Fireman's Find

Last week when the Congress Hotel burned in Tucson, Ariz. Fireman John Freeman was given a $50 tip for lugging out heavy suitcases for several "wealthy Easterners." Next afternoon, thumbing through a detective magazine in the firehouse, he stared at likenesses of two of the generous strangers. Minutes later Tucson police started a manhunt for John Dillinger and his gang who week before had looted the First National Bank of East Chicago (TIME, Jan. 29).

In a tourist camp police picked up tall, scholarly Harry Pierpont (jailbreaker & murderer) who went with them meekly, suddenly pulled two guns when they tried to handcuff him, was subdued. In a radio store they picked up Charles Makley (jailbreaker, murderer, bank robber), busy buying a short wave set to get police alarms. In a city apartment they collared Russel Clark (same occupations), before he got his gun. Few hours later they seized John Dillinger (gang leader, police killer) as he arrived with a submachine gun under his coat.

At the police station, Dillinger, identified by fingerprints, growled: "I'll be the laughing stock of the country. How did I know that a hick town police force would ever suspicion me." He and his friends, along with their women folk, Mary Kinder, Opal Long, Anne Martin, were clapped into jail, guarded by 15 armed men while police checked over five machine guns, $26,000 in cash, $12,000 in jewels, six bullet-proof vests, all found in the suspicious luggage. A Justice of the Peace held them in bail of $100,000 each.

In Indiana, Dillinger faced a mandatory death penalty for the murder of Policeman O'Malley. In Ohio, Clark, Makley and Pierpont were wanted for killing Sheriff Jess L. Sarber when they delivered Dillinger from jail. Illinois had a variety of unpleasant charges against the quartet. Hence, they announced that they preferred being extradited to Wisconsin, where only a bank robbery charge awaited them. However a smart Indiana prosecutor swooped into town, extradited Dillinger, loaded him into an airplane and flew him, manacled and guarded by police, back to East Chicago, Ind.

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