Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [230]
“This story that Purvis has put out about his office being tipped off Sunday afternoon about Dillinger planning to attend the show at the Biograph is all bunk,” O’Neil groused. “We merely played a strong hunch that Dillinger would show up at the theater Sunday night and turned that information over to Purvis to act on.”20
While Purvis basked in glory, Cowley mopped up. On Monday, after testifying at the coroner’s inquest—where he refused to identify the agents who shot Dillinger—he was forced to deal with a frantic Ana Sage, who was convinced Dillinger’s gang would hunt her down. The moment Dillinger was shot, she and Hamilton had run from the scene. Two days later, a boy swimming in Lake Michigan found a submachine gun, a pistol, and a bulletproof vest in shallow water off a pier near Lincoln Park. They were Dillinger’s; the Thompson was identified as one of the guns stolen from the Warsaw, Indiana, police department. Though it was never proven, the Chicago police told reporters they suspected Sage had run back to her flat and cleared it of Dillinger’s things, tossing the guns and the vest into the lake. Afterward Hamilton hid at a girlfriend’s. Sage locked herself inside her apartment.
By Monday afternoon, rumors began to swirl about the mysterious “woman in red” who betrayed Dillinger. Purvis and Zarkovich refused to comment, but the outlines of the conspiracy leaked anyway. DILLINGER DOOMED BY GIRL IN RED, read the Chicago Daily Times banner headline Monday evening. At her apartment, Sage panicked. Zarkovich drove her to the Bankers Building, where Sam Cowley found her “most hysterical.” In tears she begged him to hide her. Cowley said he would do whatever she wanted, then sent her home. The next morning he talked with Hoover. “[Cowley] thinks that if we don’t pick her up the newspapers will most likely find out who she is and cause a lot of publicity,” Hoover wrote in a memo that morning. “I asked Mr. Cowley if they could get her and hold her inncommunicado [sic]. He thought they could, and I instructed him to take this action.”
That same morning Cowley telephoned Sage and asked to meet her at the Stevens Hotel. There he instructed her to go home, pack her things, leave town, and let him know where she was going. Returning to her apartment, Sage was throwing clothes in a suitcase when her doorbell rang. Through the peephole she saw men outside. Frightened, she phoned Purvis, who said he would send an agent over. The men turned out to be Chicago police detectives. They took Sage in for questioning.
At the Sheffield precinct house, Captain Thomas Duffy fired questions at Sage for several hours. Amazingly, he allowed a group of newspaper reporters to listen in. Sage proved a skilled liar, denying just about everything. Again and again, she insisted she was just on her way to the movies when FBI agents had burst out of nowhere and killed her girlfriend’s date. When Cowley learned Sage was in custody, he headed to the precinct house. Both Cowley and Sage acted as if they didn’t know each other. Cowley asked Detective Duffy if he was filing charges against Sage. Duffy said he only wanted to question her. Cowley left, telling Duffy to notify him when he was finished. Later, Cowley told Hoover he felt the police had detained Sage on the urging of friends at the Chicago Daily News, who wanted her story.
That night, when the evening newspapers identified Sage as “the woman in red,” Cowley telephoned the precinct to find Sage still there. Detective Duffy said he intended to hold Sage till the next day. “No you’re not,” Cowley said.21 He telephoned Chicago’s police commissioner, persuaded him to release Sage into the FBI’s custody, then dispatched two agents to remove her from the precinct house. Reporters followed them as they drove Sage