Buffalo Courier-Express, November 21, 1933
Chicago Tribune Wire
RACINE, Wisconsin, November 20 — A dozen bandits held up the American Bank and Trust Company in the center of the downtown business district this afternoon, shot a police sergeant and an assistant bank cashier, kidnapped Grover Weyland, president of the bank; Mrs. Ursula Patzke, general bookkeeper, and patrolman Cyril Bayard, and escaped with an undetermined amount of cash.

Milwaukee Journal, November 21, 1933
RACINE, Wisconsin — John Dillinger, notorious Indiana criminal and prison breaker, was named in a warrant here this afternoon as the leader of the five machine gun bandits who robbed the American Bank & Trust Company yesterday and escaped with $28,000 cash.

Other warrants named Charles Makley and Harry Pierpont, members of Dillinger’s gang. All the warrants charge robbery while armed.

Chief of Police Grover C. Lutter said the warrants were prepared after a dozen robbery witnesses scanned police pictures of the men involved in a jail delivery [escape] from the Michigan City (Indiana) prison and the slaying of the sheriff at Lima, Ohio, where Dillinger was delivered (freed) from the county jail by a gang of desperadoes.

Pictures used in the identifications were obtained from the Milwaukee bureau of identification. Photographs also were obtained of Russell Lee Clark, 33, and Joseph Burns, 40. They were among the convicts who fled the Indiana penitentiary in September. Burns was serving a life sentence for murder. Pierpont also escaped at that time. He was serving 10 to 21 years for robbery.

Dillinger in recent weeks has been one of the nation’s most sought fugitives. Only last week Chicago police trapped him when he went to see a doctor for treatment of a skin disease, but he escaped their fire in a bulletproof car.

Racine bank officers determined today that the loot was about $28,000 cash and some securities, mostly non-negotiable. Before fleeing, the gunmen wounded Officer Wilbur Hansen of the Racine department and assistant cashier Harold J. Graham.

As hostages, the five desperadoes abducted Grover C. Weyland, president of the bank; Mrs. Ursula Patzke, head bookkeeper, and policeman Cyril Bayard. For a while they were made to stand on the running boards of the fleeing car to act as shields against possible pursuers’ shots.

Weyland said that on the ride the robbers engaged in friendly conversation and called one of their number “Mack.” Chief Lutter said that is the nickname of Makley.

Officer Bayard was shoved off the running board of the robbers’ car at Sixth and Lafayette streets, and there Weyland and Mrs. Patzke were hauled into the back seat of the car alongside three bandits. Two other gunmen sat in the front seat.

Later, over in Waukesha County on a dirt road and a half-mile from a farmhouse, Weyland and Mrs. Patzke were shoved from the car, tied rather loosely to a tree with shoestrings, and told to remain there 10 or 15 minutes. They did, then released themselves and walked to the farm home of William Klusendorf, who identified the place of their release as a woods road between Highway 59 and Highway X near Saylesville.

At 4:45 p.m. Weyland telephoned his wife and told her that he and Mrs. Patzke were safe. They were driven home by Mr. and Mrs. Klusendorf.

Garrett Venstra, a Racine building contractor, was one of the first persons encountered by the robbers when they entered the bank. The leader ordered all employees to put up their hands.

There were four customers at the cages. One of them, besides Venstra, was Barney Cowen, who had a machine gun thrust in his back. Venstra, who was making a deposit, asked if they were going to take his money, too.

“Sure, we’re going to take your money, too,” said one of the robbers. “Give it to us.”

L. C. Rowan, assistant cashier, stepped on the bank alarm button. This sounded a call in police headquarters two blocks away, setting off the big gong outside of the bank building. It was then that the shooting started. Graham was shot because one of the gunmen thought he had set off the alarm.

In response to the burglar alarm, officers Bayard, Hansen and Franklin Worsley left headquarters in a squad car.

“I was in the middle going in,” said Sergeant Hansen afterward, “and had the machine gun at ready. Bayard entered the bank first and Worsley brought up the rear.

“ ‘Get the cop with the gun,’ one of the bandits shouted.”

A moment before one of the armed men had thrust a gun in the ribs of policeman Bayard. They they fired at Hansen. He dropped to the floor of the bank. He felt a burning sensation in his right hip.

“My head was buzzing as I lay there on the floor and all I could think of was when is the next shot coming,” he said later.

Two bandits drove Mr. Weyland and cashier Loren S. Bowen back to the vault to clean it out. After snatching up what loose change was in the various cages, they marched Weyland, Mrs. Patzke and Helen Cespkes, a bookkeeper, and Jane Williams, stenographer, down the corridor of the bank and out through the front door.

Meanwhile, the robber who had policeman Bayard in charge marched him out. Miss Cespkes and Miss Williams managed to disappear into the crowd that had gathered in front of the place, but Mrs. Patzke, Weyland and Bayard were walked down Fifth Street along the bank for 120 feet to the car.

The car was in a parking space back of the bank. It wasn’t even headed outwards. After putting their hostages on the running board, the gunners backed out, turned around in the street while a score of persons gaped at them, drove east to Lake Avenue, turned south to Seventh, and then headed west through the heart of the city.

Police Lieutenant A. W. Muhlke was standing at Fifth Street and Lake Avenue. Weyland waved at him and Muhlke waved back.

“I wasn’t trying to attract Muhlke’s attention to the bandits,” Weyland said later, “but I didn’t want him to shoot at us with the three of us standing on the running board that way.”

The car sped west on Seventh Street at 40 miles an hour, across Main Street and past the sheriff’s office, with Mr. Weyland and Mrs. Patzke clinging on one running board and policeman Bayard on the other.

“I was wondering what they were advertising,” said a Milwaukee salesman who saw the car go by as he stood in front of the Hotel Racine.

Gloversville and Johnstown Morning Herald, December 22, 1933
CHICAGO, December 21 (AP) — A police detail searching for members of the John Dillinger band of outlaws, one of whom recently killed a Chicago cop, stormed an apartment tonight and shot to death three men. All of them were identified as escaped convicts, but in no way were connected with the Indiana outlaw gang.

Captain John Stege and his special detail rushed to the apartment in fashionable Rogers Park on information the bandits were hiding there. They charged into the buildings, only to be met with a blast of fire.

Immediately, the officers leveled their machine guns and raked the place with a round of slugs. Seconds later the detail found three bodies crumpled on the floor of the ornate suite.

While throngs of startled residents gathered in the quiet street outside, Captain Stege searched the rendezvous and announced he had found 20 bullet-proof vests, three machine guns, half a dozen shotguns and a full panoply of pistol and ammunition.

As the man identified as Dillinger beat Walter Ahern, the owner, over the head with a pistol butt, the owner’s dog leaped at the bandit. Coolly turning, Dillinger shot the animal through the head, killing it.

Buffalo Courier-Express, July 23, 1934
CHICAGO, Illinois, July 22 (AP) — John Dillinger, arch criminal of the age, was shot dead tonight by a group of department of justice representatives as he walked out of a Chicago movie theater.

He whipped an automatic pistol out of his pocket and had it half raised when the operatives loosed a withering blast of revolver fire that dropped him mortally wounded. He died a few minutes later.

Fifteen operatives had surrounded the theater after information had reached Melvin H. Purvis, Chicago agent for the department of justice, that Dillinger would attend the theater. Not a word was spoken as the outlaw ran into the cordon of officers.

Dillinger knew what was coming. He gave a hunted look, reached quickly into his pocket, and the guns roared.

The end of the greatest manhunt in contemporary criminal annals came in the swift tempo in which the notorious outlaw had lived.

The federal men watched him buy his ticket, and then for more than two hours — “the longest two hours I have ever spent,” Purvis said — kept the theater surrounded.

“It was late yesterday when I received undercover information that Dillinger would attend the movie, ‘Manhattan Melodrama,’ at the Biograph Theater,” Purvis said. “I hurriedly made arrangements to surround the theater with picked men from among my investigators. They were armed only with pistols. No shotguns or machine guns were issued, for I wished no general firing that might endanger passersby.”

The theater faces on Lincoln Avenue, on Chicago’s northwest side. Dillinger was walking south on Lincoln when he ran into the group of federal operatives.

Scores of persons, drawn by the vigil, witnessed the dramatic shooting, and despite Purvis’ precautions, two women spectators were wounded when caught in the fire from the federal men’s revolvers. They are Miss Theresa Paulus, 29, slightly wounded in the left side, and Mrs. Etta Natelski.

Dillinger was shot through the back of the neck, the bullet coming out just under his right eye. That shot proved fatal. Another bullet crashed through his left breast. A third bullet was found in the left breast.

At the Cook County morgue, attempts were made to identify Dillinger by his fingerprints, but the ends of his fingers were scarred, apparently having been treated with acid. Purvis had definitely identified him before the body was taken to the morgue.

Examination at the morgue disclosed a recent wound in Dillinger’s chest, about two inches long, which had recently healed. It was believe received in a bank robbery earlier this year. Purvis said Dillinger’s last known robbery was the Peoples Trust and Savings Bank at South Bend.

Dillinger’s hair was dyed coal black and cut very short. His eyebrows appeared to have been plucked to a fine line. He had a small, black mustache.

Hundreds of spectators crowded, pushed and jostled after the bleeding body of the outlaw was removed. Souvenir hunters madly dipped newspapers in the blood that stained the pavement. Handkerchiefs were whipped out and used to mop up the blood.

Traffic became so jammed that streetcars were rerouted, police lines established and traffic blocked out of the area.
Frustrated souvenir hunters hurried to the county morgue.

Police estimated 2,000 persons rushed to the morgue for a view of the body, and shouted and fought with police to gain entrance. Stringent lines were drawn there also.

Dr. Charles D. Parker, coroner’s physician, said Dillinger’s face apparently had been “tampered with.” The outlaw had tried to have scars “lifted” in the beauty parlor manner. He had a scar on each cheek.

“Dillinger evidently had been the subject of some expert plastic surgery,” said Purvis “His nose was originally a pronounced ‘pug,’ but it was nearly straight, I noticed, in a hasty examination of the body. I imagine his hair had been dyed in Chicago. He remained here, in spite of the search for him, because he had friends here to shelter him.”

Four policemen from East Chicago, Indiana, fellow officers of two patrolmen allegedly slain by Dillinger recently on an Indiana highway, were in Purvis’s office when word as to Dillinger’s whereabouts was received. They took part in the trapping of the outlaw, but Purvis declined to say who fired the shots that dropped Dillinger.

The outlaw wore gray trousers, that were well pressed, a white shirt, open at the collar, a wine-colored tie, black socks, white low shoes, and a black belt with a plain silver buckle.