{"id":8663,"date":"2025-01-13T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=8663"},"modified":"2025-01-06T12:49:39","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T17:49:39","slug":"gangster-hunters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/gangster-hunters\/","title":{"rendered":"GANGSTER HUNTERS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My parents lived through the Roaring Twenties and the early Thirties when \u201cmotor bandits\u201d and assorted gangsters were always in the headlines. I became fascinated with the era hearing them discuss it in the 1950s, when the \u201cDillinger Days\u201d were closer in time to them than 9\/11 or the Columbine High School atrocity are to us now.\u00a0\u00a0Having researched the period and written about it rather extensively, I was familiar with the work of Girardin, Russell, Helmer, Matera, Mattix, Burroughs, Toland, etc.\u00a0\u00a0When \u201cGangster Hunters<\/a>\u201d came out this year, I leafed through it quickly and left it on the bookshelf. At first glance it appeared to be just a rehash. But when my discerning friend Greg Ellifretz<\/a> mentioned he was reading it, I figured it deserved another chance. I\u2019m glad I bought it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, a lot of the content will be familiar to students of the era, but there are some nuggets in it. For instance: We all know that legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, along with local sheriff Henderson Jordan (a relative of famed gun guru Bill Jordan, one of my personal mentors) were responsible for taking down Bonnie (Parker) and Clyde (Barrow) in Louisiana. But did you know (I didn\u2019t!) that Federal agent Leslie Kindell was the one who learned that Bonnie and Clyde\u2019s minion Henry Methvin had recently moved to Bienville Parish and his father, Ivy, was willing to trade the deadly duo for leniency for his son? It was he who hooked up with Hamer and Jordan and set the ambush\/capture plan into action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book begins with a grainy picture of a class of FBI agents seated together and apparently pointing their Colt .38 Special revolvers at one another, all but one with their fingers on the triggers. Firearms safety protocols weren\u2019t the same then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author John Oller does not come across as a gun guy. He describes the Colt pistol John Dillinger was trying to deploy when he was killed in Chicago as a .38 when records show it was a .380, a common mistake particularly in those days. But overall, he has done an excellent job on his history of the period. A new student of the era could do a lot worse than to start with Oller\u2019s \u201cGangster Hunters.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My parents lived through the Roaring Twenties and the early Thirties when \u201cmotor bandits\u201d and assorted gangsters were always in the headlines. I became fascinated with the era hearing them discuss it in the 1950s, when the \u201cDillinger Days\u201d were closer in time to them than 9\/11 or the Columbine High School atrocity are to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8665,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663\/revisions\/8665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}