Gun Molls

Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey relied heavily on the testimony of gun molls of the 1930’s. When arrested and interrogated, the women had to choose between jail or cooperating with the prosecutors. If they choose cooperating they were given no protection and were either murdered by their ex-lovers or forced into hiding for the rest of their lives.

            Meanwhile, she was a worker bee. Performing the housework of crime, gun molls packed the loot and ammunition—sometimes in the frantic moments of a police shootout-- purchased cars, rented apartments to be used as hideouts, opened safe deposit boxes for the loot, and acted as go-between between gang members scattered by the police.

           Billie Frechette, John Dillinger’s lover, cooked, cleaned and ran his errands. She was born Evelyn “Billie” Frechette in 1907 in Neopit, Wisconsin to a French father and a Native American mother. She lived on the Menominee Reservation and attended school there until the age of 13 when she moved to a government boarding school for Native Americans.

            When she was 26, in 1933, after struggling to make ends meet cleaning and waitressing, she met the 30-year old John Dillinger at a dance hall in Chicago, and fell in love. Unlike Bonnie Parker she never participated in Dillinger’s crimes but was arrested anyway by the Department of Investigation Special Agents on April 9, 1934 for harboring a criminal. Dillinger drove around the block several times after her arrest unable to rescue her. She served 2 years.

            Tipped off to the FBI by a girlfriend, Dillinger was shot down on July 22, 1934, as he left a movie theater in Chicago.

            Bonnie Parker, gun moll to Clyde Barrow, was born Oct. 1, 1910. She was the middle child and oldest daughter of Henry and Emma Parker. An honor student and poet she worked as a waitress at Marco’s café where she became friends with Ted Hinton (who would ironically take part in gunning her down.)

            She met Clyde Barrow in 1930. When he was arrested, she smuggled a gun into the prison, helping him escape. Then, two years after he was arrested again and released, she joined him on a crime spree of robbery and murder until gunned down by the police on May 23, 1934, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana..