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That Thursday, October 12, was just another night in the Lima lockup. After a dinner of pork chops and mashed potatoes, Dillinger joined the pinochle game. Down the hallway, Sheriff Sarber sagged into his desk chair and opened the Lima News; the banner headline on the front page gave an update of Machine Gun Kelly’s trial in Oklahoma. Sheriff Sarber’s wife, Lucy, sat across from him, working a crossword puzzle. Around six their deputy, Wilbur Sharp, came in, loosened his gun belt, and threw it on a spare desk, then plopped onto a davenport. The Sarber’s dog Brownie nuzzled him. Sharp scratched its ears.

At 6:25 the jail’s outside door opened and three men in suits stepped in. Mrs. Sarber, buried in her puzzle, didn’t bother to look up. “Whaddya need?” Sheriff Sarber asked the first man, who wore a dark gray suit, an overcoat, and a light-felt fedora.

“We’re from Michigan City,” said the first man. “We want to see John Dillinger.”

“Let me see your credentials,” Sheriff Sarber said.

“Here’s our credentials,” said the first man. His piercing gray eyes were probably the last thing Jess Sarber saw before the man raised a pistol and fired straight into his chest.

The mass escape from Michigan City the night of September 26 was front-page news across the country. A hard rain had fallen as Pierpont, Makley, and eight other inmates, using the three .45 caliber pistols Dillinger had smuggled into the prison, took a group of guards hostage, then used them to parade into the administration building; guards on the wall, seeing the prisoners apparently escorted by the day captain, were not suspicious. Four of the inmates took a visiting sheriff hostage and forced him into his car. As they drove off, Pierpont took the other five inmates and sprinted to a Standard Oil station across the street, where they commandeered a car of their own.

That night, eluding roadblocks the Indiana State Police threw up across the state, Pierpont’s group, which included Charles Makley, Russell Clark, John Hamilton, a con named Ed Shouse, and Dillinger’s onetime cellmate Jim Jenkins, arrived safely at the Indianapolis apartment of Pierpont’s old girlfriend, Mary Kinder. They were lucky; three of the other four escapees ended up dead or recaptured within days. The next night, after one of Kinder’s girlfriends ran out to buy them clothes, Dillinger’s partner Harry Copeland arrived at the apartment and said he had arranged a hideout, at a rented house in Hamilton, Ohio, north of Cincinnati.

From the moment Mary Kinder told them Dillinger had been arrested, there was never any question that Pierpont’s band wouldn’t try to free him. Their preparations weren’t without incident, however. After stealing a car for the drive to Hamilton, the six escapees were spotted by police outside Indianapolis; in a chase, Jim Jenkins somehow fell out an open car door. Fleeing on foot, he was spotted, shot, and killed by a group of vigilantes in the town of Bean Blossom. The remaining five escapees reached Hamilton that night.

There they began laying plans for Dillinger’s rescue. For food, cigarettes, and gasoline they needed money, and for that they decided to rob a bank. On Tuesday afternoon, October 3, a week after their escape, the gang filed into the First National Bank in Charles Makley’s hometown of St. Mary’s, Ohio, just south of where Dillinger was being held in Lima. The raid went smoothly, with no gunplay, and that night they returned to Hamilton $11,000 richer. The money was too new to spend, and Mary Kinder spent several days baking and ironing the bills to make them appear worn.3

Once the money was safe to pass, they began reconnoitering Lima. Despite Matt Leach’s hunch that they might attempt a rescue, Pierpont could see no additional guards around the jail. They decided to move in the next day, Columbus Day, Thursday, October 12.

Sheriff Sarber was mortally wounded. Blood spilled from the ragged hole in his chest as he tried to rise from the floor. Pierpont stood over him, screaming,