Lester Joseph Gillis <6 December 1908 - November 27, 1934), known as George Nelson , better known as Baby Face Nelson , is a bank robber America in the 1930s. Gillis was nicknamed Baby's Face because of her young and small appearance, though some dared call her "Baby's face" on her face. The criminal partner instead calls him "Jimmy". Nelson established a partnership with John Dillinger, helping him escape from prison during the famous Crown Point, Indiana Jail escape, and then labeled together with remaining gang members as the number one public enemy.
Nelson is responsible for killing more FBI agents in carrying out their duties (three: W. Carter Baum, Herman Hollis, and Samuel P. Cowley) than anyone else. Nelson was shot dead by FBI agents during a firefight called the Battle of Barrington.
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Lester Joseph Gillis was born December 6, 1908, in Chicago, Illinois.
On July 4, 1916, at the age of seven, Nelson was arrested after accidentally shooting his playmate in the jaw with a gun he found. He served more than a year in the state reformer. Arrested again for theft and joyriding at the age of 13, he was sent to criminal school for an additional 18 months.
Nelson became a gang-affiliated during the mid-teens and soon became a gang leader. In 1928, Nelson met and married Helen Wawzynak. The couple has two children.
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Criminal career
Affiliate gang
By the time he met Helen, Nelson worked at a Standard Oil station in his neighborhood that doubles as a base for a group of young tire thieves, known as "strippers". Nelson falls into association with strippers, and also knows himself with a number of local criminals, including the one who hired him to drive alcohol across suburban Chicago. Nelson was later associated with a suburban Touhy Gang member (rather than mob Capone, as is usually reported).
Armed robbery
Within two years, Nelson and the gang engaged in organized crime, particularly armed robbery. On January 6, 1930, fellow soldiers entered the house of a magazine executive named Charles M. Richter. After tying it with adhesive tape and cutting the phone line, they ransacked the house and bought jewelry worth $ 205,000 (equivalent to about $ 3 million in 2017 dollars). Two months later, they did a similar robbery in Lottie Brenner Von Buelow's bungalow (on Sheridan Road). This work produces jewelry worth $ 50,000. After the crime, a number of Chicago newspapers dubbed the group "The Bandit Tape."
Bank robbery
On April 21, 1930, Nelson robbed his first bank, earning about $ 4,000. A month later, Nelson and his gang netted $ 25,000 worth of jewelry from the house invasion. On October 3, Nelson robbed the State Bank of Itasca for $ 4,600; a cashier later identified him as one of the robbers. Three nights later, he stole the jewelry of Chicago's Big Bill Thompson's mayor's wife, for $ 18,000. He describes his assailant, saying "He has a baby face.He is handsome, hardly more than a man, has black hair and wears a gray coat and a brown hat, falls down." Nelson and his crew were later linked to a robbery that destroyed the highway at Summit, Illinois on November 23, 1930. In the ensuing gunfire, three people were killed and three wounded. Three nights later, Nelson's gang robbed a tavern at Waukegan Road, and Nelson did the first record killing when he shot a stockbroker named Edwin R. Thompson.
1931-32
Throughout the winter of 1931, most Bandit Bands were collected, including Nelson. The Chicago Tribune refers to their leader as "George 'Baby Face' Nelson" who receives a one-year sentence to live in a state jail in Joliet. Nelson fled during the transfer of prison in February 1932. Through his contacts in Geng Touhy, Nelson went west to Reno, where he was buried by William Graham, a famous crime and gambler boss. Using the alias "Jimmy Johnson", Nelson goes to Sausalito, California, where he works for bootlegger Joe Parente. During a criminal effort in the San Francisco Bay area, Nelson most likely first met John Paul Chase and Fatso Negri, who later became close associates. In Reno next winter, Nelson first meets with Alvin Karpis on holiday, which in turn introduces him to the Midwestern bank robber Eddie Bentz. Working closely with Bentz, Nelson returned to the Midwest the following summer. He committed a big bank robbery in Grand Haven, Michigan on August 18, 1933; first in the area. The robbery was not profitable even though most of those involved made a complete escape (a clean holiday).
Leader gang
The Grand Haven bank robbery convinced Nelson that he was ready to lead his own gang. Through connection at St. Paul's Green Lantern Tavern, Nelson recruited Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll, and Eddie Green. With these people and two other local thieves, Nelson robbed First National Bank of Brainerd, Minnesota for $ 32,000 on October 23, 1933 (equivalent to about $ 604,956 in 2017 dollars). Witnesses reported that Nelson wildly sprayed a sub-machine machine gun to the observer as he fled. After gathering his wife, Helen, and four-year-old son, Ronald, Nelson went with his crew to San Antonio, Texas. While there, Nelson and his gang bought some weapons from an underground chisel, Hyman Lehman. One of those weapons is a.45 Colt gun that has been modified in such a way that it is fully automatic. Nelson used this weapon to kill Special Agent W. Carter Baum at Little Bohemia Lodge a few months later.
On December 9, 1933, a local woman told the San Antonio police about the presence of a nearby "large northern gangster". Two days later, Tommy Carroll was cornered by two detectives and fired a shot, killing Detective H.C. Perrin and wounded Detective Al Hartman. All Nelson's gang, except Nelson himself, fled from San Antonio. Nelson and his wife traveled west to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he recruited John Paul Chase and Fatso Negri for a new bank robbery wave next spring.
Partnership with John Dillinger
On March 3, 1934, John Dillinger made his famous "wooden gun" escape from prison in Crown Point, Indiana. Although the details remain in some disagreements, the escape was allegedly arranged and financed by newly formed Nelson's gang members, including Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll, Eddie Green, and John "Red" Hamilton, with the understanding that Dillinger would repay some of the bribe from his part of the first robbery. Dillinger's night arrives in Twin Cities, Nelson and his friend John Paul Chase are driving when they are cut by a car driven by a local paint seller named Theodore Kidder. Nelson lost his temper and chased, ruffling Kidder to the side of the road. The salesman got out of his vehicle to protest, where Nelson shot him dead.
Two days after this, a new gang (with Hamilton's participation as an uncertain sixth person) attacked the National Bank of Security in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In the robbery, which netted about $ 49,000 (slightly different figure), Nelson injured Hale Keith motorcycle police with a machine-gun fire when the officer arrived at the scene. The six men were immediately identified as the "Second Dillinger's gang", due to Dillinger's extreme wrath, but the gang had no official leader.
On March 13, a week after a robbery in Sioux Falls, the gang robbed the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa. Dillinger and Hamilton were shot and wounded in a robbery, where they made it with $ 52,000. On April 3, federal agents ambushed and killed Eddie Green, even though he was unarmed and they were not sure of his identity. After the robbery of Mason City, Nelson and John Paul Chase fled west to Reno, where their old bosses, Bill Graham and Jim McKay fought in federal fraud cases. Years later, the FBI determined that on March 22, 1934, Nelson and Chase kidnapped and killed the chief witness of the couple, Roy Fritsch. Fritsch's lined body is said to have been thrown down the abandoned mine shaft, and never found.
Small Bohemia
On the afternoon of April 20, Nelson, Dillinger, Van Meter, Carroll, Hamilton, and fellow gang of Pat Reilly, accompanied by Nelson's wife Helen and three other boyfriends, arrived at the remote Little Bohemia Lodge at Manitowish Waters , Wisconsin for a weekend break. The gang connection to the resort appears to have originated from a previous deal between Dillinger's lawyer, Louis Piquett, and the owner of the Emil Wanatka hut. Although gang members greeted him by name, Wanatka stated that he did not know their identity until some time on Friday night. According to Bryan Burrough's Public Enemies: American's Greatest Crime Wave and Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 , this was most likely when Wanatka was playing cards with Dillinger, Nelson, and Hamilton. When Dillinger won the round and scratched the pot, Wanatka caught a glimpse of Dillinger's gun hidden in his mantle, and saw that Nelson and the others also had shoulder holster.
The next day, when he was away from the cottage with his young son at a children's birthday party, Wanatka's wife told a friend, Henry Voss, that the Dillinger gang was at the inn, and the FBI was later tipped early in April. 22. Melvin Purvis and a number of agents arrived by plane from Chicago, and with the departure of the gang will soon, attack the inn quickly and with little preparation, and without notifying or getting help from the local authorities.
Wanatka offered a special one-dollar dinner on Sunday night, and the last of the estimated crowd of 75 people was away when the agent arrived on the front page. A 1933 Chevrolet coupe departed at the time with three cottage customers departing, John Hoffman, Eugene Boisneau and John Morris, who apparently did not hear orders to stop because the car radio drowned the agents who yelled at them to stop. The agents quickly fired at them, immediately killed Boisneau and injured others, and warned the gang members inside.
Adding to the chaos, at this point Pat Reilly returns to the inn after an out-of-town task for Van Meter, accompanied by John Hamilton's boyfriend Pat Cherrington. Attacked by agents, Reilly and Cherrington backed down and escaped under fire, after a number of misfortunes.
Dillinger, Van Meter, Hamilton, and Carroll ran away through the back of the unattended hut and walked north through the woods and through the lake to confiscate cars and chauffeurs at a resort a mile away. Carroll was not far behind them. He made it to Manitowish and stole the car, making it smooth to St. Paul.
Nelson, who was outside the cabin in an adjacent cabin, typically attacked the invaders, exchanging fire with Purvis, before retreating to the hut with a return volley from another agent. From there he slipped back and fled in the opposite direction from the others. Appearing from the forest ninety minutes later, a mile away from Little Bohemia, Nelson kidnapped the Lange couple from their home and ordered them to throw him out. Apparently dissatisfied with the speed of the car, he immediately ordered them to stop at a brightly lit house where switchboard operator, Alvin Koerner, was aware of the ongoing events, quickly phoned the authorities in one of the lodges involved to report a suspicious vehicle in front of his house. Shortly after Nelson entered the house, carrying Koerners hostage, Emil Wanatka arrived with his brother-in-law, George LaPorte and a cottage employee (while the fourth man remained in the car) and was also taken prisoner. Nelson ordered Koerner and Wanatka back to their vehicle, where the fourth man remained unattended in the backseat.
As they prepared to leave, with Wanatka driving at gunpoint, another car arrived with two federal agents - W. Carter Baum and Jay Newman - and a local cop, Carl Christensen. Nelson asked the agents who they were and the agents who identified themselves, Nelson quickly opened fire with his completely converted automatic gun, wounding Christensen and Newman and killing Baum, who was beaten three times in the neck. Nelson was later quoted as saying that Baum made him "cold" and could not understand why he was not fired. It was found that the security on the Baum gun was on.
Nelson then stole the FBI car. Less than 15 miles away, the car suffered a flat tire and eventually became mired in the mud because Nelson tried unsuccessfully to change it. Back on foot, he walks into the woods and takes up residence with the Chippewa family in their remote cabin for a few days before making his last escape in another commanded vehicle.
Three of the women who accompanied the gang, including Nelson Helen's wife, were arrested inside the cabin. After a grueling interrogation by the FBI, the trio were eventually convicted of holding charges and being released on parole.
With an agent and innocent man killed and four more seriously wounded, including two more innocent people, and a complete escape from Dillinger's gang, the FBI came under heavy criticism, with calls for the resignation of director J. Edgar Hoover and the widespread petition. demanded a Purvis suspension. Nelson's public enemy # 1
NelsonDuring a small battle in Bohemia, Nelson's identity as a member of the Dillinger gang has been known by the FBI for only two weeks. After Baum's assassination, Nelson became nationally famous and was a high priority target of the Bureau. The focus on him and the murdered agent also served to fend off some of the harsh criticisms directed at Hoover and Purvis following the small catastrophe of Bohemia.
The day after Little Bohemia's attack, Dillinger, Hamilton, and Van Meter ran through a police blockade near Hastings, Minnesota, withdrawing fire from the officers there. A bullet bounced off Hamilton in the back, wounding him fatally. Hamilton reportedly died in hiding on April 30 or May 1, 1934, and was secretly buried by Dillinger and others, including Nelson, who rejoined the gang in Aurora, Illinois.
On June 7, a member of Tommy Carroll's gang was killed while trying to avoid capture in Waterloo, Iowa. Carroll and his girlfriend, Jean Crompton (who had been arrested and tried with Helen Gillis after Little Bohemia), had grown up near the Nelson family, and his death was a personal blow to them. Nelson and his wife went into hiding for the next few weeks, and although they were in the Chicago area, their precise movement during this period remained unclear. The Nelsons family are reportedly living in various tourist camps, while continuing to meet secretly with family members whenever possible.
On June 27, a former gang and small Bohemian fugitive runner, Pat Reilly was besieged while he slept and was captured alive in St. Petersburg. Paul, Minnesota.
On the morning of June 30, Nelson, Dillinger, Van Meter, and one or more additional legs robbed the Merchants National Bank in South Bend, Indiana. One person involved in the robbery is believed to be Pretty Boy Floyd, based on some eyewitness identification and also Joseph's note "Fatso" Negri, a Nelson colleague from California who serves as a messenger for the gang at this time. Another rumored participant was Nelson's childhood friend Jack Perkins, also a colleague of the gang at the time. (Perkins was later tried for robbery and freed).
When the robbery began, a policeman named Howard Wagner directed traffic outside; responding quickly to the scene and trying to pull his weapon, he was shot dead by Van Meter, who was placed outside the bank. Also outside the bank, Nelson exchanged fire with a local jeweler, Harry Berg, who shot him in the chest - ineffective, as Nelson's bulletproof vests. When Berg retreated to his shop under a back volley from Nelson, a man in a parked car was injured. Nelson also wrestled briefly with a teenage boy, Joseph Pawlowski, who beat him until Nelson (or Van Meter) surprised Pawlowski with a blow from his weapon. When Dillinger and the man identified as Floyd (unconfirmed) emerged from the bank with a sack of $ 28,000, they took three hostages with them (including the bank president) to prevent a shot from three patrolmen at the scene. However, the police fired, wounding two hostages before placing Van Meter in the head. The gang fled, and Van Meter recovered. In constant and chaotic gunfire exchanges, some other observers are injured by gunfire, ricochets, or broken glass. It was the last confirmed robbery for all known and suspected participants, including Floyd (not confirmed).
During July, when the FBI hunt for him continued, Nelson and his wife fled to California with his partner John Paul Chase, who lived with Nelson for the rest of his life. After they returned to Chicago on July 15, the gang held a reunion meeting at a favorite meeting place. When the meeting was interrupted by two Illinois state troops, Fred McAllister and Gilbert Cross, Nelson fired on their vehicle with his converted "machine gun", wounding the two men as the gangster backed down. Cross was badly injured, but he and McAllister survived. Nelson's responsibility was uncertain until verification came later in the form of recognition from Chase.
On July 22, 1934, Dillinger was ambushed and killed by FBI agents outside the Biography Theater in Lincoln Park, Chicago. The next day the FBI announced that Floyd's "Pretty Boy" was now Public Enemy no. 1. On October 22, 1934, Floyd was killed in a gunfight with agents including Melvin Purvis. Furthermore, John Edgar Hoover announces that Nelson's "Baby Face" is now Public Enemy no. 1.
On August 23rd, Van Meter was ambushed and killed by police in St. Louis. Paul, Minnesota, left Nelson as the only survivor of the so-called "Dillinger Gang Second".
In the months that followed, Nelson and his wife, usually accompanied by Chase, flew west to cities including Sacramento and San Francisco, California and Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada. They often live in car camps, including Walley Hot Springs, outside Genoa, Nevada, where they hide from October 1 before returning to Chicago around November 1st. Nelson's movements during the last months of his life are unknown.
By the end of the month, FBI interests had settled in Nelson's former hideout, Lake Como Inn in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where it was believed that Nelson might return for the winter. When the Nelson and Chase families returned to the lodge on November 27, they met face-to-face with the shocked and unprepared FBI agents who had staked it. The fugitives fled before the fire was released. Armed with a description of the car (black Ford V8) and its license plate number (639-578), agents swarmed around the area.
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Death
The brief but fierce gun battle between FBI agents and Nelson occurred on November 27, 1934, outside Chicago in the town of Barrington, resulting in the deaths of Nelson and Federal Agent Herman "Ed" Hollis and Samuel P. Cowley.
On the morning of November 27, Nelson, along with his wife and John Paul Chase, headed south with a stolen Ford V8 heading to Chicago on US Highway 12 (now US-14). Nelson, always keen on finding a federal agent, saw a sedan being pushed in the opposite direction by agents Thomas McDade and William Ryan. The agents and criminals simultaneously recognized each other and after several reversals by both vehicles, Nelson finally chased the agent's car. When Nelson's powerful Ford was caught by a weak sedan agent, Nelson and Chase fired at the agents. Ryan and McDade shot back, drove, then entered the field and waited for Nelson and Chase, who stopped chasing. McDade and Ryan did not realize that one of their shots had pierced the Ford Nelson water pump. With Nelson Ford rapidly losing strength, Hudson's car was driven by two more agents, Herman Hollis (who had been given credit as one of the fatal shooting agents that killed Dillinger in July) and Cowley, started chasing Ford.
With his pursuers trying to accompany, Nelson directed Helen Gillis, who was driving, aimed at the entrance to Barrington's North Park and stopped. Hollis and Cowley crashed into Nelson's car with a height of more than 100 feet (30 m), and stopped at a corner. Once out of the passenger door, agents took cover behind their cars. The next shot was witnessed by more than a dozen people.
Nelson instructed Helen Gillis to take shelter in a nearby trench, and he and Chase fired at agents. Both Cowley and Hollis returned fire from behind their vehicle. A single 0.45 slug from a Cowley machine gun struck Nelson in the stomach, slicing his liver and pancreas before coming out of his lower back. Nelson leaned against the Ford board, then silently exchanged weapons with Chase. In the frenzy of gun battles, Chase heard Nelson complain that his weapons were jammed, and the injured bank robbers traded him with a.351 Winchester rifle that had been adjusted for a fully automatic firing. Despite his heartbreaking wound, Nelson moved from behind the car and advanced toward the agent while firing Winchester. Two bullets hit Cowley in the chest and abdomen, dropping it. Buckshot's bullet from Hollis's rifle then hit Nelson in the leg and dropped it. When Nelson regains his leg, Hollis, probably already injured, moves to a better cover behind a power pole. As he pulls out his service gun, Hollis is severely injured with a round to the head. Nelson staggered above Hollis's body, steering his smoky shotgun into a falling agent for a moment and then limping toward Hudson's agent. Nelson drove the car to a flawed Ford. After loading an agent car with weapons and Ford stockpiles, Nelson let Chase be behind the wheel of an agent car and the two men and Helen Gillis escaped. According to Cook County Coroner, Nelson has been shot nine times; a single (and ultimately fatal) machine gun bullet had hit his stomach and eight of Hollis's gun pellets had hit his feet. Later, inaccurate news reports gave her the number of injuries at the age of seventeen, possibly due to the release of a memorandum by J. Edgar Hoover that mentions seventeen injuries to Nelson's body. After telling his wife, "I'm done," Nelson gave directions as Chase drove them to the safe house on Walnut Street in Wilmette. Nelson died in bed with his wife by his side, at 7:35.
Hollis was declared dead soon after arriving at the hospital. At different hospitals, Cowley lived long enough to negotiate briefly with Melvin Purvis and underwent surgery, before succumbing to a stomach injury similar to Nelson. Following a telephone tip from an employee of the Chicago Telephone Company, Carl Fyhrie, who worked on the phone line and saw a corpse on the ground, Nelson's body was found wrapped in a Native-dotted blanket by FBI agent Walter Walsh, in front of St. Louis. Paul Lutheran Church Cemetery in Skokie, and taken to Haben Funeral Home, both of which still exist. Helen Gillis then states that she has placed a blanket on Nelson's body because, "She always hates to be cold..."
The newspaper then reported, based on the questionable words of an order from J. Edgar Hoover ("... find the woman and give her not a quarter"), that the FBI has issued a "death order" for Nelson's widow, who wanders the streets Chicago as a fugitive for several days, described in the print media as the "first public enemy" of the first female US. After giving up on Thanksgiving Day, Helen Gillis, who had been released after being arrested in Little Bohemia, served a year in prison for harboring her husband. Chase was arrested later and served the term in Alcatraz.
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Funeral
Baby Face Nelson and his wife Helen are buried at the Saint Joseph Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois.
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Fictitious depictions
Nelson has been described several times on the screen. These include:
- Baby Face Nelson , a 1957 movie starring Mickey Rooney
- The FBI Story , a 1959 film starring James Stewart, with William Phipps as Nelson
- Dillinger , a 1973 film featuring Richard Dreyfuss as Nelson. In this film a shootout between Nelson and the FBI Agent Cowley and Hollis is described as occurring during the Little Bohemian attack.
- Kansas City Massacre , a 1975 TV movie featuring Elliott Street as Nelson
- Baby Face Nelson , a 1995 film starring C. Thomas Howell
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? , a 2000 movie featuring Michael Badalucco as Nelson. He is portrayed as working mostly alone, until he meets the main character and keeps them together as he robs the next bank in sequence to break the record. He is played as having a "sensation-seeking personality," later known as manic-depressive and now known as bipolar. Once the excitement of the robbery ends he becomes depressed, leaving his share of the money and wandering alone. When he last appeared he was being carried by an angry mob to meet his death in the electric chair. The film was made in Mississippi in 1937, three years after Nelson's real death.
- Public Enemies , a 2009 movie starring American actor Johnny Depp, with Stephen Graham as Nelson. In the film, Nelson is portrayed as murdered by Melvin Purvis in Little Bohemia's shootout, and thus does not become Public Enemy Number One after Dillinger's death. However, the film still portrays Nelson as waking up and continues to shoot immediately after being shot several times.
- In the drama series A & amp; E "Baby Face", produced by Kerry Ehrin and Freddie Highmore with the latter taking on Nelson's role.
- In the 1981 Natural Channel History TV series Natural Born Outlaws , Alex Bird starred as Baby Face Nelson in the episode "Baby Face Nelson".
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See also
- List of Depression-era offenders
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References
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External links
- FBI: Lester Gillis ("Baby's Face") Nelson
- Biography of the Crime Library
- Baby Face Nelson in the Search of the Mausoleum
- Short Life and Violence; Crime behind 'Baby Face'
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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