The FBI's war on famous gangsters

HURON — John Dillinger. Baby Face Nelson. Pretty Boy Floyd. Bonnie and Clyde. Anyone familiar with true crime will know the names of these 1930s gangsters. But what about the FBI agents who brought those criminals to justice? Author John Oller, a Huron native who still has relatives in Ohio, thinks FBI agents — such as Ohio native Leslie Kindell, who tracked down Bonnie and Clyde — deserve to be remembered, too. Oller's new book, "Gangster Hunters," out Nov. 26 from Dutton, doesn't stint on dishing up the dirt on Dillinger, the notorious Barker-Karpis gang, Floyd and other violent, machine-gun-toting criminals. But his book also offers full details on the FBI agents, many of them young and less well-armed than their adversaries, and how they ended the 1930s crime wave of bank robberies, kidnappings and cop murders. Getting the details right Oller dug through old FBI reports and other documents, but he also did many personal interviews. "I really wanted to bring to light these unsung heroes. What I ended up doing was finding living relatives of them, descendants of the FBI guys," he said during a recent telephone interview with the Register. "In some cases, I actually found living sons and daughters, which was kind of surprising to me." Although the criminals in "Gangster Hunters" have been written up many times before, Oller's book seems to have important new information on how they were brought to justice. For example, most accounts of the 1934 ambush that killed Bonnie and Clyde, including a long article about the duo on Wikipedia, give the credit for tracking them down to a legendary Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer. While Hamer certainly participated in the manhunt and set up the final ambush, Oller's book reveals that an FBI special agent — Leslie Kindell, a Columbus, Ohio, native and Ohio State law school graduate — did most of the actual work of tracking down Bonnie and Clyde. Oller's book chronicles how the FBI wiped out the nation's top "public enemies" in the span of about two years. Modern law enforcement has sophisticated electronic monitoring, including tracking cellphones and credit card use, and well-armed SWAT teams when criminals are finally brought to bay. Conversely, FBI work in the 1930s involved a lot of legwork, which included tracking down the criminals' girlfriends and developing confidential informants, Oller said. The local connection The book mentions Erie County and Ottawa County connections to some of the famous criminals. It mentions that the notorious Barker-Karpis gang stayed "in a couple of lakeside cottages in the small village of Huron, Ohio." It records that after a dramatic Ohio train robbery in 1935, Alvin Karpis hired a private plane to fly from Port Clinton to Hot Springs, Arkansas. And deep in the book's notes, on page 460, it mentions that Mildred Kuhlman, a "gangster's moll" girlfriend of Dock Barker, remarried and ran a cocktail lounge in Sandusky. In some sources, Dock Barker is referred to as Arthur "Doc" Barker. Sneak peek Oller provided the Register exclusive additional information about the Huron hideout and about Kuhlman. In the summer of 1934, members of the Barker-Kargis gang rented two cottages in the Grand Forest Beach area of Huron from Mr. and Mrs. Fred Willgrube, who also lived in Grand Forest Beach. Grand Forest Beach is on the west side of Huron, not far from Rye Beach Road. In 1935, two journalists working for the Erie County Reporter, a Huron-based newspaper, were investigated on suspicion of being gang members but were cleared. Kuhlman, who came from an Ohio farm, was described in an FBI report as a "very good-looking girl." Oller's book describes her riding in Dock Barker's car, wearing an $800 mink coat and holding a machine gun between her legs. Kuhlman later married Joseph Auerbach, and the two owned the Annex Bar at 135 Columbus Ave. in Sandusky and, for at least a part of the 1950s, the Vogue Lounge at 1812 Cleveland Road. "The Vogue is gone but was still there in the 1970s when I lived in Huron and was quite popular. I'm not sure Auerbach still owned it then. According to Google, 135 Columbus is now Ferly's restaurant, I don't know if it's the same building as the Annex," Oller wrote in an email to the Register. "I believe the Annex eventually became the Zebra Lounge, or maybe they were separate spots within the same venue, one more a bar and the other a cabaret," Oller said. Ron Davidson, special collections librarian at Sandusky Library, said the Annex Bar was located at or near where Crush Wine Bar is now. It opened in 1946 and apparently closed around 1966. Mildred Kuhlman Auerbach died in 1993, age 84. She is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Sandusky, according to the Find a Grave website. Her husband, Joseph Auerbach, who died in 1983, is buried in Oheb Shalom Cemetery in Perkins Township. Joseph L. Auerbach, their son, died in 2001 and is buried next to his mother at Calvary Cemetery. An authorized look Oller's career as an author actually is a second career. He was a successful lawyer with the New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. His work included representing Major League Baseball when baseball officials were dealing with Pete Rose's gambling problems and with the George Brett pine tar bat controversy. Ollver's first nonfiction book, "Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew," came out in 1997 when he was still a busy attorney. He retired from law in 2011, giving himself more time for his writing career. His other books include "An All-American Murder," about a cold case murder in Columbus, Ohio; the text is available at Oller's website, www.johnollernyc.com. Oller also wrote "American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague — Civil War 'Belle of the North'," "The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution" and "White Shoe: How a New Breed of Wall Street Lawyers Changed Big Business — and the American Century." Oller and his publisher have been generating national publicity for "Gangster Hunters," including a writeup in the New York Post, and Oller has participated in the promotional effort by giving interviews and appearing in about a dozen podcasts. "Those seem to be very popular, particularly in the true crime genre," Oller said. Podcasts can reach tens of thousands of people and "have a real reach," he said.