The Merchants National Bank · the last Dillinger robbery

Saturday, June 30, 1934

The bank: the Merchants' National Bank of South Bend, OCC Charter No. 6334, organized 1902 by the DeRhodes brothers, stood at 229 South Michigan Street, at the corner of Wayne, in the bank building the family had erected for it — one of the three downtown institutions that had come through the Depression unreorganized. Its institutional life is told in the Banks section. What happened in it on the last Saturday of June 1934 is told here.

The robbery: it was late Saturday morning, about 11:30, the busiest hour of the downtown week. In the local historical account compiled from the record of the day, five men came out of the gang's sedan at Michigan and Wayne: one stood watch at the corner, one two doors north of the bank, and three went in, John Dillinger among them, into a banking room holding some twenty-five customers. Dillinger fired a burst from his machine gun into the ceiling. Outside, the street filled. Patrolman Howard C. Wagner, 29, who had been directing traffic at Wayne and Michigan, walked toward the commotion in front of the bank and was shot and killed before he could draw his weapon — the Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial's record names the lookout, allegedly Homer Van Meter, as the man who shot him, as the robbers came out; Van Meter was himself grazed in the head in the firing and recovered. Across the street, jeweler Harry Berg came out of his shop with a gun and fired on Baby Face Nelson, hitting him in the chest; Nelson's bulletproof vest stopped the shot, and Berg got back inside under Nelson's return fire. A man in a parked car was wounded. A teenage boy, Joseph Pawlowski, tackled Nelson in the street and was thrown off. The men from inside came out behind hostages, bank officer Delos Coen brought out in front of Dillinger as a shield, and the gang fired into the crowd as it reached its car; Coen was among the several people wounded. The car was found later that day, blood-spattered, abandoned near Goodland, Indiana, some hundred miles away. The gang was gone to Chicago.

The take, printed whole: the Associated Press report of June 30, 1934 — the figure the Banks record carries — puts the take at $28,439. Michael Newton's Encyclopedia of Robberies, Heists, and Capers, compiling the case for reference, puts it at $29,890. Many later accounts round it to $28,000. The three figures stand here as they stand in their sources; the file does not average them.

The cost and the disposition: Patrolman Wagner was carried to Epworth Hospital, where he died. He was survived by his parents, four sisters and three brothers, and he stands in the city's own fallen-officers record, named in the Common Council's Resolution 3852-08 of 2008. No one was ever arrested or tried for the South Bend robbery. The three men the FBI names as its robbers were all dead within five months, killed in other confrontations in other places: Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago on July 22, 1934, twenty-two days after South Bend; Van Meter by St. Paul police on August 23, 1934; Nelson on November 27, 1934, at Barrington, Illinois, in the gunfight that also killed FBI Inspector Samuel P. Cowley and Special Agent Herman E. Hollis. The South Bend case closed the way the gang itself closed, without a courtroom.

Sources:

1. Federal Bureau of Investigation, published case summary, "Baby Face" Nelson — the participants and the officer's killing (quoted in the test entry above).
2. Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial, officer record for Patrolman Howard C. Wagner, South Bend Police Department, end of watch Saturday, June 30, 1934 — shot as the suspects fled; the lookout "allegedly Homer Van Meter"; four members of the Dillinger gang; the gang's last bank robbery; the car found near Goodland; Epworth Hospital; survivors.
3. Associated Press report, June 30, 1934 — the take, $28,439 (as cited in the Banks record).
4. Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society, South Bend pages, "Merchants National Bank" — the local historical account: 11:30 a.m.; five men, two lookouts, three entering; about twenty-five customers; Wagner directing traffic; Delos Coen brought out as a shield and wounded; the blood-spattered car at Goodland; $28,439.
5. Michael Newton, Encyclopedia of Robberies, Heists, and Capers (2002) — the take compiled as $29,890; Van Meter's head wound.
6. City of South Bend, Common Council Resolution 3852-08 (2008) — the city's fallen-officers record, naming Patrolman Wagner.