Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [117]
The others took their cue from Dillinger, smiling and mugging for the cameras. Pete Pierpont actually traded wisecracks with the governor of Arizona. “These cops out here ain’t like the ones in Indiana,” Pierpont joked. “They pull too fast for us.”
The giddy mood ebbed when the reporters left. By Sunday morning, when delegations of prosecutors from Ohio, Wisconsin, and Indiana arrived in Tucson to argue for extraditions, the gang members were in no mood for chitchat. At the sight of Matt Leach, who had briefly jailed his mother that fall, Pierpont flew into a rage.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance, you dirty son of a bitch!” he shouted. “You put my mother in jail . . . If I ever get out of this the first thing I’m gonna do is kill you, you rat!”
Leach regarded Pierpont for a moment, then turned to a reporter. “There’s a man who really loves his mother,” he said. When he reached Dillinger’s cell, Leach extended his hand through the bars.
Dillinger hesitated, then shook it.
“Well, we meet again, John,” Leach said. He took a step back and studied Dillinger a moment, then complimented him on the mustache he had grown. Leach asked if he was ready to return to Indiana.
“I’m in no hurry,” Dillinger said. “I haven’t a thing to do when I get there.”7
Once again, it appeared Dillinger’s career was over. In fact, it had barely begun.
9
A STAR IS BORN
January 30 to March 2, 1934
The plane carrying Dillinger touched down at Chicago’s Midway Airport at 6:10 on a dark and snowy Tuesday evening, January 30. It had been a long flight, the outlaw’s first. His departure from Tucson followed a spirited two-day struggle between lawyers from Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio, each making the case to prosecute the gang first. In the end, Arizona’s governor ordered Dillinger to Indiana to stand trial for Detective O’Malley’s murder in East Chicago; if convicted, he faced the electric chair. Pierpont, Makley, Clark, and Mary Kinder were sent to Ohio to answer for Sheriff Sarber’s murder; Kinder was later released. Billie Frechette and Opal Long went free. They took a bus to Chicago.
Dillinger hadn’t gone quietly. After a circuslike day that Monday in which crowds of onlookers were allowed into the jail to see him, deputies had to drag him from his cell. “They’re not taking you to Indiana!” Pierpont shouted. “They’re putting you on the spot, boy!” Dillinger wrestled as his wrists were handcuffed. “You’re shanghaiing me!” he barked. “They can’t take me east without a hearing!”
In Chicago, Dillinger descended the airplane stairs into a throng of photographers and eighty-five members of the Chicago Police Department—“a reception such as had never been accorded a criminal in Chicago,” noted the Chicago Tribune. As flashbulbs popped and reporters strained to get a glimpse, two officers shoved Dillinger into the back of a car.1
The Chicago police, many outfitted with submachine guns and bulletproof vests, took no chances. Thirteen cars and a dozen motorcyclists, sirens blaring, made up the caravan that wound its way out of the airport into city streets lined with the curious. Across the border into northwest Indiana, the procession headed for the town of Crown Point, the seat of Lake County, where Dillinger was to be tried. A crowd of reporters and photographers was waiting outside the Lake County Jail when Dillinger arrived at 7:40 P.M.
Inside, Dillinger was led into Sheriff Lillian Holley’s office. Mrs. Holley had become sheriff upon the murder of the previous sheriff, her husband; her inexperience would soon become an issue. Thirty reporters followed, jamming inside as they yelled questions.
“Are you glad to see Indiana again?” someone asked.
“About as glad as Indiana is to see me,” Dillinger said, chewing a wad of gum. He seemed utterly unfazed by the crowd.
“You’re credited with having smuggled the guns into the Indiana State Penitentiary just before the big outbreak of September