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One foggy morning last week 17 convicts and two guards trudged out to a timber patch on a prison farm near Crockett, Tex. Suddenly Convict Joe Palmer dived head-first into a brushpile, came up with a .45 automatic in his hand. While he blazed at the guards two more convicts scooped two more guns out of the brush. Somewhere behind a barn a horn honked steadily. Out of rank weeds edging a ditch two men rose, splattered machine gun and pistol bullets around the wounded guards as five prisoners scrambled toward the honking horn. Fugitives and deliverers then roared out of sight in the fog.

Convicts left behind spotted the handiwork of Clyde Barrow, notorious outlaw-at-large, said he fired the machine gun, suspected the horn was honked by his woman, gun-toting, cigar-smoking Bonnie Parker. Next day posses bagged only one flown jailbird. Convict J. B. French, panting a few minutes ahead of prison bloodhounds, ran for refuge into the cabin of a Negro farmer. The Negro covered him with a shotgun, held him until bloodhounds bayed at the door.

P: In Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing, Clyde Deer, 230-lb. guard, was sipping his breakfast coffee near the cell block of desperate prisoners when he suddenly was set upon with clubs by seven convicts headed by Life Termers Jim Clark and Bob Brady. Participants in the Memorial Day jail break, they seized Guard Deer's keys, locked him and several trusties in a cell, spent 20 minutes building a ladder, rushed it across the baseball diamond and climbed over the prison wall under cover of a fog and under fire of guards.

A few minutes later they seized a school-teacher named Louis Dresser who was just starting to school in his car, drove south with him all day and all night. Next morning at a crossroads in Oklahoma they met by prearrangement a car with Texas license plates driven by a woman, who, from Dresser's description, was none other than Clyde Barrow's paramour, the fair, cigar-smoking Bonnie ("Suicide Sal") Parker. There Dresser was released and the convicts drove off with her in the direction of the Osage Hills--presumably to hide with the Texas fugitives. One other Lansing fugitive, Charles Clifton McArthur, burglar and murderer, was captured as he entered Kansas City on a trolley car, having walked 35 miles from the prison with an ankle bone fractured in the jump from the wall. Bob Brady was shot and killed by a posse near Paola, Kans.

P: Near Nauvoo, Ill., a howling mob shot a onetime candidate for President of the U. S. The victim was Joseph Smith, patriarch of the Mormon Church, and the year was 1844. Last week there was more violence in Nauvoo. Four men, armed with a machine gun and revolvers, raided the Bank of Nauvoo, fled with nearly $8,000 in cash.

P: Inside East Chicago's First National Bank one afternoon last week terrified customers and employes were lined up by two Indiana desperadoes, John Dillinger and John Hamilton. Outside were eight policemen. John Hamilton took time to scoop up $20,376. Then, using Vice President Walter Spencer as a shield, the gunmen battled their way to an accomplice's car, fled in a hail of bullets. On the sidewalk lay the riddled body of William P. O'Malley, fourth police victim of the Dillinger gang in three months' banditry.

P: In St. Paul, Minn., where William Hamm Jr. was successfully abducted last June, Edward G. Bremer. 36, was whisked out of sight last week. Since he is a son of Adolf Bremer, majority stockholder in famed Jacob Schmidt Brewing Co. and personal friend of President Roosevelt, his kidnappers figured his release was worth $200,000. While aged Mr. Bremer pleaded frantically with Federal and State authorities to keep out of the case, he got no word from an advertisement inserted at kidnappers' instructions in a Minneapolis paper: "We are ready. Alice."

After the kidnapper's car was found with blood stains on its upholstery Minneapolis' postmaster received a note (presumably from a crank) saying that the younger Bremer "was by accident bumped off."

P: Thirty-two years ago Texas Deputy Robert S. Weisiger pulled his gun, killed Spot North, a Negro who resisted arrest. For 32 years nothing happened. Last week Sheriff Weisiger asked a Texas court to indict him for the shooting--so he could be legally vindicated. No witness of the incident was still alive.

P: In Manhattan, spurred to clean-up pitch by Mayor LaGuardia's zealous reform administration, police corralled scores of petty gamblers, slot machine & punchboard operators. Last week at Louis Gitlan's candy store, zealous Policeman Isadore Newman dropped 25 pennies in a game of bagatelle (shooting marbles from a plunger into numbered holes on a sloping board). On his 25th try, he won 5-c- worth of candy, arrested Louis Gitlan for owning a gambling device. "All luck." charged Plunger Newman. Asked the Court: "As a matter of fact ... as you continued to play you got better and better, did you not?" "My scores got better," Newman replied. The Court ruled bagatelle a game of skill, set Candyman Gitlan free.

P: In Leavenworth Prison, Kans., Harvey Bailey and Albert Bates, kidnappers of Charles F. Urschel, were last week fed a pint of milk every four hours through a hose up the nose. Reason for the feeding: a hunger strike which they later quit. Reason for the hunger strike: solitary confinement. Reason for solitary confinement: refusal to reveal the hiding of $100,000 unrecovered ransom money.

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