Whittler's Holiday

''Til shoot my way out," sneered Desperado John Dillinger when after his ignominious capture in Tucson, Ariz., he was brought back to Indiana and locked up in Crown Point's jail to be tried for murder (TIME, Feb. 5). Sheriff Lillian Holley, mistress of Crown Point's escape-proof jail, also made a promise: "I know he's a bad baby and a jailbreaker but I can handle him." The sheriff meant to keep her promise, but Dillinger's promise was a shrewd piece of bluff. For weeks he sat in his cell doing nothing but whittle a small piece of wood with a razor blade.

One morning last week Turnkey Sam Cahoon was distributing soap to the prisoners taking morning exercise. Suddenly, Dillinger's stick of wood, whittled into the shape of a pistol and blacked with shoe polish, poked into Turnkey Cahoon's back. Cowed by the wooden weapon, he yielded up the jail's keys, was forced to call the deputy sheriff, who called the warden. Within 15 minutes Dillinger had 33 trusties, prisoners, jailers, wardens and special guards locked securely in the cells.

With the way to freedom wide open Dillinger invited fellow prisoners to take it with him. "Go to hell! I wouldn't walk two feet with you," replied his cellmate. Herbert Youngblood, a Negro in for murder, alone accepted. They selected two machine guns from the jail arsenal, and, taking Deputy Ernest Blunk as hostage, went to the jail garage. They could not start the two cars there. Dillinger tore out ignition wires. Once over an eight foot wall, with Blunk between them, Dillinger and Youngblood made their way to a garage whose owner was foreman of the Grand Jury which indicted Dillinger. There stood Sheriff Lillian Holley's new Ford V8 sedan, equipped with red headlights, a siren, a short-wave radio set and decorated with the sheriff's badge. With Blunk at the wheel, and another hostage, the two fugitives set off across country.

Some minutes later Sheriff Lillian, reclining on her divan in her home, got the news by telephone. All but hysterical she called police headquarters at nearby Gary: ''Rush all the police and guns you can get here--Dillinger's loose!" It took more than an hour to find keys to release the imprisoned jailers. Toward noon Deputy Blunk called by long distance to say that the jailbreakers had released him and the garageman near Peotone, Ill., about 25 miles away, giving them $4 for carfare and a cigaret each.

Sheriff Holley distractedly cried to badgering newshawks: "If I ever see John Dillinger, I'll shoot him dead with my own pistol. This is too ridiculous to talk about." Meantime three of Dillinger's confederates, arrested with him at Tucson and waiting in jail at Lima, Ohio, heard of his escape, speedily dressed in their best clothes so as to be ready when he came to deliver them.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.