Nelson nervously cruised through Lake Geneva, then drove back south. He had the feeling the town was alive with government agents. He reached the highway and turned southeast toward the Chicago suburbs.20

  Cowley took the phone call from Lake Geneva at 2:45. It was a poor moment for a crisis; most of his men were out of the office. Cowley called in two agents and told them to head for Lake Geneva at once, watching for Nelson’s car. He then took a phone call from Agent Bill Ryan, who was manning a phone tap with a rookie named Tom McDade.ek Cowley told Ryan and McDade to proceed to Lake Geneva as well.

  Cowley thought a moment. If the driver in Lake Geneva really was Nelson, four men wouldn’t be enough. He spotted Ed Hollis; they would go as well. On their way out, Cowley passed Purvis’s office.

  “Baby Face Nelson has just left Lake Geneva,” Cowley said.

  “Let’s get going,” Purvis said, rising from his desk.

  “It won’t be necessary,” Cowley said. “Hollis and I are just going to cruise around and see if we can spot the car on the highway. When we get set, I’ll phone you.”21 Purvis volunteered to call Washington. Cowley told him not to bother “as the information [is] rather vague.” Purvis called anyway, briefing one of Hoover’s aides.22

  A half hour later, Agents Ryan and McDade were the first to reach Highway 12, parallel two-lane blacktops separated by a grassy median. They sped northwest toward the Wisconsin line, scanning approaching cars; Ryan had written down Nelson’s license plate number, 639578, and pinned it to the sun visor. McDade was driving their Ford coupe as they shot through Fox River Grove, where Ryan told him to pull over so they could check Louis Cernocky’s tavern. There was no sign of Nelson or his car, so they headed back toward Wisconsin.

  Then, just as they left Fox River Grove, a black Ford raced past, heading southeast toward Chicago. Both agents peered at the plate.

  “578!” they shouted in unison.

  “Turn around!” Ryan snapped. He craned his neck to look at the passing Ford. “There’s two men and a woman in it,” he said; that met the description of the car in Lake Geneva. McDade eased into the median and completed a U-turn to follow the Ford.

  Nelson watched the FBI car slow and turn. “What the hell is this?” he asked Chase, who was in the backseat, a Browning automatic rifle in his lap. “Let’s see who those birds are.”23

  Nelson slowed the Ford, turned into the median and completed a U-turn of his own, pulling into the northbound lanes.

  “They’re turning around!” Ryan snapped at McDade.

  McDade and Ryan watched as Nelson’s car turned and drove north, passing them. A minute later, Ryan saw the Ford again head into the median and complete a second U-turn, reentering the southbound lanes.

  “They’ve turned around again!” Ryan said.

  Now Nelson was following the FBI car. “Let’s keep ahead of them,” McDade said.

  “No,” said Ryan. “Let ’em come up and we can get a look at them.” Ryan slid his .38 between his legs.

  Nelson stayed a few hundred yards behind the FBI car, going about 40 miles an hour. Both drivers kept their eyes on the other car. Then, without warning, Nelson slammed his foot on the accelerator, and the big Ford shot forward. Agent Ryan watched it approach.

  “They’re right behind us!” he told McDade.

  A moment later, Nelson pulled up beside the FBI car and honked his horn. “Pull over!” Nelson shouted.

  McDade and Ryan glanced over and saw Chase pointing the automatic rifle at them. “We gotta get outta here!” Ryan shouted. McDade ducked, then hit the accelerator. The FBI car surged ahead.

  “Let ’em have it!” Nelson shouted, pushing Helen down in the seat. Chase hesitated; he didn’t know who was in the car.

  Agent Ryan didn’t wait. He aimed his pistol at Nelson’s car and fired, squeezing off seven shots, the shells ejecting into McDade’s face. Nelson, holding a pistol in one hand and driving with the other, fired back. Windows on both cars exploded. Chase still hesitated.

  “What the hell are you gonna do, sit there?” Nelson screamed. “Can’t you see they’re shooting at us!”

  As the FBI car pulled ahead, Chase began firing the automatic rifle; somehow his shots missed the FBI car. Ryan and McDade pulled ahead. Nelson couldn’t catch up. “They must’ve hit the motor!” he said. “We’re losing speed!”

  Ahead, Agent McDade lost sight of Nelson’s car behind him.

  “Where are they?” he snapped.

  “They’re falling back!” Ryan said.

  Just then Sam Cowley and Ed Hollis, heading northwest in a black Hudson sedan, drove past the gunfight in the southbound lanes. Hollis pulled a U-turn of his own. Ryan and McDade, meanwhile, scanned the traffic behind them for Nelson’s car. Unable to spot it, McDade veered into a roadside field. Both agents jumped out, lay flat in the tall grass, and waited for Nelson to approach.

  Nelson, whose car was fast losing speed, saw Cowley’s car make the U-turn. In the rearview mirror he watched as the FBI car approached. “There’s a Hudson,” Nelson said. “It’s gaining on us.” Nelson tried to pick up speed, but it was no use; his engine was failing. Cowley and Hollis drew closer. Suddenly, just as they approached a roadside park in the town of Barrington, Nelson spun the steering wheel hard to the right and veered off the highway. He stopped on a dirt road beside the park and yelled for everyone to get out of the car. Helen scrambled into a ditch.

  Agent Hollis didn’t see Nelson’s car until he was abreast of it. He slammed on the brakes, which screeched loudly, enough to draw the attention of customers at a Standard Oil station across the highway and a Shell station about 750 feet further down the blacktop. The FBI car skidded to a diagonal stop in the right lane, 150 feet past where Nelson and Chase stood beside their car, readying their guns.

  Nelson stood on the running board and opened fire with an automatic rifle before Hollis and Cowley got out of their car. Gunshots slammed into the back of the Hudson. Chase laid a rifle across the hood of the Ford and began firing as well. Then Nelson’s rifle jammed; he threw it to Chase, yelling for him to reload it. Nelson snatched up a Thompson and resumed firing.

  Cowley leaped out of the FBI car, a submachine gun in his hands. A desk man his entire career, the squat, jowly Mormon was the last man Hoover would have wanted facing off with Nelson. Neither Cowley nor Hollis wore a bulletproof vest; Cowley complained they were too heavy. Nor had Cowley, despite the Bureau’s pleas, bothered to qualify on the pistol range. Nonetheless, crouching beside his car, Cowley fired a burst at Nelson, who returned the fire. At least six of his bullets struck Nelson in the stomach and chest, shredding his intestines.

  Nelson doubled over in pain but, with adrenaline coursing through his body, somehow continued firing at Cowley. Two rounds hit Cowley in the midsection. He sagged to the pavement, rolling into a ditch beside the car. One bullet had torn through Cowley’s stomach, the other his chest. A bulletproof vest would likely have stopped both rounds.

  Hollis jumped out the driver’s-side door onto the highway and fired blasts from his sawed-off shotgun, a blizzard of pellets that struck Nelson up and down both legs. Nelson still would not fall. He staggered forward, now firing at Hollis, who retreated across the highway, seeking the slender cover of a telephone pole. After emptying the shotgun Hollis pulled his pistol and fired as he ran. A bullet from Nelson’s submachine gun hit him flush in the forehead. Hollis crumpled to the pavement just as reached the telephone pole.

  Nelson staggered toward Hollis, badly wounded. Onlookers at the two gas stations watched in amazement as Nelson lurched over to the fallen agent. Several witnesses later claimed that Nelson fired into Hollis as he lay on the ground; he didn’t. Ignoring Cowley, who lay in the ditch, Nelson limped to the FBI Hudson and slid behind the wheel. He slipped it into reverse and managed to back it up to his car.

  “Throw those guns in here, and let’s get going!” he rasped to Chase. Chase did as he was told, grabbing up guns on the ground and tossing them into the Hudson. He started to get into the front seat when Nelson said, “You’ll have to drive. I’m hurt.” Chase circled around the car, opened the driver’s door and pushed Nelson across the front seat. Blood was everywhere. “What’ll we do about Helen?” Chase asked as he slid behind the wheel.

  “We can’t fool with her now,” Nelson said. “We’ll have to leave her.”

  Just then Chase spotted Helen running toward the car. She hopped into the backseat with the guns and Chase drove off.

  The first onlooker to reach the scene was William P. Gallagher, an Illinois state patrolman who happened to be selling tickets for an American Legion benefit at the Shell station down the highway. Hearing the shots, Gallagher had taken a rifle from the station and fired at Nelson’s fleeing car. As it drove away, Gallagher and another man, who had stopped his car upon seeing the gunfight, sprinted across the highway to Hollis. Hollis lay facedown beside the telephone pole, a gold badge pinned to his chest. The back of his head was blown off. Gallagher tried to speak to him. Hollis, who had minutes to live, managed only a heavy gasp. His eyes moved.

  Gallagher then hustled over to Cowley, who lay in the ditch, his feet on the pavement, blood covering the right side of his face; there appeared to be a gunshot wound to the side of his eye. “Don’t shoot, government officer,” Cowley whispered. Gallagher leaned down.

  “Was Hollis hurt?” Cowley asked.

  Gallagher nodded.

  “Look after him first,” Cowley said. He told Gallagher to call the Chicago office, Randolph 6226, and report what had happened. He also asked Gallagher to reach his wife and tell her he had been called out of town and wouldn’t make it home for dinner.

  Traffic was backing up. A crowd was forming. Gallagher flagged down a car and loaded Hollis inside, directing the driver to Barrington Central Hospital. Hollis died en route; Gallagher lifted a rosary from the agent’s pocket and called a priest.el A few minutes later an ambulance arrived and took Cowley to a hospital in the town of Elgin.

  Agents Ryan and McDade were still lying in a field further down Highway 12. They knew nothing of what had transpired; when Ryan ran to a pay phone and called Purvis with the news at 4:15, he reported only his own actions. Five minutes later Purvis was on the phone briefing Hoover when the police chief in the nearby town of Stamford called with news that Hollis was dead and Cowley had been shot.

  Purvis left immediately for the hospital in Elgin. He arrived as Cowley was being rolled into surgery. Cowley asked a doctor whether he was going to die. Then he saw Purvis. Whatever tensions remained between the two men vanished for a few moments. “Hello, Melvin, I am glad you are here,” Cowley whispered.

  “Rest quiet and you will be all right,” Purvis said.

  “Do you have doubt about that?” Cowley asked.

  “No,” Purvis said.

  “I emptied my gun at them,” Cowley said.

  “Who were they?”

  “Nelson and Chase.”

  Nelson was dying; even Helen could see it. He was bleeding from seventeen separate gunshot wounds. Five were in his stomach and side, two in his chest, and five in each of his legs where Hollis’s shotgun had done the damage; the worst injury was a wound to the left of his navel where one of Cowley’s .45 caliber slugs had struck and traveled sideways through his lower abdomen. Blood gushed from the wound, soaking Nelson’s gray slacks and trickling onto the seat.

  From Highway 12 Chase turned east onto Highway 22, a two-lane blacktop that wound through dense woods into Chicago’s northern suburbs. They turned south when they hit Waukegan Road, where by one account they stopped at the Techny monastery. Nelson, who remained lucid throughout the drive, was looking for his old friend Father Coughlin. After driving south into the suburb of Wilmette, they found his sister’s house at 1115 Mohawk. The house, which stills stands, was a large two-story brick home with a tree-ringed rear driveway.

  According to Father Coughlin, he was sitting in his sister’s home about four-forty-five when the back doorbell rang. A maid answered and called for him. It was Helen. She said “Jimmy” had been shot and needed help. Father Coughlin shrugged into his overcoat, threw on a hat, and followed her to the garage, where Chase had parked. Inside the garage Chase was supporting Nelson, who leaned against the car.

  Coughlin said they couldn’t stay; his sister was due home from her bridge game at any moment. “He’s dying,” Helen pled. “He’s got to go someplace where he can lie down.” Coughlin said he would take them someplace safe; they could follow him in his car. “You wouldn’t fool with us, would you Father?” Chase asked.

  Coughlin helped load Nelson into the front seat. Nelson could barely speak. He whispered in the priest’s ear, “Hello.”

  Father Coughlin drove his car, and Chase followed. The priest later told agents he didn’t know where he would go. It didn’t matter. After following Coughlin for several minutes, Nelson suspected treachery. “Lose him; I think he’s wrong,” Nelson said. “Turn around and go the other way.” When Father Coughlin lost sight of Nelson’s car, he drove back to his sister’s and called the FBI office at 6:15. Agents were at his home within the hour.

  On Hoover’s go-ahead, FBI agents began raiding all of Nelson’s gangland contacts that night. Three hustled into Cernocky’s roadhouse at Fox River Grove. Agent Ryan led two squads of Chicago police in raids on Clarey Lieder’s garage and home, taking Lieder into custody. Two more agents, accompanied by four squads of Chicago police, stormed into Jimmie Murray’s home, his parents’ home, and the Rain-Bo Inn; there was no sign of Murray. They also raided the home of Nelson’s sister on South Marshfield Avenue. Another group of ten agents descended on Murray’s cottage in the town of Wauconda. There was no sign of Nelson.

  As the raids progressed that night, Cowley was wheeled out of surgery. Doctors said his condition “was, of course, serious, but that he had a chance to pull through if peritonitis did not set in,” Hoover told Cowley’s brother Joe.24 In fact, Hoover confided to an aide, the doctors gave Cowley a 1-in-25 chance of making it through the night .25

  Characteristically, even as Cowley lay dying, Hoover was preoccupied with publicity. It was Purvis—again. Hoover couldn’t understand it; it was as if reporters were a drug Purvis couldn’t kick. He had remained at the hospital and actually given an interview to a Chicago American reporter as they watched the unconscious Cowley in a hospital bed, his wife, Lavon, and her two little boys beside him.

  “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get Baby Face Nelson—dead or alive,” Purvis whispered to the reporter, Elgar Brown. “Nelson ought to know he hasn’t a chance at eventual escape . . . We aren’t particular whether we get him alive or dead.”26

  Hoover was beside himself. He cast about for anyone to rid him of Purvis. His deputies, Hugh Clegg and Pop Nathan, were delivering speeches in Pittsburgh and Tuscon, respectively, and Hoover ordered both to Chicago. Hoover wanted Purvis out of the hospital and away from any reporters; he told Clegg to “impress upon Mr. Purvis the necessity of staying away from the office and from any public place.”27 Clegg suggested that Purvis could work in a back room at the FBI office; Hoover refused even that. Within days word would leak to the American that Purvis “is incapacitated by overwork and is on sick leave . . . Insiders do not expect him to return to the command of the Chicago office.”28

  As the night wore on, Cowley’s condition worsened. Just after midnight an agent overheard doctors say he wouldn’t make it till dawn. An hour later Purvis, who had returned to the office, called Washington to report “Mr. Cowley is sinking fast and is not expected to live more than two hours.” Purvis returned to the hospital. Cowley died at 2:17 A.M., November 28, the day before Thanksgiving. His wife, Lavon, collapsed in tears. Doctors gave her a sedative.

  Five hours later, at 7:30, police in suburban Winnetka found the FBI car Nelson had stolen in a ditch. Then, as FBI agents descended on the area, an anonymous caller phoned the Sadowski Funeral Home in suburban Niles Center (now Skokie), telling the undertaker, Philip Sadowski, he could find a body beside a local cemetery.em Sadowski passed the tip on to Niles Center police, who passed it to the FBI. Just before noon, police found blood-soaked pants, a shirt, underwear, and socks in a ditch near the cemetery. A half hour later, in another ditch at the corner of Niles and Long Avenues, they found the bullet-riddled nude body of a man wrapped in a blanket. It was Nelson.

  Chase had driven the dying Nelson through the streets of Wilmette, following his mumbled directions. About six-thirty they turned into an alley behind a house on Walnut Street and parked in a covered garage. The home was owned by a man named Ray Henderson, who appears to have been an acquaintance of the fence Jimmy Murray. Chase carried Nelson inside and laid him on a bed. Helen stripped off his clothes and wrapped a towel around his midsection in a vain attempt to staunch the blood. Nelson faded quickly, lapsing in and out of consciousness. His last minutes, like his final gunfight, resembled a scene from one of the gangster movies he loved.

  “It’s getting dark, Helen,” he whispered at one point. “Say good-bye to mother.” He recited the names of his brothers and sisters. When he asked her to bid farewell to their children, he began to cry. A few minutes later he said, “It’s getting dark, Helen. I can’t see you anymore.” He died at 7:35 P.M.

  The next morning Chase laid Nelson’s body in the ditch, then fled. Helen, frightened and unsure what to do, took refuge with her family, where the FBI took her into custody two days later. She missed Nelson’s funeral. He was laid to rest beside his father, in the suburban Chicago cemetery where his grave remains to this day.

  The bloodiest day in the FBI’s brief history was followed by two somber funerals. Herman “Ed” Hollis was buried in his native Des Moines, Sam Cowley in Salt Lake City. Cowley’s body lay in state beneath the capitol rotunda while thousands filed by in silence.

  Pop Nathan gave Cowley’s eulogy. “We are bringing [Sam] back [to Utah] a national martyred hero,” Nathan said. “The columns of the press are replete with his exploits, and men, women and children in all parts of the country know him now. He is famous, and justly so. And yet Sam Cowley was one of the simplest men I ever knew. He was greatly simple. He was simply great. His was the simplicity of the saints, seers and heroes of the ages, the simplicity of true worth, of true dignity, of true honor. We, of the Division, are very proud of him. As generations of new agents come into our service they will be told of the life and death of Sam Cowley. He will become a tradition. He will have attained earthly immortality.”