Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [82]
“Don’t hurt him no more!” Mrs. Sarber pleaded as she scrambled to her husband’s side. She grabbed the keys from a drawer and handed them to Pierpont, who stepped to the barred door of the cell block. When one of the inmates peeked his head around a corner, Pierpont raised his pistol and fired a shot into the bullpen area. “Get back, you motherfuckers!” Pierpont yelled. “We only want John!”
Dillinger ducked into his cell, grabbed his coat and hat, and jogged through the cell-block door. Sheriff Sarber was lying in a pool of blood. Dillinger looked down at the dying sheriff but said nothing as he hustled outside. “Oh men, why did you have to do this to me,” the sheriff moaned. He turned to his wife, who hovered above him. “Mother, I believe I am going to have to leave you.”
Ninety minutes later, Jess Sarber died at a local hospital. Sirens echoed through the streets of Lima all that evening, as police and vigilantes spilled from their homes to man roadblocks. Dillinger, meanwhile, sped south with the gang, arriving at the rented house in Hamilton that night. At that point, Dillinger faced a crossroads. He could have left the gang and fled to parts unknown. Instead, he decided to stick with his friends and become a full-time bank robber.
To rob a bank, they needed weapons—not just pistols, but Thompson submachine guns and bulletproof vests. That Saturday night in Auburn, a town just across the Indiana line, an officer named Fred Krueger had just sat down at the police station’s front desk to eat a bag of popcorn when two men in suits walked in. Both had two pistols in their hands. “You might as well sit still,” one said. “We don’t want to kill anyone unless we have to. Have you got any guns?”
“Yes,” Krueger said as he slid his hand toward his pistol.
“Oh no,” the man with the gun said politely. “I’ll get it.”4
Both Krueger and the desk officer were disarmed and locked in a cell. Taking the key to the gun cabinet, the intruders lugged a small arsenal out to their waiting car: a Thompson submachine gun, a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol, a .401 Winchester rifle, a 44-40 Winchester sixteen-shot rifle, a .45 caliber Colt pistol, a Lugar, several hundred rounds of ammunition, and three bulletproof vests.
From Auburn the gang headed to Chicago, betting they could lose themselves in the city.am They spent the next several days renting apartments. By October 20, four days after the Auburn raid, the gang was back on the road, in search of more guns and ammunition. That Friday night, three men walked into the city hall in Peru, Indiana, an hour north of Indianapolis, and leveled guns at the desk officers.
“I haven’t plugged anyone for a week,” one of the men, later identified as Pierpont, said, “and I would just as soon puncture one of you cops as not.”5 Pierpont covered the officers while his two confederates, one of them Dillinger, broke into the gun cabinet, emptied the contents onto a blanket, then lugged it all out to their car. The evening’s take came to six bulletproof vests, two sawed-off-shotguns, two Winchester rifles, and a half-dozen .38 caliber pistols. As they left, they stripped the officers of their guns and badges.
Only then did Pierpont and Dillinger feel strong enough to take a bank. They decided on the Central National Bank in Greencastle, Indiana, west of Indianapolis, the home of DePauw University. That Saturday was Home-coming, and Makley argued that the banks would be bursting with cash. At 2:45 that Monday afternoon, a black Studebaker eased along Jackson Street in downtown Greencastle and parked in front of the bank. Five men emerged: Dillinger, Pierpont, Makley, John Hamilton, and either Harry Copeland or Russell Clark. All wore overcoats, guns tucked inside. Walking into the bank, Pierpont stepped to a teller’s window and asked to change a twenty-dollar