and competed with each other for customers by advertising their high reserves and other conservative practices. After FDIC, there was no reason to hold more reserves than required by law, and most banks today hold less then 5% of depositors’ money in cash. The consequently high level of leverage in the banking system creates instability, and many commentators blame the S&L crisis of the 1980s, as well as the panic of 2008, on excessive risk-taking by bankers.

An additional unintended consequence of federally-mandated deposit insurance was to make depositors essentially indifferent towards robbery. Before FDIC, the robbery of a small town bank could create serious losses for depositors and a major contraction in local credit, but with a federal assurance that depositors could lose nothing, the incentive to protect banks waned and the desire to glorify robbers like Dillinger grew. Some historians believe that many Dillinger gang bank hits were, in fact, inside jobs, with bankers using the famous criminal as a cover-up for their own malfeasance.

While Dillinger’s gang was never afraid to use violence to avoid capture, Dillinger himself was a relative pacifist. The only known case in which he killed anyone was during a January, 1934 robbery at the First National Bank in East Chicago, Indiana, where he machine-gunned a police officer who had shot him during his escape. It was this killing, however, that would eventually come to be closely linked with Dillinger’s own death at the hands of the East Chicago police force.

After the First National Bank job, Dillinger and his crew decamped for Tucson, Arizona, where they tried to lay low until the nationwide manhunt that was following them passed. But it was difficult to disguise these high-rolling gangsters and their big-spending girlfriends in dusty Tucson, and eventually the local police rounded up Dillinger, Pierpont, and several other gang members. Pierpont was shipped back to Ohio to stand trial for the murder of Sheriff Surber during the Lima breakout, while Dillinger ended up in jail at Crown Point, Indiana.

It was at Crown Point where Dillinger made his most famous prison escape, one that would rocket him from a prolific, but regional, bank robber, to international superstardom. On March 3, 1934, prison handyman Sam Cahoon accidentally opened the main cell block door before the prisoners were safely locked back in their cells. Within seconds, Dillinger perceived the opportunity and jumped into action. Out of nowhere, he brandished a pistol, which he shoved into Cahoon’s side, forcing the handyman to assist him as he slowly made his way out of the facility, using the gun to take additional hostages as he went. Highlighting the audacious escape was the fact that, as later revealed, Dillinger’s “pistol” was really a wooden washboard slat, painted black and carved into the shape of a gun barrel.

Overnight, Dillinger became “the man no prison could hold.” But was Dillinger’s escape really so miraculous? Conspiracy theorists have always pointed to the utter unlikelihood of so many stars lining up at once, especially for such a high-profile inmate who should have been under especially high scrutiny. Moreover, Cahoon and other hostages at Crown Point that day swore to their graves that Dillinger’s gun was no fake. In these highly speculative, but fascinating, conspiracy tales, Dillinger was slipped a real pistol (and, possibly, the decoy as well) by corrupt members of the East Chicago police force, who may have visited Dillinger during his initial days at Crown Point, since his most recent robbery had been the First National job in East Chicago.

Lending some mild credence to these theories is the fact that the East Chicago police department in those days was notoriously corrupt. Situated just across the state line from the south side of Chicago, the town of East Chicago was an ideal spot for vice operations, and had for years been home to a myriad of gambling, prostitution, and (during Prohibition) booze operations. These resorts operated under protection from the East Chicago city government and police, who received a cut of the profits. In 1929, indictments were handed down against the mayor, police chief, and many other city officials for participation in this graft, and the top figures in the pay-for-play scheme served two years in prison, after a circus-like trial in which one of the prosecution’s chief witnesses, an East Chicago police officer turned state’s witness, was murdered. Among those who served time was East Chicago chief of detectives Martin Zarkovich, who would later play a critical role in the death of John Dillinger.

Another curious fact is that, just a month before Dillinger’s death on May 24, 1934, two other East Chicago police officers, Martin O’Brien and Lloyd Mulvihill, were found dead in their service vehicle. Most historians blame members of the Dillinger gang, and while some members of the gang were certainly capable of such violence, there was never evidence tying any of them to O’Brien and Mulvihill; conspiracists insist that the two policemen knew too much about the relationship between Dillinger and the East Chicago force, and met their fate at the hands of their fellow officers.

While these facts add up to make the theory that East Chicago officers helped Dillinger break out of Crown Point (perhaps in return for some of his loot) at least plausible, the case must be considered suggestive and circumstantial at best.

In any case, after the breakout, Dillinger rejoined VanMeter, Baby Face Nelson, and John Hamilton in St. Paul, Minnesota, where they continued their reign of terror. Later the gang spent time in upper Wisconsin, narrowly avoiding capture at the hands of the newly-formed Division of Investigation (forerunner of the FBI) in a botched police raid. By June, 1934, Dillinger was back in Chicago. His face was as recognizable as any movie star’s, and five states plus the federal government had put a total $15,000 bounty on his head. Even Dillinger realized his crime spree couldn’t go on much longer. Biding his time, he disguised himself by dying his hair black, wearing a moustache, and sporting gold-rimmed glasses, and began slowly, tentatively, venturing out onto the streets of Chicago. He also underwent primitive plastic surgery to change his facial features, and took acid treatments on his fingertips to make his prints unidentifiable.

The disguise seemed to work well, but Dillinger nevertheless made plans to escape to Mexico. Here and there, he and his gang would reunite to hit a bank, but generally Dillinger kept a low profile during the summer of 1934, building his cash holdings and preparing for a trip south of the border, which was to depart on July 23. During the meantime, though, he began enjoying the Chicago nightlife, posing as “Jim Lawrence,” a fun-loving Chicago Board of Trade employee.

One night, he found himself at the Barrel of Fun nightclub on Wilson Ave., between Elston and Cicero Aves. Introducing himself as Jim Lawrence, he asked for and received the telephone number of a dark-eyed brunette named Polly Rita Keele (nee Hamilton). At the time, Polly was living with a friend and former employer, Anna Sage, in an apartment building on Halsted, just north of Fullerton.

(Pictured: Polly Keele)

Keele and Sage had become acquainted while both lived in Northwest Indiana, and Sage was operating a brothel where Keele sometimes worked. Polly, who had run away from home in Fargo, North Dakota, at age 13, wound up at Anna Sage’s “People’s Hotel”, a house of ill-repute in Gary. There, she met her husband, Roy Keele, a Gary police officer, and they married in 1929. By the spring of 1933, however, the couple was divorced and Polly sought out her old employer, who had by that time moved into Chicago. It’s possible that Anna Sage knew Dillinger from her Lake County days, and set up the meeting with Polly at the Barrel of Fun, or it may be that the encounter between Polly and Dillinger was by chance, and Polly introduced her new beau to her landlady at some point later. In any case, Dillinger and Polly Keele became lovers and were frequently at Anna Sage’s house, with some reports indicating that Dillinger even lived there himself during some parts of the summer of 1934.

With Sage, however, Dillinger’s luck had finally run out. He did not know that the reason Anna Sage was in Chicago was that, as a convicted proprietor of a house of prostitution and a foreign national, she was facing the threat of deportation back to her native Romania. Thus, she was looking for opportunities to redeem herself in front of immigration authorities at the very moment that Uncle Sam’s most wanted man walked into her life. Dillinger also did not know that one of Anna Sage’s boyfriends during her time in Northwest Indiana was East Chicago chief of detectives, Martin Zarkovich.

Arriving in the U.S. in 1909, Anna Sage and her husband, Mike Chiolak separated in the late 1910s, and by the early 1920s, Anna Sage was one of Northwest Indiana’s top madams. A patrol officer at the time, Zarkovich, who was married with children at the time, became a frequent visitor, and the affair with Sage was cited by his wife in divorce proceedings shortly after. A flashy dresser, fellow officers referred to Zarkovich as the "police sheik", and after his divorce, he was able to quickly advance in the East Chicago police hierarchy. During the 1920s, Zarkovich's power kept the police heat off of Sage’s properties, but after he went to jail in the graft case mentioned earlier, Anna Sage was convicted four times for running disorderly houses. When he was released from prison, Zarkovich managed to get his old job back, and did his best to erase the damage, helping Sage to receive two pardons from Indiana governor Harry Leslie, but immigration authorities pressed their case against her due to the other two convictions, causing her to flee into Chicago.

(Pictured: Anna Sage with her son, Steve Chiolak)

During June and July, John Dillinger and Polly Keele frequently double-dated with Anna Sage’s adult son, Steve Chiolak, and his girlfriend. Chiolak later described the fun times with “Jim Lawrence”, which included many summer evenings at the movies: “If he was the man they said he was, he was an all around fellow. He didn’t act tough and he didn’t talk tough. He didn’t drink hard liquor either; just mild gin fizzes.”

Chiolak did notice scars on his new friend’s face, ones that seemed out of place for a sober securities trader, but felt it wasn’t his place to ask. “I don’t like to ask a guy about his face. I’d get mad if some one asked me about mine,” he told reporters later.

While it’s unclear whether Chiolak was truly unaware that Jim Lawrence was really Public Enemy #1, Anna Sage either was already aware of it, or quickly figured it out after he started hanging around her house. She contacted her old friend from East Chicago, Det. Zarkovich, and the two arranged a meeting with the Division of Investigation’s top G-man in Chicago, Melvin Purvis. Later, when Sage continued to face deportation proceedings after the death of Dillinger, she told reporters:

I was told that I could stay. The men who wanted Dillinger so bad told me it would be a small thing to stop my going away. When it was first suggested that I help in getting Dillinger, I said I was not interested in rewards – all I wanted was permission to stay in this country. Shouldn’t the government keep its promises, when I believed them?

Purvis, Zarkovich, and Sage arranged for a take-down a few days later, on the evening of July 22, 1934, when Dillinger, girlfriend Polly Keele, and Sage were all planning to attend a movie. It hadn’t yet been determined precisely which movie or which theater, but a signal was agreed upon: if the destination was to be the Biograph Theater, just behind Sage’s home, she would wear no hat; if Dillinger decided to take the women to the Marboro Theater on the Westside, Sage’s head would be covered.

(Pictured: Martin Zarkovich of the East Chicago police force)

Just after 8:00 p.m. on the evening of the July 22, John Dillinger and the two women left the house. Dillinger sported a white silk shirt, gray linen trousers, and a straw hat, but as it had been a hot day, he decided against wearing a coat, which would have helped conceal the pistol he always carried with him. Instead, he tucked the gun into his belt, where it was slightly more difficult to retrieve. As they left the house, Anna Sage, who wore a white blouse and an orange skirt, stopped the trio and asked Dillinger if they were going to be traveling far for the movie that night. If so, she needed to take her hat.

No, Dillinger said, we won’t be going far. Sage left her hat at home, and the team of police officers staking out the Sage home on Halsted signaled Purvis with the news: Dillinger’s last stand would be at the Biograph.

The group assembled to take down Public Enemy #1 included ten federal agents, plus four East Chicago officers, including Martin Zarkovich, who had gotten the tip from Sage. The deal worked out was that, after Dillinger was killed or in custody, the East Chicago team would receive the $15,000 reward money, while the feds, who were ineligible for the monetary prizes, would get all of the glory and publicity. They truly needed it, as the fledgling Division of Investigation, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, had gained a reputation for bumbling during their long and fruitless quest to end Dillinger’s crime spree.

Walking arm-in-arm, Dillinger, Keele, and Sage walked down the alley between Halsted and Lincoln Ave., and headed up the block and into the Biograph Theater, where they sat down to enjoy “Manhattan Melodrama,” a gangster film starring Clark Gable.

The Biograph, which was built in 1914, advertised itself as the “best ventilated theater in Chicago,” a feature the value of which would not have been lost on Chicago audiences, who couldn't forget the Iroquois Theater disaster a decade before, in which poor ventilation led to the deaths of hundreds. When it opened, the Biograph was one of the city’s first film venues, offering an augmented orchestra and large pipe organ to accompany silent pictures. By 1934, of course, “talkies” had arrived, as had air conditioning, and the Biograph’s cool environs were perfect for a hot summer evening. Even before Dillinger’s famous date with death there, the Biograph had been subject to various crooks, including a bookie running a handbook there, which was raided in February, 1933, and a smash-and-grab robber named George Genovese, who specialized in ripping off theater ticket counters; Genovese was finally caught after robbing the Biograph in March, 1933.

While Dillinger enjoyed the movie, Purvis wandered up and down the aisles of the theater, looking for the man whose name would forever after be linked with his. Unable to locate Dillinger in the dark, he waited impatiently in the theater lobby for the two hours duration of the film. The theater’s management, unaware that a major police operation was underway, became suspicious of the plain-clothes officers lingering in and around the building, and telephoned the Sheffield Ave. police station. When Chicago police arrived on the scene, the federal agents and East Chicago officers had to inform them of the plan to avoid being hauled back to the stationhouse.

Finally, at 10:40 p.m., John Dillinger walked out of the Biograph, with Polly and Anna on either side, and turned south on Lincoln, likely heading back to Sage’s apartment. The next building to the south of the theater was a tavern called the Goetz Country Club, and Melvin Purvis stood directly in front of it. Dillinger and Purvis’s eyes met, but Dillinger’s showed no sense of recognition that a setup was underway. As Purvis later described it, “It was a good job the surgeon did, but I knew him the minute I saw him. You couldn’t miss if you had studied that face as much as I have.”

Dillinger continued walking passing the Goetz until he was in front of the next building to the south, a National Tea Company retail store. At that moment, Purvis lit his cigarette, a signal to his team of officers that now was the time to strike. Again, Purvis describes the action:

“He saw me give a signal to my men to close in. He became alarmed, reached into a belt and was drawing the .38 caliber pistol he carried concealed when two of the agents let him have it. Dillinger was lying prone before he was able to get the gun out and I took it from him.”

In the mouth of the alley south of the National Tea Store, Dillinger fell to the ground, hit twice in the chest and once in the back of the neck. Of the three bullets, two ricocheted and hit bystanders: Etta Natalsky, mother-in-law of the owner of the Goetz tavern, and Theresa Paulus, a theater-goer. Neither was seriously injured, but Dillinger was fatally shot. Crowds turned and gasped, and word spread quickly that the man lying in the pool of blood on Lincoln Ave. was the world’s most famous criminal.

In statements to reporters, Purvis claimed Dillinger had attended the movie alone, per his agreement with the East Chicago police that all credit for the take-down would go to the feds, but witnesses consistently mentioned two women, including one whose bright orange skirt, under the harsh lights from the theater marquis, appeared red. Hence, the newspapers began searching for the famous “Lady in Red,” Anna Sage.

Returning to the conspiracy theories mentioned earlier, some speculate that if caught alive, Dillinger might have revealed the corruption within the East Chicago department, and hence, Zarkovich and his fellow officers always intended to kill, not capture, him. Confirming this aspect of the theory, a Chicago police officer who was near the scene at the time of the shooting told a reporter:

…[O]ne of the [federal] agents told him after it was over that he was among the luckiest of men. “When we got the signal, you were close to Dillinger,” said the agent. “You looked like Dillinger and I was about to shoot you when the other fellows let loose and killed the right man.”

The crumpled form of John Dillinger was rushed to Alexian Brothers Hospital, but he died on the way. When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, it was refused admittance on the grounds that the body was already dead. Four officers accompanying the medics stood on the grass in front of the hospital, surrounding Dillinger’s body, until the deputy coroner arrived and approved its removal to the county morgue. While Dillinger had taken in over $300,000 in cash from his bank robberies during the previous 15 months, at his decease, only $7.70 was found on his person – either because he had spent the rest on the trip to Mexico he was planning to begin the following day, or, as some suspect, because the officers who accompanied Dillinger to the hospital helped themselves to his loot. Dillinger also wore a ruby ring, given to him by Polly Keele, and a pocket watch with an inset photo of her.

(Pictured: Headline and story in the July 23, 1934 Chicago Tribune)

Dillinger’s death led above the fold in newspapers around the globe, and when the coroner’s inquest ended, his body was put on public display at the morgue, where thousands of curiosity-seekers filed past to get a look at the man no prison could hold. As Dillinger biographer Dary Matera put it:

To get an indication of Dillinger’s comparative fame today, imagine Charles Manson – after committing his mass murder, Helter Skelter atrocity in California – getting arrested, escaping prison, killing a second batch of Hollywood celebrities, getting arrested again, escaping again, killing a third and fourth gaggle of celebrities, then being gunned down on the streets of Los Angeles by the FBI. And after all that, having Manson’s bullet-riddled body put on public display for tens of thousands of people to parade by.

Dillinger’s life and death meant changes in the way many police departments operated, with upgrades to faster cars and better equipment, including in-car radios, following his crime spree. It also meant a much stronger role for the federal government in policing – Congress approved the right of federal officers to make arrests during the time Dillinger was on the loose. It is not a stretch to say that the modern FBI owes much of its power to John Dillinger.

After Dillinger’s death, Polly Keele left the city and hid out at her family home in Fargo, later returning to Chicago and working in hotel hospitality until her death in 1969. Dillinger’s fellow gang members John Hamilton, Homer VanMeter, and Baby Face Nelson were soon gunned down in separate incidents by federal agents (Hamilton, in fact, was already dead). Melvin Purvis faced intense jealousy from J. Edgar Hoover for taking so much of the credit for Dillinger’s end, and he quit the Division of Investigation in 1935, intending to write his memoirs. He lived until 1960, when he committed suicide, apparently over poor health.

After the shooting, Anna Sage ran back to her apartment, changed clothes, and returned to the scene of the crime, blending in with the growing crowd. She was able to avoid deportation for two years, and during that time ran a beauty parlor at Fullerton and Orchard. However, when Purvis left his position in 1935, there was no one left to fulfill the promise he had made to Sage, and in 1936, she was deported back to Romania, where she remained until her death in 1947. Her only consolation was $5,000 she received from the reward money, though she would much rather have had a U.S. visa.

Martin Zarkovich, who also received a sizable portion of the reward money, was promoted in the East Chicago police department, eventually making chief in 1947. Just three years later, however, he was again indicted for graft associated with casinos operating openly in Northwest Indiana under his protection. Demoted from the chief position, he retired in the late 1950s and died in 1969.

The Biograph Theater continued operation as a movie theater until 2004, frequently showing “Manhattan Melodrama”, the film Dillinger saw the night of his death, particularly on the anniversary of the incident. For the last five years, the Biograph has offered live theater instead of movies.

The spot in the alley where Dillinger was shot is pictured below. The building that housed the Goetz Country Club still stands (it appears to be abandonded); the National Tea Company building is gone, replaced by a Qdoba restaurant.

Mrs. William Hale Thompson, Mayor's Wife, Robbed at Gunpoint

In the fall of 1930, William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson was serving his third term as mayor of Chicago, having defeated the incumbent "Decent" William Dever in 1927. Funded by Al Capone's syndicate and unrepentant in his connections with the city's bootleggers, Thompson was in bed with criminals, and his popularity was declining as the city's crime rates rose. Yet he never guessed just what a close encounter his wife would have with the underworld on the evening of October 6 at this spot on the corner of Barry Ave. and Sheridan Rd.

William Hale Thompson was the scion of one of Chicago's greatest families. On his mother's side, Thompson's grandfather, Stephen F. Gale, was one of the signatories to the city's original 1837 charter of incorporation. His father, Col. William H. Thompson, Sr., was a Bostonian who came to Chicago after serving at high rank in the Navy during the Civil War. Col. Thompson started a real estate business, building the "Thompson Block" on W. Madison St. The Colonel's location turned out fortuitous, as his buildings were the closest ones to downtown not burned in the Great Fire. With the higher rents he was able to charge, he made himself into one of the city's major rebuilders, and his family became the toast of society.

His oldest son, William, Jr., was a wild young man, perhaps spoiled by his family's wealth and power. Once, after his son was arrested for fighting, Col. Thompson marched directly into the mayor's office to demand William, Jr., be released, and then watched as the mayor dressed down the police chief for arresting him. Instead of heading off to Yale, as his parents demanded, young William, Jr., went adventuring in Wyoming, learning the trade of the cowboy, and then to New Mexico to start a ranch. After the passing of his father in 1891, though, he returned to Chicago to take over his father's real estate business. Nevertheless, he retained his cowboy hat as a political trademark for the rest of his life.

(Pictured: William Hale Thompson, as cowboy, on the left, with two other cowboys)

"Big Bill", as his friends began calling him, also brought back a physique in top form from years of hard work on the range, and so he became seriously involved in amateur athletics. Once, in 1893, his mother fired one of her coachmen for indolence. When the man later turned up drunk and angry at the family's summer home in Wisconsin, he shoved Thompson, who returned the aggression with his fists. With one punch from Big Bill, the man dropped dead.

Thompson excelled at swimming, yachting, and football, and quickly rose in the ranks of the Chicago Athletic Association. The football teams he managed played and defeated some of the top college teams of the day, including Northwestern and Yale. In January, 1899, however, Big Bill learned his first lesson in politics when he lost the Presidency of the Association. The Tribune reported:

Although Mr. Thompson said that good feeling prevailed between the rival factions, some of his friends said the regulars [Thompson's opponents] had employed the tactics of ward politicians to gain votes and charged a breach of good faith in one or two particulars.

Thompson took the opportunity of his defeat to run for Alderman from the Southside 2nd Ward in 1900. Nominated by the Republicans at Frieberg's Dance Hall, Thompson won the race, and represented an area that included the newly-forming "Levee," the red light district that would soon become world-famous. The Tribune endorsed Thompson's opponent, beginning a long history of antagonism between Big Bill and the Trib.

The neighboring First Ward, directly to the north, was run by those famous "Lords of the Levee," Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna and John J. "Bathhouse" Coughlin, who became rich collecting protection from the brothels and gambling dens in their district. But the old Custom House Place levee district was under pressure and public condemnation, and there was talk of closing the old segregated vice district in favor of a new levee in the 2nd ward. Some operations, including the world-famous Everleigh Club, had already opened near Dearborn and 22nd, and others were soon to follow. Kenna and Coughlin decided they needed to broaden the boundaries of their Ward to include the new vice district in the freshman Thompson's ward.

Some accounts indicate that Kenna and Coughlin tricked Thompson into voting to shift the boundary of the 1st Ward down to 31st street; others say the vote was a back-room deal in which the 1st Ward aldermen promised to support Thompson's future mayoral aspirations. In any case, Thompson stepped down from his Aldermanic post after one term, and ran for county commissioner, serving in that capacity for two years before running, unsuccessfully, as an independent candidate for mayor in 1905.

At about the same time he left his Aldermanic office, he fell in love with Mary "Maysie" Walker, a secretary in his father's bookkeeper's office. Thompson's mother disapproved of the marriage, so the couple eloped to Michigan to marry. Settling down with his bride, Thompson continued running his real estate business, dabbling in Republican politics, taking control of the Columbia Yacht Club, and managing amateur football teams for the next decade.

(Pictured: Mary Walker "Maysie" Thompson)

Finally, in 1915, he ran again for mayor, this time on the Republican ticket. A newspaper account at the time described him:

Even in his forties, with some of the signs of middle age in his face and figure, he has the great depth of chest and the breadth of shoulder which mark the athlete. There is nothing about him which suggests the student.

Running against Democrat Robert Sweitzer, the campaign was dirty from the outset. Both sides accused the other of close ties to disgraced Illinois Sen. William Lorimer. As it was the first Chicago election in which women were allowed to vote, Thompson never missed an opportunity to display his rugged good looks and handsome frame. He also promised to enforce the Sunday saloon closing laws, a policy supported by most women. On the evening of his victory in the 1915 campaign, Mrs. Thompson told a reporter, "It is a women's victory...Billy stands for everything that is good for the city, and I will stand by him and second him in everything that he will do for us."

Upon election, Thompson immediately began floating his name for the 1918 Illinois Senatorial contest, and as a potential candidate for U.S. President in 1920. After all, if he was able to win solidly Democratic Chicago by 148,000 votes, just think what he could do for the Republican party on the national level.

But Thompson's first term was a disaster. At the onset of WWI, Thompson was an avowed peacenik, opposing America's involvement in Europe, and courting the vote of Chicago's large German population. Detractors began referring to him as "Kaiser" Bill Thompson, and he was consistently booed and hissed in Peoria and other downstate locations during his 1918 Senatorial campaign. The Tribune chimed in,

Having opposed the war and the draft and having objected to the sending of drafted men to Europe, it is not likely that Thompson will be very sincere in his promise to do all he can to help prosecute the war "until the United States can obtain peace with honor."

When it was revealed that the Germans were using Thompson's speeches in propaganda used against American troops, he lost his Senatorial campaign. Though he managed to maintain the mayor's office in the 1919 re-election, his popularity continued to slide as several major graft scandals arose, including his failure to keep some parts of the old Levee district, which had been shut down in the early part of the 1910s, from reopening (perhaps as a payback to Kenna and Coughlin?). His slow response to the deadly race riots of 1919 didn't help either. By 1923, Big Bill realized he couldn't win a third term, and he "retired" from politics.

During the 1920s, Thompson maintained a high profile, contributing to political campaigns, becoming involved in civic affairs, and continuing his passion for yachting. He was a major investor in the "Fish Fans Club," a sort-of booze cruise in Belmont Harbor, which when the police raided, was found to be full of illegal liquor. However, to the majority of Chicagoans who opposed Prohibition, Thompson, unlike his mayoral successor, "Decent" William Dever, was a man of the people.

Thus, in 1927, Thompson ran against Dever in one of the nastiest political campaigns in the city's history. Implicitly promising to "take off the lid" on alcohol consumption in Chicago, Thompson kicked off his campaign at the Sherman House, where he had recently become close friends with Al Capone. In one memorable speech, Thompson referred to Dever as "the biggest liar and the biggest crook who ever broke an oath of office." For his part, Dever returned the compliment: "I don't know what ails the man. I don't like to say he's crazy. But there is mental trouble of some sort there, I am sure....There isn't anybody home with that man. He simply can't conceive serious or consecutive thought."

By cobbling together the votes of Southside African-Americans, a wide range of recent immigrants, and other Chicagoans who just wanted a beer, Thompson won in 1927. It also didn't hurt that Thompson's campaign coffers were filled with Capone money, a fact that was evident to anyone who cared to look carefully.

(Pictured: Thompson as mayor, with trademark cowboy hat)

On the night of his victory, Mrs. Thompson was triumphant. "Anytime anybody wants to try to run against that boy, he's in for a smashing licking....He showed 'em. You bet he showed 'em; he showed 'em!"

By 1930, however, the Thompsons' marriage (like Big Bill's political career) was on the rocks (they separated a few years later), so it's no surprise that on the night of October 6, Mrs. Thompson went out to a show downtown together with her sister. At around 11:00, Mrs. Thompson's driver, a Chicago police officer, picked the two up outside the theater, and drove first to Lincoln Park to drop off the Mayor's sister-in-law at her apartment. Just before midnight, Mrs. Thompson's driver pulled up to the Barry St. entrance to their apartment building, at 3100 N. Sheridan (entrance pictured above, building pictured at bottom).

As her driver exited the car to help Mrs. Thompson with her door, three men stepped out of a Nash automobile parked in front and jumped the officer, forcing him back into the vehicle, where one of the robbers held a pistol to his head, disarmed him, and ripped the police star off his vest. The other two forced the city's first lady into the vestibule of the building, pressed guns against her forehead and side, and demanded her jewels. Liberating her of a 6.5-carat blue diamond ring, a 40-diamond bracelet, and a diamond brooch set, the men took off in their car.

Mrs. Thompson fainted and fell to the ground. At just that moment, two fellow residents of the 3100 building, Barney and Mrs. Balaban happened on the scene, and carried Mrs. Thompson up to her apartment, where she spent several days ill as a nervous wreck (Balaban was a Chicago theater magnate and would soon become president of Paramount Pictures in Hollywood).

The mayor arrived home at 2:00 a.m., and the next morning called the chief of police into his office. "Remember what I say. I want action, and I want action immediately," he demanded. Thompson had fired a previous police chiefs during his first term for political gain, so the implications were obvious. With no leads except Mrs. Thompson's description of one of the gunmen as "handsome, a good-looking youth," the police picked up a criminal they wanted out of the way, in the hope that a jury would convict him based on his unsavory police record alone.

That man was Sam Battaglia (also known as "Teets"), leader of the "42" gang. The 42s were a group of toughs from the impoverished Bloody Maxwell neighborhood who specialized in beatings and auto thefts, lending their services out to bootleggers (especially the Gennas) and union racketeers throughout the 1920s. Battaglia and a fellow 42, William Carr, were arrested for the robbery and put on trial, but witnesses were unable to identify Carr on the stand, and he was dismissed from court. Despite being identified by Mrs. Thompson and others, Battaglia was acquitted due to insufficient evidence, and the missing jewels were never recovered.

(Pictured: Sam "Teets" Battaglia)

Mayor Thompson's political rivals were quick to make a point of his wife's victimization: "The mayor, two months ago, should have supported my resolution for an investigation of the police department with the same vigor with which he fought King George," said one Alderman.

The crack about Big Bill fighting King George refers to Thompson's 1927 campaign, in which he famously courted the votes of Southside Irish with ridiculous arguments that King George V (then King of England) was the greatest contemporaneous threat to the United States. Thompson promised that if the King visited Chicago, the mayor personally would "bust him on the snoot."

With the city's crime wave out of control, Mayor Thompson faced an uphill battle in the 1931 mayoral election, in which he faced off with Democratic challenger Anton Cermak, and if the mayor couldn't keep his own wife safe, what were other Chicagoans supposed to expect? Thompson's poorly-run campaign, in which he gave up on his winning strategy of courting immigrant votes by belittling Cermak, making fun of his name, and never failing to point out his foreign birth, didn't help his cause either. In an early sign of the Democratic wave sweeping the country, "Big Bill" lost the '31 election by the widest margin in the history of the city up to that time. Though he ran as a reformer, Cermak turned out to be only marginally less corrupt that Thompson.

After running unsuccessfully for Illinois governor in 1936, and for Chicago mayor again in 1939, William Hale Thompson died in March, 1944. When his family checked the ex-mayor's three safe deposit boxes, they were shocked to find $1,840,000 in unreported cash. Thompson's friends argued that it was likely the fruits of the real estate business Thompson had run while not in office. But safe deposit boxes pay notoriously low interest rates, so the presence of the cash suggests an illegal source. Were these payoffs from Capone and other mobsters? Or was Thompson able to reap large real estate returns while in office, based on inside information about city public works plans? We'll never really know, but after the IRS took its share, Mrs. Thompson lived on the rest until her passing in 1958.

One of Sam Battaglia's fellow 42s, Sam "Mooney" Giancana, later became a major figure in the Chicago Outfit, organizing its lottery gambling operations in the 1940s. He brought Battaglia and several other 42s into the hierarchy of the gang, making them rich beyond the wildest dreams they ever had on the tough Westside streets where they grew up. Battaglia lived until 1972.

The Barry Apartments, where the Thompsons lived during the 1920s, still stands, and is still an apartment building. Perhaps not quite as tony as it was when the Mayor and the future president of Paramount Pictures lived there, it is still a desirable location in the Lakeview neighborhood, near the beach.