The Washington times., 1935-10-02
WOMAN IN RED
ASKS AID OF
GOVERNOR

CHICAGO, Oct. 2 u.N.S.l.-A
bad buy won't keep a woman
from returning to the bargain
counter.
The woman in red," Mrs.
Anna Sage, who drove bar
gain with Uncle Sam and found
her sugar libe. ally mixed with
sand, nevertheless vas ready to-
day to shop with the State Of
Indiana.
Gov. Paul V. McNutt, who pre-
viously had called. her ian un-
desirable" announced yesterday
that Indiana would help the
woman in red" fight deporta-
ton to Rumania if she would
tell what she knows about the
sensational wooden gun" escape
of outlaw John Dillinger from
the Crown Point Ond0 jail
March 3, 1884.
Previously she had traded the
nations public enemy No. ! to
Uncle Sam for his promise not
to send her to her native
country. -
The woman in red" kept her
part of the bargain, lured the
desperately hunted killer into a
trap set by Melvin Purvis, then
head of the Chicago Bureau Of
the Department of Justice.
Led DiIlinger to Death
. Dillinger was slain as he step
ped from the lobby Of the
Biograph Theater, the night OF
July az, 1884.
Mrs. Sage, clad in a flaming
red dress to aid in the identiti-
cation of the desperado, was on
one arm, his sweetheart, Polly
Hamilton Keele, on the other.
But Uncle Sam failed to live
I'D to his half Of the bargain.
The woman in red" was to
have been deported last Saturday.
Her attorneys obtained q writ
of habeas corpus on which final
hearing will be held in Federal
Court october 8.
She charged the Government
with welching on its promise.
Mrs. Sage was thrice convicted
in Indiana of operating disorderly
houses. Former Gov. Harry Leslie
gave her pardons on two Of the
convictions. She asked Governor
McNutt for q pardon on the third,
in which there was suspended
sentence. A pardon would leave
her record clear, and there would
be no grounds for her deporta-
tion.
Governor RecantS
Governor McNutt previously had
,intimated he would not grant the
pardon. But he recanted and Of
fered to hoSs trade with the
woman in red"
She was suspected Of being the
woman who visited Dillinger,
awaiting trial for murder, the day
before his sensational escape.
The desperate killer maintained
he made his escape with a wooden
gun, whitfield from a washboard.
But Jail attaches whom he ter
rorized as he made his dash for
q short-lived freedom, in Subse-
quent investigations, insisted the
gun was real.
The "break" caused a furor in
Indiana politics, and investigation
after investigation brought forth
no enlightenment.
But in statements charging the
Government with breaking its
pledge, Mrs. Sage has stated she
did not know the young "stock
market clerk" who kept trysts
with his sweetheart in her apart
ment was Dillinger for weeks
not until she overheard him
1aughingly remark as he read
newspaper account Of his activi-
ties.
They've got me somewhere
else, now, honey"
GOES TO PURVIS
Then she went to her old
friend, Sergt. Martin Zarkovich
of the East Chicago Gnd.) police.
He took her to PurviS and she
struck her bargain.
Zarkovich and his superior,
Capt. Tim O'Neil, were in at the
'skill," and O'Neil has revealed
that it was he who fired the shot
that felled the infamous outlaw
as he drew a gun and started
to run. ,...