Infamous America - BABY FACE NELSON Ep. 1 | “Home Invasion”

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Lester Gillis shows a restless spirit at a young age and soon begins his criminal career with a gang that specializes in home invasions. His crew makes a name for itself during Chicago’s crime wave of 1930, and he receives the nickname that sticks with him for the rest of his short life. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Hit “JOIN” on the Infamous America YouTube homepage.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4V_wVD7N1gEB045t7-V0w/featured For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. To purchase an ad on this show please reach out: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Lester Gillis, his wife Helen, and his friend John Paul Chase, raced southeast on U.S. Route 12, crossing the state line from Wisconsin into the suburbs north of Chicago. They had been heading for the Lake Como Inn in the hamlet of Lake Geneva. But before they reached their lakeside retreat, Gillis had spotted what he suspected were agents of the FBI staking out his arrival. Gillis, understandably cautious, had immediately turned at the side of the agents and raced back toward Chicago. The FBI was after him because Lester Gillis was the top outlaw in the land,

public enemy number one. He was wanted for crimes from grand theft auto to bank robbery to cold-blooded murder of a federal agent. And he was well aware that the fist at the end of the long arm of the law was closing around him. He figured his best chance was to head back to Chicago, the city that raised him, and hoped to find a safe hideout. The trio had traveled nearly 40 miles back toward the city limits with no sign of a tail. But any belief that Gillis might have had that they would make it back to the city was short-lived. Passing through the sleepy hamlet of Fox River Grove, a prohibition-era haven for kidnappers, bank robber and killers, Gillis passed a black coop. He watched in the rearview mirror as the coop made an

aggressive U-turn and began a pursuit of his Ford. Now, Gillis wasn't just suspicious, he was certain. The feds had him in their sights. But Gillis loved a powerful engine in a souped-up car almost as much as he loved the crackle of an automatic machine gun. He pulled the Ford to the left, jumped the median, then did it again, and completed his own pair of. review turns. Now, he was in pursuit of the feds. Gilles told his wife Helen to crouch down to the floorboards. He told John Paul Chase to grab one of the Thompson submachine guns in the back seat. Gillis had no intention of letting these G-men get the drop on him, and he had no intention of going quietly. Besides, there was reason to believe the FBI might not give him the opportunity.

They had gunned down the previous two men who had warned the crown of public enemy number one, with little or no effort to apprehend them. The suave bank robber John Dillinger had been shot in the back on a busy Chicago street as he left a movie theater. And Pretty Boy Floyd, the bank robbing Robin Hood of the Oklahoma Hills, was shot at point-blank range as he lay bleeding in a farm pasture. Lester Gillis was about to show that he would suffer neither fate. He had built a reputation as a trigger-happy madman,

His shoot first and shoot to kill aggression had earned him the ire of other outlaws. Authorities wanted him. The public feared him. He was the third gangster of the 1930s to be the FBI's public enemy number one, and he was not going down without a fight. From Black Barrel Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the story of Lester Gillis, better known as Babyface Nelson, one of the wildest and most intriguing,

gangsters of the Depression era. This is episode one, home invasion. Lester's parents, Joseph and Mary Gillis, were born in Belgium and moved to America in the late 1800s. They married and settled in Chicago, Illinois. They carved out a humble but secure life together in a three-bedroom home in the city's Humboldt Park neighborhood. Joseph made a living as a sought-after Tanner. Although Mary had studied to be a school teacher, she kept their house and did her best to keep track of the Gillis children. At the end of 1908, the city of Chicago was still in a state of Jubilee over the Chicago Cubs World Series victory, a feat which would not happen again for another 108 years. The nation was still marveling at the arrival of Henry Ford's Model T automobile, and the Gillis

family was celebrating the birth of baby Lester, the last of the Gillis brood. The playful, ever-smiling, blonde-haired baby was the recipient of constant attention from his mother and five sisters. There was no single incident in Lester's early years that points to him becoming one of the most infamous Depression-era outlaws in American history. Lester's father suffered from depression and alcoholism, but there was never evidence of abuse. The women in the Gillis household remembered Lester as kind and helpful to his mother. His school teacher said he was above average in his studies and rarely misbehaved. But by the time he was 10, it was clear that Lester had a restlessness about him. His first real transgression, truancy, got him briefly shipped to a nearby boarding school.

Lester ran away, and the cycle began to repeat itself over the next few years. Whether by his parents' choice or by the mandate of the Board of Education, Lester was shipped to increasingly more rigid schools. But the stricter the rules, the more Lester pushed back. He was never aggressive or violent, and teachers and administrators were often very fond of him. He would simply disappear. No one seemed to be able to keep young Lester Gillis off the streets.

By the time he reached adolescence, it was the early days of the roaring 20s in Chicago. The arrival of prohibition outlawed the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors across the country. Prohibition also gave rise to organized crime throughout the United States. In Chicago, this meant the birth of gangs, like the Northside gang, run by Dean O'Bannon and Jaime Weiss, and the Chicago outfit, co-headed by the soon-to-be legendary Al Capone. Well-dressed hoodlums driving expensive cars with beautiful women on their arms became the new heroes of boys like Lester.

Gillis began to run with a pack of neighborhood boys who emulated the gangsters whom they read about in the newspapers. The boys formed neighborhood gangs and dabbled in petty crime. They might go into a general store, fill their pockets with candy and run, daring the shopkeeper to chase them through the streets.

Or when they grew more brazen, some of the boys might distract the shopkeeper while one boy ducked behind the counter, popped open the cash register and snatched as much money as he could carry. It was during these early days, at the beginning of Lester's teenage years, that the reputation he had later in life began to take root. Away from school and the watchful eyes of grown-ups, the kids on the street tested each other,

and Lester was an easy target. He was small for his age, but his generally easy-going nature hid the fact that he had a short fuse. quickly the word on the street was that Lester was not to be trifled with. His childhood friend Jack Perkins recalled, he never backed down from a fight, no matter how big, old, or ugly the other kid was. He was the toughest kid I ever met, tougher than rat shit.

To some adults in Humboldt Park, it may have seemed like a foregone conclusion that Lester Gillis would end up in a reform school or prison or worse, And they were right. However, it wouldn't be fighting or theft that got him shipped off. It would be a tragic, near-fatal accident that would foreshadow the way he would live and die. On the 4th of July 1921, most people in Chicago celebrated America's independence. But that afternoon, Lester Gillis was in a garage in Humboldt Park,

sitting in the driver's seat of a brand-new automobile. The 12-year-old had no plans of stealing it. his car theft days were still ahead of him. No, he and his neighborhood pal, whose father owned the vehicle, were simply playing a game of make-believe, taking turns, spinning the car's enormous steering wheel, and honking the horn. At one point, while his friend acted out some imaginary scenario, Lester noticed something in the pocket of the door. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around it. He knew instantly he had a gun in his hand. Lester drew the weapon. out. His father was adamantly against having guns in the Gillis home, but even at 12, Lester had known

how to flip open the barrel of a revolver. When he did, he saw it was loaded. After some convincing, his friend agreed that they should find an alley and try out the gun. A few blocks away, they found an alley crowded with kids. Allegedly, Lester thought scaring them would be a great idea. He aimed the revolver at a fence and fired around. A few seconds of silence followed. Lester had scared himself as much as the other kids. Then the screaming started. A young boy clutched his face.

Blood poured from between his fingers. A piece of the bullet had ricocheted and had lodged in his jaw. No amount of pleading by Joseph and Mary Gillis could keep their son from being arrested, charged, and found guilty of reckless endangerment. with a firearm. Although it could have been far worse, Lester was sentenced to 12 to 15 months

in a reform school. He served the minimum of his sentence, and when he returned to his friends in the neighborhood, they were a year older and a year deeper into crime. While Lester might have participated in the occasional burglary or mugging, the only crime that the young teenager

definitely committed was car theft, and he would become a repeat offender. Between 1922 and 1926, Lester was arrested three more times for crimes involving stolen vehicles. Each time, he was sent to the Illinois State School for Boys in St. Charles. The school housed boys from ages 9 to 17 who had been caught committing all sorts of crimes. It was strictly regimented and rules were expected to be followed. But whatever might come to mind when you imagine a facility for juvenile delinquents, in the early 20th century, the state school for boys was much different. The school sat on more

than 900 palatial acres of rolling hills dotted with beautiful brick buildings. It looked more like an Ivy League college campus than a correctional facility. There was a working livestock farm, wood and auto shops, and one of the largest gymnasiums in the state of Illinois. Lester obeyed the rules while he was there and he thrived. He earned his junior high school. school diploma at the state school. But Lester and his family also experienced a great loss during his time in the state's custody. After investing much of the family's wealth in a restaurant that failed, Joseph Gillis' battles with depressin grew much worse, and so did his drinking. Eventually, the strain proved to be too much. Joseph was alone on Christmas Eve. He closed

the doors to the kitchen and opened the valve on a gas jet. Hours passed before Mary returned home and found her husband's body. The medical examiner ruled his death, suicide by asphyxiation. Lester was granted a short release to attend his father's funeral. He was 17 years old when he finally walked out of the state school for boys for the last time. His father's death had left his mother Mary in a financially tenuous position. Her children were all grown and out of the house, so she took in borders to make money.

Lester felt compelled to help his mother, but Mary pleaded with her son to stay out of trouble. Neither the pleading nor the state school for boys had any lasting effect. In less than a year, he would be back to stealing cars, and that would be his ticket to see the inside of a real prison, one of the most notorious in the country. Between Lester's stints in Reform School,

he had temporarily held down honest employment at a Chrysler dealership as an apprentice mechanic. He instantly endeared himself to his employers. While Lester might have preferred fast, easy money, he certainly wasn't afraid of a hard day's work. The dealership's management was so fond of the young man that after his last parole in 1926, they graciously offered Lester his job back. In fact, they quickly promoted him to salesmen. But then, the dealership began to struggle in early 1927, and it had to lay Lester off. To his credit, he didn't dive back into his criminal ways.

He was hired at the Commonwealth Edison Company, Northern Illinois's largest electricity provider. There, he made deliveries and worked in the motor pool maintaining the company's fleet of trucks. He held the job at Com Edison for more than a year. Historians don't have many concrete facts about what. what, if any, illegal activity Lester might have been involved in during this period of his life. But they agree that one life-changing event happened in early 1928. 19-year-old Lester Gillis fell in love. Helen Worsiniak was a 15-year-old employee in the toy department at Goldblatt's department store.

She was a petite girl with jet black hair and stunning blue eyes. Most stories state that Lester had met her while he was shopping for gifts for his seat. sister's children, and they became a couple almost instantly. Helen's father was hesitant, at first, because of the four-year age difference, Anne Lester's trouble with the law. But he believed his daughter when she said Lester was beyond those unruly times. She said Lester had a good job and was looking forward to a future with a family. That family came much faster than Helen expected. By mid-autum, Helen was pregnant, and she and Lester eloped. The newlyweds moved in with Lester's sister Julie, and in April of 1929, Ronald Vincent Gillis was born.

Lester was a kind and devoted husband and a warm affectionate father. He was thrilled when he and Helen were expecting another baby by the end of the year. But then the fallout of the stock market crash in October 1929 reached the couple's doorstep. Lester lost his steady job and was only able to find a few shifts a week at a local gas station. Helen was forced to return to her job of the department store. The standard oil gas station where Lester worked was owned by a local family. Under the facade of legitimate business, the father and son who operated the station made their real money running a chop shop, stripping parts from stolen cars.

There was little chance considering his predicament, that Lester was going to resist returning to a life of crime. Quickly, he was stealing custom tires that his bosses could resell. He also padded his pockets working as a truck driver, delivering bootleg liquor all over the Midwest. It was during this time that Lester stopped using the name his parents had given him. The disreputable crowd he began to surround himself with knew him as Jimmy. Sometimes the last name was Burke.

Sometimes it was Johnson. Other times it was Burnett. And a story from his sister Julie seems to show the beginning of the fake name that he would use most often. While Lester and Helen were living with Julie, mail began to arrive for someone Julie didn't know. At first, she figured it was for a previous tenant.

But her brother found the mail and told her it was his. He offered no further explanation, and Julie didn't ask. The name on the mail was George Nelson. Toward the end of 1929, Lester Gillis, now George Nelson, met a man named Harry Lewis. Lewis had connections who could sell stolen goods. Their specialty was jewelry, and Lewis wanted to team up with Nelson on a series of robberies. But Lewis advised against smash-and-grab jobs at retail stores or mugging people on the street. Those were too visible and too hard to control.

So Nelson and Lewis decided to do that. to target easier sources. People who owned fancy jewelry kept it in their homes. Charles Richter was dressing for dinner on the evening of January 6, 1930, when his maid called from the first floor and said there was a Mr. Marshall at the door. Richter, a magazine executive, said he'd be right down. He headed for the staircase of his Lakeshore Drive mansion, passing the bedrooms of his two children. He was annoyed that someone would show up unannounced at dinner time. The nation was in its third month of a financial crisis that would trigger the Great Depression, and a budgetary calamity had just hit the city of Chicago. The city owed more than $3 million

in payroll to its employees, and the city didn't have the money. The city's knee-jerk response was to lay off more than 450 police officers and more than 200 firemen. The understaffed Chicago Police Department was in the midst of a crime spree throughout the city, but the wealthy Mr. Richter considered himself insulated from all that. He never thought the city's crime problem would come to his front door. Richter passed his maid at the bottom of the staircase, walked through the foryer, and reached for the brass doorknob. When he opened the door, the two men on the other side were ready.

One wedged his boot between the door and the frame, so Richter couldn't slam it shut. The other pulled a pistol. The gunman instructed Richter to be calm and cooperate. If he did, no one would get hurt. Three more men then appeared from the bushes in front of Richter's home. Two of them corralled Richter and his maid. The others spanned out.

They opened the windows at the back of the house to use in case they needed a quick escape. They cut the phone lines downstairs and swept through the first floor looking for anyone else. They found the family cook preparing dinner, unaware of what was going on. They hustled the cook into the foyer, and she, the maid, and Charles Richter were bound with adhesive tape. One of the intruders, most likely Nelson, was described as short, aggressive, and toting a shotgun. He took Richter's diamond-studded engagement ring and his platinum wristwatch. He asked where the rest of the valuables were. But before Richter could speak, there was. a loud gasp. The intruders turned to see Richter's wife, Jean, in a dinner gown, frozen in terror

on the staircase. As soon as she caught her breath, she began to plead with the men for the safety of her two children. The short man with a shotgun stepped forward and made it clear. As long as she took him upstairs and turned over her jewelry, everything would be fine. He reminded her that it was all insured anyway, so there was no reason to try anything that might be. get someone shot. Gene Richter complied, and three men followed her upstairs. In Richter's bedroom, she gave them three diamond bracelets and her diamond engagement ring. One of the men cut the phone lines upstairs, and everyone headed back down to the foyer. Gene Richter was taped up with her husband and the staff. Before the robbers left, they placed tape over each victim's

mouth. Then they disappeared into the night. They were in and out in 20 minutes, and they found out that their hall was worth $25,000. That was a fortune, the equivalent of more than $460,000 today. The next morning, the headline of the Chicago Tribune read, Gold Coast Home held up. 25 other robberies were reported that night, but none were as noteworthy as the Richter home invasion. The city's elite were in an uproar. Financial crisis or not, Mayor William Thompson was forced to act. The city council reconvened, and after a second vote, all 473 police officers who had been laid off were reinstated.

But the added manpower produced few results. No arrests were made in the Richter crime. For the robbery crew, the job had gone too smoothly to stop after just one. A few weeks later, they robbed the home of a wealthy attorney in the affluent suburb of Lake Forest. They only made off with $5,000 worth of jewels, but the heist had been a breeze. Again, they left the inhabitants bound with their mouths covered. The press gave Lester Gillis, aka George Nelson's crew, the nickname The Tape Bandits. And the Tape Bandits were just getting started.

There were bigger scores ahead. Nelson and two other tape bandits gained entrance to the mansion of Mrs. Lottie Brenner von Buello on March 31st, 1930, without even having to flash their guns. They simply knocked on the door, Mrs. Bulo's brother-in-law answered, and they told the man they were census takers. The man had either forgotten that Chicago was in the grips of a crime wave, or he was oblivious to it. He invited the three strangers upstairs, where the lady of the house and her sister were gathered in a sitting room. That's when the pistols and the tape came out. Nelson and his crew quickly bound and gagged the three adults, then searched the house. Two servants were herded

upstairs and received the same treatment. Mrs. Brenner would recount later that the small, blonde gunman made comments that he knew she was worth millions. The crime wasn't random. The thieves had targeted her home. But that made sense. The Society pages had covered the death of the woman's first husband, Nathan Brenner. He had been an alderman and manufacturing mogul. He had left his wife a fortune. And then Mrs. Brenner quickly married a famed aviator who was also a German count, named Enrique von Bulow. Except it turned out the man was not an aviator, he was not a count, and that was not his real name. He was a grifter, but he had not yet grifted all of Mrs. Brenner's wealth.

The bandits discovered more than $50,000 in jewelry, including a single pearl necklace worth $40,000. As Nelson was thanking the bound and gagged victims for their cooperation, the front door downstairs opened. It was the count himself. Nelson's crew quickly moved him upstairs at gunpoint. His hands and mouth were taped, and the crew took his wristwatch and his pocket watch, along with all the cash in his billfold. With the hall secure, the tape bandits strolled out of the house, and it was hours before the von Boulos were discovered. 1930 turned into a real hot streak for Nelson and his gang. They pulled off another successful home invasion in the Chicago suburbs in May. After breaking into the home of a jeweler, two gang members held the family hostage,

while Nelson and a bandit drove the jeweler to his Chicago store and took $25,000 worth of merchandise. As the gang's rap sheet filled up, the police were still struggling to put names with vague descriptions. But toward the end of that year of 1930, law enforcement received the description that became the defining characteristic of Lester Gillis, now known as George Nelson. It didn't help the cops catch the successful bandit, but it certainly became part of the criminal's lore. In early autumn, 35-year-old Mary Thompson arrived at the child, Thompson arrived home from the theater, accompanied by her bodyguard and chauffeur, Chicago police officer Peter O'Malley. Mary Thompson had a police department bodyguard because she was the wife of Mayor William Thompson. Officer O'Malley pulled the Thompson's car up to the front of their

Sheridan Road apartment, got out, and walked around to open the door for Mrs. Thompson. As she stepped from the car, three men approached them. One punched O'Malley in the gut. When the officer looked up, he saw the barrel of a revolver. The assailant took his sidearm and told him not to move. The other two men aimed their weapons at the mayor's wife. They ushered the woman into the apartment and demanded all her jewelry and the contents of her handbag. The bewildered woman quickly handed over nearly $18,000 worth of jewels, including a six-carat blue diamond ring.

Then she fainted. The three men sprinted to a car that was parked down the street. They jumped in and sped west. The police response was quick and massive, but Nelson and Company had slipped away. When Mrs. Thompson recovered her senses, she told the police about her ordeal. According to Chicago newspapers, she said her attacker was good-looking and hardly more than a boy. He wore a gray top coat and a brown felt hat. And he had a baby face.

Next time on Infamous America, Babyface Nelson's crime spree turns more violent and lands him in prison. But the outlaw doesn't stay there long. He goes on the run. And in the time-honored tradition of outlaws who are on the run, he runs to the American West. That's next week on Infamous America.

Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They received the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Jamie Lyko, original music by Rob Valier. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer.

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