Traces the history of crime in St. Paul, Minnesota, from 1920 to 1936, describing specific incidents, profiling criminals, victims, and law enforcement officials, and looking at places where criminal activity occurred.

John Dillinger was one of the most famous and flamboyant celebrity outlaws, and this book illuminates the significnace of his tremendous fame and the endurance of his legacy of crime and violence, and the transformation of America during the Great Depression.

He outsmarted every lawman in the country and became the most celebrated bank robber and master escape artist of all time. He was a man of cleverness and originality. During his career, he participated in three gangs and was involved in a string of bank robberies across the country. He successfully escaped several police and FBI traps, broke out of two jails, raided three police stations and helped to mastermind the biggest escape ever from the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City.

Indiana State Police Captain Matt Leach led the hunt for John Dillinger during the violent early 1930s. Pushing a media campaign aimed at smoking out the fugitive, Leach elevated Dillinger to unprecedented notoriety. In return, Dillinger taunted him with phone calls and postcards, and vowed to kill him. Leach's use of publicity backfired, making him a pariah among his fellow policemen, and the FBI ordered his firing in 1937 for challenging their authority. This is the first full-length biography of the man.

A fresh, new look at gangs in every part of the world which deliberately avoids the stories that have been done to death - about Capone, Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde - and focuses on less well-known gangs such as 'Ma' Barker's Boys; the Smaldones of Denver; Scotland Yard's 1960s' Flying Squad, the so-called Firm within a Firm; Dr Death, the Melbourne drug dealer and Andre Stander, the former South African police officer who led a gang of bank robbers before being shot dead in Fort Lauderdale having fled a 17-year sentence.

In St. Paul, where they were outnumbered by Germans immigrants, they nonetheless left a lasting legacy, so that today most Minnesotans think of St. Paul as an Irish town. As farmers and laborers, policemen and politicians, maids and seamstresses, their hard work helped to build the state. Wherever they settled, the Irish founded churches and community organizations, became active in politics, and held St. Patrick's Day parades, inviting all Minnesotans to become a little bit Irish. Author Ann Regan examines the history of these surprising contradictions, telling the diverse stories of the Irish in Minnesota.

A page-turning crime tale based on a true story Notorious outlaws Alvin Karpis and Fred Barker meet the old-fashioned way: serving time in Kansas State Prison. After their release in 1931, the two reconnect and form the infamous Barker-Karpis Gang and begin a spree of robberies that leave a wake of terror in their path, including two dead cops. Now hunted in several states, the gang settles into hiding in St. Paul, Minnesota, where they thrive under the protection of a crooked police chief, who happily turns a blind eye to their activities — so long as they commit crimes outside of his jurisdiction. With increased security at banks, the Barker-Karpis Gang switches to kidnapping, catching the attention of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI and landing them at the top of the most-wanted list. How long can these wily men evade capture? Who can they trust? Where will they run when the entire country is hunting them, dead or alive?

In late January of 1934, as authorities delivered John Dillinger to an Indiana jail, the United States Justice Department announced, for the first time, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had just captured America’s Public Enemy No. 1. It was not Dillinger the Justice Department was referring to, but an affable railroader turned outlaw, Verne Sankey. Now Timothy W. Bjorkman has written the first full-length biography of this overlooked criminal, relating how a South Dakota family man became a bootlegger, a bank robber, and eventually, a kidnapper whose deeds heralded a nationwide crime spree. In the early days of Prohibition, Sankey, then a locomotive engineer, was drawn to the easy money he could make bootlegging. When crime syndicates monopolized the trade and Prohibition’s end was in sight, he turned to the occasional bank robbery and eventually to a ransom scheme. In tracing the life of Sankey—and his demure wife, Fern—Bjorkman depicts a good-natured man, friendly neighbor, and gentleman rumrunner catering to the banker and broker trade. He also explores Sankey’s motivations, his identification as America’s first Public Enemy, and his ultimate descent into oblivion. Verne Sankey: America’s First Public Enemy is a riveting narrative set amid the Great Depression. Bjorkman’s research painstakingly reveals the life of Verne Sankey and his times, delving into the intriguing story of the family of his kidnapping victim, Charles Boettcher II, and the stark contrast between wealth and poverty during some of America’s most harrowing days.

The untold story of the man who followed the money to bust Al Capone and clean up America's first great crime wave