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Travel, History & Culture in America's Dairyland |
| Valley of the Molls - Part I | |||||||||||||||
| Wisconsin may have been home to both Mercer and Madison, but the state's remote North Woods and the downstate capital city were worlds apart, separated by culture and a five-hour drive along Highway 51. There was nothing about the shootout "Up North" to get excited about in the sophisticated government and university town. Making front-page news in Madison was the salacious divorce trial of Eugene & Mary Schoeffel. A biochemistry assistant at the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Schoeffel confessed on the witness stand that he had removed his bathing trunks during a swimming party in Lake Mendota. The "nude, moonlight swimming parties" as described in Capital Times newspaper, the afternoon competitor to the morning State Journal, set the circuit court buzzing and brought more tantalizing testimony. "Both Mr. & Mrs. Schoeffel admitted on the witness stand that she undressed in Schoeffel's room before they were married. But Schoeffel claims he did no more than 'caress' the woman. The wife, however, claims he did not stop at caressing." Also making news was the arrest of six college students for burning an outhouse and singing boisterously late one Saturday evening, and the local District Attorney busied himself with stopping the county's first "walkathon" endurance contest. With the State Journal's announcement of the three women's arrival began Madison's tenure as the epicenter of Dillinger-induced hysteria. The cocksure outlaws would surely spring their girls from jail, especially since one of the women claimed to be married to a gang member. The days that followed would be unlike any other. Dillinger was reported to be driving a brown Packard, Wisconsin license plate number 3111. After tracing the vehicle's registration, police and reporters stormed a Milwaukee hospital in search of the vehicle owner, Hans Misselhorn, whose wife who was in labor. John Dillinger did not steal his car, Misselhorn assured the breathless crowd, nor did he lend the gangster his car: They had the wrong plate number. "Go out and have a look at my car in front of the hospital," Misselhorn barked. The dejected group left the maternity ward. The Misselhorn's had a son. At Madison's Lorraine Hotel, one block away from the jail, a bell hop strolled through a banquet calling, "Paging Mr. Dillinger...Mr. Dillinger." "Fortunately, he was enlightened to the joke in time and any real panic was prevented," reported the Capital Times. Sheriff Finn didn't have time to crack wise. Dillinger had turned jailbreaks into an art form. Weeks earlier, Dillinger escaped from an Indiana jail past an army of police and National Guardsmen. Breaking into jail to free the women would be a cinch compared to breaking out. With an arsenal of weapons at the gang's disposal and a man like Baby Face Nelson on hand, a man who delighted in killing cops, Madison's streets would flow red with blood. Finn's concern had already gotten the better of him. On the night the women arrived -- after the reporter left to write his scoop -- the sheriff played his hand in a deadly game of bait and switch. Getting the women out of Madison would be the best way to avoid bloodshed, but the city was home to the federal court where the women would be arraigned. Finn did the next best thing. If he could not rid the city of the women, at least he could rid the jail of them. The gang would be greeted by a shower of bullets if they tried to fight their way in, while the women would be held somewhere else in the city. But where? Finn smuggled his three prisoners into the last place John Dillinger would ever be caught dead: St. Raphael's Catholic Church, just across the street from the jail. The women made their beds on the hard oak pews. Next, Finn placed floodlights in the jail's driveway and around the county garage to keep the area lit through the night. J. Edgar Hoover, his grip firmly on the Madison situation, had no intention of enduring another Little Bohemia fiasco. Federal agents began descending on Madison from St. Paul, Milwaukee and Chicago. "A picked squad of the best sharpshooters in the department of justice was speeding to Wisconsin as the government net was drawing closer on the fleeing gang chieftan and his aides," reported the Capital Times. "Authorities here were guarding against any possibility of raid tonight by Dillinger or his associates. Guards armed with machine guns, riot guns and shotguns paced the corridors surrounding the cells where the trio of teen-aged 'molls' rested after an all-night journey from the Vilas County jail." Eventually, the women were returned to jail as federal agents reinforced the facility. Continue... |
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