Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [125]
That Monday morning the fingerprints were forwarded to Washington for examination. Hoover’s wrath was immediate; he demanded to know why the prints had languished in the files for seven months. “It appears,” a Kansas City agent wrote Hoover, “that in the excitement in connection with this investigation at that time shortly after the massacre happened, [the fingerprint file] was overlooked.”
Anderson’s search of the files generated a dozen new leads. He went to work even as the FBI laboratory, already busy on the Bremer case, began analyzing the beer bottles for fingerprints.
That same Monday, Louis Piquett returned to Crown Point. Rumors persisted that John Hamilton was preparing to raid the jail to free his partner. Sheriff Holley had asked that Dillinger be moved to the prison at Michigan City. Dillinger pleaded with Piquett to block the move. “Quit worrying,” Piquett said. “You’re not going to Michigan City.”
In Judge William Murray’s chambers, Piquett listened as Sheriff Holley argued that the prison was the only place they could guarantee Dillinger could not escape. Piquett easily short-circuited her request with a sly bit of
“There isn’t anything wrong with it,” Mrs. Holley said. “It’s the strongest jail in Indiana.”
“That’s what I thought,” Piquett said. “But of course, I don’t want to embarrass Mrs. Holley. I appreciate that she’s a woman, and if she’s afraid of an escape—”
“I’m not afraid of an escape,” the sheriff said. “I can take care of John Dillinger or any other prisoner.”
That pretty much did it, but just to make sure, Piquett said he would file for a change of venue if Dillinger were transferred. Judge Murray clearly didn’t mind the press attention he was receiving as Dillinger’s judge, and it was all he needed to hear. He ruled that the prisoner would remain in Crown Point.
Piquett returned to the jail three days later, on Thursday, February 15. For the first time he brought his investigator, Art O’Leary. Piquett was planning to send O’Leary to Florida to establish their alibi; Dillinger was claiming he had still been in Daytona Beach when eyewitnesses put him at the East Chicago bank robbery.
“Wait a minute,” Dillinger said as they rose to leave. “I’m gonna give you a note for Billie.”
Piquett and O’Leary looked at the folded note on the drive back to Chicago. Dillinger had drawn a floor plan of the Crown Point jail and a suggestion to Hamilton as to how he could break him out. The note instructed Hamilton to dynamite a corner of the jail, then use blowtorches to cut through the steel walls into the cell block where Dillinger would be waiting.7 O’Leary let out a low whistle. It was the first hint they had that Dillinger had no intention of standing trial. The note frightened both men. It was a ridiculous scheme, one that would no doubt get everyone involved killed. Nevertheless, after some debate, Piquett passed it to Frechette, who got it to John Hamilton.
Hamilton, however, was in no shape to help anyone; he was still recuperating from the bullet wounds he had suffered in East Chicago a month before. He had been holed up in a Chicago apartment ever since, tended to by Pat Cherrington. In desperation he contacted the one yegg he thought he could trust, their old friend Homer Van Meter. Van Meter was in St. Paul, where as fate would have it, he had just reunited with that most unstable of Depression-era outlaws, Baby Face Nelson.
In the wake of the Eastham raid, Clyde Barrow had a new gang for the first time in seven months, and from all appearances he was determined it would be his ticket into the criminal elite: finally, he would become a bank robber. It’s possible banks intimidated Clyde. Even when he worked with partners in the past, he had kept to jewelry stores and gas stations. But if Clyde now viewed himself as a Dillinger-like figure commanding a band of seasoned