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Lester Gillis was born on December 6, 1908 and grew up in Chicago but he became known as Baby Face because he had a very youthful appearance. His habit of stealing other people’s cars meant that his teenage years were spent in and out of reform schools. Although he married his sixteen year old girlfriend in October 1928 after she became pregnant, the birth of a son did not motivate him to stay out of trouble. Instead, he joined a gang that stole tires before graduating to driving trucks with bootleg whiskey. Two years later, the need to feed a wife and two children led him to form a gang that specialized in armed robbery, including jewelry stores, banks and the homes of rich people. Despite assuming the alias of George Nelson, the frequent number of jobs meant that he would eventually be recognized, although mugging the wife of William “Big Bill” Thompson, the mayor of Chicago, did not help. He and most of his gang were arrested in February 1931, but he used a smuggled gun to escape while being transferred to prison in February 1932.

Contacts with Roger Touhy’s gang got Nelson a job guarding liquor shipments in San Francisco where he came to know Johnny Chase and Joseph “Fatso” Negri. After six months, he felt there was too much chance of being caught so he went to Reno, where he met Alvin Karpis, who was on vacation. He wanted to work with the Barkers but Karpis felt he was too rash, so arrangements were made for Nelson to learn from Ed Bentz, a veteran bank robber. Bentz selected a target, prepared a getaway map and even suggested that Homer Van Meter and John Dillinger take part in the first job but Nelson refused to work with strangers. Against his better judgment, Bentz found himself agreeing to lead the actual raid at Grand Haven, Michigan on August 18, 1933. The robbery was almost a disaster, since the two men left outside proved unable to stop the owner of a nearby furniture store from scaring off the getaway car. Bentz was able to grab another car but the getaway map had been in the getaway car. Worse, a member of the gang was captured by the bank manager and the car quickly ran out of gas, while a second commandeered car developed two flat tires. It took all night to make it back to their meeting place and when it turned out that each person’s share was $600 Bentz said good-bye to Nelson and his band of incompetents.

Nelson’s brief career as bank robber nearly came to an abrupt end a few weeks later when Frank Nitti, Al Capone’s successor, ordered a hit against him because of his ties to rival gangster Roger Touhy. Warned by Karpis, Nelson avoided Nitti’s hitmen and shifted operations to St. Paul, where he recruited Homer Van Meter and Tommy Carroll. They robbed the First National Bank in Brainerd, two hours north of St. Paul, on October 23. After forcing the janitor to let them into the bank before it opened, they then took the employees prisoner when they arrived for work and walked out with $32,000.  

The men ended up in San Antonio, Texas for a vacation, but the madam of a local whorehouse frequented by gang members Carroll and Chuck Fisher saw a machine gun in their car and contacted the local police. Unfortunately, the police were spotted tailing Carroll on December 11 and he ambushed them, killing one and wounding another before escaping. The gang disappeared that night and although Fisher was captured he refused to say anything, so no one knew that Nelson’s gang had been there. Van Meter and Carroll returned to St. Paul while Nelson ended up in San Francisco, where he met his old friend Fatso Negri and began planning a wave of bank robberies.

In late February, the Nelson gang got back together in St. Paul but although they needed more men, most of the experienced robbers were either dead or in prison. At the same time, Nelson was approached to see if he could break Dillinger out of jail, so he talked to Karpis to see how he had smuggled in a gun to veteran bank robber Harvey Bailey. Karpis was unable to provide much help and Nelson’s invitation to work together was tactfully declined, since he still felt Nelson was too unstable. However, Dillinger would not be so choosy after his escape from the jail at Crown Point on March 3.

Dillinger was grateful to Nelson for providing him with a place to hide and Nelson was naturally thrilled to be working with the most famous bank robber in the nation. However, his excitement faded when the gang was labeled the Second Dillinger Gang by the press. 

Their first robbery was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on March 6 and it quickly became clear that Nelson lacked the steady nerves needed for that line of work. When the alarm went off shortly after they entered the bank, Dillinger and Van Meter calmly collected the cash but Nelson demanded to know who had pressed the alarm. The gang members stationed outside the bank captured the first three policemen who showed up but an irritated Nelson simply shot the fourth. The remaining police wisely decided to occupy nearby roofs but the robbers emerged from the bank with hostages and the local sheriff proved unwilling to pursue them very far. Whether Dillinger was comfortable with Nelson’s itchy trigger finger is unknown and likely irrelevant, he needed money to pay his legal bills and those of his former partners, and Nelson had a gang.

Although Dillinger is now associated with the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover was reluctant to become involved because he had not escaped from a federal jail and the bureau’s resources were already strained by the Bremer kidnapping case. However, when the Sioux Falls robbery made national headlines every FBI office was ordered to focus on the Dillinger case, possibly motivated by a need to keep the FBI in the public eye.

On March 13, the gang hit the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa. In response to the wave of bank robberies, it had a guard in a steel cage behind bullet proof glass above the front door inside the lobby. However, the men felt that the $250,000 in the vault was worth the risk. In the end, the tear gas canister fired by the guard was quickly kicked away and he could not use his rifle because there were too many innocent bystanders. In fact, a quick-witted bank teller who deliberately locked himself behind a barred door in the vault and slowly handed over money was more effective. Taking no chances, Dillinger rounded up hostages while Nelson busied himself shooting parked cars and nearby buildings. Witnesses later said that the robbers drove off with twenty to twenty-six people both inside and outside the car. The take was $52,000 and the men so feared Nelson’s violent nature that they basically surrounded him as he counted out the money to make sure he could not quickly shoot them and keep the cash. 

Dillinger’s landlady in St. Paul became suspicious and contacted the FBI on March 30. What was expected to be a routine investigation suddenly became a firefight when Van Meter ran into a police officer and an FBI agent outside Dillinger’s door. The outlaws escaped but the police soon discovered that they had missed Dillinger, who had fled to the family farm. When his car was wrecked on the way back from a visit to the parents of his former partner Harry Pierpoint, a submachine gun clip left behind was found by state police and although the license plates had been removed, the engine number matched that of a car purchased by Dillinger, who until that moment was believed to be in Minnesota. FBI agents were sent to watch the family home but even though they saw him, they were too exhausted to recognize him. The fact that the FBI did not already have the families of Dillinger and Pierpoint under surveillance shows how inexperienced it was.

Dillinger made it back to Chicago, where his girlfriend Billie Frechette contacted an acquaintance to arrange a safe house but he informed the FBI. When Melvin Purvis, head of the Chicago FBI office, led his men to stake out the bar where they would meet, they only caught her even though Dillinger was parked in a car outside of the bar and one of the agents had actually walked right by the car. Frustrated by the constant series of screwups, Purvis had his men use sleep deprivation but she refused to say anything.

The FBI’s big break came when gang member Eddie Green died on April 11 after being shot by agents on April 2. His wife then told the FBI everything she knew, which was immeasurably more than they did, including the names of the other members of the gang, the members of the Karpis-Barker gang, their hangouts and their contacts in the underworld. Unfortunately, the bureau still lacked the agents needed to follow up on the treasure trove of information.

The gang got back together in mid-April but Nelson resented Dillinger for getting all the press and attracting the FBI’s attention while Dillinger thought Nelson was too risky. They decided to go away for the weekend to release tension and chose a lodge named Little Bohemia in northern Wisconsin because the owner had run a bar in Chicago that had been frequented by underworld types. Although Dillinger assured the owner they did not want trouble, the owner’s wife became worried and got a message to the FBI. Purvis immediately gathered as many agents as possible and flew to the nearest airport, as well as notified the St. Paul office to send additional men. The agents arrived late Sunday afternoon but moved slowly because they had to rent cars from the local dealership.  

Since the gang was planning to leave after dinner, the agents would have to attack at night and few had been in a firefight, never mind an attack of this scale. In fact, the only plan had to been to make a proper plan when they got there. As soon as they reached the lodge, three men jumped into a car and drove off. Faced with the humiliation of seeing Dillinger escape yet again, the agents started firing when the driver did not obey their order to stop. Riddled with bullets, the car stopped but someone else started shooting at them with a pistol. One of the men in the car was dead and the other two were wounded but instead of outlaws they were men from a nearby federal work camp.  

Unknown to Purvis the gang had escaped during the confusion. Nelson had fired the pistol at the agents and he made it out on his own but when the first car that he stole broke down after a few hundred yards, he ambushed the two agents and local constable who arrived to investigate the matter, killing one agent and wounding the constable. Despite the gunfight between Nelson and the agents, Purvis believed that most of the gang was still trapped in the lodge, so he kept his men freezing outside until dawn. However, instead of the outlaws, only their women emerged and when footprints leading away from the lodge were found Purvis realized that he had failed again.

However, the fugitives did not have an easy time either, since Wisconsin and Minnesota were soon filled with roadblocks manned by the police and hundreds of vigilantes. John Hamilton was badly wounded after he, Dillinger and Van Meter were recognized during a roadblock. Carroll made it to St. Paul and Nelson hid on an Indian reservation in Wisconsin for several days before reaching a tavern in Chicago, which Purvis had neglected to put under surveillance even though numerous sources had said that it was linked to the underworld. At the same time, Dillinger and the others arrived in Chicago in desperate need of a doctor but it was too late and when Hamilton died on April 26 he was buried at a quarry after lye had been poured on his head to destroy his face.

The Battle of Little Bohemia soon became a national scandal and the FBI received a flood of calls to fire Purvis, but since he had hired him, Hoover refused to fire him. Meanwhile, morale plummeted as the agents realized that mistakes at work could cost them their lives. The fallout from the bungled raid was that FBI resources were further strained checking out calls from worried citizens and nervous sheriffs.   

Although there had been no confirmed reports of Dillinger since Little Bohemia, most newspapers still printed stories on a daily basis because they knew that people still rooted for the man who was able to stand up to the government. Actually, Dillinger and Van Meter were living in a delivery truck and sleeping on a mattress, always on the move, sick, tired and dirty.

After three weeks on the run, his lawyer Louis Piquett and Nelson arranged for Dillinger and Van Meter to hide with a fence named Jimmy Probasco. Although Piquett had been investigated, the FBI did not put either him or his assistant Art O’Leary under surveillance. On May 28, Piquett hired a doctor to perform plastic surgery on Dillinger, removing his chin dimple and three facial moles, as well as smoothing out his skin. Van Meter also got plastic surgery and both men endured the agonizing process of having their fingerprints removed. Unfortunately, Tommy Carroll died after a shootout with police in Waterloo, Iowa on June 7 when a mechanic noticed a rifle hidden in his car and notified the police. However, the plastic surgery enabled Dillinger to go to Chicago Cubs games and nightclubs.

Little Bohemia had made it all too clear that the majority of agents were still not ready for gunfights, so all of the agents who were experienced with firearms were assigned to Chicago. When the Bureau could only produce eleven agents who fit the bill, Hoover went headhunting and stole several top detectives from Southwest police departments. At the same time Purvis’ numerous mistakes and few successes had showed that he lacked the leadership ability needed to bring Dillinger down. Most important, he had not fostered cooperation with the Chicago police department and had failed to develop reliable informants. When agents working for Purvis allowed the recently released girlfriends of gang members and Nelson’s wife to disappear from surveillance on May 31, Hoover decided it was time for a change of command, and replaced Purvis with Sam Cowley, who took over an office filled with demoralized agents, most of whom had joined the FBI because jobs were scarce in the Depression. They worked insanely long hours, risked their lives and received no credit.

Although Dillinger was never noticed thanks to the surgery, Nelson was irritated that he was taking unnecessary chances and resented the fact that the reward for Dillinger’s capture was twice as high as his, which meant that cooperation between the two men during the robbery of the Merchants National Bank in South Bend, Indiana was not smooth. It is unknown exactly who took part in the raid, although it is certain that the five robbers included Dillinger, Van Meter, and Nelson. The remaining two men could have been Nelson’s friends Johnny Chase and Fatso Negri, but some people believe that the other two were Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Richetti. They hit the bank on June 30 and when one of the gang fired his submachine gun into the ceiling of the bank it was heard by people outside the bank, including a policeman directing traffic, who then moved towards the bank but was killed by Van Meter. The owner of a nearby jewelry store shot Nelson in the chest but the bullet was stopped by a bulletproof vest. When three more policemen arrived Van Meter held them off long enough for the rest of the gang to leave the bank with $28,000 and hostages.  

In early July, Dillinger and Van Meter decided to cut relations with Nelson, since he was too dangerous and too greedy. Instead of forming a new gang, the two men planned to rob a train, which was to be the big score that would enable them to leave the country. How the violent and short-tempered Nelson would have reacted to them operating on their own is unknown. Dillinger was killed by FBI agents on July 22 after a friend of his girlfriend contacted the bureau in order to avoid deportation.

With Dillinger dead, Nelson knew that the FBI’s attention would switch to him and he made his way to Reno but his old friends were unwilling to take the risk of being caught helping him. Nor did he have any success in his old haunts near San Francisco, so the gang was forced to roam from tourist camp to tourist camp all over northern California. Johnny Chase had fallen for a girl in San Francisco and badgered Nelson for weeks until he was finally allowed to bring her along with them. Unfortunately, after learning that they were hiding with Baby Face Nelson she pressed Chase to leave the group. Nelson detested Chase’s girlfriend so much that he seriously debated killing both of them but the matter was finally settled when the couple left the group in Illinois on September 4.

Nelson, his wife and Negri wandered across Nevada but unknown to him the FBI had picked up Chase’s girlfriend and persuaded her to talk by pointing out that Chase would die if he did not come in. Unfortunately, Chase happened to walk by when FBI agents were staking out the garage were his car was being fixed on October 11 and noticed the strangers. Fearing a trap, he gave up on his car and contacted Nelson, although Nelson had to be persuaded to not ambush the FBI agents.

Chase’s girlfriend was able to identify Nelson’s favorite resort and faced with charges of abetting a wanted criminal, the resort owner was extremely cooperative, allowing agents to use his house for the stakeout. Nelson and his gang reached the resort in Wisconsin near the border with Illinois on November 27 but Nelson figured out that he had ran into an FBI agent before the agent recognized him, so he drove off. Cowley was immediately notified and headed there with several agents but refused to let Purvis come along. When two agents from Chicago followed Nelson he became suspicious and ordered them to pull over. The two cars exchanged fire but Nelson’s car was damaged and he fell behind. Just then Cowley and another agent drove by and ended up in a shootout with Nelson and Chase. Cowley was a bureaucrat but he did not hesitate to start shooting and he hit Nelson several times. Unfortunately, Cowley had refused to wear the regulation bulletproof vest and Nelson managed to live long enough to shoot back, killing him. Despite being hit by the second agent as well, Nelson managed to put a bullet in his forehead. Although he had been hit seventeen times, Nelson made it to the agents’ car and Chase was able to drive them away. The second agent died within minutes but Cowley made it to the hospital. The FBI raided every known hideout but did not find anything. When Hoover learned that Purvis was giving interviews, he had Purvis pulled off the case and announced that he would be on sick leave.

Cowley died on November 28 and the next morning an anonymous caller told an undertaker there was a dead body in a cemetery. It was Nelson. Chase disappeared after leaving the body and Nelson’s wife was picked up two days later.

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Related Movies:

The FBI Story (1959)
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, starring James Stewart and Vera Miles
A veteran FBI agent relates his experience with the FBI from its humble beginnings through its battles with bank robbers, gangsters, Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and communists.
Baby Face Nelson (1957)
Directed by Don Siegel, starring Mickey Rooney and Carolyn Jones
Rising gangster Nelson allies with John Dillinger to oppose Al Capone.
Dillinger (1973)
Directed by John Milius, starring Warren Oates and Ben Johnson
Following the death of several FBI agents during the Kansas City Massacre, FBI agent Melvin Purvis vows to capture or kill a number of famous outlaws including Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger. (please click here to read the review)
Baby Face Nelson (1995)
Directed by Scott P. Levy, starring C. Thomas Howell and Lisa Zane
After being forced out of Chicago by Al Capone, Nelson becomes a famous bank robber but is finally hunted down by the FBI.
Public Enemies (2009)
Directed by Michael Mann, starring Johhny Depp and Christian Bale
Led by Melvin Purvis, the FBI pursues notorious outlaw John Dillinger during the Public Enemy Era. (please click here to read the review)

Further Reading:

Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. Bryan Burrough, New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

The author grew up listening to stories about Bonnie and Clyde, and decided to write the book because there was no single history of that period, partially because the FBI files had only been released in the late 1980s. His access to previously sealed FBI files means that the story is as much about the evolution of the FBI as it is about the gangsters themselves. It is a superb, one-stop look at that brief period where outlaws seemed to roam free. Ignoring the easy approach of dividing the book into several sections that focus on individual gangs, the story is told in chronological order, which might appear confusing to some readers but serves to show how interrelated the events were. Most of the gangs knew each other and their paths crossed more frequently than I would have thought, which may help to explain why the FBI was so confused in the beginning. Burrough’s attention to detail is impressive, he shows what happened to the main FBI agents, the surviving outlaws who ended up in prison, and their various girlfriends and accomplices. What is odd is that once the War on Crime was over, no one really talked about it. The agents rarely told their families, while the families of the outlaws often preferred to move forward and leave their tainted past behind them.

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