Clinton Cook Publishing Corp. Copyright c. 2002 by Ellen Poulsen
Please find some time to look around on her site, it's fabulous and full of information and photos and all sorts of things about these women, who didn't want to be called "molls." http://dillingerswomen.com/index.html
I am grateful to her for her generosity of time and information!! And I thank her also for her patience in seeing this here on JDR.
JohnnyDeppReads talks with Ellen Poulsen:
JDR -This is one amazing book that you've written! Thank you for speaking to me about your book "Don't Call us Molls"
EP - Thank you for your interest, I appreciate that.
JDR - There's been a lot of interest in the women of the Dillinger gang lately because of the Depp film Public Enemies. So many people have read your book and we are discussing it on JDR.
EP - That's really funny, because when I thought of writing the book back in 1986, somebody said to me "oh and there'll be five people who will read it." Things have changed a lot since then, there's a lot of interest in Dillinger and that era now.
JDR - And with this movie being filmed, your book is right up there with the good books about Dillinger and his gang. Being a Depp fan site, we are primarily women of all ages reading these books and waiting for this movie.
EP - Count me in as a Johnny Depp fan, I love him!
JDR - There are so many people now who have no recollection of the depression. Can you speak about the women with these men? How or why did they cling to these men who were very obviously gangsters?
EP - I think that the money factor was an important one, but I don't think it was the ONLY factor. You see, for some of them like Pat Cherrington who was one of the women hanging around with John Dillinger's friend Red Hamilton, it was definitely economic need that motivated them to seek out men who were "gangsters" if you want to call them that or guys who were involved in crimes. Because they had a lot of primary needs that weren't being met...like it was a very common thing for them (the women) to go to the dentist after they got a boyfriend like that. Also Pat Cherrington had a series of operations, she had a lot of problems in her stomach and there was no health insurance back then, in fact the social blankets that we have now really didn't kick in until Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration. They didn't have things like social security, etc. They didn't have the things that Americans take for granted. They had to find some way of getting by, of getting the things that they needed. But the thing is, a lot of women were in the same boat in those days - they didn't have any money and they needed things. Why did this particular group end up with gangsters like Dillinger? I think the roots of that are just in who they happened to know. Like Evelyn Frechette, who was John Dillinger's girlfriend, was going out with men on the fringes of crime as far back as the 1920s. And she had no interest in the boys who lived on the reservation. You know she was a Native American and she was of the Menominee tribe, she was a bad apple, she had a bad reputation within the reservation for being a woman who liked to run around. So she ended up in Milwaukee and Chicago and she married a man who was sitting in the county jail waiting to be shipped to Leavenworth and she married him, and so she was already involved with the criminal element when she met John Dillinger.
I know there was some hype, she told some newspapers that she didn't know who he was, but I'm sure she did. A lot of times these women ended up with people like that because of family relationships. There were three sisters who were involved in the Barker Karpas gang and they were as young as sixteen years old when these girls started going out with men like this when they were so young. It was almost impossible for them to change the core, you sort of brand yourself as a loser, more or less, when you start going out with men who have prison records or who are going into prison or committing crimes, so they had no real way out once they got involved in it. Something really interesting is that a lot of them were what I call "sister acts" because one sister would go out with a gangster and then her sister would go out with another gangster in the same mob and sometimes even a third sister would go out with someone because the mobsters liked women of that element, women who could be trusted not to talk, not to tell police anything, women who could stand up under pressure if they were arrested. So there was such a combination of factors there. I think the final factor was sometimes that they started out so young and so innocent with these men, before these men really became the big gangsters that we know. For example Baby Face Nelson was basically dealing in stolen car parts and he was a real low level criminal in Chicago when his girlfriend got pregnant, she was sixteen. By the time she had two children she was nineteen and he was public enemy number one and she went to jail on a federal harboring charge. So I mean they started out as just dating guys from the neighborhood and they ended up as very, very notorious women who probably never had a chance to live down their reputations.
JDR - As I read your book, I was struck by the idea that Evelyn for instance, bought fine clothing and jewelry and had a little dog with her. Stepping away from the fact that these guys were criminals, it's like these guys were the rock stars of their time and the women were their groupies. You pointed out that when they had money they got dental and medical care, yet as a group they could be rather outlandish and didn't always blend in as much as they could have. And yet so often they had to just walk away from these things.
EP - Also they sent money home, I don't know if that was guilt...but that was also a part of it, to help out relatives who were also indigent. But you know that they all weren't extremely poor. I know that Evelyn was, only because I personally visited her home on the reservation, and even as recent as ten or fifteen years ago it seemed very much an impoverished place. Although very proud in tradition, and not to be disparaging at all in saying that, it's a wonderful culture but economically they didn't seem to be really up and coming. But they weren't all extremely poor. Mary Kinder was pretty much a middle class person, the house that she lived in in Indianapolis was a fairly nice house by middle class or working class standards. Not all came from poor, poor backgrounds but I guess enough of them did.
EP - That's a very interesting observation, that these men were the rock stars and the women were their groupies.
JDR - Thanks! These women weren't just hangers on because these women loved these men. These women were absolutely with these men. I remember where you talk in the book about the women buying the cars for then, Evelyn driving the car for them.
EP - Oh yes!
JDR. I just loved the pictures that you found of them! They are fabulous! How did you find them? (go here to see many of her vintage photos http://dillingerswomen.com/index.html )
EP - Thank you very much. Well, I collected for such a long time that I guess I accumulated them over the years, if I found out that something was going up for sale. Those pictures pre-date the e-bay revolution or being able to find things online. I used to be able to walk right into the Associated Press wide world because I lived in New York City and I could look through the boxes (of photos) of that era and you see them reproduced in the books but you can't imagine how beautiful those photographs were in print form. Because the photo journalism of that era was magnificent, they really took some incredible black and white photos.
JDR - There is a part in your book where you talk about John Dillinger's niece Mary, and the fact that his sister took pictures and brought them to Dillinger so that he could have them. BUT on the back she had written that they were to be returned to her. Were these returned?
EP - Mary Gallagher was his niece. I don't know for sure if they were returned to her. I know that there were attempts made to get photos back for family members. Sam Cowley, the FBI agent who was in charge of eveything was killed by Baby Face Nelson and Melvin Purvis was demoted and eventually fired, yet I don't know who would have been in charge of getting those pictures. I have my doubts that they got those pictures back through regular channels. I know the Dillinger family had a lot of stuff that they sold over the years to the museum. But that's another chapter in Dillinger lore.
JDR - While we are speaking about pictures, there's a fabulous picture in your book with three women, I think Pat Cherrington is in the middle...
EP - Yes that's fabulous!
JDR - Yes the clothing and the demeanor and the stances of the women ... these are women that you don't want to mess with.
EP - That's right!
JDR - Was there anything about any of these women shooting anyone?
EP - Oh that's a great question! I don't think anybody's ever asked me that question. That picture actually has one of those "sister acts" that I was talking about. The big lady, Opal Long? Her sister is Pat Cherrington. Shooting anybody? You know there was a mythological story about a woman named Kathryn Kelly and she wasn't in the Dillinger gang but she's part of that school, she's the wife of Machine Gun Kelly, and she's one of those. like Evelyn Frechette, there's such a mystique around this particular woman. She was rumored to have shot her husband, her first husband, and he was found shot to death and there was a suicide note that said something like "I can't live with her or without her"..something like that, she was always rumored to have been the one to have shot him and left the suicide note. BUT I have to stress that's never been proven. All we know is that he died, he was shot and there was a note and most people attribute that to Kathryn Kelly. But as far as any of the other ones ever taking a gun and shooting it at another person? No, I can't really say. The only instance where it's hotly contested is Ma Barker, another woman from that ilk. In fact in "Don't Call Us Molls" there's one or two chapters in the back devoted to Ma Barker and at her death, she was killed in an FBI ambush. She was purportedly found with a smoking gun. That again has been disputed by historians. I'm just trying to pick my brain to see if I can think of any other instances ...no. In terms of getting these men, particularly the Dillinger gangsters, out of tight spots, the women more or less drove the cars when they had to or they very quickly packed up and got themselves out of these hideouts. They weren't really the ones who used the fire arms to any great extent. There's another exception of course, Bonnie Parker, who is considered to have been a "loader." There was an interview that was in "Playboy" magazine by one of the gang members of the Bonnie and Clyde gang, he said that she was a "loader" not a shooter. And I know that she did manage to shoot herself one time with a firearm. She shot herself in the leg. There really isn't any instance of these women acting out violently with firearms.
To get back to the Dillinger gang women, they were more or less along for the ride, they figured the kind of jobs that they had to do, they rented apartments, they opened safe deposit boxes to keep stolen money in, they were in charge of communication - like sending telegrams because in those days there wasn't any email, or make a telephone call.
JDR - Towards the end of the book, you wrote about speaking with Evelyn's last husband.
EP Yes, I spoke with Art Tic, he was also a Menominee.
JDR - What a fabulous opportunity to talk with this man, what was he like?
EP - He was very nice, some of the things he said were kind of off the wall. He said that she liked wearing skirts, that she never wore slacks. And some researcher friends of mine found pictures of her wearing bell bottoms! (we laughed) Well, so much for that.
JDR - We had been wondering about that quote on the forum, as we had seen some of the pictures coming from location and we know that the costumer, Colleen Atwood, is always as accurate as possible.
EP- YES! She contacted me and I sent her a book.
JDR - She (Colleen) has "Billie" in slacks in what looks to be several scenes including one scene where the Evelyn Frechette "character" is dressed in mens wear in order to meet John Dillinger.
EP I can't comment on that because I didn't see it, but is it a kind of wide legged, sort of a pajama?
JDR - Yes, it appears to be maybe a pajama, a wide legged pant and a raincoat and a hat, perhaps she's trying to somehow disguise herself?
EP There is a photograph that didn't get into "Don't Call us Molls" but it did get published in a book called "Dillinger:Dead or Alive" by J. Robert Nash and that publishes a photograph of Evelyn Frechette wearing a raincoat, a sailor cap and pants. So maybe the costume designer copied it right from that, her hair is a bit longer in that picture and it's assumed that the photograph was taken sometime in the late 1920s. In fact, in that picture Evelyn is standing with a man who's got a gun sticking out from beneath his jacket. So that was kind of proof positive that she always had a taste for men from the underworld. In fact there's another photograph that I have somewhere, which again I got this after I finished the book, where Evelyn is standing in that same outfit and she's standing next to a girl friend of hers that was mentioned several times in the book Vivian Warrington. That's the lady who was friendly with Evelyn up in the reservation as it's mentioned several times in the book and Evelyn is posing in that same outfit next to her friend Vivian, that was identified to me by somebody I spoke to at the Menominee reservation. So obviously that outfit (in the film) was taken from real life.
JDR - Was there anything that you learned about Evelyn that surprised you in any way? That may have been out of character? A juicy tidbit maybe?
EP - It's said that Evelyn used to snatch ashtrays from places she'd been.
JDR - Polly Hamilton, I think she's kind of an interesting character, she wasn't around as long as the other women, she came in and then took off and disappeared. What happened to her after John Dillinger was shot?
EP - Well apparently she did, the woman in red, Anna Sage, tried to keep Polly's name out of this. She actually got Polly out of Chicago and they went to Detroit for a while to get away from the heat. And then Polly and Anna Sage had a parting of the ways and Polly went back to her home and laid low for a very long time and ended up coming back to Chicago and marrying a salesman and lived in the "old town" section of Chicago proper for the rest of her life. And lived completely anonymously. The same life style was adopted by Opal Long, who was the heavy woman in that photograph. Opal Long married a man who was very loosely identified with the Dillinger era, he was a newspaper man who was friendly with Pearl Elliot who was the prostitute who was harboring John DIllinger. She married this man and lived in Chicago anonymously and it's interesting that they all died between the years of 1969 and 1971, they all died around the same time and Opal Long is buried in Chicago under a different name and Polly was cremated so there's no grave to visit for Polly and they were able to live anonymously. It's amazing that they were able to do that. Polly got completely out of the Dillinger loop, Anna Sage did not. Anna Sage was deported, but Polly didn't have such a sterling background. She was a prostitute and she worked as a prostitute for Anne Sage. They both had a very long record. And because of Anna Sage's connections, because she was very friendly with Sgt. Martin Zarkovich, she was able to have her records... she never did any time...it was sort of like a revolving door situation. She never had to face the music for anything that she did until she got involved with Dillinger.
JDR - While you were writing about these women was there a favorite of yours?
EP - (she laughs) Over the years my favorites have come and gone. When I was a little girl I had this interest in them and Mary Kindle was my favorite. She was the girlfriend of Harry Pierpont, but that was basically because she was quoted quite eloquently in John Toland's book " The Dillinger Days" and that was the book. Dillinger people didn't have much to read in those days. Basically " The Dillinger Days" and Joe Pinkston's book "A Short and Violent Life", and both of those books quoted Mary (Kindle) so much that she just came across as a very colorful, very tough, wise cracking person and I think she was, that was confirmed to me by Jeff Scalf who was John Dillinger's nephew. He went to visit her and brought her flowers and she took the flowers out of his hand and she threw them on the counter.
I think my real favorite is Patricia Cherrington, of course we all love Evelyn, that goes without saying but Pat Cherrington, the lady in the picture, in the middle with the cigarette. About two years ago a couple of my fellow researchers and some sympathetic people to her, chipped in and we put a head stone on her grave in Chicago. On my website you can see information about that and so that's what we did for Pat Cherrington. I went to visit the grave many times in Chicago and it always seemed so forlorn. They used to put a traffic cone on her grave site because people wanted to see where she was buried. So we went from a traffic cone to a monument and we put a cross on it. At around the same time some family members contacted me and I got their permission to do it. I don't think I really needed it after so many years but it was nice to get their blessing. We determined her religion was Baptist. The only reason I know this is because her sister's the big gal, her prison record - which amounted to one page - indicated that she had been a Baptist. So we felt that it was OK to put a cross on her grave. I thought she was a very sympathetic person, I think because she had a child and I think that it was poignant that she had to go through this whole life style, to use a new catch phrase, as a single mother, she had to leave the child with her sister quite a lot and with other people, her gangster boyfriend Russell Clark, his family took care of her child.
JDR - Well it's good that somebody stepped up to take care of the poor child caught in the middle...
EP - Yes, thank you, she was a poor child caught in the middle and it's an interesting testimonial to the families of the these desperados, that they were human beings. I mean Russell Clark's mother had Pat Cherrington's child living in her house with her in Detroit. You know Russell Clark was one of the gang, it's that the family members of these gangsters were not bad people and they were pretty much victimized big time because of what happened to their loved ones.
JDR - We've all seen the small news reel clip of John Dillinger's father speaking and you've written about how painful it was for John Dillinger to see that in the theater, to see his dad reading basically from a script about his son not being a bad person.
EP - Evelyn spoke about those clips in one of those interviews she gave with the Chicago Herald and Examiner "my Life with John Dillinger", she said that it was very hard for him to see his father in that news reel. I wonder if it brought it home to him too just how much he was going to lose, to be killed or brought to justice.
JDR - You can't even begin to imagine what went through their minds, I think these are all tragic people, who were just kind of caught in a web at a time and a place, especially during the depression.
EP - I agree with you about that. And the poverty went back before the depression.
JDR - These were just very poor people.
EP - With no access also to education. I always said Bonnie Parker, who was a talented poet, had she had the means in those days to maybe, I like to say, come to New York, live on the lower east side, take some courses, lead a fulfilling life. She was a creative woman who had no outlet and I think that she saw in Clyde an opportunity for the big creative splash that she had to make. Bonnie's been called a drama queen by some of the men I know who have written books about Bonnie and Clyde. And I bet you'll understand, I always say that was a gross put down because a drama queen is kind of disparaging.
JDR - She was in a way, trapped, no way out, no way up. There she was and along comes Clyde, thug that he was, and paid attention to her.
EP - And gave her a way to express herself you know with all of the fast cars, and the guns and the shoot outs and she wrote these poems about life on the run with Clyde and they were very evocative first person accounts of life on the run, and I think that her life would have gone another way. Our era, for all of the things you could say about the bad things that are happening in the world today we definitely have more opportunities than these people had, economic or opportunites for education and the lack of education is a factor. But you know something, they were not really illiterate women, I mean they wrote letters and some of them are pretty funny to read.
JDR I really like that you put those letters in your book. I remember reading old letters that my grandmother wrote her sister at about the same time, and their phraseology back then was so different than what we say today. That's the way they wrote, that's they way they talked...they were farm people.
EP - Evelyn was educated in the Indian school and she had a nice way of writing, they all were literate and they were basically, I guess, grade school educated or basic high school, without any real vocational training. But that was pretty much the norm for a lot of people in those days.
JDR - You've been so generous with your time today, I don't want to take up too much more of your time.
EP - No, as long as you want to talk.
JDR - You are quite nice to do this.
If there was one thing that you wanted people to understand about these "Dillinger" women what would it be?
EP - I think that for posterity the most important thing to remember is that they paid for their crimes, I don't know that that sounds too Eliott Ness. That they paid, they paid in spades. For the most part, they were very loyal to their men, they didn't really buckle under and spill. The women who were with the Dillinger gang, through thick and through thin all shared the same characteristics: they were all loyal, none of them caved in and gave information to the police and I feel that given the spirit of the era that that was a positive trait. And trust me, I am not anti police, my father was a police officer, I'm a law abiding person but I believe that because they were loyal to their men they suffered extreme consequences because J. Edgar Hoover, who was in back of all of the prosecutions, the federal harboring prosecutions that took place had the power to decide where these women served their time. So if they helped the FBI they went to a country club jail, they went to Alderson, if they didn't they went to Milant? which was a men's penitentiary with a steel barred annex for women. So because they were loyal to their men and to their gang they suffered HARD time, they served federal harboring sentences, most of them did. When they got out of jail, they were not free to resume their lives because Hoover at that point embarked upon a smear campaign. He ghost wrote a couple of books, I'll give you the titles if you want, one was "Ten Thousand Public Enemies" and one was called "Here's to Crime", in those books he wrote essays about women like Pat Cherrington and Evelyn Frechette and Delores Delany, who was a teen aged girlfriend of Alvin Karpas. He smeared them so badly and they had to go through life with that type of slander and libel directed at them after they served their time, after they were paroled and when they tried to start a new life. And as a result of that they were almost forced to remarry or to get married because they had to change their name. The psychological repercussions affected some of these women so badly! I mean Evelyn was one of the lucky ones, she married, remarried. Marie Comforti was Homer Van Meter's girlfriend and she was dead by 1944 of cirrhosis of the liver. Vern Miller's girlfriend Vi Mathis, he was another one of those midwest crime wave characters, not associated with Dillinger, she was dead by, I think, 1939. She died in an abusive relationship. They suffered and they paid.
JDR - Do you think that John Dillinger was abusive towards Evelyn?
EP - NO NO! I can say unequivocally he was not. And I'll tell you why. When I went up to the reservation I spoke to some of Evelyn's family members and I have never revealed their names because I never got written permission and didn't want to have any problems, but one in particular vehemently told me that he hated that Warren Oates movie and fifty percent of that movie showed him pushing her, roughing her up, kidnapping her at one point and this particular relative of Evelyn Frechette was very agitated about that film and he said that he wasn't mean to her, he didn't treat her like that, he said if anything he was afraid of her. And this wasn't a great nephew or somebody who only heard the stories passed down. This was a direct relative who had spent time with her and knew her, knew her intimately, and so I got it from the family and that was collaborated for me by the woman who I spoke with.
We soon ended our conversation and I thanked Ellen Poulsen for her generosity with her information, her knowledge and her time with us!
