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June 30, 1934 — unresolved
The count itself is unsettled: the FBI's published summary names three participants — Nelson, Dillinger, Van Meter. The Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial's record says the robbery "was being committed by four members of the Dillinger Gang." The local account describes five men stepping out of the car, two of them posted as lookouts on Michigan Street. The file prints all three counts as they stand; the discrepancy is in the record, not in this telling of it.
The suggestions: the unnamed man has been identified in print, at times, as Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd — on eyewitness identifications and on a later account by an associate of Floyd's — and at other times as John Paul Chase, Nelson's associate, or as the gang hanger-on called Fatso Negri. None of the three identifications was ever confirmed, and the fullest statement the record supports is the one the Nelson literature itself makes: South Bend was the last confirmed robbery for all of the known and suspected participants, Floyd's presence among the suspected remaining unconfirmed. The fourth man's name is a gap in the record, and it is printed as one.
Sources:
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, published case summary, "Baby Face" Nelson — three participants named.
- Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial, Wagner record — "four members of the Dillinger Gang."
- Homer Van Meter biographical record, compiled from Michael Newton, Encyclopedia of Robberies, Heists, and Capers (2002), and John Neal Phillips / Girardin literature — "an unidentified fourth man… has been suggested at times to be Pretty Boy Floyd, Johnny Chase, or Fatso Negri"; "the last confirmed raid for all of the confirmed and suspected participants."
- Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society, South Bend pages — five men arriving, two posted as lookouts.