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30 JUNE 1934 · MICHIGAN AND WAYNE STREETS
On 30 June 1934 four members of the Dillinger gang robbed the Merchants National Bank in downtown South Bend, taking $29,890. Patrolman Howard C. Wagner was directing traffic at Wayne and Michigan streets when he heard gunshots in the vicinity of the bank and went to investigate. As he approached, three men came out of the bank they had just robbed, and the gang's lookout — alleged, in the memorial record, to have been Homer Van Meter — shot him. Wagner was taken to Epworth Hospital, where he died. The gang's getaway car was found abandoned later that day near Goodland. The robbery itself is told in this history's Bank Robberies record; the murder belongs here.
No court ever sat on Wagner's killing. The disposition of the case is the gang's own end, which came within five months: John Dillinger was killed by federal agents in Chicago on 22 July 1934, three weeks after the robbery; Van Meter was shot and killed by police in St. Paul, Minnesota, on 23 August 1934; and Lester Gillis, “Baby Face” Nelson, was killed by federal agents at Barrington, Illinois, on 27 November 1934, in the gunbattle that also killed two federal officers. The South Bend job stands in the gang's record as its last bank robbery, and Patrolman Wagner — survived by his parents, four sisters and three brothers — as the officer whose murder no jury was ever asked to judge.
Sources:
- Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial, fallen-officer record for Patrolman Howard C. Wagner (incident of 30 June 1934)