whose doors had been removed. It had been Shotgun George Ziegler’s idea to order the doors taken off; this way, no one could be hiding inside to ambush them. On the floorboard beside Dunn was a satchel containing $100,000 in cash.
Dunn’s late-night drive followed three notes from Hamm’s kidnappers. The first had been delivered to a pharmacy near Dunn’s home: You’re so god damed [ sic ] smart that you’ll wind up getting both of you guys killed. Furthermore we demand that you personally deliver the money so that if there is any doble [ sic ] crossing we will have the pleasure of hitting you in the head.
Saturday morning a second note was left in the car of a brewery worker. It gave instructions on how to deliver the ransom and warned Dunn to come alone: You brought the coppers into this, now you get rid of the ass-holes. The St. Paul SAC, Werner Hanni, debated whether to set a trap for the kidnappers when the ransom was delivered. The corrupt detective Tom Brown alerted the Barkers. A third ransom note was delivered to Dunn that afternoon: If you are through with the bullshit and balyhoo [ sic ] , we’ll give you your chance. First of all, get away from the coppers.
Just after ten o’clock that night, Dunn drove north on Highway 61. He passed the town of White Bear Lake and continued north in the darkness. Just before Pine City, about halfway to Duluth, a car roared past at a speed of over seventy miles per hour. A second car followed. Dunn slowed and watched as the two cars pulled to the side of the road. They let him pass, then pulled out and passed him again. After a few minutes, Dunn saw headlights ahead of him in the darkness. They flashed five times. It was the signal. He stopped the car and threw out the money.
Dunn drove on to Duluth, where he had been told Hamm would be waiting at the New Duluth Hotel. He wasn’t there. Soon Dunn was joined by the kidnappers’ secret liaison, Tom Brown, and another detective. They sat all night, waiting. Hamm never showed.
Fred Barker and George Ziegler returned to the Bensonville safe house the next morning and threw the satchel on the kitchen table. “You better round up some Hamm’s beer,” Ziegler announced. “I got a feeling that it’ll be my favorite for a long time to come.”
The next morning at dawn, after an all-night drive back to Minnesota, Karpis left William Hamm blindfolded in a field outside the town of Wyoming. After a few minutes, Hamm took off his blindfold and trudged to a farmhouse, where he telephoned his mother in Minneapolis. By noon he was back at his mansion, standing dazed before a crowd of reporters.
Several members of the gang also returned to the Twin Cities that morning, and if not for the intervention of Tom Brown, the Barkers’ careers would have ended that day. At the house Fred Barker was renting on Vernon Street, neighbors had noticed his strange habits and the arrival and departures of all sorts of large cars at all hours, and had taken to joking that the home’s occupants were gangsters, maybe even the Hamm kidnappers. As the gang piled out of its Buick that morning, one neighbor joked, “There goes the ransom money.”
Not everyone was joking. One young man was suspicious enough to phone in a tip to an editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The editor phoned the police who, to the Barkers’ good fortune, turned the matter over to Tom Brown. Brown slipped out of his office and phoned a friend, who alerted the Barkers. All that evening neighbors watched as the gang scurried through the house, slamming doors and tossing suitcases into their cars. When two officers arrived to check out the house the next morning, they found it empty.
By that Monday, as the Barkers scrambled to escape St. Paul, the rest of the gang had already decamped to apartments in Chicago. There they read in amazement newspaper stories of the Kansas City Massacre. Everyone affiliated with the gang realized Verne Miller must have done it to
Dunn’s late-night drive followed three notes from Hamm’s kidnappers. The first had been delivered to a pharmacy near Dunn’s home: You’re so god damed [ sic ] smart that you’ll wind up getting both of you guys killed. Furthermore we demand that you personally deliver the money so that if there is any doble [ sic ] crossing we will have the pleasure of hitting you in the head.
Saturday morning a second note was left in the car of a brewery worker. It gave instructions on how to deliver the ransom and warned Dunn to come alone: You brought the coppers into this, now you get rid of the ass-holes. The St. Paul SAC, Werner Hanni, debated whether to set a trap for the kidnappers when the ransom was delivered. The corrupt detective Tom Brown alerted the Barkers. A third ransom note was delivered to Dunn that afternoon: If you are through with the bullshit and balyhoo [ sic ] , we’ll give you your chance. First of all, get away from the coppers.
Just after ten o’clock that night, Dunn drove north on Highway 61. He passed the town of White Bear Lake and continued north in the darkness. Just before Pine City, about halfway to Duluth, a car roared past at a speed of over seventy miles per hour. A second car followed. Dunn slowed and watched as the two cars pulled to the side of the road. They let him pass, then pulled out and passed him again. After a few minutes, Dunn saw headlights ahead of him in the darkness. They flashed five times. It was the signal. He stopped the car and threw out the money.
Dunn drove on to Duluth, where he had been told Hamm would be waiting at the New Duluth Hotel. He wasn’t there. Soon Dunn was joined by the kidnappers’ secret liaison, Tom Brown, and another detective. They sat all night, waiting. Hamm never showed.
Fred Barker and George Ziegler returned to the Bensonville safe house the next morning and threw the satchel on the kitchen table. “You better round up some Hamm’s beer,” Ziegler announced. “I got a feeling that it’ll be my favorite for a long time to come.”
The next morning at dawn, after an all-night drive back to Minnesota, Karpis left William Hamm blindfolded in a field outside the town of Wyoming. After a few minutes, Hamm took off his blindfold and trudged to a farmhouse, where he telephoned his mother in Minneapolis. By noon he was back at his mansion, standing dazed before a crowd of reporters.
Several members of the gang also returned to the Twin Cities that morning, and if not for the intervention of Tom Brown, the Barkers’ careers would have ended that day. At the house Fred Barker was renting on Vernon Street, neighbors had noticed his strange habits and the arrival and departures of all sorts of large cars at all hours, and had taken to joking that the home’s occupants were gangsters, maybe even the Hamm kidnappers. As the gang piled out of its Buick that morning, one neighbor joked, “There goes the ransom money.”
Not everyone was joking. One young man was suspicious enough to phone in a tip to an editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The editor phoned the police who, to the Barkers’ good fortune, turned the matter over to Tom Brown. Brown slipped out of his office and phoned a friend, who alerted the Barkers. All that evening neighbors watched as the gang scurried through the house, slamming doors and tossing suitcases into their cars. When two officers arrived to check out the house the next morning, they found it empty.
By that Monday, as the Barkers scrambled to escape St. Paul, the rest of the gang had already decamped to apartments in Chicago. There they read in amazement newspaper stories of the Kansas City Massacre. Everyone affiliated with the gang realized Verne Miller must have done it to
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