Published: October 05, 2009 11:24 pm         

‘Public Enemies’ author shares stories of Great Depression-era gangsters during speech at ISU

TERRE HAUTE — Once upon a time, a kid from Temple, Texas wanted to be a journalist.

“All I ever wanted to do was cover cops in Dallas,” author Bryan Burrough said Monday at Indiana State University’s Hulman Memorial Student Union shortly before his speech in Tilson Auditorium.

Some decades later, his most recent book, “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34” is flying out of bookstores, and its Hollywood incarnation, “Public Enemies,” starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, is on the silver screen.

Burrough visited the university as part of an author series, telling his story as well as those of Great Depression-era gangsters such as Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde and others. His book on the era is based largely on FBI documents from the time.

The biggest misconception about the early 20th-century bank robbers is that they possessed, at any level, some redeeming social characteristics, he said. Their crimes were, and are, sometimes turned into folklore for erroneous reasons.

In the end, Burrough told those in attendance, Dillinger “had no more social conscience than that cell phone.”

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were “white trash spree killers,” and tales of Pretty Boy Floyd burning the mortgage documents of poor farmers to free them from debt is just “ridiculous,” he said.

Still, in a time when bank foreclosures were as rampant as the unemployment rates, it was easy for farmers to hate banks and feel that Dillinger and others were getting even for them, like Robin Hoods who had traded bows and arrows for Thompson machine guns.

But Dillinger was capable of calculated chivalry, such as the times he’d lay his jacket down in a woman’s path. Unlike Nelson and other contemporaries, Dillinger was smart enough to realize that manners helped his cause. Always close to his father, sister and her children, Dillinger had, at some level, a mind for public relations, Burrough said.

“Dillinger knew that there are two kinds of bank robbers: those that people hate and those that they kind of like,” he said. And odd as it might seem, it was as if Dillinger decided that if he was to be a bank robber, he’d be one of whom his sister’s kids could be proud.

Image aside, though, Dillinger robbed banks so he could afford drunkenness and rampant sex without the constraints of a real job, Burrough noted.

And the Midwestern states that hosted the great wave of bank robberies in those early years were a prime target due to their open roads. No one wanted to rob a bank on the East Coast, he explained, pointing out that in 30 minutes on an Indiana road one can be well on their way to another state. Then, as now, it can take 30 minutes just to get out of a New York City parking lot.

Those open roads, in conjunction with the then-relatively recent inventions of the V8 motor and Thompson machine gun, made “harvest banks” full of farmers’ money in small, underprotected towns, ripe for the hitting.

All of these factors eventually led to J. Edgar Hoover’s rise and what would become the modern Federal Bureau of Investigation.

This book, Burrough explained, is the first to study that period and its subjects with empirical data. Prior works have relied upon firsthand accounts and anecdotal evidence, whereas Burrough is the first author to purchase the FBI’s 1 million pages of related documentation at 10 cents each for research.

About 70 percent of the book is based on the “rigor and discipline” of minute-by-minute stakeouts and hour-by-hour logs kept by federal agents, he said. Thirty percent is from newspaper clippings of the era and as many firsthand personal interviews as he could drum up, he said.

Originally from Texas with relatives in Arkansas, Burrough’s grandfather helped chase the infamous Bonnie and Clyde, who happened to have shot an ancestor of one of his own childhood friends.

His interest in crime stories dates back to those days, but after graduating from the University of Missouri, his first job was as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, where he ended up covering one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in history, that of RJR Nabisco, in the fall of 1988. As he broke the story, agents and publishers began calling Burrough and fellow reporter, John Helyar. Those calls resulted in the two writing “Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco.”

Other works include “The Big Rich,” a book about the rise and fall of Texas oil fortunes, as well as regular pieces for Vanity Fair.

“I like big American personalities,” he explained.

In August, Burrough began work on his next book, which deals with the FBI’s investigations into 1970s bombings by American groups such as The Weathermen.

Like the Dillinger era, the protest bombings of the Pentagon and other institutions during the 1970s are on the back burner of most Americans’ memories. They vaguely recall them, but don’t know much, he said.

Corey Hill, an ISU junior aviation management major, was on-hand at the pre-speech book signing.

Hill, who lives in Crown Point, responded to an advertisement in his local newspaper when the movie “Public Enemies” was being produced. His response landed him a role in the film as a prison inmate. During the filming, Hill got to meet actor Stephen Dorff and saw Depp while working inside the prison at Joliet, Ill.

“I thought it was a great experience,” he said, noting that he’s up for another Hollywood role anytime it’s offered.



Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.