Daring Shootout at the Lincoln Court Apartments
By: Matt Reicher
Tags: History, True Crime, Crime, Gangster, Minnesota

Daring Shootout at the Lincoln Court Apartments

A chance FBI encounter ended with a shootout against reputed gangster John Dillinger

Actions of Principals in Gun Battle Traced (via the Pioneer Press)

A seemingly minor police encounter with quiet residents at the Lincoln Court Apartments in St. Paul became another in a series of grand battles between law enforcement and the criminal underworld. A call to the authorities from Daisy S. Coffey, the building’s owner, drew out America’s “Public Enemy №1” and pushed the gangster menace to the front page of newspapers nationwide.

On a cold Saturday, March 31, 1934, morning at around 10:15 am, St. Paul, MN Detective Henry Cummings and FBI agent R.C. Coulter knocked on the door of apartment 303. The owner had spoken with the FBI a day earlier, expressing concern about the couple living there. Their intense need for secrecy had aroused suspicions. The couple always went through the rear door and kept the shades in their apartment closed. The only sign of any activity happened at night.

Less than two weeks earlier, on March 19, Dillinger and Frechette had rented apartment 303 for $60 per month. They used the alias of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hellman. Frechette opened the door after Cummings and Coulter knocked. The detectives asked to speak to Mr. Carl Hellman. She initially said, “Who?” and then pivoted to say that she needed to get dressed to talk to them and quickly shut the door. Billie Frechette, Dillinger’s girlfriend, had forgotten their alias at a most inopportune time.

While the two men waited for Mrs. Hellman’s return, a man walked up the stairs and toward apartment 303. Noticing the law enforcement presence, he continued walking toward the stairs leading out of the building’s front. Feeling like something was off, FBI Agent Coulter asked him what he was doing there. The man, reputed gangster Homer Van Meter, replied that he was a soap salesman. The agent asked him where his samples were, and Van Meter said he was getting them out of his car.

Coulter followed Van Meter to the building’s lobby. Realizing that he wasn’t going to get away, the gangster swung around and started firing at the FBI agent. He then tried to escape, but Agent Nails, stationed outside, fired on him when he exited the building. Van Meter was forced to re-enter. An incredible gun battle ensued, with later reports that there were too many shots fired to count them all accurately.

Hearing the gunfire in the building, Dillinger cracked open the door of his apartment and sprayed the hallway with bullets from a Thompson machine gun. The hail of gunfire forced the FBI agents and police officer to take cover, allowing Frechette, Van Meter, and Dillinger to escape through the building’s unguarded rear entrance. During Dillinger’s wild spraying of bullets, he was hit in the upper left calf, making his the melee’s only injury.

While Dillinger covered her escape, Frechette ran to a nearby garage and grabbed the couple’s car, a brand new black Hudson sedan. Dillinger got into the car, and the two sped off. When they were safely out of reach of the authorities, they slowed down to not raise suspicion.

FBI Agent Nails, realizing that the man that had walked into the building earlier was the gunman, shot holes into the tires of his car so he couldn’t escape. Realizing that his car was inoperable, Van Meter hijacked a garbage collector’s horse, replaced his brand new fedora with a hauler’s cap, and galloped away.

The three met up later at gangster Eddie Green’s nearby house.

In early 1934, a Ramsey County grand jury looked into allegations that the city of St. Paul’s police force had allowed the city to become a criminal haven. On March 31, the same day that the Lincoln Court Apartments shooting occurred, the grand jury released its findings, stating that the city did not have a gangster problem.

St Paul Pioneer Press March 31, 1934

The Saint Paul Daily News and its editor Howard Kahn, already at odds with city officials over their response to the apparent gangster problem, wasted little time expressing their outrage. They lamented the grand jury’s decision, noting that its findings were released on the same day law officials were engaged in a shootout with criminals at the Lincoln Court Apartments.

Dillinger’s escape and the ensuing search was front-page news in the city’s newspapers for a week. It was another traumatic incident in a decade-long crime wave, and the city’s citizens had seen enough. Public sentiment, which had once been mostly positive toward the gangsters in St. Paul, shifted. People believed that the violent criminal element in the city had to be extinguished.



This shootout touched off a battle that would change the city’s history and exterminate the country’s gangster menace. Four months after his St. Paul shootout, Dillinger was gunned down by federal agents outside of a movie theater in Chicago.

It all started by innocently forgetting an alias.