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Lawlessness reigned in mid-1930s northeastern Indiana.
The April 14, 1933 Ashley-Hudson Times headlines included the arrest of a suspect in the murder of a South Milford man, a theft and kidnapping at the filling station in Pleasant Lake and the robbery of Farmer’s State Bank in Hudson by three well-dressed men carrying handguns.
The men left town spraying lead slugs from a repeating shotgun out the back of an Auburn sedan, aiming at town watchman Lee Clark, who hunkered near a gas station. “… as the bandits sped out of town, Clark stepped out and emptied his gun at the fast moving car,” says the article, which hangs over a table in the bar at Dillinger’s restaurant in Hudson.
Local lore
No one has ever proved that John Dillinger had anything to do with the Hudson bank robbery. If he did, it was from afar, as Dillinger was incarcerated at the time. Nevertheless, the safe that was robbed is the centerpiece of the restaurant, which houses a host of Dillinger and Hudson memorabilia.
Dillinger was also rumored to have stayed briefly in Steuben County Jail.
“I’ve never come across any definitive proof,” said Steuben County Tourism Bureau director June Julien.
Dillinger allegedly cooled his heels at Lake George between fiery forays throughout the Midwest with his stone-cold cohorts.
There is a photo on the wall at the Lake George Retreat rumored to be the Dillinger gang relaxing on the former Lake George Hotel’s front lawn. The photo has since been identified as a group of carpenters taking a break, says “Reflections on Lake George,” published in 1994 by the Lake George Cottagers Association. In the book, Effie Nelson, who had been summering at Lake George since 1916, said Cottage 490 was owned by the uncle of one of Dillinger’s front men, Homer Van Meter. A sign at the cottage read “Dillinger slept here June 27, 1932.” That was the same day a bank in Auburn was robbed, though Dillinger’s role was never substantiated.
The day Dillinger was shot, Nelson recalls in the history, “Mrs. Van Meter called her men off the lake and they left.”
Van Meter is buried in Lindenwood Cemetery in Fort Wayne, said Ed McDonald of Auburn, who has researched Dillinger and Auburn police history extensively.
“Over a period of five years, he lived in five different locations (in Fort Wayne),” said McDonald. Van Meter was circulating in that area from 1929-34, prior to the Dillinger gang’s fall from fame.
McDonald photographed the existing former Van Meter residences, located in the area of Pontiac and Anthony streets.
The Auburn cache
Dillinger rumors abound, but the only documented one in this area is Dillinger’s raid on a weapons cache at Auburn Police Department.
The Oct. 16, 1933 edition of the Evening Star says deputies Fred Krueger and Henry West were locked in a holding cell while “a group of daring bandits believed to have been led by Walter Deitrich, who was among 10 prisoners at Michigan City who escaped recently” raided Auburn City Hall. The loot was about $1,000 worth of weapons and ammunition, including a machine gun.
“Dillinger, The Untold Story,” credited by McDonald as the definitive book on Dillinger’s life, says Dillinger, Harry Pierpont and Deitrich were responsible for the Oct. 14, 1933 crime.
On Oct. 21, 1933, the same three raided a police station in Peru, Ind., and took more guns and bulletproof vests.
“It was reported that sometime after the weapon robbery, Auburn Mayor Warren Lige received a letter from Dillinger stating that he appreciated his bullet-proof vests but one of them had proved unsatisfactory — the guy wearing it had been killed in Hammond during a bank robbery,” wrote John Martin Smith in the July 1969 Auburn DeKalb Vanguard.
It took until 1938 for Auburn Police Department to buy a new Thompson machine gun, said McDonald. It was eventually traded for three semi automatic rifles.
Smith’s article said a map of DeKalb County showing the location of Auburn City Hall, all DeKalb County banks and proposed get-away routes was found in Dillinger’s Chicago apartment after his death in July 1934.
Just days after the Auburn robbery, Dillinger, Pierpont, Charles Makley, Russell Clark and Copeland robbed Central National Bank in Greencastle of $75,000 while Dillinger gang members Baby Face Nelson, Tommy Carroll and others robbed the First National Bank in Brainerd, Minn. on the same day.
After a South Bend bank robbery on Oct. 24, 1933, the Indiana National Guard was called to deal with the Dillinger scourge, causing him to flee to Chicago — where he and his gang members were emblazoned on the Chicago Police Department’s Public Enemies list in December 1933.
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