Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [95]
This kind of small courtesy was becoming a Dillinger hallmark. Like most of his peers, Dillinger was an avid reader of his own press clippings, and one suspects this penchant for niceties had less to do with good manners than with an increasing awareness of his own public image. Dillinger knew how the public tended to celebrate daring bank robbers, and he craved its adulation. He got it. Just as Pretty Boy Floyd had aroused populist sentiment in dust-bowl Oklahoma, Dillinger was quickly perceived by many Midwesterners as a force of retribution against moneyed interests who had plunged the nation into a depression. Letters of support began popping up in Indiana newspapers.
“Why should the law have wanted John Dillinger for bank robbery?” read one. “He wasn’t any worse than bankers and politicians who took the poor people’s money. Dillinger did not rob poor people. He robbed those who became rich by robbing the poor. I am for Johnnie.”
And this was only the beginning.
By mid-November there had been no confirmed sighting of Bonnie and Clyde for three months, not since they were seen fleeing the bloody shoot-out at Dexfield Park, Iowa, on July 24. No one knows where they hid, but anecdotal evidence suggests they spent several weeks with cousins of Clyde’s who lived on farms deep in the East Texas pines. Distant Barrow relatives, several of whom were interviewed by a band of schoolchildren for a class project decades later, remembered an incident during this period in which Bonnie attempted to learn how to fire a pistol and nearly shot off one of her toes.
Wherever Bonnie and Clyde were hiding, only two men were actively pursuing them. A Dallas FBI agent, Charles Winstead, poked around where he could, but the pull of other cases kept him from the chase full-time. In the FBI’s absence the manhunt, such as it was, fell to the Dallas county sheriff, Smoot Schmid, who handed the case to a veteran investigator named Bob Alcorn. That fall Alcorn began working with a young deputy named Ted Hinton; both had met Bonnie during her waitressing days in downtown Dallas, and both knew Clyde and his old west Dallas haunts.
By October Alcorn and Hinton were reasonably certain Bonnie and Clyde were hiding somewhere in the countryside outside of Dallas. Worried they would be seen, the two law-enforcement agents refrained from systematic surveillance of the Barrow and Parker families. Instead they worked their sources, panning for tips on Clyde’s whereabouts, and spent endless days and nights cruising county roads around the city, parking on hillsides and staring at traffic; on one occasion they thought they saw Clyde’s Ford and gave chase, but the V-8 in question outran their squad car. Realizing they needed a more powerful vehicle, Hinton prevailed upon the Ben Griffin Motor Company to loan him a fast new Cord sedan: if anything could catch Clyde Barrow, the salesman promised, it was the Cord.
Late one night, on a hillside overlooking Duncanville, Hinton was sitting behind the wheel of the Cord, watching cars pass; there were reports that members of the Barrow family had been seen in the area. Suddenly Alcorn pointed at a passing Ford and barked, “That’s him!” Hinton shoved the car into first. “Get going!” Alcorn snapped. Rolling onto the blacktop, Hinton shoved the car into second gear, but he shoved too hard. The linkage ripped; the car sagged and died.
The deputies returned the Cord and leased a powerful Cadillac limousine. Driving one night on Loop 12 in far east Dallas, Hinton thought he saw Clyde in a passing Ford. Hinton floored the accelerator, but the Ford was too fast. Within minutes it outdistanced them and disappeared into the night. Back went the limousine. At this point, the two frustrated deputies were ready to try anything. Looking for something that might stop Clyde, they prevailed upon an excavating