His gun, hat, glasses and fake Frechette is known to have been involved with Dillinger for about six months, until her arrest and imprisonment in . Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton only knew him as "James Lawrence," who said he worked as clerk at the Commodities Exchange on LaSalle Street (no record of him there). She said she would be wearing an orange skirt and white blouse to make her easily identifiable. WATCH LIVE: White House holds press briefing after First Republic Bank seizure, If you want to beat transgender ideology, don't adopt its logic. When interviewing the curator of that cemetery years later, he told me: "Get that body out of there and examine it? theater by the FBI. Billie Frechette - Dillinger's Girl Wisconsinology Yes. She relocated to a government boarding school located in Flandreau, South Dakota that catered for Native Americans of which she attended for 3 years before relocating again. When Hoover took over the Bureau in 1924, replacing William Burns, the Bureau was a corrupt instrument of the Harding administration, with FBI agents like Gaston Bullock Means conducting widespread blackmail and extortion from a corner office in the Bureau and Hoover had a hell of a time getting rid of Means and others. Probably not, since the FBI (and no one else) has ever refuted the FACTS (far beyond my theory) I presented in several books about the shooting at the Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. The curator knew that the senior Dillinger was broke and had not even been able to pay for the $50 embalming fee of the dead man, but he suddenly had enough wealth to pay for a dozen workmen, trucks, steel, iron, and a concrete mixing truck. Her old friend from the East Chicago police department, Mark Zarkovich, made the connection to the federal agents on the case. ", While the autopsy was being conducted, James Henry "Blackie" Audett, a West Coast bank robber and one of the last Dillinger associates (who was paroled to my custody years later from a federal prison when terminally ill with cancer, and who gave me much background information no this case) went to a cabin in Aurora, Illinois and told a man waiting there: "Well, you're dead now, John. Frechette began a relationship with Dillinger in 1933 and was arrested in April of 1934 for hiding Dillinger in her St. Paul, Minn., apartment. He said, 'Tell Billie for me: Bye bye, Blackbird.'. . Dillinger had an agreement with fellow inmate Harry 'Pete' Pierpont to help prisoners escape after he was paroled in exchange for being in Pierpont's gang once they were out. Frechette continued to struggle in order to make ends meet, doing housework and waitressing to pay the bills. The producers of that film would have been better served if Moe Howard was still alive and had been cast in that role--he would have been far more entertaining! John had that "junior" put on as a way of a joke, that the man taking his place in that grave was a 'junior' his own." Evelyn Frechette ~ Early Years - Page 2 Let them have it!". Billie R. Davis, 56, of Bloomington, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Evansville Thursday on a charge of willfully causing injuries . In the wake of John Dillinger's death, The press is showing him standing up to the banks that they believe have failed the country. Some people speculated she did this to honor her father William Frechette who died in 1913 when she was 7 years old. In one letter Frechette sent Dillinger through O'Leary, she begged him not to try to rescue her, for fear he would be killed. Evelyn Frechette also used the name Evelyn Watson. Frechette was 26, Dillinger was 30. [4] Frechette assumed more marital roles with Dillinger than an accomplice. There was NOTHING haphazard or slipshod about that autopsy since the physicians had already told Purvis that the corpse was most likely not that of John Dillinger. Popular culture likes to play up the "eternal romance" between Dillinger and Frechette, but evidence shows that they. Paperback. Purvis, for the moment, not Hoover, was the hero of the hour-a very brief bitter hour, indeed. Evelyn "Billie" Frechette was born in 1907 in Neopit, Wisconsin, to a French father and a Native American mother. [citation needed] Spark was sentenced, with two others, on July 20, 1932, to a 15-year term at Leavenworth for three counts of robbery of postal substations in drug stores. Impossible. You go to the Biograph and if they show up there, you call me and wait until I get there and I will shoot him when he comes out of that theater." By driving the sheriff's car from Indiana to Illinois, he broke the newly created National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. Public Enemies Ending Explained: What Does Dillinger Say in the End? Here, Johnny Depp portrays the infamous Dillinger dated Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, who was of mixed French and Native American ancestry. eventually caught up with him. surgery to disguise his appearance before According to Melvin Purvis's obituaries, he shot himself through the jaw with a .45 caliber automatic pistol in the upstairs hallway of his Florence, South Carolina home on February 29, 1960. Hamilton fled to her workplace, and went drinking with a friend of hers. Purvis' FBI raid at Little Bohemia was a disaster. She returned to Wisconsin and died on January 13, 1969, in Shawano, Wisconsin. if ( 'querySelector' in document && 'addEventListener' in window ) { O n this day, Jan. 13, in 1969, Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, best known for her relationship with the bank robber John Dillinger in the early 1930s, died at age 61. They recorded the eyes of the dead man as brown (Dillinger's were blue or blue-gray); they found none of Dillinger's well documented scars and bullet wounds; they took out the heart and closely examined it and determined that the dead man had had a rheumatic heart condition since childhood and was terminal close to the time of his being shot to death (Dillinger could never have played semi-professional baseball--as second baseman for the Martinsville, Indiana, team--or ever leaped over the six-foot partition cages in banks as he was routinely seen to do in his many bank robberies, with such a heart condition); the body was shorter and heavier than that of Dillinger, that he was prone when shot and had been executed (as accurately described through the path of the bullets outlined by the pathologists) and many more discrepancies in a autopsy that disappeared from the Coroner's office the day it was filed. Evelyn Billie Frechette fell in love and lived with bank robber John Dillinger. Finally, watch a 1945 John Dillinger movie that offers a different perspective than the 2009 Johnny Depp Public Enemies movie. She worked as a nurse there, but work was hard to come by. Billie Frechette Biography, Life, Interesting Facts back in describing the graphic scene. Frechette was heartbroken and took her son's name of "Billie" as a nickname for herself. With few recourses, Evelyn, now Billie, Frechette began to run around with the lowest elements of society. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. They remained together until Frechette was arrested by Department of Investigation Special Agents on April 9, 1934. he shouted. With few recourses, Evelyn, now Billie, Frechette began to run around with the lowest elements of society. the G-Men. Chief Other people said she chose the name "Billie" after hearing of her son's untimely death. "Is that your money or the bank's," he asked the farmer. Dillinger and Frechette reunited in Chicago after Dillinger escaped from prison in Crown Point, Indiana. committing his final bank robbery. Facing Fear: The True Story of Evelyn Frechette - amazon.com before being shot dead outside of the The 90s saw Sherilyn Fenn in the role, and in Johnny Depps 2008 film DILLINGER, she was played by French actress, Marion Cotillard. Walter Spark and his co-defendant, Arthur Cherrington, both married the same day, Cherrington to Patricia Young. Upon her release in 1936, Frechette toured in a theatrical show calledCrime Doesn't Paywith members of Dillinger's family. The real John Dillinger did smuggle guns to the inmates but was not present during the escape. Clark died a short time later. Purvis walked to a car in which she was sitting (directed to that car by Zarkovich) and there she told him that she thought that the man seeing her girl, Polly, was Dillinger. Although she later claimed that she had nothing to do with Sage's plan, the D.O.I. Captain Matthew Leach headed the Indiana State Police during the Dillinger gang's heyday. Frechette served two years in federal prison for harboring hercriminal lover. There was, of course, a very good reason to give Purvis this story. ", "Oh, no," I replied, "other than arranging a conspiracy and executing an innocent man, not a bit.". Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. John Dillinger : If you were looking at what I'm looking . Sheriff Lillian Holley being overly Evelyn "Billie" Frechette (1907-1969) | American Experience | PBS He pressured Melvin Purvis, chief of his Chicago office every day to "get Dillinger and get him quick!" A man who had been working the night shift The FBI believes that Ms. Frechette said this to get sympathy during her trial. [2] A riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement. Evelyn Frechette - Wikipedia He was on the spot. Yes. You have to blast it out of there with dynamite and what would be left would not fill up a small cookie jar.". . When they passed him, the women saw Zarkovich and dropped back. When the car was found in Chicago, Dillinger was indicted for the Federal offense and the FBI began its manhunt, which ultimately led to Dillinger's death. After Dillinger's death, she sold her story toTrue Confessions,True Romance, and theChicago Herald and Examiner. Every time the publicity conscious FDR read another story about Dillinger-and that was almost every day-he called Hoover, asking: "What are you doing about this man?". Facing Fear depicts the true story of Evelyn (Billie) Frechette, the beloved companion of John Dillinger. Cherrington later said that he started "crying like a baby.". -PBS. the early 1930s, tried to alter his var googletag = googletag || {}; After her release, she wrote a booklet about her experience. Watch all three parts of a Dillinger documentary that explores the gangster's rise to and tragic fall from his status as Public Enemy Number One. Dillinger reluctantly gave up his intention only after Piquett threatened to leave him if he killed anyone. Frechette served two years in federal prison, and was released in 1936. Suicide tends to be the more popular theory since his former FBI boss, J. Edgar Hoover, had ostracized Purvis within the agency due to his jealousy. Dillinger watched from a few blocks away as authorities took her away and even attempted a rescue mission but dismissed the idea after much evaluation. [3] She was arrested on April 9, 1934 for allowing him to hide in her St. Paul, Minnesota, apartment and for obstruction of justice. A former employee of Anna Sage, Hamilton was working as a waitress and prostitute. In the next year, Billie played the role of lover and companion to America's #1 gangster. That way his revenge for the death of his friend would be satisfied. Three days later, Sage called Purvis to tell him that Dillinger had invited her and Hamilton to the movies that evening. -FBI.gov, Yes. He could not, this dead man, bring himself to remain dead, however, and he began sending letters and his picture to several persons many years later, pointing out that the "wrong man" had been "shot outside the Biograph theater," and it was one of those letters that fell into my hands and initiated my many years of research into the case and producing two full books on the subject. An innocent man had been killed and two other innocent men badly wounded by a bunch of trigger-happy FBI agents led by one of the most irresponsible men in FBI history, who had been pressured into his rash actions by his boss, Hoover. Public Enemies True Story: What Johnny Depp's Dillinger Movie Changes Sage complained that Purvis had promised to stop her deportation proceedings. The man in the UnlikeBonnie Parker, who wasClyde Barrow'sactive accomplice, Frechette gave Dillinger minimal assistance. She lived on the Menominee Reservation in Keshena, Wisconsin until she was 13. Evelyn Frechette took on the nickname "Billie" in her late twenties. One of them-it may have been the impetuous and sleepless Purvis-shouted: "They are getting away! On October 12, 1933, former inmates Harry 'Pete' Pierpont, Russell Clark and Charles Makley posed as police officers and walked into the Ohio jail. She lived on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin until the age of 13. Facing Fear: The True Story of Evelyn Frechette|Paperback American Experience | Public Enemy #1 | People & Events - PBS Yes. That was Hoover's invention. "[2] Frechette returned to the Menominee Reservation, where she had two subsequent marriages. They were piercing and electric, yet there was an amused carefree twinkle in them too. Window on the World. var googletag = googletag || {}; He totally controlled the public mouth and words of the FBI. The photo below displays an image of the real Billie Frechette and actress Marion Cotillard. We learn that the notorious one reporter said. Frechette eventually settled down on the Indian reservation where she was born. Customers would line up to watch him knock over the targets." Before his death, Dillinger frequently met with his lawyers about Frechette's appeal, even though he was already dating Polly Hamilton. At the age of 18, she moved to Chicago to be closer to her sister. Growing up, Frechette struggled to make ends meet hence she worked multiple jobs at a time such as waitressing and housekeeping. (This documented event was later wrongly attributed to those two snakes Bonnie and Clyde, and appears in that 1968 movie about them and which you, Roger, became one of its first champions). Dillinger drove around the block several times before Pat Cherrington, the girlfriend of Dillinger gang member John Hamilton, convinced him that he would be killed if he tried to rescue Frechette. Parents: William Frechette and Mary LaBelle William Frechette was born September 23, 1887 in Marinette, Wisconsin and died in April 4,1916. He simply walked up behind the man, pushed him down to the cement and fired two bullets into the back of his head (proved by the autopsy), murdering him at close range, then walked away and Purvis and his agents rushed to the scene. Sage said she would call him at the first opportunity. In November of that year, she met John Dillinger at a dance hall. "Why there?" Frechette remained in the city with her friend Pat Cherrington, and together they frequented the many Speakeasies in the Chicago area. Will there never be an end to this? Mary Evelyn "Billie" Frechette (September 15, 1907 January 13, 1969) was an American Menominee singer, waitress, convict, and lecturer known for her personal relationship with the bank robber John Dillinger in the early 1930s. -LittleBohemiaLodge.com, Yes. A John Dillinger Her celebrity did not come from being a film actress or anything of that sort. He does. In addition to being a historian and educator, Gary R. Entz serves on WXPR's Board of Directors and writes WXPR's A Northwoods Moment in History which is heard Wednesdays on WXPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Evelyn Frechette and "Walter Sparks" (Welton Walter Spark) married on August 2, 1932 in Chicago. In 1926, four Chicago gangsters fled to the Northwoods.Just ahead, Gary Entz tells us exactly what transpired as part of our continued series, A, During the summer of 1958, Rock and Roll pioneers Buddy Holly and the Crickets toured the Upper Midwest as part of the Summer Dance Party tour. trailer for the 1934 film starring actors Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Primary Sources: 'What I Knew About John Dillinger' By His Sweetheart", "American Experience | Public Enemy No. No. The Unloved, Part 113: The Sheltering Sky, Fatal Attraction Works As Entertainment, Fails as Social Commentary, Prime Videos Citadel Traps Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden in Played-Out Spy Game, New York Philharmonic and Steven Spielberg Celebrate the Music of John Williams. Early Life And Background Born on September 15, 1907, in Neopit, Wisconsin as Mary Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, her father was a French man who died when she was 8, while her mother came from the Native American lineage. "Should we try southern California?" She served her term behind bars in Milan, Michigan at the Federal Correctional Farm for 2 years before being released in 1936. [2] On 24 April 1928, Billie gave birth to her only child, William Edward Frechette, while residing in an unwed mother's home in Chicago. Dillinger found Frechette fascinating, and as part of a marginalized and often discriminated part of society, Frechette found Dillingers attentions captivating. Dillinger wanted to attack the lawmen and rescue her, but accepted the argument that he would die in the attempt. John 'Red' Hamilton, John Dillinger and Homer Van Meter escaped out a back door and headed north along the lake to Route 51 where they held up a local man and had him drive them away. It is not so strange then, with his career on the line, that Purvis did what he did. Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! some great footage as it explores the life Frechette was unable to complete divorce proceedings before her imprisonment and Dillinger's subsequent death. John Dillinger, scholar of crime: The Michael Mann transcript The prisoners successfully escaped that day while Dillinger was sitting in a Lima, Ohio jail after being arrested while visiting his girlfriend. A few days after the body of the man shot at the Biograph Theater was buried at a cemetery in Indianapolis in the Dillinger plot, Dillinger's father, John Wilson Dillinger appeared at the cemetery with several trucks, including a concrete truck and many workmen, telling the curator that he was worried that the body of his famous son might be stolen by ghouls or souvenir hunters. She told Purvis that they would be going to the movies soon and she would call him at his office to let him know which theater they would attend. Unfortunately, American society at the time was still deeply racist and unwilling to accept Native Americans into the majority culture. Of course, in my books, I pointed out many of those discrepancies--which were supported in the autopsy conducted by TWO top pathologists before a student class of more than twenty persons, with a recording nurse in attendance, documenting the statements of each physician, the first making an initial examination, the second checking what the first identified and reaffirming it to the recording nurse. Public Enemies Movie vs. Real John Dillinger, Melvin Purvis, Billie Frechette moved in with Dillinger and was with him when his gang went on their famous bank-robbing spree. Purvis promised to do all he could to stop her deportation proceedings, but said he could not give any guarantees. The goal of both mission and boarding schools was to use education as a tool to assimilate the First Nations. With twenty some agents, recently authorized to carry weapons and make arrests without local authority, Purvis and his men spread out in front of Little Bohemia Lodge, which has considerable frontage (I know, have been there several times), and slowly advanced in the darkness toward the place, where lights were showing on the ground floor. Billie Frechette Biography When she was 18, Frechette moved to Chicago, where she worked as a nursemaid and waitress. criminal whose law breaking ways ", That same year, while at a dance hall, Billie Frechette met bank robber John Dillinger. I said. He holds nothing The two lovers were reunited in Chicago after Dillinger's escape from Crown Point, Indiana an escape which she may have facilitated by smuggling money and maps into the jail during a jailhouse visit with Louis Piquett. Meanwhile, Hoover was waiting for Purvis' report and it did not come. Why he gave me the name Puente, California, I do not know, but I went there and met a man who talked to me while we both stood in a dark room. "You just shot three of our boys-they're CCC workers-and you killed Gene Boiseneau!". grow up on opposite sides of the law. He looked after me and bought me all kinds of jewelry and cars and pets, and we went places and saw things, and he gave me everything a girl wants. "He looked after me and bought me all kinds of jewelry and cars and pets, and we went places and saw things, and he gave me everything a girl wants. In 1932 she married Welton Spark, a career criminal who was sent to Leavenworth Penitentiary immediately after the wedding. -PBS, Yes. She married and returned to the Menominee Indian Reservation, where she was born, for a quieter life in her later decades. He burned up the phone wires to Chicago in trying to reach his agent in charge. Watch this trailer for the 1945 movie Zarkovich waited down the street in a darkened store entrance. Dillinger's mother died when he was three and he was seeking maternal affection and everything that a man gets from a woman, and his only mode of courtship was caring; was . She later opened brothels in Gary, Indiana, and Chicago. According to the book John Dillinger Slept Here by Paul Maccabee, the manager reported the couple as being suspicious after they insisted on using the rear entrance and stayed in most of the time. Yes. The gang's three women, Helen Gillis (Baby Face's wife), Jean Delaney (Tommy Carroll's wife) and Marie Comforti (Homer Van Meter's girlfriend), were taken into custody without additional incident. She returned to Wisconsin and died on January 13, 1969, in Shawano, Wisconsin. I obtained a copy of that autopsy through one of the pathologists that conducted it years later--he kept copies of that particular autopsy where he held on to none of the many thousands of others he conducted, knowing, as he said to me, that "I knew somebody would come along some day to dig into this story. morgue photo is shown towards the end of I put my ear next to his mouth, and what I think he said was this. Hoover personally announced or personally approved of all press announcements on all cases. Depp did not name the source behind these details. Two badly wounded men fell out. Zarkovich told Purvis that Sage told him that one of her girls, Polly Hamilton (no relationship to John Hamilton, one of Dillinger's bank robbing associates) was seeing a man she thought was Dillinger. There was no junior. Crime History: John Dillinger's girlfriend dies - Washington Examiner childhood and his evolution into a life of She said, "There was something in those eyes that I will never forget. John Dillinger documentary focuses in part They met my eyes and held me hypnotized for an instant." After four years in a boarding School for Indian children, she moved to Chicago and during the onset of the great depression fell in with petty criminals. He cheated and lied to build that FBI reputation, such as creating out of whole cloth the image and actual words of the "G-Man"; for instance, he issued a statement and reiterated that statement later on in an article for the American Legion magazine that FBI agents captured George "Machine Gun" Kelly in a rooming house and when they burst through the door of his room, Kelly, according to Hoover, stood quaking in his underwear, pleading: "Don't shoot, G-Men, don't shoot!" Frechette served two years in federal prison, and was released in 1936. -FBI.gov. Hamilton wrote that Dillinger was generous and considerate; "he never liked to hurt anyone's feelings." Sage, the legendary "Woman in Red," was actually wearing an orange skirt and white blouse. movie is best known for being the film In one letter Frechette sent Dillinger, she begged him not to try to rescue her, for fear he would be identified and killed. The ending of Public Enemies might not be as surreal as the ending of some other movies, but we have decided to explain what actually happened in the end of the movie. ", Dillinger, according to Audett, refused to leave right away for the West Coast.
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