Nowhere special: South Bend, Indiana

Ed.--Here are a few photos I took of the town I live in. The photo to the top right shows the building in which John Dillinger, Homer Van Meter and Baby Face Nelson robbed the Merchant's Bank on June 30, 1934, to the left of the front-end of the car in the center of the shot, a building with arches and a tall front. It's now a Cambodian restaurant. The building to the bottom left was once an outlet of the Chicago Stock Exchange, or at least that's what I've been led to believe. The State Theater was featured in some shots of the Party Monster "Shockumentary" that was aired on Cinemax in 1998, about South Bend native and club kid promoter Michael Alig. There hasn't been a hell of a lot going on here since Studebaker closed in 1964.

Public Enemies (2009) review

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“That was the attitude at the time; that the authorities were buffoons who couldn’t get Dillinger, and these were same authorities that couldn’t fix the Depression, couldn’t relieve the suffering from the Dust Bowl, and Dillinger was attacking the institutions, i.e., the banks that had made everybody’s life a misery.”--Director Michael Mann to Roger Ebert, June 19, 2009.

For anyone who ever wondered, “What exactly was John Dillinger really like as a person?” Michael Mann’s sad-but-lively love song to the Depression-era gangster is going to be a real treat, and one that was a long-time-coming. Someone finally got the story right. Why did it take so long? There are a number of very simple reasons, but when it comes to crime, American culture tends to go through up-and-down cycles of punishment versus rehabilitation.

We never learn, and the majority of our “big house” prisons have served as criminal-factories, producing hardened men and women who might have never gone down the road to even greater crimes then they would have. In an interview transcript from June, Mann sides with a majority of corrections administrators, wardens, and even corrections officers’ unions that the system didn’t work over eighty years ago. It doesn’t now:

This is off on a sidetrack. I wanted to know about prison because it’s the prison that made him, those prison conditions made him into who he was. Of course, all of this is about finding character, what’s the character, what’s behind it. …We came up with a 1936 Bureau of Prisons investigation because that State Prison was a scandal. They had institutionalized forms of torture, of beatings, suffocation of people in strait jackets--it was horrendous, it was a hellhole. And he survived that at the top tier of that kind of population so this was a tough, tough guy.[i]

Indeed he was, and he was a product of his times as all of us are. Today, we would say that John Dillinger had become “institutionalized” by a brutal criminal justice system, and it all began with a juvenile crime of robbing the town grocer for $50. Dillinger was given ten years by a biased judge, and that was that. The die was cast from a child’s mistake, and just about anyone under the circumstances would have wanted some payback.

This is why Dillinger wanted to be known and why he didn’t wear disguises when he robbed banks.

Now that the national focus on punishment versus rehabilitation has shifted and nearly 80 years have passed, we’re able to look back at the 1933-34 crime wave with better information, more perspective, and a clearer vision. To recount the general plotline created by Mann and his collaborators is to tell the real story of the thirteen months of John Dillinger’s short life (although some would disagree that he was the man shot in the alleyway of the Biograph Theater in the very hot summer of 1934—granted, a long-shot if ever there was one).

“Public Enemies” couldn’t have had a better writer-director. Mann’s oeuvre in the crime genre is practically unassailable with “Thief” (1981), “Manuhunter” (1985), “Heat” (1995), and the more recent “Collateral” (2004), starring Tom Cruise. Few directors are better at depicting crime than Michael Mann.

It’s fun writing this review since I personally know of a few locations here in South Bend that Johnnie robbed back in 1933-34. Michiana was literally his stomping ground and he hid around this area and several nearby locations, some of them controlled by the Chicago Outfit who would hide bank robbers for money up-front. Just down the road from where I’m writing this right now is State Road 6 (built in 1932!) and the town of Walkerton, Indiana, down which the Dillinger gang was chased by Indiana State Patrolman Arthur Keller in 1933.

This jibes with a ruined location at nearby Koontz Lake that my father used to show me and my brother in the 1970s, which as far as I can tell has never been documented. I also know and have known people who were at the Biograph Theater the evening of Dillinger’s assassination by federal agents, a husband and wife who shall remain nameless in this review. As a point-of-fact, I was told by the husband before his recent passing that, “Someone pointed Dillinger out to us in the audience.” [ii] “M” and “K” were kids at the time, and when they saw the commotion in the alley of the Biograph, they fled the scene out of fear. The husband also saw Nelson’s shooting-spree in downtown South Bend and the safe house that the gang hid in, allegedly on Michigan Street, just blocks away from where I viewed this motion picture. How do I know these anecdotes are true? When “M” died earlier this year, I conveyed some of the stories to their children—they had never been told any of it. “M” and “K” weren’t supposed to be in East Chicago that hot summer night in 1934, they were only 12 and 13 years old, respectively, and they never sought any fame over what they claim to have witnessed.

Highway Patrolman Arthur Keller’s (who also appears to have had no reason to lie) oral account, conducted on October 27, 1971 at the Walkerton Police Station by Interstate Trucking historian Harry D. Woods captures the real John Dillinger:

He came from one of the most wonderful families I ever met. I can only say one thing for John Dillinger—he was an organizer. He had a sense of direction like a bird. He proved it to a bunch of us guys one night in Chicago back in November 16, 1933. He was a driver that if he was alive today, I’d still take my hat off to him. As far as John Dillinger was concerned, he got the blame for everything. I remember one particular incident when he was in his heyday. The bank of Modoc [sic], Indiana, a little two-bit bank, was robbed. There was a bank robbery in Pennsylvania that day. Racine, Wisconsin, was robbed that day. John Dillinger was indentified as the gunman at all three of these banks. The fact was, John Dillinger was sitting on his can in an automobile, a Buick, behind the bank at Racine. He was never in the bank.[iii]

This is the very same John Dillinger as portrayed by director Michael Mann and his co-writers and a bevy of researchers hired for the movie production, and they really did their homework. The November 1933 incident Keller refers to is one in which Keller was pressured to execute the bank robber illegally in an ambush by his Indiana State Trooper superiors, probably why he didn’t go into further detail. As usual, Dillinger got the jump on them and got away, but it was very close.

Mann and his collaborators attention to historical detail and accuracy is just staggering, and merely adhering to the facts has given him and the audience for this film a real feast for the eyes, quite a ride. For example: nearly every movie ever made about John Dillinger—until now—has gotten the color of “the Lady in Red’s” (Hungarian East Chicago madam and hooker, Anna Sage) dress wrong. She wore a white-blouse with an orange skirt when she accompanied Dillinger to the Biograph. There are many other examples just like it in Public Enemies, and truth be told, I’ve read nearly everything about the man and his life and was expecting Mann and company to screw-up. They never did once. From the very beginning, to the very end of the film, I was expecting some really ridiculous distortion of history, and it never really came.

There is one scene that appears to be stylistic where Dillinger strolls right into the FBI’s Chicago Field Office, and he definitely had the balls for it as well as the cunning to get away with it. Call it a nod to social banditry and the noble outlaw who restricts his robberies to the rich, the banks. Right now, you couldn’t have a timelier message. The truth is that it actually happened, it’s not fanciful!

Public Enemies is the first motion picture to accurately express the meaning of the life of John Dillinger and his place in the history of America’s criminal underworld and our modern law enforcement apparatus. Mann intercuts between Dillinger’s pursuer, Melvin Purvis, Dillinger and his gang, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and Al Capone’s Lieutenant, Frank Nitty, and his associates who harbored the Dillinger gang for money. They sure weren’t doing it for their health, and when Johnny crossed from Indiana to Illinois after his incredible escape from Crown Point Jail with a wooden-gun, Hoover saw his opening and federalized the pursuit of Dillinger that had been on shaky legal ground up to that point. The rest is history.

After that, Dillinger and all the rest of the bank robbing gangs were a liability to the growing, cancerous networks of organized crime that were operating “coast-to-coast.” For decades, Hoover would deny their very existence and wouldn’t mount a national campaign against them until he had no choice. But it was easier to get more congressional appropriations for the FBI through getting John Dillinger and the other bank robbers of that bygone era. After 1934, the FBI would move towards becoming the nation’s police, and her record has been very patchy indeed, including collusion with organized crime and the harassment of political dissidents. Something died at the Biograph Theater that night, and it wasn’t just John Dillinger.

Public Enemies features a very solid ensemble cast and uses it in a way that would make the late Robert Altman proud, and it’s a very kinetic action film while being a great history lesson. You can tell that Michael Mann has wanted to direct this film for at least thirty years, if not more, and according to him, the Kentucky-born-and-raised Depp came to the project with the same passion, if not more. The Chicagoan director truly did his research. Public Enemies is a labor of love and an important movie not to be missed.

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[i] Mann, Michael. “John Dillinger, scholar of crime: The Michael Mann Transcript. The Chicago Sun-Times. June 26, 2009. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090626/PEOPLE/906269998

[ii] “M” and “K” to the author, January 2009.

[iii] Woods, Harry D. “The Story of Mr. Arthur Keller as Told to Harry D. Woods.” Indianapolis: Indiana State Highway oral history project, 1971. 10-11.

Bert Szymanski (1921-2009)

South Bend, Indiana--This week, our friend and neighbor Bert Szymanski. He was 87 years old and is one of the last surviving people in Indiana (besides his widow) who saw John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson in life. Bert was also a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather who was loved by many. Bert was a trucker who helped build the Alaskan highway during WWII. Like many of his generation in South Bend, he worked at the Studebaker plant for several years and was laid-off when it closed in 1963.

Bert told me in January of this year some interesting details that are corroborated by Dillinger's lawyer's (Louis Picquett) book regarding the gang's hideout--a safe house--here in South Bend during the 1933-34 crime wave.

Details told to me by Bert fit Picquett's account of their staying in-hiding in South Bend like a glove. There were other Dillinger gang hideouts in this are, one at Koontz Lake that's long gone, destroyed by a freak tornado in the 1960s (my father showed us the remaining steps and foundation during the 1980s).

Dillinger was chased just down the road of our current residence by Indiana State Highway Police on old S.R. 6, just ten miles down the road from our home in Walkerton, Indiana. This was his stomping ground. Bert and his wife Sally saw Dillinger inside the Biograph just minutes before his murder by FBI agents in the alleyway of the theater, but fled the scene out of fear. They were just kids, no more than 13. Amazingly, I don't think Bert ever told his children about this, but then, I don't think he and Sallie were supposed to be in East Chicago on that hot summer day in 1934 either.

We're losing these stories to mortality every day, and it's a shame that we don't take more care in preserving our history. Sounds like a job for the federal government and a new W.P.A. oral history program.

Bert was a good man who loved his family, his children, his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and his neighbors. He was a good friend of my late grandparents and he will be missed. Bert and I reflected that he lived to see two Great Depressions in his lifetime, but he was pleased that Barack Obama had won the election and was hopeful that he could be our FDR. He was a smart man, a working man. I helped Bert from the floor of his garage twice--which contributed to a hernia! I will never regret helping my neighbor, he was quite a man. He was buried this morning, and hundreds attended his viewing yesterday. I'm going to miss taking him vegetables from our garden. Sleep well, the neighborhood isn't going to be the same without you.

The FBI Never Gets Their Man: Bruce E. Ivins

Lies
Federal Bungling Investigators/The United States Army (nuff' said, don't ask , don't tell)--Even a cursory look at the stories should tell you something: the FBI and other investigative bodies botched this investigation for nearly seven years.

It was only when the psychopath behind it began acting-out, disintegrating, that he was reported by his psychiatrist and therapeutic counselor.

In addition to this fact, we find that Mr. Ivins had a history of behavioral problems extending-back to his days as a graduate student. This has all been easily uncovered by media, and presumably Ivins's counselor Jean Duley and psychiatrist, Dr. David Irwin. Irwin probably conveyed Ivins's psychiatric history to Duley.

The real heroes? Not the FBI, but Ivins's aforementioned psychiatrist and counselor. He told them quite a bit, which is why Duley put out a restraining order on the man, reporting him to police as is procedurally laid-out for a psychiatrist or a mental health worker.

But ultimately, it had to be Dr. Irwin who made the original diagnosis and who alerted the authorities.

If a patient is clearly psychotic, has confessed to crimes or the strong desire (and the wherewithal to do it) and attempts to commit them, a psychiatrist or counselor is morally and legally bound to report it to the authorities to prevent a potential crime. But only a psychiatrist can make an official diagnosis of psychopathology, or that someone is dangerously psychotic.

Duley went to the police. On July 10, authorities at the Fort Detrick lab where he worked removed him from the premises and had him committed for a psychiatric evaluation. A judge in Frederick, Md., granted an order that required Ivins to cease contact with Duley and stay away from her home and place of work.

The FBI suspects that Ivins' behavior changed after the Justice Department announced a $5.8 million settlement a former scientist from the same Fort Detrick lab. Steven Hatfill, who then-Attorney General John Ashcroft named a person of interest in the case in August 2002, had claimed he was unfairly targeted and his reputation damaged by leaks to the press. ("Counselor: Anthrax Scientist Was 'Homicidal,' " ABC News.go.com, 08.03.2008)

Yet, Ivins blamed Duley and not his psychiatrist Dr. David Irwin, the man who can be safely presumed to have made the diagnosis and originally alerted the authorities of Ivins's threat to himself and others.

The formerly bungled investigation finally got going on the right foot for the first time since 2002. What likely is that they confronted Ivins and notified him of what the potential charges held (the death penalty), he saw no way out, and he committed suicide. Why? Because he was guilty. Innocent people don't act like Ivins.

The problem with the feds' story of breaking the case? Dr. Irwin probably broke the case, and Duley just added fuel to the fire. Doubt it? Here's some of the transcript of the taped interview with Duley where she was requesting the restraining order. The Smoking Gun's documents state "received July 24th," and it's signed and dated as such by the counselor:

(Describing early morning voice messages from Ivins) [Ed.--Curiously, no date given.]

Duley: The first voice message was sort of a ranting, blaming me for having this done to him. It was sort of just rambling.

Same with three minutes later, saying that obviously we no longer have a therapeutic relationship, and how could I do this to him.

(Describing a July 12 call)

Duley: That one was rather scary. He very calmly thanked me for ruining his life and opening, allowing the FBI now to be able to prosecute him for the murders and that it was all my fault, and it's going to be my fault that they could now get him. [Ed.--A virtual confession of his crimes.] ...

Duley: As far back as the year 2000, the respondent has actually attempted to murder several other people, either through poisoning—he is a revenge killer when he feels that he's been slighted or has had, especially towards women, he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killing. He has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic, homicidal killer. ("Excerpt of tape in which therapist Jean Duley seeks restraining order against Bruce Ivins," The Minneapolis Star, 08.02.2008)

Wouldn't one have filed right away, right after the first message on what appears to be the 9th of July? I would, but not if someone else had reported Ivins. There is an apparent contradiction in the timeline that masks Irwin's involvement: did Duley make earlier contacts with the authorities? Irwin must have. Perhaps Duley did make earlier contact with federal authorities, but she must have felt covered by Dr. Irwin in some way. What authorities did Dr. Irwin contact?

Did the FBI put Duley and Irwin under protection after the July 9-12 calls from Ivins? The record seems confused. Since there's no oversight of the FBI by Congress, we may never know their role in this breakthrough. The transcript of the restraining order reads as though Duley had already been briefed thoroughly on Ivins, but by whom? Probably Irwin.

Duley was scheduled for an August 1st appearance before the grand jury. She also knew by July 24th that Ivins would be charged with "5 capital murders," and that the "FBI [is] involved. She waited two weeks to file the restraining order on Ivins, thanks to the fact that he was being held for observation at Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore. Yet why the need for a restraining order with other authorities, local ones?

On another count, gleaned from Duley's filing, Ivins's superiors at Fort Detrick and the bioweapons program he worked for had some inkling that he was completely nuts, and barred him from entry of the bioweapons research facility where he worked on July 10th. But there are other indications in the above record that they knew he was sick for several years. Irwin and Duley could probably answer these questions, hence the peculiarity of the records based on what little additional context is being provided against public statements by investigators and the aforementioned players.

When you bring in the "big guns" of psychiatry to examine a top level government scientist, someone's paying the bills, and it's unlikely that his employers would have been unaware. What's more likely is that they ordered the diagnoses themselves for legal protection, among other reasons.

Many questions remain, and are likely to remain so, in order that those who could have identified Ivins--but did not, probably due to incompetence and his peculiar talents--aren't held accountable. This is likely more of a story of bungling by federal investigators within and without of the United States Army, as well as outside pressure to contain information of a questionable weapons program and the real dangers it poses to the civilian population. Other questions will remain for future historians, one could imagine, and for decades.

One question is highly pertinent: of the many anthrax-laced envelopes that were sent, why were some to the opponents (primarily Democrats) of the Patriot Act, and by a top-level biowarfare scientist after a major terrorist attack on US soil? Was he told to? Senator Patrick Leahy was one of the recipients, though he emerged from the incident unscathed. That raises numerous alarming possibilities and questions to those of us paying attention, and they are of a constitutional nature. I'm not alone:

Daschle, whose office was a target of the attacks, tells Fox News Sunday that from the very beginning he's had "real concerns" about the quality of the investigation.

He notes the government recently agreed to pay almost 6 million dollars to a former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, who accused authorities of unfairly targeting him in the probe.

Daschle says he doesn't know if the investigation involving the late government microbiologist Bruce Ivins "is just another false track and a real diversion" from where investigators need to be. ("Daschle criticizes FBI's handling of anthrax probe," AP, 08.03.2008)

If it says anything at all, it's that our own weapons programs can be turned against us by lunatics--and Ivins wasn't the usual kind. He wasn't a politician, but a nutty geek who made things that killed people. He was already sick wanting to work at Fort Detrick, having been there for 36 years.

Dr. David Irwin and Jean Duley are likely to be the real heroes here, not the U.S. Army's investigators, and certainly not the storied FBI. Ivins is just one part of the American disease, and so are they. Duley's husband is calling her a hero. Ivins behavior was probably tolerated due to his actual value to powerful interests. How far that value extends is the real question. "The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people. ...In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his untimely death." states the press release by his attorney.

Tell it to another Fort Detrick scientist, Steven Hatfill, he survived nearly six years of pressure and harassment at the hands of the FBI. They went as far as to run his foot over with one of their surveillance cars. No tears here for Ivins, that's for his misguided former co-workers and neighbors, the kind who never notice serial killers in their midsts.

"Excerpt of tape in which therapist Jean Duley seeks restraining order against Bruce Ivins," The Minneapolis Star, 08.02.2008: http://www.startribune.com/nation/26212859.html?location_refer=Nation:highlightModules:7

"Counselor: Anthrax Scientist Was 'Homicidal,' " ABC News.go.com, 08.03.2008: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5503274&page=1

"Anthrax Suspect Homicidal, Sociopathic-Counselor sought restraining order against biodefense researcher," The Smoking Gun, 08.01.2008: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0801081anthrax1.html

"Documents reveal turbulent days leading to a dark end," FrederickNewsPost.com, 08.02.2008: http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1452500

Postscript, 08.07.2008: Yes, I am implying that the FBI rarely ever closes a case successfully without tips from informants. They're flatfoots, and the real adults quit to be around someone intelligent like a janitor. The FBI would be a joke if it wasn't for the fact that they've continued to systematically harrass dissenters, and generally done everything outside of their mandate. They never got John Dillinger either, that's a myth.

D.B. Cooper's Parachute

Washington State--Here's to Dan Cooper and his 1971 hijacking for $200,000, back when it was worth something. Here's to those who steal from the thieves and get away with it. Here's to John Dillinger who might have gotten away. America could use some more social rebels--real ones, not the corporate-model.

The hope is that the finding of the remains of a parachute are from Cooper's famous 1971 bail-out (no, not Bear Stearns). What's really exciting is that the find fits the area of where Cooper probably landed, and covers previous search areas.

In 1980, a family found around $8,000 of the money on the banks of a Washington river, most of it half-rotted from only ten years of exposure to the elements. This isn't about finding the money, most of which is either with Dan somewhere on the other side of the globe (or next door to you readers), with his dessicated corpse hanging from a tree, or simply turned to dust on some Washington forest floor or riverbed.

The only important thing is to find-out what really happened after he parachuted from that airliner, almost 37 years ago.

Crime never pays, just don't tell that to the GOP and the White House, or even Wall Street for that matter. D.B. Cooper, I hope and pray that you got away, but it doesn't matter: a majority of bank robberies are successful in this country, and all property is theft. Banks losing their ass will always be better than the average person losing theirs. Bailout the public, and let the rich take their losses in the marketplace as they should. Otherwise, we can expect to see many more Dillingers and Coopers. You can bank on that one, if nothing else.