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THE DATED-CORNER TEST, NEGATIVE
The test: South Bend's fame file holds a dated crime corner — one address, one morning in 1934, where a nationally famous crime touched the ground. The checklist this chapter executes requires the same test here, and it is run at full strength: is there a Mishawaka address where a crime of national fame is fixed by date and place? The crime record of this history, built on court, press and official record only, returns the negative in both its halves. The bank-robbery tradition the compilations imply does not exist — the stories-told record prints the test plainly: no home-grown serial killer and no documented bank-robbery tradition stand in Mishawaka's record. The city's one execution-connected offense, the Matheney case, is Mishawaka's by the crime record's own boundary ruling, but it is a case in a file, not a corner in a city's fame — no address in Mishawaka draws a visitor for a crime.
The print:Mishawaka's notoriety is industrial and legendary, not criminal: the addresses the outside world attaches to this city are a plant gate, a park that was a factory, a soldier's grave, a fictional princess's boulder and a brewer's haunted house. The Dillinger morning of 30 June 1934 at the Merchants National Bank belongs to South Bend's record, three miles west, and is boundary-printed there — claimed in that city's file, at that city's address, and not borrowed here.
Sources:
- The crime record of this history — the city's crime history from court, press and official record: the Matheney boundary ruling and the absence of a bank-robbery tradition.
- The stories-told record of this history — the claims record: the serial-killer and bank-robbery tests, both negative.
- The South Bend record — the Dillinger corner at 229 South Michigan, 30 June 1934, boundary-printed as that city's.