From Prohibition Gun For Hire To Depression-era Outlaw
As the end of the decade approached, Miller was widely known as a freelance gunman for Midwest bootleggers and racketeers. On May 31, 1930, after a friend of Miller's, Eugene "Red" McLaughlin, had been killed by members of Al Capone's Chicago Outfit, Miller tracked down three of the suspects to a resort hotel in Fox Lake, Illinois and gunned them down on June 1. Later known as the Fox Lake Massacre, this event was attributed to members of George Moran's North Side Gang. {McLaughlin's body was found in a Chicago Canal}
With the end of Prohibition approaching, Miller teamed up with Harvey Bailey, George "Machine Gun" Kelly and three others in a daylight raid resulting in the theft of $70,000 from a bank in Willmar, Minnesota on July 15, 1930.
On August 13, in an argument over a "double-cross" from the bank robbery, Miller killed Frank "Weinie" Coleman, Mike Rusick and "Jew" Sammy Stein and dumped their bodies at White Bear Lake.
The murders did not seem to affect Miller's relationship with his accomplices as he again participated with Bailey, Holden, Keating, Kelly and Lawrence De Vol in stealing $40,000 from a bank in Ottumwa, Iowa on September 9, 1930.
Again with Bailey, Kelly, Frank "Jelly" Nash and several others, Miller robbed another $40,000 from a bank in Sherman, Texas on April 8, 1931.
On December 16, 1932 during a bank robbery in Minneapolis, two policemen were killed by the Miller gang
Read more about this topic: Vernon C. Miller
Famous quotes containing the words prohibition, gun, hire and/or outlaw:
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Jalous he was, and heeld hire narwe in cage,
For she was wilde and yong, and he was old,”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“It is better to have the power of self-protection than to depend on any man, whether he be the Governor in his chair of State, or the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold and with murder in his heart.”
—Lillie Devereux Blake (1835–1913)