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Purvis thus started from scratch, pulling five agents off the Bremer case to hunt Dillinger. It’s difficult to say whether the miserable quality of this group’s work in the ensuing weeks was due to the Bureau’s ambivalence or Purvis’s ineptitude. Agents descended on the Crown Point jail, taking statements from everyone involved in the escape, and visited the prison at Michigan City, where Dillinger’s onetime gangmate Ed Shouse gave them Billie Frechette’s name. For ten days, as Dillinger sightings poured in from cities as far afield as Los Angeles and Seattle, Purvis and his men probed the backgrounds of Frechette and various relatives of Dillinger’s jailed partners. They found precisely nothing.

Dillinger would dominate headlines around the country for weeks to come. With no sign of the man himself, crowds of reporters descended on Lima, Ohio, to attend the trials of his former partners Pete Pierpont, Charles Makley, and Russell Clark. One line of speculation ran through every story: would Dillinger ride to their rescue?

Ohio officials were ready if he did. Lima was an armed camp. Governor George White called out the National Guard, and guardsmen patrolled the town’s streets day and night. Their commander, a bellicose artilleryman named Harold Bush, surrounded the Allen County Courthouse with sand bags and a trio of machine-gun nests. After a rumor spread that Dillinger intended to kidnap Governor White, two squads of guardsmen took up positions outside the governor’s mansion.

The three trials themselves were cursory affairs. Ed Shouse was brought under guard from Indiana, and his terse recitation of events leading to Sheriff Sarber’s murder was all the ammunition the juries needed. In three consecutive trials spanning two weeks, Pierpont was convicted, then Makley, then Russell Clark. Pierpont and Makley received death sentences. Clark got life. Dillinger never showed.

Mason City, Iowa Tuesday, March 13

Wet clots of snow were blowing diagonally across the yellow fields of northern Iowa as two cars came to a stop at a sandpit just beyond the southern edge of town. A harsh wind tore at the flaps of the men’s overcoats as Homer Van Meter and Eddie Green stepped out of one of the cars, a navy Buick. The rest of the gang—Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, John Hamilton, and Tommy Carroll—emerged from the second. They huddled together in a ragged circle, talking.

Green and Van Meter had spent the weekend in Mason City studying the layout of the First National Bank, staying in a room at the YMCA. They briefed the others, who had driven down from St. Paul. Everyone knew this was a high-risk job. Years of robberies had turned many Midwestern banks into small fortresses, and the Mason City bank, located on the town’s main square, was Iowa’s Fort Knox. A guard sat in a steel cage behind bulletproof glass on the second floor of the lobby, fifteen feet above the front door. He was armed with tear gas and a rifle. But the payoff, Green emphasized, was huge. He estimated the vault held a quarter million dollars. If everything went according to plan, they wouldn’t have to work again for months.

A few minutes after two o’clock, the circle broke. They transferred the guns into the Buick and headed into town. Tommy Carroll drove. As he headed up Pennsylvania Avenue, a local couple, Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Barr, fell in behind the car. “Isn’t that peculiar?” Mrs. Barr remarked, motioning at the Buick. “They have the rear window [knocked] out.”

“It’s probably hot,” said Mr. Barr, eyeing the carload of well-dressed men. “There’s an awful lot of them. It looks like a car full of pallbearers.”9

A minute later, a freelance cameraman named H. C. Kunkleman watched as the Buick pulled to a stop beside the First National Bank’s towering seven-story red-brick facade. Standing beside a tripod in the square, Kunkleman watched, curious, as five of the six men inside stepped from the car. One of them noticed Kunkleman’s camera. “Hey you,” the