Public Enemies (68 page)

In Washington, reporters confronted Hoover as he hurried into his office. He deflected entreaties to boast, emphasizing the Bureau’s hunt for Van Meter and Nelson. “This does not mean the end of the Dillinger case,” he said. “Anyone who ever gave any of the Dillinger mob any aid, comfort, or assistance will be vigorously prosecuted.”
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Attorney General Homer Cummings, tracked down at Washington’s Union Station, where he was boarding a cross-country train toward a Hawaiian vacation, put Dillinger’s death in the broadest context, making clear it was a product of New Deal-style federalist thinking. “This marks the end of the trail for John Dillinger, but it is not the end of the trail for the Department of Justice,” he said. “For us this is but one more episode in the carefully planned campaign against organized crime which we have been conducting for more than a year.” Without any hint of irony—given the lack of cooperation between the FBI and Chicago police—he added, “What has happened is an illustration of the success that can be accomplished by concentrated effort and fullest coordination between federal and local authorities. To bring about this sort of friendly and helpful cooperation is one of the cardinal points in our movement to suppress crime.”

The next morning Dillinger’s death was front-page news around the world, dominating headlines in New York, London, Moscow, and Berlin. The European papers played up the lack of warning Dillinger was given before being shot in the back. In Germany a Nazi newspaper used this as ammunition for a broadside against America. “Is a cop calling a man by his first name before shooting him down a sufficient trial?” an editorialist wrote. “Does a country in which this happens still deserve the name of a country of law and order?”
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American newspapers had no such doubts. Much of their coverage focused on Purvis, who while reading congratulatory telegrams gave interviews and posed for photographers in his office all day Monday. The caption beneath his picture in the
Chicago Daily Times
that evening—HE GOT HIS MAN—was typical. The
New York Evening Journal
printed a series of Dillinger photos arrayed like scenes from a movie, calling it “Underworld Melodrama—in Three Scenes—(A U.S. Production directed by Melvin Purvis).”
Time
printed a photo of Purvis shaking hands with Homer Cummings captioned, MELVIN PURVIS AND FRIEND. While Sam Cowley, whom the
Tribune
continued to identify as “Purvis’s chief assistant,” shunned the press, Purvis gave interviews in which his ego was vividly on display. Talking to a
Daily Times
reporter, he referred to the FBI’s as-yet-unnamed snitch as “my informant” and embellished the story of lighting his cigar.

“There was no response from my men,” Purvis said. “I’ll confess I was under a strain and extremely uncomfortable when Dillinger saw my signal and gave me a dirty look . . . Once I spotted him I knew him at once, because of those killer’s eyes of his.”
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This was not the way Hoover wanted FBI agents to behave, as Purvis would soon learn. There was much work still to be done, in fact, and Cowley excluded Purvis from almost all of it. Monday night, while Cowley grappled with an array of pressing issues, Purvis was sent to the railroad station to pose for photographs with Homer Cummings. The following evening he flew to Washington, where he posed for more photos with Hoover; Cowley apologized, saying he was too busy to go. Hoover announced both Purvis and Cowley were given raises. For the moment, it appeared Purvis had been freed from the director’s doghouse.

“The shooting and killing of John Dillinger by the Agents of your office under your admirable direction and planning are but another indication of your ability and capacity as a leader and an executive,” Hoover wrote Purvis the morning after the shooting. “[I]t again confirms the faith and confidence which I have always had in you . . . This would not have been accomplished had it not been for your unlimited and never-ending persistence, effective planning and intelligence . . .”
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The attention lavished on Purvis did not sit well with the East Chicago police. Zarkovich gave several interviews, trying hard to direct credit to the East Chicago police. Like Purvis, he freely embellished his story, telling reporters he had seen Dillinger attending movies at the Biograph several times. He also claimed the East Chicago police had Van Meter and Nelson under surveillance. It was no use. The press had annointed Purvis “the man who got Dillinger,” and nothing the East Chicago police said changed anyone’s minds. Later that week, Captain O’Neil told reporters he made a “big mistake” agreeing to let Purvis handle the initial publicity.

“This story that Purvis has put out about his office being tipped off Sunday afternoon about Dillinger planning to attend the show at the Biograph is all bunk,” O’Neil groused. “We merely played a strong hunch that Dillinger would show up at the theater Sunday night and turned that information over to Purvis to act on.”
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While Purvis basked in glory, Cowley mopped up. On Monday, after testifying at the coroner’s inquest—where he refused to identify the agents who shot Dillinger—he was forced to deal with a frantic Ana Sage, who was convinced Dillinger’s gang would hunt her down. The moment Dillinger was shot, she and Hamilton had run from the scene. Two days later, a boy swimming in Lake Michigan found a submachine gun, a pistol, and a bulletproof vest in shallow water off a pier near Lincoln Park. They were Dillinger’s; the Thompson was identified as one of the guns stolen from the Warsaw, Indiana, police department. Though it was never proven, the Chicago police told reporters they suspected Sage had run back to her flat and cleared it of Dillinger’s things, tossing the guns and the vest into the lake. Afterward Hamilton hid at a girlfriend’s. Sage locked herself inside her apartment.

By Monday afternoon, rumors began to swirl about the mysterious “woman in red” who betrayed Dillinger. Purvis and Zarkovich refused to comment, but the outlines of the conspiracy leaked anyway. DILLINGER DOOMED BY GIRL IN RED, read the
Chicago Daily Times
banner headline Monday evening. At her apartment, Sage panicked. Zarkovich drove her to the Bankers Building, where Sam Cowley found her “most hysterical.” In tears she begged him to hide her. Cowley said he would do whatever she wanted, then sent her home. The next morning he talked with Hoover. “[Cowley] thinks that if we don’t pick her up the newspapers will most likely find out who she is and cause a lot of publicity,” Hoover wrote in a memo that morning. “I asked Mr. Cowley if they could get her and hold her inncommunicado [
sic
]. He thought they could, and I instructed him to take this action.”

That same morning Cowley telephoned Sage and asked to meet her at the Stevens Hotel. There he instructed her to go home, pack her things, leave town, and let him know where she was going. Returning to her apartment, Sage was throwing clothes in a suitcase when her doorbell rang. Through the peephole she saw men outside. Frightened, she phoned Purvis, who said he would send an agent over. The men turned out to be Chicago police detectives. They took Sage in for questioning.

At the Sheffield precinct house, Captain Thomas Duffy fired questions at Sage for several hours. Amazingly, he allowed a group of newspaper reporters to listen in. Sage proved a skilled liar, denying just about everything. Again and again, she insisted she was just on her way to the movies when FBI agents had burst out of nowhere and killed her girlfriend’s date. When Cowley learned Sage was in custody, he headed to the precinct house. Both Cowley and Sage acted as if they didn’t know each other. Cowley asked Detective Duffy if he was filing charges against Sage. Duffy said he only wanted to question her. Cowley left, telling Duffy to notify him when he was finished. Later, Cowley told Hoover he felt the police had detained Sage on the urging of friends at the
Chicago Daily News,
who wanted her story.

That night, when the evening newspapers identified Sage as “the woman in red,” Cowley telephoned the precinct to find Sage still there. Detective Duffy said he intended to hold Sage till the next day. “No you’re not,” Cowley said.
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He telephoned Chicago’s police commissioner, persuaded him to release Sage into the FBI’s custody, then dispatched two agents to remove her from the precinct house. Reporters followed them as they drove Sage to the Bankers Building, where they bombarded Cowley with questions. He firmly denied Sage was responsible for “fingering” Dillinger.

Behind closed doors, Cowley told Sage to call Polly Hamilton, whom the Bureau had been unable to locate. By 2:00 A.M. both women were secreted safely on the nineteenth floor. They were questioned all night. Hamilton steadfastly denied ever knowing “Jimmy Lawrence” was Dillinger, though this flatly contradicted Sage. Still, Cowley accepted her story. “He is positive she knows no more than the informant,” Hoover wrote in a memo after talking to Cowley the next day. “Mr. Cowley believes that she is telling the truth.”
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They decided to get both women out of Chicago. Wednesday morning, three days after the shooting, Cowley had a pair of agents drive Sage back to her apartment. Inside they encountered a crowd of reporters, ushered in by the helpful Chicago police. After Sage packed a suitcase, tossing a few choice epithets at reporters as she did, agents drove her and Hamilton to Detroit. They spent the next several days in a hotel.

While Cowley dealt with the women, his men began rounding up those who had helped Dillinger. The first was Wilhelm Loeser. Once the FBI confirmed that Dillinger had undergone cosmetic surgery, Cowley had no doubt who had performed it. Agents arrived on Loeser’s doorstep Tuesday morning. When no one answered the bell, a half-dozen men broke down the side door. Barging up the stairs, they heard a man’s voice ask, “Who’s there?” A moment later Loeser, shirtless, appeared on the landing. He was taken to the Bankers Building.

Downtown, Loeser told them everything. Charles Winstead led a raid on Jimmy Probasco’s house the next evening. By midnight Probasco was locked inside a conference room at the Bankers Building. When they searched Probasco’s house, agents found what was later described as a suicide note. Cowley ordered Probasco watched all that night. At 9:00 Thursday morning, a twenty-five-year-old rookie agent named Max Chaffetz took Probasco to be fingerprinted, then returned Probasco to the conference room. A few minutes later Chaffetz returned to find the room empty. A chair was propped beneath the window. Chaffetz stepped to the window and looked down. There, in the alley nineteen floors below, lay the splattered remains of Jimmy Probasco.
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“Mr. Cowley [called and] stated that Probasco had just jumped out of a window at the Chicago office, which is on the 19th floor,” Hoover wrote in a memo that morning at 10:30. “I remarked that this was extreme carelessness.”
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Probasco’s demise led to rumors that he had been pushed from the window, or perhaps fallen while being dangled by interrogating agents. A crestfallen Cowley recommended to Hoover that both he and Chaffetz be suspended for two weeks. Hoover chose to suspend only Chaffetz. Given that Boss McLaughlin, who had passed the Bremer ransom money, had complained to reporters that agents had dangled him from a nineteenthfloorwindow, both Cowley and Hoover were concerned about bad publicity. For the most part the Chicago press ignored the story.

Louis Piquett, Art O’Leary, and Harold Cassidy were all rounded up in the following weeks. By that point, Cowley was deeply involved in the pursuits of Baby Face Nelson, Homer Van Meter, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barker Gang. The Dillinger case, however, was not quite closed.

 

 

As the FBI’s own reports make clear, the story of Dillinger’s betrayal told by Ana Sage and Polly Hamilton, though accepted by two generations of historians, made as little sense in 1934 as it does today. The two women told completely contradictory stories, and it was only a matter of time before someone questioned their veracity.

That Friday, July 27, someone did. It was Matt Leach. Leach came to the Bankers Building and met with Cowley behind closed doors. There was already tension between the FBI and the Indiana State Police, and the ill will only grew after this meeting.

Leach told Cowley he had an informant who said that Martin Zarkovich had sheltered Dillinger in East Chicago for at least two months, that Zarkovich had arranged the May 24 murders of two East Chicago detectives to cover this up, and that he had conspired to have the FBI kill Dillinger so that he could steal Dillinger’s money. Leach said a “serious investigation” was warranted, and suggested the FBI conduct it. Cowley was skeptical. He said the Bureau was investigating the possibility Hamilton and Sage had harbored Dillinger, but noted that since Zarkovich had participated in his killing, there was no way a court would convict him of harboring. If Zarkovich had arranged to have the detectives murdered, he went on, that was a state crime, over which the FBI had no jurisdiction.

When Leach left, unsatisfied, Cowley telephoned Hoover. “Mr. Cowley stated he believes this is a frame-up,” Hoover wrote in a memo that day. “I stated I am of the same opinion; that I believe they are jealous because they didn’t get him themselves . . .”
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The FBI had no intention of investigating Hamilton and Sage, much less Zarkovich; the mysterious trio had become the Bureau’s de facto allies, and Hoover’s attitude appears to have been that anything that reflected badly on them, reflected badly on the Bureau. In the weeks after Dillinger’s death, FBI agents took a single signed statement from Sage and none at all from Hamilton or Zarkovich. Two agents did interview Hamilton in Detroit on August 2, and from her evasive answers they believed she was hiding something.

“[I]t may clearly be seen that [her] information is very sketchy, and is in direct conflict with information furnished by Mrs. Anna [
sic
] Sage,” the two agents wrote Cowley afterward. “In this regard, it is the conviction of both agents that no information will be developed that Dillinger ever resided at the residence of Mrs. Sage, as she has cautioned Polly against furnishing any information concerning this matter, and she, Mrs. Sage, is very careful that no opportunity is had to question Polly out of her presence.”
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