Review
Criminal Neglect: As of 1995, the FBI still is withholding the identity of a famous St. Paul kidnapping victim. This is, apparently, to protect the innocent. Except that in this case the kidnapping took place more than 60 years ago. The victim, banker Edward Bremer, has been dead for decades. Author Paul Maccabee hauls out a heavily censored Bremer document to support his oft-stated complaint that FBI officials remain stubbornly and unnecessarily secretive about gangster activities that occurred so long ago that there are no actual participants left to offend, defame or endanger.
Federal foot-dragging on the release of information is the main reason why Maccabee's new book "John Dillinger Slept Here," took 12 years to research and write, he says. "Promoting the book is the easy part. The hard part was dealing with the FBI. What surprised me the most about the Bureau is that even after J. Edgar Hoover died, there is still this cult of secrecy at the place." Nevertheless, his book, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, is all about St. Paul and the mobsters who had free run of the town in the 1920s and 1930s. That historic fact is no surprise; St. Paul's lurid past is increasingly celebrated in such novels as "Saint Mudd," such stage productions as "Last Hooch at Hollyhocks" and in gangster-era tours that are currently pitched at the public like casino outings. The era of which Maccabee writes, 1920 to 1936, is recent enough so that there are still many citizens around who remember rubbing elbows with big-named hoods at St. Paul's notorious blind pigs, or speakeasies. Some remember selling ice or soda pop to John Dillinger, or newspapers to Ma Barker. Many of the homes and apartment buildings where dramatic gunfights or getaways occurred are still standing, and the families of some of the innocent victims still mourn their losses. Much, of course, has already been written about Dillinger's days in St. Paul, and how he and Homer Van Meter evaded capture by shooting their way out of the Lincoln Court Apartments.
The Barker-Karpis gang, which specialized in bank robberies and kidnappings, pulled off some of the most daring, brutal and bloody capers in the Twin Cities, and much is known of how they holed up in the White Bear Lake area. "The bad guys have usually been portrayed in glamorous ways," Maccabee says, "and their molls are usually cleansed and adorable. But the fact is these were unhappy women who were battered, misused and diseased. They had money and big cars, but they were also the chief cooks and bottle washers for the gang. If they were lucky, their big night out was a movie, and when they had to leave town, they had to leave in a big hurry." "The guys they hung out with weren't perceived as threats to polite society, not like the drive-by shooters are today. But one fact remains: Those old gangsters did kill innocent people. It is a myth that all the good people of the city were shocked when the Bremer and Hamm kidnappings occurred. The reality is that the lines between clean society and the gangsters had been intertwined for years. Someone had to make all that bootleg liquor, and someone had to spend money at the speakeasies." Maccabee's book gives fresh detail about corruption in the police department, and how the biggest leak in the department was right in the chief's office. He writes of how Leon Gleckman-described as St. Paul's Al Capone-ran the city from the third floor of the Lowry Hotel, and how one man-Daily News editor Howard Kahn-heroically battled the mob and fought for political reform in his front-page editorials. The most distressing news in Maccabee's book is that the St. Paul police department, as late as the 1980s, systematically destroyed many of the first-hand records of the era. This was not a sinister act, Maccabee says, but rather simple ignorance born out of need for more record storage space. "This book had to be written now," Maccabee says. "The files were literally being destroyed as I wrote. Ninety percent of the records of that era are gone. The cops had Homer Van Meter's hat, can you imaging that? And now it's gone." There are some artifacts of the times still left, though. Dapper Danny Hogan owned the infamous Green Lantern saloon and was unofficially the head of St. Paul's underworld until he was blown away one morning when he started his car. The police department still has pieces of the bomb, and they still have the gun that wounded Dillinger in the Lexington Court shootout . "I suppose it's understandable that much of the material, many of the souvenirs and artifacts, are missing," says Maccabee. "Most cities don't want to be reminded of their scoundrels." -- Saint Paul Pioneer Press, September 4, 1995
Crook's Tour of Crime: For anyone who likes to read of the cops-and-robbers gangbuster era of the 1930s, John Dillinger Slept Here is a must read. The title is somewhat deceptive. The book, while it deals with Dillinger, is more a portrait of the times in which he lived, and particularly the city of St. Paul, Minn., which served as a haven for America's most wanted outlaws. It is subtitled A Crooks' Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul, 1920-1936 and is a fascinating look into the gangster era of that time. Compiled by crime historian Paul Maccabee who spent 13 years researching FBI and police files, it details gangland crime in the 1920s and 1930s. The players include everyone from Dillinger to machine Gun Kelly, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, Ma Barker, Babyface Nelson and many, many more. Diligent research: It is a delightfully written book, combining intimate insights into the people and events of the time bolstered by diligent research. Maccabee takes the reader along on bank robberies, gangland assassinations, kidnappings, the bloody battles between corrupt police and the FBI. The book is based on FBI files, wiretaps, prison and police records, confessions and interviews with 250 crime victims, police officers, gun molls and family members. He brings notorious public enemies to life with touches of humor, pathos and intimate details. A Dillinger moll, describing the times, laments, "It wasn't very exciting. All I did was cook and wash dishes..." Alvin Karpis says of his lawyers: "They got the money. I got the time." What Maccabee uncovers is how gangland ruled St. Paul with full cooperation of the police for nearly two decades. In fact, John J. "the Big Fellow" O'Conner, who served as St. Paul police chief almost continually from 1900 to 1920, supervised the underworld from police headquarters. He left a legacy of bribery, corrupt judges, fencing operations for stolen property and protection of outlaws that set the foundation for St. Paul as "outlaw city" for the likes of Dillinger and Karpis for years to come. It was a place of corrupt politicians, brothels, bootleggers, kidnappers, robbers, murderers and thieves, all perfectly safe as long as they committed no crime within the city limits of St. Paul, a virtual paradise of illicit nightclubs, casinos and posh hotels that flourished through the years of Prohibition. Picture them: some 135 illustrations of people and places add an enticing ambiance to the story: photos of Ma Barker; Frances Nash (a school teacher) wife of bank robber Frank Nash; Edna "the kissing bandit" Murray; Delores Delany, girlfriend of Alvin Karpis; Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, girlfriend of John Dillinger; and Lester M. Gillis--aliases: George Nelson, "Baby Face" Nelson, Alex Gillis, Lester Giles, "Big George" Nelson, "Jimmie" and "Jimmy" Williams --to name a few. Perhaps most interesting is the intimate look at famous "gang leader" Ma Barker. Born Arizona Clark near Springfield, MO., she came to be labeled "the red hot momma and brains" of the Barker gang by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. This, however, was how Alvin Karpis referred to Ma: "Just an old-fashioned home-body from the Ozarks. . . superstitious, gullible, simple, cantankerous and, well, generally law-abiding." The gang, he said, took Ma along with them because nobody suspected them of being crooks with this little old lady in their midst. According to Karpis, "Ma couldn't organize breakfast," but Hoover was later to preen before the press that she was "a mastermind of crime" after agents machine-gunned her down during a siege of the gang's Florida hide-away. Hoover does not emerge as an endearing character. He was universally hated within his own organization as well as in the ranks of the underworld. Dillinger especially was a thorn in Hoover's side. Time after time, he eluded traps laid by FBI agents, and it was claimed Dillinger's capture became an obsession with Hoover, who, meanwhile, ignored the far more menacing figures of "the syndicate," "the mafia," and other organized-crime figures. Overall, Maccabee has written a delightful book in which "the good guys" are difficult to distinguish from the "bad guys" during an uproarious period of American history. A very engaging and readable book. -- The Indianapolis Star, August 20, 1995
John Dillinger Slept Here (Minnesota Historical Society), by Paul Maccabee: this is a small masterpiece of social history that describes how an earlier "war on crime" provided Americans an entertaining distraction from their Depression worries-except in St. Paul, where enlightened civic policy maintained the peace far more simply by offering sanctuary to public enemies. -- Playboy, May 1996
The crooks of St. Paul are captured in great style: Eighteenth-century novelist and preacher Laurence Sterne reputedly delivered something like the following line in a sermon to his congregation on the morning after his wedding: We have labored all the night to no good effect." St. Paul historian Paul Maccabee has labored way more than all the night-and to very excellent effect. Maccabee spent thirteen years, combed through 100,000 pages of formerly classified FBI documents, interviewed all manner of experts and survivors and read a ton of books in order to write John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks' Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul, 1920-1936 (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 360 pages, $45 cloth, $24.95 paper). Since I moved to town 25 years ago, I've heard stories and read newspaper accounts about the deal struck between the St. Paul police and the petty and not-so-petty hoodlums of the 1920s and 1930s; Gangsters such as John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis and Ma Barker were welcome to stop over in St. Paul, as long as they committed their crimes elsewhere. Maccabee, in a monumental effort of research, has fleshed out this story, told the smaller stories behind the story and profiled all the major and many of the minor players to create an altogether fetching story of crime and corruption in the Saintly City, including some side trips to its younger sister across the river, the town that isn't mentioned in the Bible. One thing I found out was that the high-profile Robin Hood gangsters, such as Dillinger, were just a part of the story. St. Paul and Minneapolis had their own criminals, often better organized and richer than the darlings of the tabloids. >Dapper Dan Hogan, owner of St. Paul's Green Lantern saloon, who acted as go-between for Police Chief John O'Connor and the visiting indignitaries. (Hogan was blown through the roof of his automobile one day in 1928.) >St. Paul bootlegging king, Leon Gleckman, who held court at the St. Paul Hotel. And his Minneapolis counterpart, Isadore (Kid Cann) Blumenfeld. (Gleckman went to the movies with his wife every night because it was the only place he dared sleep.) >St. Paul's leading madam, Nina Clifford, who operated a fancy whorehouse on Washington St., just below the central police station. (On her building permit was the description "dwelling place," to which some wag at City Hall added "and seminary.") Maccabee takes some well-deserved swipes at the FBI, points out egregious anti-Semitism in all the law enforcement ranks (many of the "Syndicate" mobsters were Jewish) and admirably refuses to glamorize any of the punks who lived in or descended on our fair cities. Some may object that the book is organized in snippets rather than chronologically, a practice which breeds repetition, but no one will argue with the efficacy of 135 photographs, six maps, the chronological survey and the gazetteer of "Rogues and Reformers." If I were to read the book again, I'd Xerox the vast footnotes at book's end and have them by my side for easy reference, just so I could more fully admire Maccabee's research. -- Star Tribune, September 3, 1995
Two of the more historically interesting books I've seen lately-one rather macabre, the other totally absorbing-were sent to me by The Historical Society of Minnesota, a publisher I had not heard too much about prior to this. The books are limited to activities in just one state-Minnesota in the 1930s. The first is John Dillinger Slept Here by Paul Maccabee, and sub-titled A Crooks' Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul from 1920 to 1936. But first, the story of the bootleggers, kidnappers, murderers and thieves-and the police-who "used" Minneapolis and St. Paul, the Twin Cities, and Minnesota in general, as a playground. It was also the sight of many major kidnappings and bank holdups which occurred during those wild and wooly 1930s of The Great Depression and Prohibition eras. Their names still fascinate in print, and on the late show from the Warner Bros. Gangster era films and other studios: Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, Roger "The Terrible" Touhy, Machine Gun Kelly, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, and who could ever forget Ma Barker-Bloody Mama, as portrayed by Shelley Winters in that violent 1970 film depicting Ma Barker's life. Maccabee spent 13 years researching and gathering material for this fascinating account of Minnesota and its "baddies" of the era. He leads you to nearly 70 of the Twin Cities' most notorious Prohibition speakeasies, gambling dens, the gangland hideouts, brothels and "Murder, Inc." killing sites. (The latter was also portrayed on film in Murder, Incorporated.) It is obvious there has always been a morbid interest in America's violent past, but none so detailed as Maccabee's effort. Through the words of eyewitnesses, FBI agents and the remaining gangsters themselves, the author takes you inside the bank robberies, gangland assassinations and the (corrupt) police intrigue of the Twin Cities of the 1920s and 1930s. The book also reveals for the first time the secrets of J. Edgar Hoover's feud with "Creepy" Karpis, the love story behind the bloody Kansas City Massacre and the battle between corrupt cops and the FBI. Maccabee waded through 100,000 pages of FBI files, wiretap transcripts, prison and police records and many mob "confessions." There are interviews with 250 crime victims, policemen, "gun molls," and surviving family members. There are also "Crook's Tour" maps and more than 130 rare FBI, police and family photographs and other sources. This book is, literally, a landmark examination of how gangsters of that era virtually held a major American city hostage with police cooperation for two decades. This book is a very provocative tale of corruption and is exceedingly well told and well worth reading. In cities like Chicago, mobsters such as Capone controlled the police. In St. Paul, police controlled the mobsters. All in all, it is a fascinating, engrossing story of a rogue's gallery of criminals-police of the era and otherwise. What's more important, it is a damn good read! -- Sun City News, November 2, 1995
Product Description
This book is based on more than 100,000 pages of FBI files and wiretaps, prison and police records, and mob confessions. Interviews with 250 crime victims, policemen, gun molls, and family members of criminals bring these public enemies to life. Crime historian Paul Maccabee takes you inside the bank robberies, gangland assassinations, and police intrigue of St. Paul's 1920s and 1930s gangster era. You'll also find Crooks' Tour maps and more than 130 rare FBI, police, and family photographs.
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