Public Enemies

Nobody was ever convicted for the “Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre,” the most famous gangland hit in American history, but it’s an open secret that it was the work of America’s most famous gangster, Al Capone. Indeed, “Scarface” has captured the nation’s popular imagination since Prohibition, managing to be the most notorious gangster in America while living a very visible and high profile life in Chicago. In the end, it wasn’t the bodies or the violence that landed Capone in the slammer; it was taxes. After being convicted, Capone managed to continue running his business rackets from behind bars, forcing authorities to move America’s most notorious gangster to America’s most notorious prison on Alcatraz Island.

Two months after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933, a petty thief who had spent almost a decade behind bars for attempted theft and aggravated assault was released from jail. By the end of the year, that man, John Dillinger, would be America’s most famous outlaw: Public Enemy Number One. From the time of his first documented heist in early July 1933, until his dramatic death in late July of the following year, he would capture the nation’s attention as had no other outlaw since Jesse James.

The man who became Public Enemy Number One after the deaths of John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd was Lester Joseph Gillis, whose alias “George Nelson” eventually gave way to the nickname “Baby Face Nelson”. Despite the almost playfully innocent nickname, and the fact that he was not as notorious as two of his partners in crime, Dillinger and Floyd, Baby Face Nelson was the worst of them all.

While the Barrow Gang was no more murderous than other outlaws of the era, their romantic relationship and the discovery of photographs at one of their hideouts added a more human dimension to Bonnie and Clyde. In some way though, the sensationalized version of their life on the run is less interesting than reality.