Welcome to another deep dive. We are we are so
glad you decided to join us today. Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for tuning in. If you're listening right
now, you are probably already familiar with the
massive sweeping narratives of the 1930s public
enemy era. Right. The big names, the famous shootout.
Exactly. The larger than life folklore. But today
we are pushing all of that cinematic mythology
to the side. We have a single, highly detailed
Wikipedia article in front of us. And it chronicles
the life, the chaotic crimes, and the incredibly
gruesome death of John Rhett Hamilton. Right.
Our mission for this deep dive is to strip away
the glossy veneer that usually covers these stories.
We're going to look at the gritty, paranoid,
and honestly surprisingly disorganized reality
of a man who was central to John Dillinger's
inner circle. A man whose personal story is frequently
relegated to just a mere footnote in history.
Yeah. It is, you know, it's remarkably easy to
get caught up in the polished legend of the 1930s
outlaw. Yeah. But when you examine the historical
footprint of their daily lives, the actual mechanics
of survival on the run. It wasn't glamorous.
No, anything but glamorous. John Hamilton provides
the perfect lens for this reality check. He was
right there for the most infamous bank robberies
and the most desperate escapes. Operating right
in the background of these highly publicized
events. Exactly. By tracing his specific trajectory,
we get a much starker picture of what it actually
meant to be a career criminal during the height
of the Great Depression. Okay, let's unpack this
from the very beginning. Who was John Hamilton
before he became a permanent fixture in the Chicago
crime papers? Well, the baseline facts set a
rather unassuming stage. Hamilton was Canadian.
He was born in Bing Inlet, Ontario in August
of 1898. Okay, so a small town. Very small. And
his parentage reflects a pretty typical North
American immigrant experience for the era. His
father was an Irish Canadian from Essex County,
Ontario, and his mother was a German American
from New York. Got it. So he certainly wasn't
born into some notorious underworld syndicate.
He started life in a small Ontario community,
completely removed from the urban crime hubs.
What immediately stands out about his early years
is this incredibly memorable, almost startling
physical detail. Oh, yeah. Long before he was
holding up banks, Hamilton picked up the nickname
Three Finger Jack. And he didn't get this moniker
from some violent mob initiation or a knife fight.
Nothing like that. He lost two fingers on his
right hand in a childhood sledding accident.
Just a brutal, ordinary winter mishap in the
snow. It is a striking detail, particularly when
you consider his future profession. Right. Armed
robbery. Exactly. You have a distinct permanent
physical limitation missing two fingers on your
dominant hand. And yet. He goes on to become
one of the most prolific, elusive armed robbers
of his generation. It's crazy to think about.
It is a sharp paradox. You would logically assume
that such a highly identifiable physical trait
would make a life of crime, especially one involving
firearms and the need to blend into a crowd,
nearly impossible. Yeah, you'd stand out everywhere
you went. Yet his criminal career proved to be
incredibly slippery. Slippery is an understatement.
But his very first major run -in with the law...
Wasn't exactly a master class in criminal evasion,
was it? Far from it. The real catalyst for his
life as a career criminal happens in March 1927.
He's convicted of robbing a local gas station
in St. Joseph County, Indiana. Just a gas station?
Just a gas station. And for that single crime,
the court hands him a staggering 25 -year sentence
at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
25 years for gas station robbery is a massive
amount of time to be locked away. That kind of
sentence completely removes him from society
and drops him into a very specific, high -pressure
environment. We connect this to the bigger picture.
The prison system at that time inadvertently
functioned as the ultimate criminal networking
event. A networking event? Wow. Really, it was.
Hamilton wasn't just sitting in a cell serving
his time. He was actively socializing, mingling
with a literal who's who of the Midwestern underworld.
Building a Rolodex. Precisely. Inside those walls,
he formed tight bonds with heavy hitters like
Russell Clark, Charles Makely, Harry Pierpont,
Homer Van Meter, and crucially, a young inmate
named John Dillinger. The audacity of what happens
next is just wild. Dillinger gets paroled in
May of 1933. You would think someone given that
kind of freedom would just walk out, breathe
the fresh air, and disappear. You'd hope so.
But instead, Dillinger swears loyalty to the
guys he left behind. Wait, he actually manages
to smuggle handguns back into a maximum security
state prison. How does a paroled gas station
robber pull that off? It represents a phenomenal,
almost catastrophic security failure on the part
of the prison administration. Dillinger arranged
for a threat of corruption or a massive blind
spot to be exploited. Sending firearms directly
into the hands of his buddies inside. Yep, Hamilton,
Mackley, Pierpont, Clark, all of them. It's a
profound testament to the ironclad, almost fanatical
loyalty among this specific group of men. And
that loyalty paid off. Massive dividends. On
September 26, 1933, armed with the weapons Gillinger
provided, a total of 10 men, including John Hamilton,
executed a breathtakingly bold escape. They didn't
meticulously dig a tunnel over months or anything.
No, they held up the guards and literally walked
out the main gate of the Indiana State Prison.
The image of 10 armed inmates just strolling
out the front door of a penitentiary. It's hard
to wrap your head around. It kicks off a spree
fueled almost entirely by this twisted sense
of loyalty combined with sheer chaos. Absolute
chaos. Because almost immediately after breaking
out, they realize they have a massive problem.
Right. The timeline compresses frantically at
this point. While Hamilton and the others were
organizing their breakout, Dillinger had gotten
himself arrested for a separate bank robbery.
Unbelievable. time. He was sitting in the Allen
County Jail in Lena, Ohio. So the newly freed
gang immediately decides they have to return
the favor. They need to rescue Dillinger. But
executing a high profile jailbreak requires serious
resources. It requires cash for safe houses,
bribes, weapons, reliable getaway cars. Exactly.
So Dillinger is in jail and rescues aren't cheap.
How did Hamilton and the rest of the gang manage
to fund this breakout when they had literally
just walked out of prison themselves? They went
straight back to work. Yeah. On October 3, 1933,
Hamilton's crew hit the first national bank in
St. Mary's, Ohio. They made off with $14 ,000.
Wow. To put that into perspective regarding purchasing
power, that's equivalent to roughly $348 ,000
today. They walked out of a small -town bank
with over a third of a million dollars. Yeah.
That kind of capital funded a highly mobile,
highly lethal operation. Nine days after that
robbery, the gang traveled to Lima to break Dillinger
out. There is a fascinating nuance about Hamilton's
role in this specific event at the Lima jail.
Charles Mackley and Harry Pierpont enter the
building, and in the chaotic process of freeing
Dillinger, they murder the Allen County Sheriff,
Jess Sarber. A brutal killing. But Hamilton doesn't
pull the trigger. In fact, he doesn't even step
foot inside the building. He waits outside as
the getaway driver. It really highlights that
even within this notorious gang, there were varying
degrees of involvement. Hamilton was clearly
an essential part of the crew, but he wasn't
always the one committing the most violent acts
in the room. At least not yet. The violence surrounding
the entire organization was escalating rapidly.
Getting worse. Much worse. By December 13, 1933,
they are in Chicago. They execute a massive,
highly coordinated armed invasion of a bank,
specifically targeting the safe deposit boxes
rather than just the teller drawers. Oh, going
straight for the bolts. They empty them out and
net as much as $50 ,000. We are talking about
the equivalent of $1 .24 million today. They
are operating on a massive, almost industrial
scale now. Here's where it gets really interesting.
You have these guys pulling off million -dollar
heists, outsmarting the authorities across state
lines, living this high -adrenaline life. Yeah.
And what brings the heat down on John Hamilton?
A completely mundane errand. The day after that
massive Chicago heist, Hamilton drops a car off
at a local garage for some body work. It is the
ultimate mundane detail, tripping up a complex
criminal enterprise. A guy just needs a dent
fixed. But the mechanic at this Chicago garage
is incredibly observant. He looks at the vehicle,
notices some suspicious details, perhaps bullet
holes, perhaps customized plating, and gets a
gut feeling. A bad feeling. He decides to call
the police and reports that a gangster car is
sitting in his shop. So when Hamilton strolls
back to the garage to pick up his ride, he walks
straight into an ambush. Police Detective William
Shanley and two other officers are waiting for
him. And he doesn't go quietly? No. Hamilton
doesn't surrender. He opens fire, kills Detective
Shanley on the spot, and somehow manages to elude
the other two officers, vanishing into the Chicago
streets. The fallout from that single moment
at the garage cannot be overstated. By killing
a Chicago police detective, Hamilton directly
provoked the full, unrestrained wrath of the
city's law enforcement. They took it personally.
Very personally. Because of Hamilton's specific
actions, the Chicago Police Department officially
formed a massive 40 -man unit entirely dedicated
to hunting this specific group down. It was officially
dubbed the Dillinger Squad. You go from being
regional bank robbers to being hunted by a specialized
40 -man task force in one of America's biggest
cities overnight. That pushes Hamilton squarely
into public enemy status. The pressure is immense,
but the gang refuses to stop. Moving to January
15, 1934, the gang crosses into Indiana and hits
the First National Bank in East Chicago, stealing
over $20 ,000. Another massive haul. But the
heist evolves into a shootout, and a police officer
named William O'Malley is killed. Officially,
John Dillinger is charged with O'Malley's murder.
That is the name that goes on the federal paperwork.
But there is a massive discrepancy. Multiple
witnesses at the scene swore up and down that
John Hamilton was the actual shooter who took
down Officer O'Malley. What's fascinating here
is how this event shifted the hierarchy of notoriety.
Because of the East Chicago murder and his growing
resume of violence, Hamilton climbed the ranks
of the most wanted. He's moving up the list.
He hit the number three spot on Indiana's...
public enemies list, sitting right behind Dillinger
and Pierpont. In fact, shortly after this, when
Dillinger was captured out in Tucson, Arizona,
John Hamilton briefly became the number one public
enemy in the state. We need to pause on that
East Chicago heist for a second because Hamilton
didn't walk away clean. He was actually shot
twice during that robbery. Yeah, severely wounded.
While the rest of the gang, including Dillinger,
fled out west to Tucson, where they ultimately
got caught, Hamilton had to be left behind in
Chicago. He's left bleeding in the care of his
girlfriend, Pat Charrington, and a man named
Joseph Moran. Moran is a crucial figure here.
He was an underworld physician. This gives us
a really stark look into the medical underground
of the 1930s. This is a deeply entrenched, dark,
parallel economy. If you are the number one public
enemy with two bullet holes in your torso, you
absolutely cannot walk into a legitimate hospital.
They'd arrest you on the spot. Exactly. You are
forced to rely on disbarred doctors, disgraced
surgeons, and mob -associated physicians who
operate in hidden back rooms. So they just patch
them up in secret. They take on massive legal
risks to patch up fugitives, and they do it for
a massive cut of the stolen money, no questions
asked. They essentially run phantom clinics specifically
designed for men who cannot afford to be seen
by the state. Hamilton survives this ordeal in
the shadows. He lays low, recovering from his
gunshot wounds while relying entirely on this
underground network. Meanwhile, Dillinger is
arrested in Tucson, extradited to Indiana, and
then famously escapes from the Crown Point Jail
using a fake wooden gun. The wooden gun escape,
legendary. Right. So Dillinger makes his way
back to Chicago, reunites with the recovering
Hamilton, and forms a brand new game. This new
iteration is highly volatile, largely because
they add some truly terrifying figures, most
notably Babyface Nelson. The addition of Babyface
Nelson fundamentally altered the dynamic of the
gang. Nelson was notoriously trigger -happy,
deeply unstable, and lacked the calculated restraint
that even Dellinger occasionally showed. Just
a wild card. The chaos and the violence skyrocket.
You see this vividly in March of 1934. On March
6, they rob a bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
During the getaway, Nelson spots a motorcycle
cop named Hale Keith. And Nelson doesn't hesitate.
He doesn't. He severely wounds the officer, firing
machine guns straight through a plate glass window
just to hit him. It is just reckless, terrifying
violence. Yeah. And it catches up to them a week
later on March 13 in Mason City, Iowa. They are
robbing the First National Bank and the town
actively fights back. The citizens actually shoot
back. Yeah, an elderly judge standing across
the street from the bank just opens fire on the
gang. He manages to wound Dillinger and shoots
Hamilton right in the shoulder. So Hamilton has
been shot again. The gang is battered, bleeding,
and the targets of a massive nationwide manhunt
fueled by an intense media campaign. Every newspaper
in the country is tracking their movements. They
desperately need a place to hide and recover.
This desperation pushes them into April of 1934.
They make a very discreet trip up north to visit
Hamilton's sister in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
After that, they retreat to a place called the
Little Bohemia Resort, deep in the woods near
Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It's supposed to be a
quiet place to lay low. But their luck completely
runs out here. The FBI, led by an agent named
Melvin Purvis, receives a tip about their location
from a man named Henry Voss, who was a friend
of the resort's owner. A local guy. Yeah. Purvis
organizes a massive raid on Little Bohemia on
April 22. Looking impartially at how this operation
was executed, it was tragically disorganized.
It stands as a complete blunder by the authorities.
The FBI agents move in, and they mistakenly open
fire on a car pulling away from the lodge. But
it wasn't the gangsters in the car. It was three
completely innocent local men. These men were
employees from a nearby Civilian Conservation
Corps work camp. The CCC was a Depression era
New Deal program designed to provide manual labor
jobs for unemployed, unmarried young men. Such
a tragedy. You have this incredibly tragic contrast.
Innocent men just trying to survive the economic
devastation of the Great Depression through government
relief work being gunned down by federal agents
who are frantically searching for outlaws sitting
on millions of dollars. Eugene Guineau is killed
instantly and John Hoffman and John Morris are
severely wounded by the crossfire. While the
FBI is mistakenly engaging these innocent CCC
workers out front, the actual gang realizes what
is happening and initiates a frantic escape from
the back of the lodge. It sounds like something
out of a thriller, except it is cold, wet, and
miserable. A nightmare scenario. Dillinger, Hamilton,
and the others jump from a second floor window.
They land on a mound of frozen snow. They have
to run on foot along the freezing shores of Star
Lake in the pitch black middle of the night.
Eventually, they manage to steal a car from a
local carpenter about a half mile away and vanish.
They escape the immediate perimeter of Little
Bohemia, but the federal net was closing impossibly
tight. That brings us to the very next day, April
23. The authorities catch up with Hamilton, Dillinger
and Homer Van Meter in Hastings, Minnesota. They
just couldn't catch a break. Another brutal shootout
ensues. This time, John Hamilton's luck finally
runs dry. As they are fleeing in a stolen car,
a bullet tears through the vehicle and mortally
wounds him. This is where the grim reality of
the outlaw life truly sets in. You have this
crew that has stolen millions in today's money.
They have been fiercely loyal to each other.
But when Hamilton is dying in the backseat, all
that stolen cash means absolutely nothing. They
can't save him. They rush him back to Chicago
to see Dr. Joseph Moran, the exact same underworld
doctor who treated him just months prior. But
this time, Moran looks at the dying Hamilton
and outright refuses to offer any medical aid.
It is the ultimate betrayal by the criminal underground.
Moran was well aware that the heat from the FBI
was simply too intense. Treating a dying public
enemy of that magnitude was a guaranteed prison
sentence or possibly a death sentence for himself.
So they have to keep moving. Forced to move,
Dillinger takes his dying friend and hides him
with two associates, Volney Davis and Edna Murray,
in a safe house in Aurora, Illinois. Three days
later, on April 26, 1934. john hamilton dies
the glamorous gangster life ends in a bleak hidden
room in illinois but the story of what they did
with his remains is chilling dillinger and volney
davis take hamilton's body to a spot near oswego
illinois and bury him in a secret unmarked grave
right in the dirt Before they cover him with
dirt, Dillinger pores lie all over Hamilton's
face and hands. They are actively trying to destroy
his fingerprints and melt his facial features
so his body can never be identified. It is a
grotesque act driven by pure paranoia. They knew
that if the FBI found the body and identified
it, it would provide the authorities with a concrete
timeline and location, compromising the remaining
gang members. Covering their tracks at all costs.
But there is a fascinating paradox here regarding
the lie. They used it to destroy his features,
but under certain environmental conditions. conditions,
specifically when mixed with soil moisture lye,
can trigger a process called saponification.
What does that do? Instead of completely dissolving
the remains, it can convert the fatty tissue
into a soap -like substance, actually preserving
the underlying bone structure and dental evidence
far longer than normal decomposition would. Because
they hid him so well, it led to this bizarre,
almost comical bureaucratic absurdity. The federal
government had no idea Hamilton was dead. On
May 19th, almost a month after he took his last
breath, the government officially indicted John
Hamilton for harboring fugitives. He were actively
prosecuting a corpse. They even went after his
family, convicting Hamilton's sister of the same
charge. She actually spent time in prison for
it, all while her brother was secretly rotting
in an unmarked grave. The lack of a public body
inevitably fueled rampant rumors. The ghost of
Red Hamilton really haunted the FBI for a long
time. There were persistent widespread reports
that he had survived. People love a conspiracy.
They do. The FBI was flooded with tips from people
claiming they just saw Hamilton at a diner or
riding a train. Even Hamilton's own nephew went
on the record claiming he had personally visited
his uncle in Ontario long after the supposed
date of his death. It is wild how the public
simply refuses to believe that a legendary story
is over, but the truth always leaves a trace.
How did they finally prove that the body in that
shallow, lie -filled grave was actually John
Hamilton? They relied on the rapidly advancing
field of forensic odontology. Despite the lie,
the authorities eventually located the grave
and exhumed the remains. To positively identify
the body, they compared the amalgam restorations,
the specific dental fillings on the teeth of
the corpse with the highly detailed dental files
kept from Hamilton's time at the Indiana State
Penitentiary. The prison records. The records
were an exact, undeniable match. It definitively
proved that the man in the grave was John Hamilton.
It brings his entire story full circle. The very
prison system that served as his ultimate criminal
networking hub was the exact same system that
held the dental records used to identify his
melted remains in the dirt. It's incredible.
Before we wrap this up, we have to look at how
pop culture has handled Hamilton over the years
because it perfectly illustrates our mission
today of stripping away the Hollywood gloss.
Hamilton's gruesome end inspired a great Stephen
King short story called The Death of Jack Hamilton.
Right. Great read. But if you look at the 2009
blockbuster movie Public Enemies, the actor Jason
Clarke plays Hamilton. If you look closely at
the screen, Jason Clarke is acting with all five
fingers intact on his right hand. They missed
it completely. They completely ignored the defining
physical trait that gave him the name Three Finger
Jack. They literally sanitize his missing fingers
right off the screen. It is a seemingly small
detail, but it speaks volumes about how we culturally
digest history. We take a man. who is missing
fingers from a childhood accident, who spent
his final days in agonizing pain, rejected by
the criminal doctors he paid, and buried in a
paranoid frenzy. And we morph him into a slick,
fully intact, cinematic character. So, what does
this all mean? We do these deep dives to look
past the silver screen and find the terrifying,
real -life human being behind the myth. This
raises an important question, something for you
to mull over long after we finish speaking today.
While we look back at these men as chaotic, glamorous
outlaws, consider what their violent crime spree
actually gave birth to. The desperate, frantic
need to catch men like Hamilton directly caused
the massive centralization of the modern FBI.
It changed law enforcement forever. It led to
the creation of federal crime task forces, the
expansion of cross -state jurisdiction, and the
rapid forced advancement of forensic sciences
like dental identification. Did the unchecked,
disorganized chaos of the 1930s gangster actually
inadvertently build the foundations of the modern
federal surveillance and law enforcement state
we live under today? That is a phenomenal thought
to leave you with. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive. We hope you walk away today
with a new perspective on the history you thought
you knew. Stay curious, keep asking questions,
and always keep seeking out the surprising truths
hidden behind the headlines. Until next time.