Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [327]
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According to an excellent 1992 article in Serb World USA magazine, Leach’s real name was Matija Licanin. His family came from the Serbian town of Kordun.
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Dillinger cased and may have robbed at least one bank in northern Kentucky. He was suspected but never charged with the August 11 robbery of a bank in Gravel Switch, Kentucky.
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The home still stands, at 2000 Golden Gate Drive, in Long Beach, Indiana.
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It was probably through the garage owner that Nelson made his first contacts in Roger Touhy’s gang. According to Touhy’s 1959 biography, Nelson worked briefly as a “torpedo” in the labor struggles between the Touhy and Capone outfits; the assignments did not last long, but Nelson’s association with the Touhys would cause him trouble in later years.
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In a 1953 article for Argosy mgazine, Bentz recalls being introduced to Nelson by an Indiana tavern owner. While possible, he was more likely to have befriended Nelson with the endorsement of a fellow yegg like Karpis.
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The establishment was Art’s Army Store at 3318 Michigan Avenue, a retailer of military clothing whose back room was a gathering spot for local hoodlums. Bentz and Nelson were known to have frequented the store in June 1933, as were John Dillinger and Homer Van Meter. Nelson and Dillinger may have met there.
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“Cleaning a street” refers to the job of keeping armed citizens and law officers away from a robbery in progress.
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Fred Barker and his girlfriend Paula Harmon had spent the summer at a rented house in Long Lake, Illinois.
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According to a gang member who was debriefed by the FBI in 1935, the largest share of the Hamm ransom, $25,000, had gone to the corrupt detective Tom Brown. Jack Peifer received $10,000. The six men who actually carried out the kidnapping—Karpis, the Barker brothers, Shotgun George Ziegler, Charles Fitzgerald, and Bryan Bolton—each received $7,800. The gang also gave its old friend Deafy Farmer $2,500 to cover legal expenses for his defense in the Kansas City Massacre case.
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Weaver, an Arkansas-born prison pal of Dock Barker’s, had been with Karpis and the Barkers since their first bank robbery in southern Missouri in early 1931. He had a rap sheet dating to 1918 and had been paroled for murdering an Oklahoma policeman. Weaver would work alongside Karpis and Barker for the rest of their careers.
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The name is a pseudonym; the maid’s actual name is blacked out in FBI files.
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This brief conversation, reported verbatim in an October 3, 1933, FBI memo, is curious. It suggests the FBI tapped Sayers’s phone, though approval for such a tap is mentioned nowhere in FBI files. The FBI memo further indicates that Sayers went to Waco in search of Kathryn that day but failed to locate her.
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Luther Arnold’s sadsack story about the Oklahoma farm was true, but he pointedly failed to mention his two arrests for passing bad checks in Los Angeles.
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Both “Mae” and “Hilda” are pseudonyms; the women’s actual names are blacked out in FBI reports.
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Afterward Kelly would claim he had stayed up all night, watching for the possibility of a raid. Given the half-dozen gin bottles in his bedroom, and the ten more empty bottles of Old Log Cabin bourbon on the back porch, that’s unlikely. Whether he slept or not, Kelly had risen early, waiting for the newspaper’s delivery. Around seven he heard a thump on the front porch, the sound of the paper being delivered. He walked out and grabbed it, then returned inside, failing to relock the front door.
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All those involved in harboring Kelly, including Lang Ramsey, drew brief prison sentences.
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Pierpont was the kind of inmate who seemed at war with the world. His problems began at nineteen, when he tried to steal a car; when the owner intervened, Pierpont drew a gun and fired at him four times, missing. He drew a term in a reformatory,