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By Root 2238 0

in Room 210 above his office in the hotel. He spread the money on the bed. At one point, Wilson, unaware of the scheme, knocked on the door. Moran, who was drunk, opened it, a bottle of beer in his hand. Wilson peered inside. He saw Boss McLaughlin, Izzy Berg, and Russell Gibson standing over the bed, counting the largest stack of money he had ever seen. He watched as McLaughlin put a brick of bills into a briefcase. “How much more do you want?” Wilson heard Berg ask.

“What’s going on?” Wilson asked.

“Don’t get nose trouble,” Moran slurred.

“Close that door,” McLaughlin snapped.5

They moved the first $10,000 quickly, and when they were finished Dock Barker came by and picked up the laundered cash.

“Any problems?” Dock asked.

“Nope,” Gibson replied.

“Good,” Dock said. “We have a lot more.”

It took a few days to move the next $20,000. Boss McLaughlin and his friends did the leg work, while Moran drank himself into a stupor. Everything went swimmingly until Monday, April 23, the day after Little Bohemia. That morning, as FBI agents waved the last wisps of tear gas from Emil Wanatka’s barroom, a Chicago bank teller discovered he had been passed a bill whose serial number was listed on the FBI’s Bremer-ransom circular. A supervisor called the FBI. The very next day, as Purvis’s men scrambled to trace the bill, Dock Barker got the call that Dillinger wanted to meet.

That Tuesday morning, as police and vigilantes combed Minnesota and Wisconsin in search of him, Dillinger limped back into the Chicago suburbs. It was as desperate a moment as he had faced since escaping from Crown Point. In the backseat John Hamilton lay dying; his blood was all over the inside of the car. They had bought bandages and medicine in Dubuque, Iowa, but if Hamilton was to have any chance to live, they needed a doctor. They had stolen a set of license plates, but Dillinger knew he couldn’t drive the streets of Chicago long with a bleeding man in the backseat before someone noticed.

The doctor Dillinger attempted to find that day was none other than Joseph Moran, who at that moment was closeted in his hotel room laundering the Bremer ransom.ck Failing to find him, Dillinger drove to the HiHoInn, a Cicero nightclub operated by a pair of syndicate men, brothers named Bobby and Joie O’Brien. The O’Briens apparently wanted nothing to do with him. They sent Dillinger away, promising to find Dr. Moran and bring him to a rendezvous that night.

Dillinger’s visit set off a flurry of phone calls. The O’Brien brothers telephoned Elmer Farmer, the man who owned the Bremer safe house, who they believed could find Moran. In turn, Farmer called Dock Barker, who tried to reach Moran but couldn’t. Meanwhile Joie O’Brien drove to suburban Aurora, thirty miles west of downtown Chicago, and retrieved Volney Davis, who had been living in an Aurora apartment for several weeks. Everyone gathered that night in a parking lot behind the Seafood Inn, a restaurant in suburban Elmhurst .6

It was the first time Dillinger met members of the Barker Gang, but there was little time for pleasantries. They lifted Hamilton out of the car and put him in the back of Volney Davis’s Buick. Dillinger and Van Meter then followed Davis back to his apartment in Aurora. Davis sent his girlfriend, Edna Murray, to stay with friends, and Hamilton was carried in and placed on a bed. He didn’t have long, they could see. Gangrene had set in. Not even a doctor could help Hamilton now.

Members of the two gangs tended to the dying man all that night and the next day, doing their best to ease his pain. Hamilton lasted two more days, finally dying around three on Thursday afternoon, April 26. At dusk, Dock Barker and Volney Davis drove to a quarry six miles south of Aurora and dug a grave. After dark they loaded Hamilton’s body into a car, drove him to the quarry, and laid him in the ground. Davis had purchased several cans of lye to destroy his features. Dillinger bent over the dead man and in a low voice said, “Red, old pal, I hate to do this, but I know you’d do the same for me.”7 And then