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By Root 2061 0

his schedule. Gang members had been trying to pass stolen bonds through a fence in Milwaukee and had spotted an attractive bank en route, the American Bank and Trust Company, in the small lakeside city of Racine. That weekend, the gang rented an apartment in Milwaukee and cruised Racine’s downtown streets, studying the bank and scoping out escape routes. The money was beginning to run low, and Dillinger was brimming with expensive dreams, from buying and learning to fly an airplane to taking a long Florida vacation. They planned to hit the bank on Monday.

7

AMBUSHES

November 20 to December 31, 1933

Racine, Wisconsin Monday, November 20 2:30 P.M.

The numbing cold front had moved on, but as the five gang members cruised toward the American Bank and Trust Company, a cool wind was still blowing off Lake Michigan behind the bank. Russell Clark did the driving, dropping the others on downtown corners before parking in a lot behind the bank.av It was a mistake: the bank didn’t have a back door. Worse, the gang either didn’t notice or didn’t care that the Racine Police Department was only three blocks away.

Pete Pierpont, wearing a gray overcoat and matching fedora, was first into the lobby. He unfurled a Red Cross poster and without a word taped it up in the bank’s front window, obscuring the view of the teller cages from the outside. Dillinger, Makley, and Hamilton walked in a moment later. At the cages the head teller, Harold Graham, was counting a stack of bills. He had just pulled a NEXT WINDOW, PLEASE sign in front of his window when he heard someone say, “Stick ’em up!”

Graham kept his head lowered and ignored the order, thinking someone was joking.

“Stick ’em up!” Makley repeated.

Graham still didn’t look up. “Next window, please,” he said, with what one imagines was a touch of attitude.

Without a word, Makley raised his pistol and shot him. The bullet went through Graham’s right arm and lodged in his hip. He fell backward, stunned and bleeding. Somehow Graham kept his senses enough to press the alarm button. Outside, the alarm began ringing loudly, echoing up and down Main Street. Dillinger turned his head. Out on the sidewalks, passersby did the same. Two more alarms rang at police headquarters. Dillinger and Pierpont strode past the teller cages, ordering the eight or nine employees there to lie on the floor. Dillinger frog-marched the bank’s president, Grover Weyland, to open the vault, then hustled inside and began shoveling stacks of bills into a sack. Pierpont kept an eye on the front door. Among the frightened tellers and customers who watched him that day, all described the handsome, forceful Pierpont as the clear leader of the robbers.

At police headquarters, officers weren’t exactly scrambling to join the action. The bank had suffered a series of false alarms, and Officer Chester Boyard figured this was one more. He grabbed two men, strolled to a squad car, and drove to the bank. A few minutes later, Boyard was first out of the car in front of the bank. The moment he entered the lobby, he heard a voice yell, “Stick ’em up.” Before he could react, one of the robbers—later identified as Russell Clark—leveled a submachine gun at him and took his pistol. Sergeant Wilbur Hansen was next through the door, his submachine gun pointed toward the floor. From the back of the bank Pierpont shouted, “Get that cop with the machine gun!”1

Makley, who was covering the lobby, turned and fired. A bullet grazed Officer Hansen’s right hand and scorched a flesh wound in his side. He pitched forward, stunned. A woman fainted, slithering to the floor like a shrugged-off overcoat. A vase of flowers crashed down. Makley stepped over and tried to wrench Officer Boyard’s pistol from its holster. It wouldn’t come free. He took a moment to unbutton the holster and take the gun. Outside, the third officer ran for help.

Gunsmoke was rising inside the lobby. Outside, a crowd was beginning to form. The manager of Goldberg’s Shoe Store, four doors north of the bank, jogged down to investigate. Officer Boyard made eye