The 'Dillinger' gangster who grew up across the river – part 1

From the archives of the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library:

When one thinks of gangsters in the 1930’s, the names Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie & Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, and John Dillinger come to mind.

It was an era glamorized and sensationalized in Hollywood movies for its bank robberies, shoot-outs, prison breaks, car chases, and violence.

A Canadian named John Hamilton was a key participant in all of it, committing crime alongside prominent outlaw John Dillinger who was considered “Public Enemy Number One.”

Most of the gangsters of this time met violent deaths by gunshot wounds, but Hamilton’s last days are far more mysterious.

John Hamilton was born in 1898 in the small hamlet of Byng Inlet, Ontario. In his early years, the family made a move to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

He makes an appearance in the 1910 U.S. Census at 12 years old. His father’s occupation is listed as a Stationary Engineer and the family was living on Chestnut Street.

The American Sault would also prove to be the birthplace of one of John’s nicknames. He was known as “Red” due to his hair colour, but also as “Three-Fingered Jack” when he lost parts of his middle and index fingers of his right hand in a childhood misadventure between his sled and a speeding freight train.

John initially stayed out of trouble. He left school at a young age but worked respectable jobs in the lumber industry and sailing the Great Lakes on Canadian freighters.

In 1921 he married Mary Stevenson and they started their married life on Elizabeth Street with John working as a carpenter.

This respectability was unfortunately short-lived as Hamilton soon started rum-running over the border from Canada.

Prohibition was in full swing, and there was lots of money to be made.

In 1924 he was arrested for bootlegging in Detroit. He was released on a promise that he would return to pay his fine, but he never returned and his life of crime and running from the law had begun.

Hamilton had also become a member of the “Stevenson Gang” which was comprised of the brothers of his wife.

On July 25, 1925, he committed his first robbery in the company of his brother-in-law. They made off with $33,000 from the Lakey Foundry Corporation’s payroll in Muskegon Heights, Michigan.

In 1927, they robbed a bank in Grand Rapids, Michigan and left $25,000 richer.

For the time, these were tremendous sums of money. Hamilton’s luck was soon to run out – on March 15, 1927, he was involved in a botched bank robbery in South Bend, Indiana. They fled but were soon quickly captured, and his accomplice (an ex-cop), quickly confessed and also incriminated Hamilton in the earlier Grand Rapids robbery.

As a result, he was sentenced to 25 years at the Indiana State Penitentiary at Michigan City.

Not only did he lose his freedom, but also his marriage. A divorce was granted in October 1928 to Mary Stevenson and the record states the cause of divorce as “extreme cruelty and non-support” of her and their two children.

Hamilton made some very profitable criminal connections while in prison. Red had developed a reputation as a tough guy, not to be trifled with, and was welcomed into a group headed by Harry Pierpont who was one of the most infamous bank robbers at the time.

They would soon be joined in July 1929 by a young John Dillinger. Pierpont had met Dillinger at Pendleton Prison in Indiana and had taken a liking to him.

Hamilton and Pierpont took Dillinger under their wing and taught him everything they knew about robbing banks. This was in their own interest as Dillinger was set to be the first out on parole and they hatched a plan for him to break them out of prison.

Once free, Dillinger was instructed to rob a series of banks to fund the planned prison break. He proved to be an exceptional pupil in the art of crime and managed to carry out 10 bank heists across five states in only three weeks.

After one failed attempt, Dillinger also was successful in getting guns snuck into the prison.

Prison officials were then used as human shields to enable the Pierpont gang to walk right out of the prison’s main entrance.

Once out on the street, they finalized their escape plan by stealing a sheriff’s car and took one other at gunpoint.

Following the prison break, Dillinger was captured, so on Oct. 19, Hamilton and Pierpont (and others) busted him out of the county jail in Lima, Ohio, killing a sheriff in the process.

They then settled in Chicago as their home base and had the audacity to steal firearms from two different police stations in order to prepare for their next bank heists. Due to these exploits, Dillinger and all his gang members became well-known quasi-celebrities in the newspapers.

After the Great Depression, banks were not trusted institutions, so some members of the public enjoyed that they were “stealing from the rich.”

One incident that was widely publicized took place during a bank robbery in Greencastle, Indiana where Dillinger let a farmer keep his cash.

“We only want the banks,” Dillinger said. The same hold-up was also the scene of a bit of humiliation for Red Hamilton. An elderly woman walked right out the front door during the robbery.

Hamilton told her to turn around and return inside, but instead of submitting, the lady allegedly said, “I go to Penney’s and you go to Hell” and walked away.

Red did nothing to stop her. Perhaps it was a tiny bit of our well-known Canadian politeness to be kind to our elders rearing its head, and Hamilton let her go.

On April 17, 1934 while on the run for various bank robberies, as well as the death of a cop in Chicago, Hamilton visited his sister – Mrs. Anna Steve in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. He brought Dillinger with him.

The following day, government agents sent by J. Edgar Hoover (who would establish the FBI) raided her house on Oak Bluff and charged her and her son for harbouring fugitives.

Check back next week to find out if John “Red” Hamilton is able to elude the law

Each week, the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library and its Archives provides SooToday readers with a glimpse of the city’s past.

Find out more of what the Public Library has to offer at www.ssmpl.ca and look for more Remember This? columns here