Homer Van Meter
Homer "Wayne" Van Meter (December 3, 1906 – August 23, 1934) was an American criminal and bank robber active in the early 20th century, most notably as a criminal associate of John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson.
Biography
Early life
Homer Van Meter was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the son of an alcoholic railroad conductor. During the sixth grade, Van Meter ran away from home, eventually ending up in Chicago, Illinois, where he worked as a bellhop and a waiter.
He was arrested for the first time at age 17, for drunk and disorderly conduct. In Aurora, Illinois, on June 23, 1923, Van Meter was sentenced to 41 days in jail for larceny. On January 11, 1924, he was sentenced for auto-theft and incarcerated in Menard Correctional Center. At the time of his admission, he had a tattoo reading "HOPE" on one forearm, and a case of syphilis.
Van Meter was paroled in December 1924. Three months later, he teamed up with an old cellmate to rob the passengers of a train in Crown Point, Indiana. He was caught and convicted of the crime, receiving a sentence of 10 to 21 years, to be served in the Pendleton Reformatory.[1]
Meeting John Dillinger
While in Pendleton, Van Meter met John Dillinger and Harry Pierpont. He and Dillinger became friends, while he and Pierpont openly despised each other, largely because of Van Meter's clowning antics and demeanor. On July 28, 1925, Van Meter's repeated joking and violation of Pendleton rules earned him a transfer to the state prison at Michigan City.[1]
Escape attempts
In January 1926, Van Meter was transported to Chicago to testify in defense of a man wrongly suspected of being his accomplice for the train robbery in Crown Point. He escaped from the transport at Union Station, but was quickly apprehended by his captors while he was begging for change on the street. A week later, Van Meter attempted prison escape again, this time with cellmate Charles Stewart. After sawing through the bars of their cell, the two beat a corrections officer unconscious, but were caught before leaving the prison. As a penalty, he spent the next two months in solitary confinement, where he was severely beaten by prison guards.[1]
Crime wave
Afterwards, Van Meter affected a reformation sufficient to allow the parole board to release him on May 19, 1933. On August 18 of the same year, Van Meter aligned himself with Baby Face Nelson and Tommy Carroll to rob a bank in Grand Haven, Michigan. They got away with $30,000. On October 23, the trio along with John Paul Chase and Charles Fisher robbed a bank in Brainerd, Minnesota, escaping with $32,000. When Illinois published its list of "public enemies" at the end of 1933, Van Meter ranked 18th.
On March 6, 1934, Van Meter, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Tommy Carroll, Eddie Green and John Hamilton committed a robbery in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, during which police officer Hale Keith was severely wounded by Nelson. The robbers escaped with $49,500 to their hideout in St. Paul, Minnesota. One week later, on March 13, the same gang robbed a bank in Mason City, Iowa, for $52,000[2]. On April 12, Dillinger and Van Meter robbed a police station in Warsaw, Indiana, stealing firearms and bulletproof vests.
Because of this level of criminal activity, Van Meter and the gang became the subject of an intense FBI manhunt. Both Van Meter and Dillinger shot it out with police pursuers on March 31 (in St. Paul) and April 23 (with John Hamilton, in Hastings, Minnesota), but escaped both times.[3] Hamilton was wounded in the latter encounter, however, and died four days later at the house of Volney Davis. Van Meter and members of the Barker Gang buried him in a gravel pit near Oswego.
Van Meter, Dillinger and Carroll spent most of May 1934 hiding in a woodland cabin near East Chicago, Indiana. On May 24, while driving a truck through East Chicago, Van Meter and Dillinger were stopped by police detectives Martin O'Brien and Lloyd Mulvihill. Van Meter shot both officers dead.
A few days later, in an attempt to conceal their identities, both Dillinger and Van Meter underwent plastic surgery at the hands of Wilhelm Loeser in the apartment of Jimmy Probasco, a bar owner connected to the Chicago Outfit.[4] Loeser operated on Van Meter on June 3. Unsatisfied with the results and, not coincidentally, with the pain of the operation, Van Meter attempted to kill Loeser on the spot.
On June 30, Van Meter, Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and an unidentified fourth man robbed a bank in South Bend, Indiana, during which four bystanders were killed. Van Meter also murdered police officer Howard Wagner. It proved to be the gang's last raid.[1]
Death
On July 22, 1934, FBI agents led by Melvin Purvis and Samuel P. Cowley gunned down John Dillinger in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago. That night, Van Meter and his girlfriend Marie Comforti fled to St. Paul.
On August 23, at the corner of Marion Street and University Avenue in St. Paul, Van Meter was confronted by four police officers, including Chief of Police Frank Cullen, former chief Thomas Brown and two detectives, all heavily armed. The officers later claimed Van Meter ignored their command to stop and fled into a nearby alley, where he opened fire on the officers, at which time the officers returned fire, killing Van Meter.
The number and severity of Van Meter's wounds—he was shot dozens of times, and several of his fingers were shot off—would cause some to label the incident an "ambush" or an example of "police execution"[citation needed]. Van Meter's family would later say their kin had been used for "target practice".
The four officers reported $1,323 found on Van Meter, although his friends and associates claimed he was carrying at least $10,000 on that day. In 1939, the FBI announced that it believed St. Paul gangster Harry Sawyer had set up Van Meter to get at his money, splitting the take with the four ranking officers who did the shooting.[1]
Homer Van Meter is buried in Lindenwood Cemetery, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Temperament
There are conflicting accounts of Van Meter's personality, although all agree that he was an inveterate clown and prankster. Of his criminal side, the director of research at the state prison at Michigan City said:
This fellow is a criminal of the most dangerous type. Moral sense is perverted and he has no intention of following anything but a life of crime ... He is a murderer at heart and if society is to be safeguarded, his type must be confined throughout their natural lives.[1]
While not long afterwards, the chaplain at the very same facility described him as follows:
Van Meter ... is ready to prove that he is no longer the man who got off on such a bad start.[1]
Other media
- Homer Van Meter was the subject of an episode of the Gang Busters radio show on April 15, 1936, which later became the 10th episode of the first season of the 1952 TV series of the same name.[5] On the TV show, Van Meter was portrayed by actor Richard Crane.
- In John Milius's 1973 film Dillinger, Homer Van Meter was portrayed by actor Harry Dean Stanton.
- In the 1975 television movie The Kansas City Massacre, Van Meter was portrayed by actor Brion James.
- The 2001 Stephen King short story "The Death of Jack Hamilton" is told from the point of view of Homer Van Meter, in a storyline where he didn't die in 1934 and lived long enough to recall John F. Kennedy's assassination.
- In the 2009 Michael Mann film Public Enemies, Homer Van Meter is portrayed by actor Stephen Dorff.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Newton, M. (2002). The Encyclopedia of Robberies, Heists, and Capers. Checkmark Books, an imprint of Facts on File, Inc. ISBN 0-8160-4489-9. pp. 305-307.
- ^ Harrison, T."First National Bank Robbery (or the Dillinger Robbery)" Mason City Public Library. Retrieved December 4, 2006.
- ^ Crime Library. "John Dillinger: The New Gang" CourtTV.com. Retrieved December 4, 2006.
- ^ "People & Events: John Dillinger, 1903-1934". PBS.org. Retrieved December 4, 2006.
- ^ Gang Busters