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mounting when Purvis was handed the best bait the Bureau had been served in months. On May 26 a federal judge in Wisconsin granted the Little Bohemia women—Helen Gillis, Jean Delaney, and Mickey Conforti—probation. Before being released, the three women were questioned at the Bankers Building. Purvis assigned a half-dozen men to shadow them. Conforti went to her foster parents’ home, while Gillis and Delaney went to the apartment of Nelson’s sister, Juliette Fitzsimmons, on South Marshfield Avenue. All three women settled into quiet routines. They knew they were being watched.

Purvis searched for a way to make his agents less noticeable. There was a gas station across from the Fitzsimmons home, and he pressed the owner to let an agent work there. On Tuesday, May 29, three days after Helen’s release, Purvis called on the man, and was stunned when he mentioned he had seen Nelson visiting his wife the day before. Nelson had circled the block four times, apparently looking for surveillance, then walked right up to the building and gone inside.7

This was too much for Hoover. He fired off an ominously worded letter to Purvis. “I am becoming quite concerned over some of these developments in the Chicago district,” Hoover wrote Purvis. “We have had too many instances where surveillances have not been properly conducted, and where persons under surveillance have been able to avoid the same . . . I cannot continue to tolerate action of investigators that permits leads to remain uncovered, or at least improperly covered. It is imperative that you exercise the proper supervision over the handling of this case.”8

Purvis’s position deteriorated further that same day when a Chicago newspaper reported that Eddie Green’s widow had arrived in the city and was talking with the FBI. When a Hoover aide questioned Purvis about the leak, Purvis said the reporter had probably “concocted” it. “It’s strange they should concoct the truth,” Hoover scrawled on a memo.9 Hoover had just sent a terse wire to Purvis requesting an explanation when a rash of articles the next morning quoted Purvis saying he thought Dillinger was dead. Once again Hoover demanded an explanation. Once again Purvis insisted it was all a product of reporters’ imaginations. “I would not have made such a statement to the effect that John Dillinger is dead because, primarily, I do not believe that he is dead,” Purvis wrote Hoover.10

For Hoover the turning point came the next night, Thursday, May 31, the same day Dillinger had his facial bandages removed across town. The agents watching Helen Gillis were staying in an apartment across the street. Purvis had put Ed Hollis in charge. It was a problematic stakeout from the outset, as “[Helen] is quite aware that she is being followed at all times,” Purvis wrote Hoover. Still, he assured him, “This matter is receiving my closest attention.”11

What was needed, Purvis decided, was someone who could gain Helen’s trust. His choice for the assignment was a poor one, a Michigan City parolee named George Nelson. A convicted swindler, Nelson claimed he had known Dillinger in prison; he further claimed Baby Face Nelson had “stolen” his name. Purvis agreed to pay Nelson $20 a day. That Thursday night he dispatched him to the building on Marshfield Avenue.

From their position across the street, Hollis and the other agents watched as George Nelson drove up. As he did, Helen and Jean Delaney emerged from the building. Nelson approached the women, saying he was a messenger sent by Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson. Neither woman knew him, however, and both would later say they assumed he was an FBI plant. Helen and Delaney then walked around a corner, where Helen disappeared into a movie theater. Nelson followed.

Rather than tail the women themselves, Hollis and his men decided to wait, assuming they would return shortly. When there was no sign of them after fifteen minutes, the agents scrambled down to the street and jogged around the corner. There they saw Nelson sitting in his car. To their surprise, Nelson recognized them and came over to talk.