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Travel, History & Culture in America's Dairyland |
| Valley of the Molls - Part I | |||||||||||||||
| Virtually every corner of the world was talking about the gunfight and Dillinger's escape. The London Globe said it was "the kind of act you would expect to flourish" in depression-era America. "With John Dillinger loose, no voices ought to be raised against Hitlerism," Berlin proclaimed, and endorsed sterilization for murderers and the "congenitally inferior." At home, President Roosevelt addressed the nation while Congress prepared 12 anti-crime bills. The botched raid was a problem for the Justice Department. With both Director J. Edgar Hoover and Chicago bureau man Melvin Purvis were under pressure to resign, the official Justice Department reports were massaged to say agents shot only the tires of the automobile driven by the conservation workers. To re-focus attention on the outlaws, Hoover issued a dramatic "shoot to kill" order with plenty of media attention. The largest manhunt in history fanned out through five states with 5,000 federal, state, and local officers -- and countless vigilantes -- in tow. Continue... |
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