I managed to check off a bucket-list thing recently. My wife and I visited Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin on Monday, April 22, 2024, the 90th anniversary of the gun battle between FBI Agents and the John Dillinger gang. Like many a Hoosier youth, I grew up hearing stories about Dillinger, talked with people who claimed to have known Dillinger, and visited places said to have been connected to Dillinger. I visited the Crown Point, Indiana jail where he made his famous “wooden gun” escape on the 75th anniversary (March 3, 2009) and the Biograph Theatre in Chicago where he was gunned down also on the 75th anniversary (July 22, 2009). But Little Bohemia always seemed to be a bridge too far. Located 560 miles away, it is an 8-hour drive there from Dillinger’s hometown of Indianapolis.
The first thing you notice on the journey is the sheer remoteness of the lodge. U.S. Highway 51, a 1,277-mile road that starts in the suburbs of New Orleans and heads due north, almost perfectly bisecting the state of Illinois before turning left to skirt Lake Superior to its terminus in Hurley, Wis. U.S. 51 was established in the 1920s. It was then and remains today, a two-lane highway. Since it has been a main north-south artery from its earliest days, it became heavily traveled and often experienced many accidents. This highway gained the moniker of “Killer 51″ and was immortalized by Bob Dylan in the song “Highway 51 Blues.” It is a long, lonesome road and as we traveled it, visions of gangsters and outlaws danced through our minds. It is easy to imagine how Dillinger and his gang with their beautiful, flashy gun moll girlfriends in tow would stand out to the farmers and church matrons of these small lakeside communities. One thing screams out as you turn into the long wooded driveway leading to Little Bohemia: There was no way John Dillinger could have found this place on his own.
In his book Dillinger, The Hidden Truth, author Tony Stewart, revealed that Dillinger was guided to Little Bohemia by his crooked attorney Louis Piquett. The Lodge, located on Little Star Lake, had been built in 1929 by Emil Wanatka, Sr. (1888-1975). There is some debate about Wanatka’s underworld connections — maybe he was a Lake Superior bootlegger, maybe not. What is known is that Louis Piquett was Wanatka’s lawyer, too. Stewart’s book claims that it was Piquett who smuggled the wooden gun into the Crown Point Jail and arranged for Dillinger’s famed botched plastic surgery by inept Chicago underworld doctor Wilhelm Loeser who had served three years in Leavenworth on narcotic charges. Later, the Illinois Supreme Court disbarred Piquett for harboring Hoosier Homer Van Meter, sentencing him to a two-year jail term and a fine of $10,000 (over $233,000 today). So Dillinger’s presence at Little Bohemia was not by chance. Stewart’s book claims that Dillinger paid Wanatka $500 rent for three days at Little Bohemia, which is equal to $12,000 by today’s standards. This suggests that Wanatka likely knew Dillinger’s identity in advance but just as likely is the supposition that Wanatka waited until Dillinger paid him the $500 before his wife told anyone the outlaw was there. It was the height of the Great Depression, Dillinger’s reward was an astonishing $10,000, and Wanatka could stand to collect some, if not all, of that reward.
All conjecture aside, what we can be sure of is that on the afternoon of April 20, 1934, Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll, John “Red” Hamilton, and gang associate (errand-runner) Pat Reilly, accompanied by Nelson’s wife Helen and three girlfriends of the other men, arrived at Little Bohemia for a weekend of rest. Wanatka swore that he was initially unaware of the gang’s identities even though lodge employees stated that the outlaws greeted their boss by name on arrival. Wanatka claimed that he grew suspicious during a weekend poker game after Dillinger won a round and raked in the pot, revealing 2 pistols hidden under his jacket. It was then that Wanatka noticed the shoulder holsters carried under the jackets of Baby Face Nelson and Red Hamilton.
One of my favorite Little Bohemia memories comes from a rare newsreel interview with Emil Wanatka, Jr. (1925-2009), who was 8 years old at the time. Emil was asked about Baby Face Nelson, who played catch with the boy in the front yard of Little Bohemia that weekend. Emil, Jr. said he didn’t like Nelson because “he kept throwing the baseball too hard.” That Saturday, Emil’s wife Frieda (1920-1991) took their son to a cousin’s birthday party at her brother’s home, George Laporte. There she informed her brother-in-law, Henry Voss, that the Dillinger gang was holed up at the lodge. Voss, who along with his wife died in a car accident in Florida in February of 1958, owned Voss’s Birchwood Lodge on nearby Spider Lake. Voss informed the FBI of the Dillinger gang’s presence early on April 21st. That snowy Saturday, FBI agent Melvin Purvis and several agents arrived by plane from Chicago. The next day, fearing the gang’s escape, the agents moved in with little preparation, and without notifying or obtaining help from local authorities. On Sunday nights, Wanatka offered a one-dollar dinner special so there were over 75 people on hand when the agents arrived.
They waited until closing time and watched as three men, John Hoffman, Eugene Boisneau, and John Morris, at the Lodge toss back a few beers after a long day of hunting, exited Little Bohemia carrying their hunting rifles and climbed into a 1933 Chevrolet coupé. Just then Emil Wanatka’s dog, a massive jet-black Great Dane, started barking, alerting the gang. The agents panicked and shouted at the men to stop, but the shouting was drowned out by the car radio. The agents quickly opened fire on them, instantly killing CCC worker Boisneau and wounding the others. Adding to the chaos, at the same time, “gang gopher” Pat Reilly returned after an out-of-town errand for Van Meter accompanied by Red Hamilton’s girlfriend, Pat Cherrington. Confronted by the agents, Reilly and Cherrington escaped when the bullets started flying. Because of poor planning, no agents were posted at the rear of the lodge. After a brief, but furious gunfight, Dillinger, Van Meter, Hamilton, and Carroll escaped out of the second-story windows and skittered down the roof in the rear of the lodge. They made their way north on foot through woods around Little Star Lake where they commandeered a car and hijacked the driver at a resort a mile away.
Baby Face Nelson did what he was always apt to do. Housed in an adjacent cabin away from the gang outside the lodge because, well, he was crazy, Baby Face characteristically attacked the FBI agents head-on. He exchanged fire with Melvin Purvis before retreating into the lodge under a withering fire from the other agents. He ran out the back and fled in the opposite direction from the others. Emerging from the woods a mile away an hour and a half later, Nelson kidnapped a young couple from their home and ordered them to drive him away. Unhappy with the car’s speed, he stole another car and ironically captured Emil Wanatka, his brother-in-law, and two more lodge employees who were searching for the outlaws. With Wanatka driving at gunpoint, another car pulled alongside containing FBI agents W. Carter Baum and Jay Newman, and a local constable, Carl Christensen. When the agents identified themselves, Baby Face Nelson opened fire, shooting Christensen nine times in the chest, arms, and legs wounding Newman in the head and killing Baum with three shots in the neck. Nelson then stole the FBI car which blew a tire and got stuck in the mud 15 miles away. Back on foot, Nelson wandered into the woods and hijacked a Chippewa family, commandeering their secluded cabin for several days before making his final escape in another stolen vehicle.
Three of the women who had accompanied the gang, including Nelson’s wife Helen Gillis, were captured inside the lodge. After a grueling interrogation by the FBI, the three were ultimately convicted for harboring wanted felons and ultimately released on parole. With a federal agent and a civilian dead, and four more severely wounded, the debacle at Little Bohemia brought the FBI under severe criticism. Director J. Edgar Hoover was not amused. Dillinger escaped unscathed and remained on the run until Hoover’s agents, led by Melvin Purvis, shot him in the back while escaping at the Biograph Theatre. The other outlaws would eventually all suffer similar fates. For Little Bohemia, things would never be the same.
Next week: Part 2 of Little Bohemia.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
