The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Dillinger gang member — a name in the criminal record
On the record
Homer Van Meter was born in Fort Wayne on December 3, 1905 — some family and cemetery records give 1906 — the son of a railroad conductor. In 1925 he was sentenced to the Indiana Reformatory for robbing train passengers at Crown Point, and there he fell in with John Dillinger. Paroled on May 19, 1933, he became one of the Dillinger gang's leading members, taking part in the gang's 1934 robberies at Sioux Falls and Mason City and standing lookout at the June 1934 robbery of a South Bend bank in which a police officer, Howard Wagner, was killed. St. Paul police shot Van Meter dead on August 23, 1934, a month after Dillinger's own death. He is buried in Lindenwood Cemetery. He stands in this section because the record stands there: fame, in his case, is infamy, and the entry is kept plain.
Find them on this page
- § 06 — people of the record · famous-people supplement
Sources: Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana (people of Allen County; "Infamous Burials"); Visit Saint Paul (gangster-era history).