Albert Jack's Ten Minute Mysteries

9. John Dillinger: Whatever Happened to America’s Robin Hood? The story of the charismatic criminal who leaped over counters Hollywood style when robbing a bank. During the Depression of the 1930s, many Americans, broke and hungry, made heroes of the outlaws who simply pulled out their guns and took what they wanted. This was the era of the gangster: of Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde and, most of all, John Herbert Dillinger. A career criminal, Dillinger is often described as an American Robin Hood – although he conveniently skipped the bit about giving anything back to the poor. Dillinger is best known for his narrow getaways from police and his many bank robberies where, incidentally, he also picked up the nickname ‘Jackrabbit’ due to the athletic way he leaped over counters (supposedly inspired by something he had seen in a movie). He was finally cornered by FBI agents at the Biograph Theater in Lincoln Park, Chicago, on 22 July 1934. He had been there to watch the film Manhattan Melodrama with his girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, and a brothel owner called Anna Sage, who was facing deportation charges. Sage had cut a deal with the FBI and, as they exited the theatre, she tipped off agent Melvin Purvis who gunned Dillinger down from behind. J. Edgar Hoover, founder and director of the FBI, had become obsessed with capturing the charismatic bank robber, who was on the run from the Crown Point Indiana County Jail, said to be escape-proof. In the quest for the gangster, agents had arrested the wrong man several times and even mistakenly killed three innocent construction workers in a shoot-out, causing public outrage. Dillinger had been goading Hoover and was becoming something of a Robin Hood-style figure in the eyes of the world. Hoover, in return, was devoting a third of the entire FBI budget to catching this one single outlaw. But then doubts arose as to whether it was Dillinger who had been shot. It all started when Dillinger’s father, summoned to identify the body, failed to recognize his son, famously stating: ‘That’s not my boy.’ Further investigation appeared to confirm the doubts rather than dispel them. The dead man had brown eyes, for instance, whereas Dillinger’s were grey, and the autopsy revealed signs of a childhood illness that he never had. The corpse also showed signs of a rheumatic heart condition, but Dr Patrick Weeks, the physician at Crown Point, confirmed Dillinger had been suffering from no such disease and had been in robust health. Apart from his famed athleticism during bank raids, he had been an avid baseball player both in the navy and while in prison. Furthermore, although fingerprint records were inconclusive due to acid scarring of the hands, the body had none of the scars that had been listed on Dillinger’s prison files. Had the FBI again mistakenly killed the wrong man again in their desperate search for John Dillinger? Was he to remain a free man, with J. Edgar Hoover refusing to reveal the truth, as he was already under pressure to resign over the previous mistaken-identity killing. Anna Sage was still deported back to her home country of Romania, leading to speculation she had deliberately misled the FBI by identifying the wrong man, a petty criminal from Wisconsin called Jimmy Lawrence who bore a close resemblance to Dillinger and had dated the same girls. Had John Dillinger found the perfect way to rid himself of Lawrence, a love rival, and the interest of the FBI in one fell swoop? Rumour has it that, such was the brazen cheek of the man, he even taunted J. Edgar Hoover by sending him a Christmas card every year afterwards. 10. The Missing Navy Diver The mysterious disappearance of a real-life James Bond – the man on whom the fictional character was based. Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb, OBE, was the Royal Navy frogman who famously vanished in 1956, when the Suez Crisis was at its height, during a reconnaissance mission to investigate a Soviet cruiser. Crabb’s life began uneventfully enough. He was born on 28 January 1909 into a poor family living in Streatham in southwest London. After leaving school he held several menial jobs and then joined the Merchant Navy. At the beginning of the Second World War, he joined the army but it wasn’t until he transferred to the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1941 that he came into his own. In 1942 he was posted to Gibraltar as part of a new Royal Navy diving unit. Their mission was to remove unexploded mines fixed underneath the waterline to the hulls of many Allied ships. It was dangerous, unpleasant work but Crabb excelled at it. His comrades held his courage and ability in such high regard that they started calling him ‘Buster’ after the American Olympic swimming champion Buster Crabbe (who moved on to a career in the film industry, starring as both Tarzan and Flash Gordon) and the nickname stuck. His skills were also recognized by his superiors. Buster was awarded the George Medal, promoted to lieutenant commander and placed in charge of all anti-mining operations around the coast of Italy. At the end of the war he was awarded the OBE for his services to the empire and in 1947 he was posted to Palestine to lead an underwater explosives disposal team removing mines planted by Jewish rebels. Crabb then left the navy, but he remained in close contact with the military, on one occasion even helping to identify a suitable location for a nuclear waste discharge pipe for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston. In 1955, as the Cold War gathered pace, the Soviet cruiser Sverdlov steamed into Portsmouth harbour as part of a worldwide naval review. Behind the scenes, and the friendly gestures of the world’s most powerful nations, Crabb was recruited by naval top brass to make a series of secret dives around the docked Sverdlov to evaluate its potential. According to his diving companion Sidney Knowles, they found, contained within an opening in the ship’s bow, a large propeller that could be directed to give thrust to the bow. Whitehall was impressed, but in the process Crabb had technically become a spy. In March 1955, he reluctantly retired from professional diving due to his age (he was now fifty-four years old). The following April, the Russian ship Ordzhonikidze arrived in Portsmouth carrying a delegation headed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It was the height of the Suez Crisis. The British and Egyptian governments were arguing about ownership and rights of access along the Suez Canal; hence, as the Russians were providing the Egyptians with arms, negotiation with the Soviet Union was crucial. So Prime Minister Anthony Eden was both alarmed and dismayed when, without warning, Khrushchev furiously called off the talks, claiming they were being spied upon by British intelligence. On his return to Russia, Khrushchev promptly released a statement declaring that his ship’s crew had spotted a frogman close to the cruiser as it lay berthed in Portsmouth harbour. Soon afterwards the British government issued its own sombre statement – that Commander Crabb had been reported missing while ‘enjoying a recreational dive somewhere along the south coast in Hampshire’. This aroused a great deal of suspicion, leading to speculation that perhaps the Russians knew rather more about the baffling disappearance of Britain’s best-known diver than the public were being told. And when questions were asked in the House of Commons and Anthony Eden forced Sir John Sinclair, the head of MI6, to resign, it only added to the mystery. After all, if the Russians were this upset over the alleged spying, what information did they have to support it? Could they have captured Crabb? Compounding the puzzle was the discovery, fifteen months later, of the body of a frogman washed up on a beach at Pilsey Island in West Sussex. Officials believed it to be that of Buster Crabb but, as the corpse had had both its head and hands cut off, identification was near impossible (using the techniques available at the time). When both Crabb’s ex-wife and girlfriend failed to identify the body, there was speculation about yet more shenanigans on the part of the government, brought to a halt when Sidney Knowles was summoned and identified a small scar on the frogman’s left knee, thereby confirming that the body was Crabb’s. But the rumours and wild stories continued unabated. In 1961, J. S. Kerans, a British member of Parliament, submitted a proposal to have the case reinvestigated, but this was denied by the Conservative government of the day. In 1964 another MP, Marcus Lipton, made a similar move but with the same result, in the form of a rebuffal from a Labour government this time. Some stories suggested that Crabb had been killed by a secret underwater Soviet weapon, while others tried to prove he had been captured and held in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo Prison, even citing his prison number (147) – although the Russians strenuously denied this. Another rumour suggested that Crabbe had been brainwashed and was now working voluntarily as a specialist instructor for Soviet frogmen. Other accounts maintained he had deliberately defected to the Russians and was now in charge of the Black Sea Fleet under the name of Lev Lvovich Korablo. Or that he was a secret double agent. Or that – as claimed by Joseph Zwerkin, a former Soviet spy – on being spotted in the water close to the ship, he had been shot by a Russian sniper from the deck of Ordzhonikidze. The strange story of Buster Crabb has intrigued many people over the years. Ian Fleming partly based the character of James Bond on the many colourful tales of Crabb’s covert operations. More recently, Tim Binding, author of a fictional account of Crabb’s life, Man Overboard (2005), claimed he was contacted by Sidney Knowles after its publication. Knowles, then living in southern Spain, apparently met Binding and told him that in 1956 Crabb had intended to defect and that MI5 had become aware of his plans. It would have been a public relations disaster if Commander Crabb – a popular and well-known English war hero, awarded an OBE and with the George Medal pinned to his chest – suddenly became a Soviet citizen. Knowles also alleged that MI5 ordered the Ordzhonikidze mission with the sole intention of killing Crabb, even going as far as providing a diving partner to carry out the job. Knowles was then ordered by MI5 to identify the body as Crabb’s, despite knowing that the headless corpse wasn’t that of his former colleague. The reason he gave for his long silence was that, back in 1989 when he was planning to write an exposé, he had been threatened with death if he continued. And the confusing events surrounding Crabb’s disappearance were only made murkier by the British government decision to extend the Freedom of Information Act sixty years longer than usual in the case of Buster Crabb. Hence official records will not be made available until the year 2057, one hundred years after the incident. But, based on the evidence that is currently available, this is my interpretation of events. When the Anglo–Soviet talks were being prepared, Anthony Eden ordered MI5 – responsible for overseeing domestic counter-intelligence gathering and home security – to do nothing that might cause a diplomatic incident, so crucial was the Suez Canal to British interests. However, this order was not passed to MI6 – responsible for overseas security and intelligence. Documents recently released prove that Nicholas Elliot at MI6 recruited Crabb to spy on the Ordzhonikidze while it was berthed in Portsmouth harbour. The diver was to gather information about the propeller size and design and check for underwater mine-laying hatches, Such information would enable British intelligence to calculate the ship’s top speed as well as providing useful information for British torpedo manufacturers. In April 1956, Buster and his MI6 controller, whose name has been deleted from the records, covertly booked in to the Sally Port Hotel in Old Portsmouth. On 19 April the pair quietly boarded a small boat and paddled into Portsmouth harbour, where the frogman made a preliminary dive near the Russian ship. He surfaced, briefed the MI6 officer and then prepared to make a second, more extensive dive. This time, however, Crabb failed to return and was not seen again until his body, minus head and hands – presuming, for the moment, that it was his body – was washed up at Chichester. For MI6 to be taking such risks in the first place was an extraordinary development given that the chances of a British sea battle with the Soviet Union at that time were as unlikely as one with the Portsmouth Yacht Club, and probably about as one-sided too. (Added to which, in the wake of such a diplomatic blunder, Khrushchev delighted in announcing that, far from being a modern state-of-the-art warship, Ordzhonikidze was an outdated naval vessel and had been decommissioned. The ship was no longer part of the battle fleet but, instead, on ceremonial duty ferrying around politicians like him.) A top-secret memo, now in the public domain, from Rear-Admiral John Inglis, Director of Naval Intelligence, denied any official mission by Crabb, stating that if it had been a ‘bona fide’ assignment, there would have been an ‘immediate and extensive rescue and recovery operation’. But, on grounds of diplomatic sensitivity, surely no rescue attempt could seriously have been considered in the waters close to the Russian ship without causing alarm. So was Crabb sacrificed to avoid a diplomatic incident? Or were the Russians already aware of Crabb’s presence and managed to capture him? Or did Buster in fact defect, and was the body found at Chichester therefore that of another man? In the wake of the recent defections by middle-ranking diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, this would have been a major embarrassment, very much worthy of cover-up by the British government. It is, after all, known that Nicholas Elliot was responsible for proposing that Crabb should carry out the underwater mission in Portsmouth on that fateful day. Elliot and Kim Philby had been friends at Cambridge when the great twentieth-century spy ring was being formed. But back in 1956, Philby was still seven years away from joining MacLean and Burgess in Moscow. It was not until Elliot confronted Philby in Beirut in 1963, after a defecting Soviet agent had named the latter as a spy, that suspicion arose and connections were made with the Crabb mystery, but somehow Elliot allowed Philby to vanish, only to later reappear in Moscow. It is not officially known what role Elliot played in the spy ring, and some believe that if he was supportive of it, he may well have arranged Crabb’s defection in 1956. An alternative theory suggests that Elliot was embarrassed by his connections to Burgess and MacLean, following their defection, and that, on learning of Crabb’s attempt to do the same, had him murdered by MI6 agents while on his spying mission in the harbour. Crabb’s service to his country appears to have counted for very little in the end, as the government – wishing to avoid a further diplomatic incident – refused to provide his widow with any war compensation, pension or maintenance payment. Eden’s government had been fully aware Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb was working for the secret service. They lied, both publicly and in private, about events surrounding his disappearance. Many aspects still remain unclear, despite the release of some official documents covering the subject. For example, the official line is that Buster Crabb booked into the Sally Port Hotel using the name ‘Mr Smith’. But this couldn’t be confirmed, apparently because another secret service agent whose real name was, coincidentally, Mr Smith and who was also booked into the Sally Port Hotel, was enraged to find his name being used and (rather conveniently for the government) tore out the relevant four pages of the hotel guest book. Assuming Crabb wasn’t a turncoat (imagine James Bond defecting!), it would appear that the British government made a mess of their diplomatic relations with the Russians, and in an attempt to whitewash the whole affair, both officially and publicly, made Commander Crabb their scapegoat, washing their hands of him completely. If this is the way Britain treats her war heroes, she doesn’t deserve to have any, in my view. 11. The Dover Demon Was there a demon on the streets of Dover, Massachusetts, in 1977? Late in the evening on 27 April 1977, seventeen-year-old Bill Bartlett was out driving with two friends along Farm Street, Dover, in Massachusetts. Suddenly something caught the teenager’s eye. Slowing to take a closer look, he and the two other boys assumed it must be some sort of animal crouching by the wall at the side of the road. Caught in the car’s headlights, the ‘animal’ turned to face them – at which they all froze in terror. This creature was like nothing they had ever seen before: it had a small, thin body but a huge oval head and outsized hands and feet. Trembling with fright, Bill put his foot down hard on the accelerator and they were off. The boys later described a beast with large orange eyes and no body hair at all but very rough-textured skin.