By Mollee Francisco

There are no bullet holes left as proof that notorious gangster John Dillinger once inhabited Apartment 303 at the Lincoln Court Apartments in St. Paul.

Seventy-five years after his 12-day stint at the corner of Lexington Parkway and Lincoln Avenue, there is only the occasional stop, by local gangster tours, to serve as a reminder that the quiet building in the tree-lined neighborhood was once the site of an infamous shootout between Dillinger and the FBI. 

Today, Apartment 303 is home to Chaska native Shannon Olson. Olson, an author and assistant professor of English at St. Cloud State University, causes much less trouble than Dillinger did – a fact that has happily kept her in the building for 14 years now.

She didn’t always live in Apartment 303, Olson noted. She used to live across the hall and a friend had Apartment 303, but when he moved out and offered her the chance to snag the “Dillinger Suite” as he called it, she jumped at the opportunity.

“I love the history of it,” she said. “I also think it makes me feel better about myself and my criminal leanings.”

Does the influence of the Dillinger Suite make her want to break the law? “Don’t we all wake up wanting to rob a bank?” she joked.

John Dillinger’s storied past made its way to the big screen this week in the film “Public Enemies,” directed by Michael Mann, though it is not clear how much, if any, of his time in Minnesota will be represented in the movie.

“I heard it’s mostly about his time in Chicago and Wisconsin,” Olson said, noting that she would have loved for the movie to be filmed in Minnesota.

“I figure Johnny Depp would have had to do some sort of research on my apartment, right?” she asked.

March 1934

According to Paul Maccabee’s “John Dillinger Slept Here,” Dillinger and his girlfriend Evelyn “Billie” Frechette moved into the Lincoln Court building on March 19, 1934 so that Dillinger could recover from gunshot wounds suffered the week prior during a bank robbery in Mason City, Iowa. They registered as Mr. and Mrs. Carl P. Hellman, but still managed to arouse building owner Daisy Coffey’s suspicions almost immediately.

Maccabbee wrote that the FBI reported, “The Hellmans usually remained indoors and when they did go out, they used the rear entrance. They lowered their shades just after dusk each evening and kept them lowered until about 10:30 each morning.”

According to the book, Coffey reported the odd couple to the FBI who responded to the tip on March 30, setting up overnight surveillance at the building. The next morning, around 10:15 a.m., FBI agents knocked on the door to Apartment 303.

Gunfire erupted downstairs and later outside the building as Dillinger’s driver took on the agents, Maccabee wrote. Meanwhile, inside the apartment, Frechette “begged” Dillinger not to shoot.

“When the shooting began, the door of the Hellman apartment was opened slightly and the muzzle of a machine gun protruded and began spraying the hallway with bullets,” Maccabee wrote of the FBI description of the event.

“The bullets were scraping the wall where I had cover and going right past my nose,” one agent recalled.

Moments later Dillinger and Frechette made their way to the getaway car hidden in a garage near the building.

Ghost?

Today, amidst the IKEA furniture and the bookcases full of colorful books, it is hard to imagine that the bright and airy Lincoln Court Apartment 303 was once the site of that shootout between Dillinger and the FBI.

“I keep waiting for his ghost to manifest,” Olson said hopefully.

To date, that hasn’t happened, though Olson is happy to recall a moment when she thought it had. A friend had given her a prohibition-era bottle of whiskey that she had left out on the counter overnight only to wake up the next morning and find the top off the bottle and across the room.

“I thought, ‘Great! John Dillinger was here sipping my whiskey,’” she said. “It has always been such a girly place that he had no reason to show up until I brought the whiskey in.”

She later disappointedly found out from her friend that they had a recurring problem with the tops “popping” off of the bottles.

So instead of showing off her affected whiskey bottle, Olson shows off the grocery door outside the apartment where Dillinger and Frechette would have had groceries delivered directly into the apartment and the view of Lexington Parkway that the couple would have had when the FBI descended on them.

Even the door once riddled with bullet holes from the shootout has been replaced since Dillinger’s stay. According to Maccabee’s book, the door was given by Coffey to a family that ran the Brigham Inn resort near Remer. The mahogany veneered door entranced curious tourists for decades before it was tossed behind the resort where it eventually disintegrated.

Although there are few reminders left of Dillinger’s time at Lincoln Court, it doesn’t stop Olson from toying with the idea of sticking a toy water gun out of the window when the tour buses come by. She hasn’t done it yet, but if traffic picks up after the movie’s released, she makes no promises.  

More on John Dillinger

Book: “John Dillinger Slept Here”

What: An engrossing 362 page paperback detailing the various criminals who relied on corrupt St. Paul cops to find refuge in Minnesota.

Author: Paul Maccabee

Publisher: MHS Press

Cost: $24.95 

Movie: “Public Enemies”

Director: Michael Mann

Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard

Opened: July 1

Running time: 140 minutes