Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Tuesday is the 70th anniversary of John Dillinger's night-time raid of Warsaw city hall, where police department guns were stored.
The desperado, who had escaped the "inescapable" Lake County Jail in Crown Point in January, waylaid night patrol officer Judd Pittenger at around 1:15 a.m. April 13 as the local man walked his beat.
Although newspaper accounts differ slightly, Dillinger reportedly accosted Pittenger with a submachine gun in front of the Warsaw Candy Kitchen on Center Street (now Le Gourmet Chocolate Shoppe), according to the April 13, 1934, limited edition of the Warsaw Union.
Pittenger instinctively grabbed the barrel and held it up. Then Homer Van Meter, Dillinger's companion, came up behind Pittenger with another submachine gun and asked the officer if he wanted to die.
Pittenger was relieved of his service .38, and with his own weapon was whacked on the head three times.
The bandits paraded Pittenger to the Warsaw Police Department. At the time, the WPD was above the fire station at the current entrance of Key Bank's drive-through entrance on Center Street.
The two men were after weapons, and Pittenger was forced to let them in with his key to city hall. He was forced upstairs at gunpoint, leading the bandits to the glass-fronted gun cabinet.
Dillinger and Van Meter removed two Smith and Wesson .38-caliber pistols and three "bulletproof" vests.
"Officer Pittenger made his escape while the two bandits were robbing the police station," according to the Times' report, "fled down the stairs, falling most of its length, and dodged into an alley back of the Centennial Theatre just in time to get out of the range of the machine guns flourished by the two desperadoes as they followed him."
City fireman Mike Hodges also witnessed the robbery and the three getaway cars parked on Indiana Street.
Hodges had night duty at the fire station and all the commotion upstairs woke him up.
In the meantime, Pittenger alerted nearby city and town authorities and the state police.
Newspaper writers and photographers from surrounding cities began arriving as early as 3:30 a.m. to report the sensational event.
John Dillinger began his life of crime by beating a Mooresville grocer Sept. 6, 1924. He was apprehended, held in prison and sentenced to 10 to 20 years at Pendleton state prison. He was in jail nine years.
Paroled May 22, 1933, he seemed to be determined to make up for lost time.
By the time Van Meter beat up Judd Pittenger and he and Dillinger robbed city hall, Dillinger had robbed a number of Midwest banks, was an accomplice to the murder of Ohio Sheriff Jess Sarber and was accused of killing police officer Patrick O'Malley in East Chicago.
After the murder of O'Malley, Dillinger and his associates fled to Florida and decided on a move to Tuscon, Ariz.
Dillinger was apprehended in Arizona Jan. 25, 1934, and sent to the Lake County Jail in Crown Point to stand trial for the murder of O'Malley.
On March 3, 1934, John Dillinger walked out of the Crown Point jail by threatening the jailers with a wooden gun.
With new associate Lester Gillis (Baby Face Nelson) and old friends John Hamilton and Homer Van Meter, Dillinger and company terrorized towns in Iowa, robbing banks and escaping under heavy gunfire.
By the time Dillinger reached Kosciusko County, he was recovering from gunshot wounds to the shoulder and to the leg.
He was the FBI's Public Enemy No. 1.
Pittenger retired from the WPD in 1947. He died at age 89 on Feb. 12, 1976.
The Times-Union edition of Feb. 13, 1976, said Pittenger served the police department for 30 years. He would have been 47 years old when Dillinger held him up on Center Street.
WPD Sgt. Larry Engle collects Dillinger memorabilia over the years.
It's a paper chase, Engle said. There aren't a lot of items associated with Dillinger, but plenty of newspaper articles, wanted posters and photographs.
The WPD is in possession of Pittenger's hat, uniform and badge.
In his office at the East Fort Wayne Street police department, Engle has an original wanted poster of Dillinger, complete with photographs and fingerprints; a scale model of the 1934 Ford coupe Dillinger used as a getaway car; and original copies of the Call Bulletin newspaper of San Francisco, Calif., and New York Times' accounts of Dillinger's appearance in Warsaw.
Based on his research, Engle has some theories about Dillinger's escape from the Crown Point jail.
"They [the jailers] may have just liked the guy. They posed for pictures with their arms around him," Engle said. "In bank robbery business, he was known to be pretty polite."
Dillinger was considered a dandy and a gentleman and, in many ways, a hero for robbing the Depression-era banks responsible for so many foreclosures of the time. He gave his money to children's charities.
Relieving the current police department of its weapons would take a more calculated effort today. The guns and ammunition are in the bowels of the brick building, in a cement block room with a steel door, and only four officers have keys to the cabinets, according to Police Chief Steve Foster.
Engle also has an original Wisconsin newspaper promotional poster of Pittenger standing next to the glass-fronted gun cabinet.
The three bulletproof vests were made locally by tailor Ferdinand Laurien. Laurien's grandson, Jerry Laurien, is a retired Warsaw policeman who said the vests were made of a steel plate stitched into a cloth pouch.
"My dad (Phillip) went with Grandpa to Chicago to identify the vests," Laurien said. Ferdinand Laurien worked at Phillipson's for many years and out of his home in Winona Lake.
Engle likes to tell of Dillinger's correspondence with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, advising Hoover that Baby Face Nelson should be apprehended.
He also wrote Henry Ford, complimenting him on the manufacture of the 1934 model, saying it was the best car he ever drove.
Dillinger was gunned down by FBI agents outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago on July 22, 1934, after seeing a movie.
The Old Jail Museum in Warsaw has a small display dedicated to the Dillinger incident. There is a picture of Pittenger, a .32-caliber Colt automatic pistol reported to have been used by Dillinger during a South Bend bank robbery and copies of the Warsaw Union's limited edition report.
