Northfield’s resistance shattered the James-Younger Gang. Decades later, Dillinger, Karpis and other notorious criminals left their marks on Minnesota.
The dual-college town of Northfield will hold its annual celebration of criminality this week, when townspeople stage the Defeat of Jesse James Days from September 9 through 13.
This year’s commemoration is special because it marks the sesquicentennial of the James-Younger Gang’s unsuccessful raid on the First National Bank of Northfield on September 7, 1876.
The celebration’s name gives the game away. Its bank-raid reenactments honor the townspeople who impeded the robbery, killed two gang members at the scene and launched the manhunt that crippled the gang. Two Northfield citizens also died: acting cashier Joseph Lee Heywood, who refused to open the bank’s safe, and Swedish immigrant Nicolaus Gustafson, who was struck by gunfire and died several days later.
The James brothers, the older Frank and the more renowned Jesse, managed to escape. Cole, Bob and Jim Younger were captured in a shootout near Madelia, about 80 miles from Northfield, along with Charlie Pitts, who was killed. The three Youngers spent years in the state prison at Stillwater.
Frank later settled into a reportedly largely law-abiding life. When Cole was paroled about 25 years after the raid, the two briefly joined forces in a Wild West touring show and other ventures.
Jesse became a celebrated antihero in dime novels and, later, a sympathetic figure in movies and television shows. He was often cast as a genial Robin Hood type, although no evidence shows that he ever gave any of his bounty to the poor, as did the legendary denizen of Sherwood Forest. He was slain six years after the Northfield raid by Robert Ford, a fellow hanger-on seeking reward money and clemency for his own misdeeds.
The resurrection of the Jesse James saga in downtown Northfield, about 45 miles south of the Twin Cities, recalls several other high-profile robbery villains in these parts, as they supposedly said in the Old West.
Criminal Capers
The bungled Northfield robbery yielded only $26.70 in loose change.
The gang had considered banks in Minneapolis, Red Wing, St. Peter, St. Paul and several southern Minnesota communities. According to the Northfield History Center, its first choice was Mankato. The robbers abandoned that plan on September 4 and headed for their second choice, Northfield, much to their ultimate detriment.
Others found the Twin Cities more suitable for robbery and related hijinks. During the Depression, the region figured prominently in the exploits of some of the era’s most notorious gangsters. St. Paul, in particular, became a haven under its infamous “layover agreement.”
A fascinating account of those exploits appears in John Dillinger Slept Here, the 1995 book by St. Paul native and public-relations guru Paul Maccabee.
Bonnie and Clyde in Okabena?
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, later glamorized by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Hollywood, conducted most of their grimy business in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Popular lore also credits them with a 1933 bank robbery in Okabena, in southwestern Minnesota.
The historical record is considerably murkier. Tony, Mildred and Floyd Strain were arrested, convicted and imprisoned for the robbery. They maintained their innocence, while later historians revived the argument that the Barrow Gang committed the crime.
That unresolved dispute is examined in a detailed Minnesota History article. Either version lends a bit of outlaw luster to the hamlet of approximately 200 residents.
Dillinger and Baby Face
John Dillinger, the most celebrated holder of the “Public Enemy No. 1” designation, dallied around the Upper Midwest. In October 1933, a gang led by Lester Gillis, better known as “Baby Face” Nelson, robbed the First National Bank in Brainerd and escaped with about $30,000, leaving bullet holes in the building.
Dillinger and several cohorts also holed up in St. Paul from time to time. Criminals were allowed to stay under the so-called “layover agreement,” also known as the “O’Connor system” after St. Paul Police Chief John O’Connor. In exchange, they were expected to mind their own business and commit no crimes within the city.
Dillinger and several contemporaries underwent crude procedures intended to alter their appearances and fingerprints. Members of the Barker-Karpis gang did the same, submitting to the kind of backroom surgery later portrayed vividly in a number of criminal B movies.
Dillinger’s last stand began in St. Paul. While laying low at the Lincoln Court Apartments at 93–95 South Lexington Parkway, he escaped a March 31, 1934, raid by federal agents and local police. He fired a Thompson submachine gun down a third-floor hallway, fled through the rear of the building and escaped despite suffering a gunshot wound to his leg.
The end was nigh. On July 22, 1934, Bureau agents famously gunned him down outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater.
“Baby Face” Nelson, the cherubic-looking Lester Gillis, also spent time in St. Paul. He met the same fate later that year after a shootout with federal agents near Barrington, Illinois. Nelson died after the gun battle, which also killed two agents.
Karpis and the Barkers
Then there was the Barker-Karpis gang, led by the aforementioned Alvin “Creepy” Karpis. Known as one of the era’s more cerebral criminals, he orchestrated the Depression-era kidnappings of scions of two wealthy St. Paul families: brewery president William Hamm Jr. and banker Edward Bremer.
The FBI’s history of the Barker-Karpis gang recounts both kidnappings. Hamm was released after payment of more than $100,000. Bremer’s family paid $200,000.
Karpis operated with the considerably less cerebral Barker brothers, Arthur “Doc” Barker and Fred Barker. Their mother, Kate “Ma” Barker, occasionally shared quarters with members of the gang in the St. Paul area and at White Bear Lake. Ma and Fred eventually died together in a 1935 shootout with federal agents at a cottage near Lake Weir, Florida.
The era produced plenty of other violence. On December 16, 1932, four gunmen robbed the Third Northwestern National Bank at East Hennepin and Central avenues in Minneapolis. The robbers killed Minneapolis police officer Ira Evans at the scene and mortally wounded officer Leo Gorski, who died two days later. During their escape, the gunmen also mortally wounded Oscar Erickson, a young Christmas-wreath salesman who happened to drive past their getaway point.
Later accounts have sometimes associated that robbery with the Barker-Karpis gang. Contemporary identifications, arrests and convictions implicated another group of criminals, making the Barker-Karpis attribution doubtful.
Karpis was captured in New Orleans in 1936 and returned to St. Paul, where he pleaded guilty to the Hamm kidnapping and received a life sentence. He spent 26 years at Alcatraz and additional time in other federal prisons before his release in 1969. He later moved to Spain, where he died in 1979 at age 72.
Capone’s Supposed Safe House
Even the era’s most notorious criminal, Al Capone, supposedly spent time in the Twin Cities.
A house near Duluth Street and Highway 100 in Golden Valley has long been reputed to have served as one of his occasional safe houses. The building is still standing, but descendants of longtime residents have disputed the Capone connection and denied that he ever stayed there.
It is a mystery that even Geraldo Rivera cannot unseal.
Very interesting read. Thank you!