[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.” Given the whitepress’s attention to “the negro Youngblood,” the Defender’s declaration that the “social commingling between Mr.Youngblood and Mr.Dillinger may ultimately be the undoing of them both” seemed notentirely unreasonable.Certainly, the Defender observed, Dillinger’s taking Youngblood along got African Americans’ attention.The paperconcluded on an ironic note, pointing out that Youngblood added tothe list of Negro accomplishments.Blacks were rising in industry, thearts, science, technology, and athletics; it was only fitting that they should make their mark in jailbreaks too.50How did Dillinger really do it? According to his father, asrecorded by reporter John Cejnar, Johnnie said of the wooden pistolduring a family visit in April, “I carved it out of the top brace offa washboard.I used a safety razor blade.It was slow work76 | Dillinger’sWildRideand I raised several blisters before I got it done.” Dillinger explained that as soon as he got to Crown Point he realized that his only wayout was to gull his captors.He simply charmed everyone, convinc-ing officials that he was a good guy: “I fed them a lot of soft talk and tried to make them think I wasn’t half as smart as they were, and didthey fall for it.” His words ring true with what we know of the man.Especially as he grew famous, Dillinger’s smiling good looks and easymanner gave him tremendous charisma, and he knew how to turn iton: “I played the good fellow with all the guards at the jail.I jokedand wisecracked with them.I patted them on the back and told themwhat fine fellows they were.I volunteered for all the distasteful oddjobs that had to be done.All jailers like soft talk.It puffs them up.The Crown Point jailers were no exception.” He said that carryingthe “slop jars” of human waste every day made it impossible for theguards to see him as a celebrity or a “public enemy.” Then, whenhe pulled his wooden gun, the guards were most vulnerable: “I’mtelling you that once I changed from a docile prisoner into a suppos-edly armed desperado, they were all like sheep.” Dillinger added thathe had read the newspaper coverage of the Crown Point escape andthat Will Rogers’s observation tickled him most: “You can’t blamethat woman sheriff so much after all because she thought she wasdepending on MEN!” 51Dillinger no doubt worked his captors, but this was only part ofthe story.What happened at Crown Point was considerably morecomplex, though the facts remain murky.Almost immediately afterthe breakout Sam Cahoon and Ernest Blunk came under suspicion.One of them may have passed Dillinger the wooden gun and, moreimportant, provided the intelligence he needed—the jail’s floorplan, the location of weapons, the numbers of guards, where theycongregated—to make his getaway.Newspapers quickly raised suspi-cions that Cahoon and Blunk were too obliging while Dillinger madehis escape, and Blunk invited more scrutiny by changing his story,first claiming that Dillinger had only a wooden gun, then declaringit was a real one (the weight of the evidence from interviews theFBI conducted later strongly suggests that it was fake).They werequestioned repeatedly, but nothing ever came of it.Suspicions fellalso on Judge William Murray, who had refused to send Dillinger toMichigan City for safekeeping, and on Edward Saager for being toocooperative with the desperado.52“John Dillinger, Houdini of the Outlaws” | 77Another source of information on Crown Point was Dillinger’sattorney.Lawyers for big-time criminals in this era were minor celeb-rities, if also looked on as a bit shady, Chicago lawyers most of all.Dillinger hired himself one of the flashiest.Louis Piquett arrived inChicago in 1908, already married and in his twenties
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
