Chasing Dillinger: Police Captain Matt Leach, J. Edgar Hoover and the Rivalry to Capture Public Enemy No. 1

by Ellen Poulsen, Lori Hyde

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476674650
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	08/28/2018
Pages:	289
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dillinger researcher Ellen Poulsen is the author of a book on the women of the John Dillinger gang. She lives in Queens, New York. Lori Hyde has researched police tactics of the 1930s for more than forty years, and created websites about Depression-era desperadoes. She lives in Corunna, Indiana.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: The Infinite Chase
Prologue
Part I. The Dreamer
 1. Destination: Gary, Indiana
 2. Statehouse Room 126
 3. Clemency
 4. Shirttails to the Wind
 5. Big Men
Part II. The Gadfly
 6. Denials
 7. Double-Crossing Dirty Rat
 8. East Chicago Rising
 9. Unsung
10. Obstructionists
Part III. The Mutineer
11. The New Dillingers
12. Kangaroo Court
Part IV. The Landowner
13. Reveille
14. Milepost 107.5
Appendix A. Indiana Police Board Charges
 Against Matt Leach, Charges Drafted by Indiana State Safety Director upon Request of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Dated September 4, 1937
Appendix B. Matt Leach’s Rebuttal to State Police Board Charges, Indianapolis Times, September 4, 1937
Appendix C. The Lost Manuscript: Matt Leach’s Ghostwriters Weigh In
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Finally a full-length biography of Indiana State Police Captain Matt Leach has been written. In the war on crime of the early 1930s Leach and Melvin Purvis, Special-Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago FBI office, became famous in the hunt for Public Enemy No. 1, John Dillinger, and became rivals of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. After the death of Dillinger, Hoover and the FBI were able to destroy them in only a few years. In 1937 Leach was fired for lack of cooperation with the FBI.”—Jeffery S. King, author of The Rise and Fall of the Dillinger Gang, The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd and Kill-crazy Gang: The Crimes of the Lewis-Jones Gang; “While the F.B.I. took credit for bringing down John Dillinger, the man who pursued him from the start was Matt Leach, head of the Indiana State Police...and he continued to track the famous bank robber after he became a federal fugitive. A state police captain, Leach antagonized the federal bureau, which angrily wrote him out of their script. Leach was all but lost to posterity until Ellen Poulsen and Lori Hyde resurrected his role as a dynamic force in the nation’s most famous manhunt of the 20th Century. The perceptiveness and lucidity of Ellen Poulsen’s writing make this a hard book to put down.”—William J. Helmer, author, Dillinger: The Untold Story and Baby Face Nelson, Portrait of a Public Enemy; “Thought you knew everything about notorious 1930s bankrobber John Dillinger and the lawmen who pursued him until his death outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago? Think again. Chasing Dillinger reveals for the first time the behind-the-scenes turf wars between local police, state officials and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, as they competed for Dillinger’s apprehension. Author Poulsen uses her vivid, warts-and-all portrait of Dillinger hunter Matt Leach to explore the battles between law enforcement agencies that underpinned their legendary manhunt against Public Enemy #1.”—Paul Maccabee, author, John Dillinger Slept Here.

From the Publisher