ROBBER SHOOTS WAY OUT

Taranaki Daily News, 2 April 1934, Page 5

ROBBER SHOOTS WAY OUT

DILLINGER ESCAPES POLICE FOUND IN ST. PAUL’S HIDEOUT . ... '’-v . MONTH’S HUNT FRUITLESS MOST NOTORIOUS GANGSTER

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Rec. 6 p.m. New York; March 31. Police Federal agents who for a month ' have been searching for John Dillinger, the notorious gangster who escaped from prison, thought they had • trapped him to-day in a hide-out at St. Paul’s Minnesota, but the desperate gangster, with two companions, one a "woman, fought a way through the police .with machineguns and escaped in an automobile. Bloodstains indicated that one of the trio was wounded.

By some miracle there were no casualties among the officers, although many shots were exchanged. Dillinger, America’s most notorious bank robber and murderer, walked out of the heavily guarded and supposedly escape-proof Lake County gaol in a daring bid for liberty rivalling the exploits of the Wild West heroes, said a cable sent from New York on March 2. He cowed his guards with a two-ounce piece of wood, which he had whittled down to resemble a pistol and stained with shoe blacking, and with a negro convicted of murder helped himself- to two of the gaol’s machine-guns. He commandeered the sheriff’s automobile, taking the deputy-sheriff as hostage. He later released the deputy and escaped. ; Mrs. Lillian Holley, sheriff and warden, became hysterical, but . after giving the alarm to police officials at Chicago she resolutely placed herself at the head of the search and declared: “If ever I see Dillinger I will shoot him dead with my own pistol.”