The last of three love stories At my last writing I asked if Brahm’s ever got married and you can guess what the answer is. He was so devoted to his work that he would not have been able to concentrate on a family. Paul talks about this concept in the Bible, but it is rare, as families are the backbone of a society.
There was a young boy in a small town in Indiana, Mooresville, that everyone liked. He was a model citizen, would not even take a pencil from a fellow student. Everyone liked him. He played piano, and excelled at sports. In baseball everyone said he was Major League material.
He had never gotten into a fight. When he was out of high school he took a job in a machine shop where he was a hard worker, quite industrious, and everyone liked him. I wish that was the end of the story, but something happened that changed the course of his life forever.
John fell in love. Her name was Francis Thornton, she was the stepdaughter of his uncle Everett. She was quite pretty, 17, and John was 20. Things went so well that John decided to ask his uncle for Francis’s hand in marriage. Everett said no, there was a nice boy in Greencastle that he had chosen to be Francis’s husband. He forbade John to call on Francis again. John was crushed. Francis simply said she had to abide by Everett’s decision.
John fled to the big city, Indianapolis, stole a car, and began visiting prostitutes. The boy that had been a hometown star, now became public enemy number one, John Dillinger. John was born in 1903, one year before my father. He became one of the most notorious criminals of all times. I remember Whitey Heller, my high school coach saying that he actually saw John Dillinger. He lived at Reynolds, Indiana, and John announced that he was coming through town at 10:00 on Saturday morning, in his Duesenberg. Exactly at 10:00 a.m. his entourage came roaring through town in their Duesenberg, traveling at high speed. Everyone gathered to watch the spectacle.
In Goshen, on a street corner in front of the courthouse is a brick building perhaps 15 ft in diameter that has small slits for looking out. That was built to protect the cops when John came through town. In 1923 he joined the Navy but deserted when it docked in Boston. Shortly after he married a lady by the name of Beryl Covius. On Sept 10, 1926, he and his gang, robbed the West End grocery, severely beating the 65-year-old owner.
He was caught and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, of which he served 9 and 1/2 years in Michigan City. Prison was just like college to him, for he and others planned robberies that they would do when they got out.
The way John met his demise reads like a movie script. I wonder if I don’t get on a path that is leading to destruction, and can’t get off. These criminals had to know what the final result would be. John’s girlfriend, who had met him in a bar, didn’t know who he was at first. Later she plotted with police on how to trap him. Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton were going to a movie that afternoon with John. Anna would be wearing red.
When they came out of the movie that day the police confronted him and he ran down an alley. He was shot four times. An interesting tidbit. Anna Sage had made a deal with Chicago Police, but Federal Marshals did not honor this deal, and she was sent back to Romania. Anna said of John, she never heard him swear, and he seldom drunk alcohol, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
—James Neuhouser
