Sgt. Tom Keeley and secretary Linda Bradfield with two of the guns seized from the infamous Dillinger gang.
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John Dillinger and his gang of bank-robbers — Charles Makley, Russell Clark and Harry Pierpoint — were captured in Tucson on Jan. 25, 1934.
The actions of Dillinger’s gang members during a fire at Hotel Congress aroused the suspicions of firemen and police.
Tucson Police Chief C.A. “Gus” Wollard devised a plan to take the dangerous criminals one at a time in what the Arizona Daily Star called “a series of breath-taking captures, each of which might have at any moment culminated in a stream of lead and death.”
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Clark was pistol-whipped when he resisted arrest at a home at 927 N. Second Ave.
Makley was arrested at an appliance store and Pierpont was found at a South Sixth Avenue tourist court and taken downtown on the pretext of needing to register his out-of-state car. He pulled two weapons as he was being interrogated, but Tucson police Officer Frank Eyman drew his first.
Dillinger was arrested easily when he came to the Second Avenue house that night. Tucson police kept the gang’s guns for display.
In this 1961 picture, Tucson Police Sgt. Tom Keeley holds a Colt Thompson with a 20-round clip, and secretary Linda Bradfield holds a Winchester Model 1907.
