Transcript

Intro

Track 3

Jake_:
[0:04] Welcome to hub history or we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 2 46 how two of boston’s strangest shootings fueled the gun control debates of their times.
Hi, I’m jake. This week, I’m going to share two classic stories about deadly murders in and around boston.
Both of them were committed using military grade assault weapons and both of them happened in the middle of a raging debate around gun control in the country.

[0:38] From that description, you might assume that I’m talking about something that happened after the school shootings in Parkland florida in 2018, or even columbine in 1999.
But I’m not the first crime took place in the sleepy boston suburb of Needham in 1934 when three Gangsters used a stolen Tommy gun to rob the Needham savings bank and murder two policemen,
sadly this deadly crime took place just months before the 1934 federal firearms act made it illegal for civilians to own machine guns.
The second crime will discuss took place a generation later in 1989.
In the middle of a heated national debate that resulted in George H.
W. Bush’s 1989 limited assault weapons ban and the stronger 1994 band that was allowed to expire in 2000 and four, and what has to be the only recorded example of someone going postal in the sky.
A disgruntled postal worker killed his ex wife stole a plane and spent hours shooting up downtown boston with an Ak 47.
But before we talk about the Mylan gang, machine gun murders in the Cessna stray, for I just want to pause for a moment and say thanks to everybody out there who supports hub history on patreon podcasts are a great way to get by.

[1:59] Podcasts are a great way to get a bite sized lesson in history.
The reason you’re hearing a rerun this week is because I’ve been away on a road trip with co host american Nicky, we visited historic sites in florida Georgia, south Carolina and Virginia.
Of course, the first thing I did was to cue up a playlist for the car of related episodes of stuff you missed in history class, the american revolution podcast and the one mike black history podcast. So I know the significance of the sites we were visiting.
I hope that our show can do the same thing for others, whether it’s visitors to boston or lifelong residents who are hearing a story about their city’s past that they’ve never heard before.
The generous listeners who sign up to support the show with $2, or even $10 a month on patreon make it possible for me to keep producing the show and I’m eternally grateful to them.

[2:52] If you’re already supporting the show, thank you.
If you’re not and you’d like to start, just go to patreon dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support us link and thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.
Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.
First up is the story of Merton Earth millen who murdered two Needham cops with a Thompson submachine gun that had been stolen from the massachusetts state police.
Just days before they were the first Needham officers ever killed in the line of duty and the first murder victims killed with a fully automatic weapon in massachusetts history,
before the perpetrators were identified as the Mylan Faber gang, that is the two brothers and their ragtag band of followers.
They would rack up at least five murders, a long string of robberies and flee to Washington, D. C.
Their trial would be the highest profile case at the denim Courthouse since Sacco and Vanzetti, and before they were transferred to Charlestown state Prison for execution, they staged an armed jailbreak that was nearly successful.
This story originally aired as episode 1 70 in February 2020.

Jake-:
[4:07] The morning of february 2nd 1934 started out as a perfectly ordinary winter day in New England.

Millen Gang Machine Gun Murders

[4:13] It had snowed there too before, but town work crews had things pretty well cleaned up as usual. The snowbanks meant that the roads were a bit narrower than usual, and parking was a little bit scarcer than usual.
In the sleepy boston suburb of Needham patrolman, frank. Haddock had started this morning shift at eight a.m. And gone on foot patrol.
As he passed the fire station on Highland Avenue, Needham Heights, he paused.
Fireman tim Coughlin was shoveling out the driveway of the firehouse to make it easier to get the engines out past the snowbanks in a hurry.
The two acquaintances fell into conversation not long after nine a.m.
Not far away. Patrolman Forbes McLeod had also started his shift just before eight am, checking in at the police station, then directing traffic while Children arrived at the Greendale school.
When the kids were all inside, he walked about a mile and a half to need him center, arriving near the green in front of town hall by nine a.m.
He checked to make sure he wasn’t needed at the station, then stopped to talk with grocer, charlie stevens stevens unloaded fruit from a truck into a store across the railroad tracks that ran parallel to Highland Avenue.
The staff of the Needham Trust Bank was already getting ready to open for business.
The next day’s boston globe describes how the staff began filtering in and taking their places.

[5:32] Arnold macintosh, tall, red faced, rugged and bespectacled treasure of the Needham Trust company came to work in his car, parked it outside the door on Gordon Street,
considered the problems put up to him by the merchants and townspeople within the past few weeks, just as he had come to work every morning for years,
he walked into his office, a place in the corner of the country bank, separated from the customers lobby by an elbow high mahogany counter.
He called Elizabeth kimball, who has graduated a few years ago from the Needham High School. To take dictation.
The office staff was on duty, Ernest keith, the assistant treasurer sat in a little office just off Treasurer McIntosh’s open space.
Ernest was going over some books, checking things up.
Miss Ada Powell was in the next cage separated from keith by a low mahogany and glass partition, so they could speak over it.
She was checking some card indexes. Her little compartment is the loans department.
The information compartment in the corner near the safe deposit vault was empty because no one looks for information in the Country bank. At 9 15 in the morning, any customer could call across the counter to Arnold Macintosh and find out what he wanted to know.
The safe deposit vaults and the rear of the bank are separated from the customers lobby by a grill gate walter bahr ptolemy stood there to open it.
Should any depositor want to get into this box.

[6:55] At 9 21 the inbound commuter train let out a whistle as it pulled into Needham center, a black Packard car slipped through the crossing on great plain Avenue just as the gates came down and then it knows into one of the angled parking spaces in front of the bank.
The train chuffed to a stop at the station blocking the at grade crossing on great play nav.
Inside the bank, Elizabeth kimball was taking dictation from Treasurer Arnold McIntosh, who glanced up as the front door opened and suddenly stopped in mid sentence.

[7:25] Three men had gotten out of the big Packard and as they entered the bank they had handkerchiefs pulled up over their faces like old West outlaws and they were bristling with guns,
as two robbers armed with revolvers and shotguns began hurting the bank employees together and making them sit with their backs against the wall and their hands over their heads.
Ada Powell, the one woman loans department managed to press the button to trigger their emergency alarm.
A third robber went to the back of the bank where the door to the teller’s cage was inside the cage, 77 year old walter Bartolomeo stood guard with his hand on the key to the cage.
When Bartolomeo refused to open the cage, the robber raised a Thompson submachine gun and squeezed the trigger Walters, hand was riddled with 45 caliber bullets and he stepped back.
One of the robbers reached through the bars, turned the key and let himself into the cage, forcing teller joseph, Gordon out of the way and gathering about $14,000 in cash from the teller drawers on the other side of the train tracks.
Officer MacLeod heard the alarm going off at the bank, but the stop train prevented them from dashing to the scene. For a few long moments.
Finally the train pulled away and he started across the tracks on great plane on behind it.
At that moment one of the bank robbers called out a warning to his crew saying, here comes a cop, one of the others replied sarcastically.
Well tell him to come in.

[8:50] The one with the Tommy gun turned toward the window and fired a long burst of fully automatic fire right through the glass.
Outside, Patrolman frank mccloud fell dead in the middle of great plain avenue.

[9:02] This was the first time a machine gun or technically a submachine gun had been used in a murder in massachusetts.
The Thompson submachine gun was already legendary, having been made famous in gangland killings like the ST valentine’s day massacre ordered by Al Capone,
and by gangster pretty boy Floyd who was officially public enemy number one after robbing banks and murdering FBI agents.

[9:28] Movie audiences knew the guns from the many gangster movies released in the era, but people in the boston suburbs considered Tommy gun’s a tool of the famous mobs in Chicago or Kansas city and they never expected to see one used here at home.

[9:42] By the time MacLeod fell, less than five minutes had passed since the gang first entered the bank with the money from the teller’s drawers in hand.
They began to put their escape in motion at gunpoint.
The three men forced Treasurer, Arnold Macintosh and tell her joseph.
Reordan to walk in front of them out of the bank into the big Packard auto. Waiting outside the three robbers climbed into the car, then grabbed the two hostages by their coats and made them stand on the car’s running boards.
Reordan was thrown free at the end of the first block when the driver took a hard turn, the others in the car fired a few shots at him, but he rolled safely between a parked car and the curb and waited while they sped out of sight.

[10:23] Macintosh was in for a wild ride. After seeing the gang shootout Reordan, the middle aged, bespectacled banker held on for dear life in hopes that he wouldn’t be next.
The car flew down Highland Avenue at speeds over 70 miles an hour.
The globe carried a quote from Macintosh on what happened next.
As the car came into Needham Heights, I was on the right hand side and as we neared the Needham Heights fire station I saw frank Haddock and tim Coughlin standing in the driveway on the left side of the car.
Haddock had something in his hand. I thought it was a rifle, although I have since learned that it was not just as they were going by the fire station, they opened up on him with the machine gun.
I saw a haddock fall to the ground.

[11:07] The papers would report that both Officer Haddock and firefighter Coughlin were likely to die, but in the end Coughlin pulled through,
frank Haddock did not becoming the second need a police officer to be murdered with the Tommy gun that day and just the second ever killed in the line of duty.
After a few more blocks, the car slowed and McIntosh’s captors allowed him to jump off in the days before police radios and helicopters, they were lost as soon as they took the next turn out of sight.

[11:38] The Thompson submachine gun that the gang had used to blast their way to freedom was a formidable weapon.
It fired deadly 45 caliber pistol bullets at a fully automatic rate of up to 800 rounds a minute.

[11:50] It was originally developed as a trench broom to help break the stalemate on the western front of World War One.
But the war ended just days before it was set to be deployed.
It would later be used extensively by Allied forces in the Second World War.
In the 20s and 30s, the Tommy gun became a favorite of the Gangsters involved in rum running and speakeasies as well as of the law enforcement agencies who fought them.

[12:15] In fact, almost as soon as the smoke cleared, investigators realized that the timing gun that was used in this shocking crime might have belonged to law enforcement until just a few days before the week before the robbery in need. Um, there was a big car show in boston.
It was held at Mechanics Hall, which was basically a convention center located along Huntington’s Avenue on a lot that’s part of the Prudential Center complex today.
As part of the show, the massachusetts State police set up a large display of the latest high tech police equipment.
They had a teletype and a panel truck that could carry a so called portable radio, which was only portable insofar as could be crammed into the back of a large panel truck.
They also had a display of the latest police weapons Early in the morning of January 27 3 men emerged from their hiding spot in the hall.
They had purchased tickets to the auto show the day before. Then, when nobody was looking, they stashed themselves in the back of a van in the basement That night. They pulled pistols and rounded up two night watchmen.
While one man watched the guards the other to made their way to the state police display and quickly gathered the items they came for.
They got four short barreled shotguns, a tear gas launcher, poison gas grenades and one Thompson submachine gun with 100 round drum magazine.

[13:35] Police thought the robbery might be related to break ins at sporting goods stores and an armory in the area where more guns have been stolen.
They speculated that the guns were being shipped out to the midwest to arm the mobsters who made headlines out there sadly less than a week later, that turned out not to be the case.

[13:56] In the wake of the Needham Trust robbery, three state police detectives, a ballistics expert, a photographer and a fingerprint expert were assigned to bolster Anita’s meager Police Department.
While the boston Police department also sent fingerprint experts, the police had to send out a press release denying rumors that the robbery was carried out by Pretty Boy Floyd as there was no evidence that the machine gun wielding robber was anywhere near boston.
The first lead came from a need um real estate agent frank Hammett had been approached a few days before by three men who said they were interested in renting a house in town.
He rode with the three in their black Packard auto, showing them around Needham and pointing out the available properties.
They gossiped as they drove and the men kept steering the conversation back to the town’s police department,
asking how many officers they had and expressing surprise when Hammett said that the department had eliminated their teletype machine and declined to outfit patrol cars with radios in order to cut costs.
The description of the car matched the one that had been involved in the chase, and Hammett said that in retrospect, the three were tough looking customers.

[15:05] The next useful clue came from the town of Norwood. The Perps had abandoned their car on a quiet road in a heavily wooded area along the Norwood Westwood town line,
seeking to cover their tracks, They set the big Packard on fire, but there was still enough left for investigators to work with.
They soon made an important discovery. The car had an oversized replacement battery and a picture of it was printed in the papers.
The owner of a repair shop in Dorchester came forward and said that he recognized the battery as one he’d recently installed in a big black Packard owned by 24 year old Merton Millen and his 21 year old brother, Irving of Roxbury.

[15:46] On February 13. Police announced that the brothers were wanted as material witnesses in the case On February 16.
Despite the fact that the family home in Roxbury where Irving lived in Merton’s Boylston Street apartment were both under surveillance.
The two brothers disappeared, Martin’s new bride Norma, the 19 year old daughter of a native preacher, went along as well.
The millions were off the radar for a week until police searched norma’s parents house in natick and found a postcard or a mother with a return address at the Lincoln hotel in new york city on february 25th.
Detective john Stokes at the massachusetts state police staked out the Lincoln hotel along with three detectives from the NYPD and two private detectives.

[16:32] Though they had actually taken a break from the stakeout, they lucked into one of their suspects as they arrived back at the hotel at 3:10 pm.
Here’s how Detective Stokes told it.

[16:42] As we walked into the lobby, we recognized Irving Millen and grabbed him. I grabbed one arm.
He reached for his gun but was subdued by myself and a new york. Police officer, john Fitzsimmons.
Irving’s weapon was a loaded 32 caliber revolver.
We took him upstairs to a room in the hotel to question him There we found several $1,000 in bills of these.
I can say we’ve found bills which we believe carried numbers of bills which are stolen from the Needham Trust company the day the two patrolmen were fatally injured while Stokes was upstairs interrogating Irving.
The NYPD detectives downstairs saw Merton and Norma enter the hotel.
Detective Fitzsimmons drew his gun, but Merton Millen grabbed at the barrel and the two men fell to the floor as they struggled over the revolver as they grappled on the floor, the gun went off, embedding a slug in the wall and causing a panic stampede among the other guests in the lobby,
still locked in combat.
The two men rolled down a flight of stairs until Merton was stopped by a blow to the head from another detectives, nightstick and photos that later ran in the boston globe.
Merton’s face is badly bruised and Irving’s head is wrapped in a bloody bandage Norma millen who was at first held as a material witness looks composed, stylish and almost elegant in the arrest photos.
Another pair of brothers Saul and Morris Messenger who were friends with the Mylan’s were also held as material witnesses.

[18:10] Within a day or two, Norma Millen was released from jail. Her father norman Brighton came to new york city and norma was released into his custody as the D.
C. Evening star reported before leaving for boston, mrs Millen sat silent in a Manhattan hotel room and heard her father reverend norman Brighton tell police her lust for recklessness got her into this fix.
Mrs Millen, attractive graduate of a fashionable New England finishing school, listened with downcast eyes as her father said.
The first thing I do if I get her out of this fix is to have her marriage annulled five years ago, her sister Thelma disappeared and we’ve never heard a word from her since then.
Both girls were highly educated. I gave them everything they wanted. I can’t fathom this latest exploit.

[18:57] Reading this passage today, it’s clear that none of the men involved, Not norman, not the police, not the reporters had any conception of women as fully formed humans with their own agency,
first because it was assumed that she must be a victim of mert millen, not a co conspirator,
then because if she was considered innocent, she wasn’t released but held and turned over to her father like a wayward child.
And finally because her father felt that it was his prerogative to have her marriage and old.

[19:28] While the melons were being arrested in new york massachusetts State Police and boston police planned a raid on a garage in dorchester that the brothers had rented the night of the arrests.
In new york, boston police used sledgehammers to knock down the door of the garage Inside they found the shotguns, grenades and gas launchers that have been stolen from the state police display at the auto show.
There was also a cache of other weapons, mostly pistols and a large stockpile of ammunition under a pile of newspapers.
They found a supply of dynamite and they were blasting caps in a burlap bag nearby.
The one thing that seemed to be missing was the stolen Tommy gun.

[20:08] The next day, police in Washington D. C. Were asked to follow up on a lead in the Needham trust case.
The search of mert and norma’s room at the Lincoln hotel in new york turned up the key to a safe deposit box and claim checks for the luggage office at union station just blocks from the U. S. Capitol building.
Detective sergeant john wise went to the station, retrieved two suitcases that have been left by the millions.
The Washington D. C. Evening star reports what was found inside open to police headquarters.
The suitcases were found to contain a submachine gun, two sawed off shotguns, five pistols, ammunition for all the weapons, a gas mask and six tear gas bombs,
two masks and a quantity of men’s clothing along with $100 in $1 bills.

[20:55] Finally the stolen police Tommy gun was back in police hands and it would soon be back in the hands of massachusetts State Police,
Detective Stokes hot office capture the millions in new york, proceeded to Washington on february 28th.
There he learned that the millions and enjoyed quite a stopover in D. C. Before moving to new york.
They had arrived on february 20th, staying briefly at a hotel before signing a six month lease on an apartment on 16th street near Rock Creek Park in northwest D. C.

[21:26] Right after signing the lease, they hopped on a train back to new york so it’s hard to tell what their intentions were Stokes and the D. C. Police followed the Mylan’s tracks across the city.
They searched the 16th street apartment, finding clothing and personal effects, but nothing incriminating.
Next they went to Hamilton’s National Bank where the key seized in new york matched a safe deposit box that had been rented by two brothers using the names mert and bridge nelson.
Inside detectives found $4730 which was turned over to the U. S. Marshal Service to hold his evidence until the trial.
The guns that have been found at Union station were given to detective Stokes.
The evening star described how he was preparing to leave for boston with a veritable arsenal seized in Union station, where have been checked by the millions when things got too hot for them in massachusetts,
the exact time of his departure was kept secret since police feared the large assortment of arms you will carry might prove an attraction to Gangsters.
It contains submachine guns, automatic shotguns, revolvers and tear gas bombs.

[22:32] He also brought the family’s personal effects were found in the apartment, arriving back in boston on March 1st.

[22:39] After their success in locating the millions through the postcard norma and center mother police decided to take another look at the mill and families correspondence at the family home in Roxbury, they found letters from the brothers to their parents, but no new york postmarks.
They soon discovered that the brothers were sending mail to a friend in boston and the friend would then put the mail into a fresh envelope and send it to their parents.
Unfortunately for the friend, he was using his real name and return address Abraham favor.
The owner of the columbus Avenue radio repair shop where the Mylan’s worked was arrested as an accomplice.
While the police were out gathering physical evidence in new york and Washington detectives back in boston, we’re interrogating a favor and he didn’t hold out for long.
25 year old age was arrested on February 26 and by the next morning he was singing like a canary.
He started by confessing that he had been involved in the Needham hold up along with the millan’s, but soon he was tying them two previously unrelated murders in linen Fitchburg.
Back in December 1933 Ernest Clark, the owner of a sporting goods store in Fitchburg had been killed in a robbery gone wrong.
Abe Faber told the chief of the Fitchburg police that he and the millions had planned to take clark prisoner and forced him to open the store where they would then be able to steal more guns and more ammunition.

[24:02] The Mylan brothers and myself went to Fitchburg prepared to rob the iver johnson store. After our arrival, we watched until clark came out and locked the doors.
We followed him down Main Street and up Blossom Street. We stopped him and asked him for directions to an imaginary address.
We plan to induce him or force him into the automobile, get the keys to the store and steal the weapons and ammunition.
When he refused to, he was shot. Later when he came back toward the city property, we saw him talking to another man, then we decided to take care of both of them.
They ran and we shot at them again.

[24:38] He didn’t stop there in january. There had been a robbery at the paramount theater in Lynn.
Two men came in a side door just after the theater opened for the day, rounding up all the employees at gunpoint, a third robber with a shotgun, joined them while they waited for the manager with the key to the safe to show up.
One janitor was shot and wounded with a 22 caliber target pistol when he tried to run and another employee was shot and killed in an argument with his captors.
In the end, the bandits made off with less than $200 most of it in coins.

[25:13] By the time Faber started talking, police believed that they had already solved that case and two taxi drivers are on trial for the crime in a Salem court.
In fact the case seemed to be open and shut. The newspapers were openly speculating that the men would go to the electric chair, ballistics had matched the bullets used at the paramount theater to the ones used to kill Ernest clark in Fitchburg.
And Faber told authorities that they would match a target pistol recovered from the train station in Washington, D. C.
Probably a good thing for the two cabbies that Faber got himself arrested.

[25:45] At first, a big favor might seem an unlikely match for the Mylan brothers.
Faber was in 1931, graduate of M. IT with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and a passion for electronics.
The Globe reported that he had been offered positions designing aircraft parts after graduation, but he turned them down to open an electronics shop near the cadet armory at Park Plaza.
Both Mert and Irv Millen worked in favor store, which only makes sense once you know that Mert Millen and Abe Faber have been classmates at English High,
Mert was the oldest surviving child of immigrant parents who changed their name from Mordecai to Millen after leaving Russia in the 1890s,
The family settled in Roxbury in an 11 room house, living a comfortable lifestyle mert nerves.
Father joe was frequently abusive and Mertz seems to have taken the brunt of it.
He was known as the family wild child talking back to his parents and teachers and getting into trouble in and out of school.
He grew up strong and stocky with a quick wit and plenty of charisma earth by contrast was a quiet boy and some profiles have suggested that it might have been developmentally challenged by all accounts.
He looked up to his older brother as a hero.

[27:01] One of the people charmed by Merce charisma was a big favor,
in a profile of the brothers judge our Mark Kantrowitz says for boston english high school classmate Abraham favor the tough talking and quick acting mert possessed all the qualities.
A blacked, timid and shy.
Abe also had a noticeable twitch, could not look one in the eye and had few friends.
The three were nearly inseparable as teens. Then they went their separate ways when Abe went off to college.
Besides excelling in his studies, Abe joined the M. I. T. Pistol team and the ROTC becoming a crack shot.

[27:40] The three friends reunited after a graduated and opened his electronics shop. They didn’t keep to the straight and narrow for very long.
Nobody is sure why they decided to turn to crime but they began plotting sometime in 1932.
Most of the robberies, they eventually pulled off showed a high degree of forethought at the paramount theater.
They knew which employees had keys to the safe and when the beat cop would walk down the block at the Needham trust, they knew the commuter train could screen them from responding police and they knew to go after the teller’s drawers instead of the vault.
They started making these plans long before their first heist.
And at the same time, Abe Faber set out to teach the Mylan’s how to shoot after their arrests.
The head of the massachusetts State Police would announce we have information now that the two melons have been practicing for some time with different weapons, pistols and machine guns so that they have become expert shots.
We have located their shooting range in woods near Weston. There’s a fair sized tree out there, practically shot away by 22 bullets.

[28:46] The crime spree started in earnest in the winter of 1932 to 1933.
During that time they twice robbed the oriental theater in Mattapan Square and they robbed the Palace theater in Worcester.
No other robberies are attributed to them until the robbery of the Iver johnson store in Pittsburgh.
That december perhaps they decided to put their crimes on hold because Mert was in love on Labor Day weekend in 1933 Norma Brighton was a senior at Natick I,
she played a lead role in the class play and her classmates voted her prettiest in the senior superlatives for the holiday weekend.
She was dancing at a fantastic beach nightclub.
Mert Millen was also there and she was immediately taken with the older man.
He was charming, seemed worldly and thanks to his burgeoning life of crime, he had money to spend on courting.
He introduced her to cigarettes and booze told her to worry less about the future and live for the moment and just generally swept her off her feet.
Within three months they were married while martin was a newlywed, the gang continued the crime spree and the key question after they got caught was whether Norma was an active participant or not.

[30:01] While the brothers were waiting to be taken back to boston headlines in the boston globe screamed Irving Millen confesses to save norma in favor.
Younger Millen brothers reputed a mission of Needham crime name’s Merton is gunner who killed policemen.
Both are ready to go to the chair to save favor from that fate and also despair bride ordeal of trial Irving called slain officers fools.

[30:26] By this time the press was reporting that Norma probably was involved in the crimes at least to some degree.
For example, the globe said police declared that the involvement of Norma grows more and more pronounced and the probability that she will face trial with the trio seems likely if Norma would potentially face capital charges.
Irving was willing to talk to police in order to alleviate this suspicion in front of new york detectives and Stokes from the massachusetts state police, he allegedly said that he realized that he would have to go to the electric chair.
No matter what though he considered himself doomed, he wanted to clarify that his sister in law, norma had nothing to do with the robberies and murders and Abe had gone along on the robberies but had not shot anyone.

[31:12] Much like Faber had in his own confession, Irving managed to implicate the trio in a new crime that hadn’t previously been linked to the gang.
Among the weapons police had recovered was a standard police issue revolver owned by the worcester cops.
Irving admitted to stealing it during a theater robbery there.
Speaking of police weapons, he also admitted to stealing the Tommy gun and other weapons from the boston car show, but that case already seemed airtight before the confession,
between urban Abe had confessed to so many crimes that a state police spokesman seemed to develop an overactive imagination Approed that the three men might be responsible for over 70% of all crime in the Commonwealth for the past year.
That might have been just a bit of an exaggeration, and besides, Irving refused to sign his confession, likely making it inadmissible in court.

[32:04] On March 1st. Governor Joseph Eli formally signed extradition papers for the brothers.

[32:12] On monday morning the fifth, an extradition hearing was held in new york, officially transferring custody of the Milan brothers to massachusetts.
They boarded a train that night for dead um because authorities were afraid of mob violence against the brothers if they were taken to need him in a book about denim history.
James part describes the brother’s arrival back into massachusetts the next morning On March six, the famed passenger train from New York to Boston. The Yankee Clipper made its first ever stop at the Reedville station.
A crowd of several 1000 eagerly awaited the train’s arrival that afternoon, hoping to get a glimpse of two of its passengers.
These passengers were neither glamorous movie stars nor brave adventurers arriving to a hero’s welcome.
The train was carrying two young Roxbury brothers accused of robbing a Needham bank and shooting two policemen in cold blood.
They’ve been captured in new york and were on their way to the Norfolk county jail to await their trial for robbery and murder, interestingly, the first time I ever heard of the miller brothers was searching through the boston public library’s flickr account.
I was looking for photos of Reedville station. My local commuter rail stop back when it had an actual enclosed station building.
One of the photos I found showed the station building and outside stood a row of four uniformed police officers holding shotguns at the ready.
The photo by Leslie jones was captioned Milan brothers brought back from new york to refill station.

[33:37] That may be curious and now you’re listening to the results park continues.
After pulling into the station on Time. Merton Millen 23 and Irving Millen 21 emerged from their railroad car under heavy guard.
The mob greeting them with a chorus of boos and hisses.
Soon a convoy of some 40 cars was making its way across town, sirens wailing and horns blasting the approaching noise in the caravan brought dozens of Spectators outdoors as it made its way down High Street towards Times Square.
They’re the bystanders watched an amusement as the lead car stopped at the intersection of high in Washington streets to acquire of the traffic officer john keegan directions to the jail.
Even more astonishing was when keegan jumped on the running board of the lead car and led the caravan the few blocks to the jail, they’re the brothers joined their accused accomplice, 25 year old M I. T graduate Abraham favor who had been captured earlier.
Now abe IRV and Murray were reunited in the denim jail.
After all these interrogations and conflicting confessions, you have to imagine it might have been a very tense time on the old cellblock.

[34:48] Denham at this time was a quiet suburb at the very end of boston streetcar lines.
It may not have been quite as sleepy as need. Um, but it was close the mill in favor gang, as the press began calling them was big news and hordes of reporters, photographers, and gawkers descended on Dedham Square where the Norfolk County courthouse stood,
luckily this wasn’t Denims first rodeo As we discussed back in episode 12, the Sacco and Vanzetti trial was held in the same courthouse.
If we could handle the international media circus of that trial that could handle the regional or perhaps national coverage attracted by the mill in favor gang.

[35:26] That theory would be tested as the mill in favor gang gained more and more notoriety in the coming weeks.
Both Mylan’s pled not guilty by reason of insanity, leading to competing mental health experts, arguing for their pet theories and trying to destroy each other’s professional reputations from the witness stand.
Abe’s fiancee Rose Neller testified against him saying that he’d given her a large package as a wedding present, but she opened it after his arrest and discovered that it was full of stolen cash,
reporters and curious members of the public would dress in suits and carry briefcases in hopes of passing his attorneys and getting into the sealed courtroom,
and Newsboys hawked their latest editions among the crowd that inevitably gathered outside the courthouse to watch the gang shackled three abreast, get lead back to the jail van. At the end of the day’s proceedings.

[36:15] Throughout this media circus, Norma Millen seemed to just eat up the attention.
She was photographed shopping, cooking a meal at her father’s house and walking her dog after a late season snowstorm and most of the pictures she strikes model like poses gazing at the camera with a smoky eye.
She was clearly having a good time. But that would come to an end when she was re arrested as an accessory after the fact to murder,
her child would begin after a bob Merton Earth were done after a record setting 37 day trial, a full week longer than the first Sacco and Vanzetti trial.
All three defendants were found guilty on june 9th 1934.
The Associated Press described the scene, Merton Millan, the leader, leered as he heard the verdict.
His brother Irving described as a tool of his brother took his medicine, smiling.
Abraham Faber heard the verdict with eyes downcast and head bowed.
A crowd of 2000 persons swarmed about the courthouse. When the verdict was returned, state troopers maintained order and kept alert watch inside the courtroom, there was cheering when the verdicts were announced.

[37:28] Sentencing was postponed until after Norma’s trial, which was set to begin on June 20 after a few days of testimony, Norma took the stand in her own defense saying that she’d been enthralled by Mark Millan and couldn’t act on her own behalf.
The jury did not buy it After deliberating for seven hours, much longer than the jury that heard her fiance’s case Norma Brighton Millen was found guilty on three charges that carried a maximum sentence of 21 years in state prison.

[37:59] The Associated Press again describes her return to the dead in jail after being sentenced to one year normal, walked from the courtroom in the courthouse maintaining our composure back to the jail.
She went under the same roof with her husband. She could not ask for comfort.
Merton, who had beseeched to guard during the waiting hours for news of progress of the trial, was simply told that she was back.
It was answer enough. He turned toward the wall in his cot jail attendants said, and tears that eight weeks of his own trial and not produced were visible on his hard, steady eyes at the time.
People found it astonishing that a woman would be convicted of a serious crime.
An editorial in the Oakland Tribune in August 1934, titled Beauty doesn’t count in court, used enormous case as an example of the changing times.
Pretty faces no longer mean anything to murder juries, facts, not feminine charm now influence their minds.
Long sentences and death penalties are given to the fair sex with as much cold blooded deliberation as they are meted out to defendants of the male persuasion.
This is as true of juries, comprised solely of men as it is of those composed partly of women.
The beauty and childish charm of norma Brighton millen, daughter of a clergyman, could not save her from conviction for complicity in the murders and robberies of her husband martin Millen condemned to death at dead, a mess for the killing of two policemen and the robbery of a bank.

[39:28] Neither her extreme youth, she’s only 19 nor her beauty, which is outstanding touch the emotions of the 12 men who heard her testimony.
There was a time not many years ago, when Norma’s tearful story related on the stand would have moved any american jury to return her to freedom amid the cheers of the onlookers.
But no more women must remain sinless in the eyes of the world or suffer the consequences.

[39:54] While papers marveled over the one year sentence norma received Mert IRV and Abe were all sentenced to die in the state’s electric chair at Charlestown, interestingly, at the same time, the trial of the mill in favor gang was making headlines.
A national gun control debate was making headlines in the very same papers though the gang had stolen the Tommy gun, they used to murder the two police officers, There was no federal law restricting ownership of automatic weapons at the time,
anyone could go out and buy a similar submachine gun if they could find a gun shop that carried them.
As we read up on this, the similarities to the current debate around semiautomatic assault rifles are striking first.
The marketing for the Tommy gun was almost identical to that for guns like the Ar 15 today, despite the military origin of the weapon they were advertised for hunting and home defense.
One magazine ad said the Thompson submachine gun, the ideal weapon for the protection of large estates, ranches, plantations et cetera.
Others advertise it as the weapon that bandits fear the most.
Another ad says sportsman attention. The Thompson submachine gun fires full automatically from the shoulder at the rate of 1000 shots per minute.
Very highly recommended for big game hunting.

[41:14] Then there’s the fact that these military weapons made headlines in sensational crimes, leading to public calls for laws keeping them out of civilian hands.
The american public was being inundated with news stories about brutal gangland killings using Tommy guns.
Similar to how we see a constant drumbeat of mass shootings carried out with assault rifles.
The mill in favor gangs case along with many others was used as an argument for new restrictions.
The fact that the Mylan’s didn’t need a permit to purchase guns was brought up in arguments for a new state firearms law. While the brothers were still on trial, the current law only applied to pistols and it was proposed to amend it to require a permit for long guns as well.
With the proposed language saying firearms includes a pistol, revolver, machine gun or any other weapon of any description loaded or unloaded from which a shot or bullet can be discharged,
with the new law, Anyone buying or renting a gun of any length would need a permit.
As you can imagine, gun rights groups protested, The globe reported on a hearing at the state house,
the fact that the Mylan brothers and a big favor would have found it easy to obtain pistol licenses and view of their previous good records was brought out by Representative john Whelan of Broxton,
Chief Rutherford agreed that the men who are now under arrest on charge of many robberies and murders might have been able to secure permits to carry guns from the police.

[42:41] An interest group lobbyist trotted out yet another familiar argument.
The bill only imposes restrictions on law abiding citizens. Alfred M Tao representing the South Shore Rifle and pistol. League said without in any way doing anything to correct crime conditions.

[42:58] These are basically the same arguments we hear today against a renewed assault weapons ban.
The difference, of course, is that legislators in the 1930s weren’t afraid to act.
State regulations were tightened somewhat and then the federal government stepped in.

[43:14] In 1930 for Congress passed the National Firearms Act, one of the first pieces of federal gun control legislation Inspired by gangland crimes, like the ones carried out by the Mylan’s, as well as an attempted assassination of FDR.
In 1933, the legislation required excise taxes and registration for certain types of guns that were considered particularly dangerous or reprehensible.
The law effectively band sawed off shotguns, short barreled rifles, silencers and of course machine guns.
The Tommy gun would be legal no longer despite the protests of interest groups and so called sportsmen, the new legislation didn’t seem to negatively impact anyone in massachusetts the day it went into effect.
The globe wrote No machine guns except those in the possession of the state and city police departments were registered with the collector of internal revenue at the federal building yesterday,
when the last day elapsed for registering firearms under the National Firearms Act without becoming liable for $2,000 in fines or five years imprisonment or both.
No banks or money. Express agencies registered any weapons in boston because it was explained to the collector’s office.
The shotguns and rifles used by the banks have barrels longer than 18″.
On the other hand, several handy burglar guns were registered by private watchman or detective agencies.
These guns, sometimes called sawed off shotguns, can be concealed on the person.

[44:42] Throughout the gun control debates that they helped spark Irv Abe and Mert sat in jail in Dedham waiting their turn on the state’s death row.
There are a few reports of halfhearted escape attempts, one of the brothers made a rush for a door that a guard left briefly unlocked and got tackled.
The other made an attempt to grab the revolver from the holster of a visiting police officer. None of these got the gang much more than a nightstick to the head.
However, an escape attempt utilizing help from the outside was successful enough to at least get the group back onto the front pages of the local papers.
In the wee hours of the morning, on January 10, 1935, a neighbor telephoned the dead and police to report a man with a gun standing on top of the wall surrounding the exercise yard at the dead in jail.
The man who would turn out to be a 22 year old acquaintance of the Mylan brothers named Edward Fry, had climbed up a telephone pole outside the jail yard, then tied a rope ladder to the top of the wall and climb down.
He made his way to the window of herbs, sell hit a revolver in the ivy of the jails outside wall so one of the brothers could use it during the anticipated escape, then climbed up high enough to catch herbs.
I from his cell, Irving mill ingested it fry to wait a while.
Meanwhile, as the sun came up, the boston globe tells us how the plot began to unfold inside the jail.

[46:05] When guard Jon Mata entered the cell, Irving tossed Pepper carefully saved for such an emergency.
Over a period of weeks into his face, blinded him and then leapt upon him unable to see Mattias shouted for aid and threw himself forward, carrying Irving to the floor.
Shoot! Shouted Irving while Merton shook the bars of the iron door and shouted open my cell, open my cell Fry who had been hiding inside the jail yard, smashed a window outside the cell with a sawed off 16 gauge shotgun and took aim.

[46:37] However, with all the excitement fries, aim wasn’t true. He missed the guard Mata instead shooting out the lights and peppering Irving with birdshot.
Another guard ran onto the cellblock and subdued earth while fry beat a hasty retreat back over the prison wall on the rope ladder.
Thanks to the neighbors called denim officers soon had him under arrest, fry would claim that the plot was a one man show armed with a sawed off shotgun bought for 7 50 in the north end and carrying a revolver, ammunition and a rope ladder.
He had taken the trolley cars to Denham and walked to the jail.

[47:12] The timing of the pepper seemed to be too fortuitous and police immediately suspected that fry had help from the outside.
In April two more million siblings were arrested. The police alleged that their sister mary Millan Goodman, gave Edward fry money and drove him to the West End to buy the shotgun that he later cut down and carried into the jail yard.
Brother Harry Millan then drove friday the denim jail and circled the neighborhood while he waited for the prisoners to emerge,
the town of debt and requested that the utility companies relocate the poll that had allowed fry such easy access to the jail’s wall, but it was a moot point for the mill in favor gang as IrV Merton Abe, we’re all moved to death row in april,
at 4:50 a.m.
On april 18th, 1935 the three men were led onto a prison bus shackled and had actual balls and chains to fix to their ankles, wary of another attempt at rescue.
The bus was packed with guards and four heavily armed state troopers rode in each of two cars that accompanied the bus on its trip from Denham to Charlestown,
upon crossing the town line into boston several BPD patrol cars also packed with heavily armed officers join the convoy,
they arrived at Charlestown and were processed in Awaiting an anticipated April 28 execution date.

[48:33] That date was pushed back a few times as the gang’s appeals worked their way through the courts, but everything seemed to be resolved.
By the first week of june that week Abe Faber filed a last minute suit against the Charlestown warden for false imprisonment.
That was instantly dismissed the same day the Mylan brothers announced that they would not request executive clemency, preferring to die than spend a life in prison.

[48:57] Just after midnight. On June 7, 1935, the sentences for the mill in favour gang ran their course on death row. Merton had been placed in cell number one Irving and number two and eight and number three.
And that was the order that they were executed in that night. The Mylan brothers made out their wills.
Irving left his earthly possessions which were few to his parents While Merton left an estate worth up to $2,000 to Norma.
Mert also wrote a long farewell note to normal which he gave to an attorney to pass to her in the dead in jail.
Faber spent much of the night in prayer with rabbi moses said er who was a chaplain in the state penitentiary at midnight, Martin Millen was led from the # one cell.
He paused before the cell doors of number two and number three shaking hands with Irving and abe and saying to each, we will meet again.
He asked his attorney to help Norma and her parole hearings when they came up and asked to have his body cremated.
Then he entered the death chamber and gave no last words.
He was strapped to the chair electrodes were placed on his head And 2000 volts of electricity were passed through his body. At 12:05 and 20 seconds.
He was pronounced dead at 12:10.

[50:16] Little brother Irving was the next to die. While martin had worked on his will and favor, prayed. Irving had spent much of the night singing popular songs and asking guards to sing along with him.
His attorney questioned his competency to suffer the death penalty to the end, describing his last visit with the condemned.
As I turned to come out, I glanced back and brody. Irving’s nickname struck out his arms and said So long mr Harvey. He had a broad grin.
I broke down. I’m sorry for that kid. Earth was led into the chamber at 12 13, pronouncing the last words, All I can say is I salute my brother Martin.
It took seven minutes after the first current passed through his body before he was pronounced dead.

[51:04] Abe. Faber was the last when it was time to leave his cell. He shook the attorney’s hand and said, I’m resigned to my fate.
Life is life and death is death, I am ready.
He worked up until the less possible moment, preferring to keep his head covered while he prayed with Rabbi said are when it was time to affix the electorates to his head. The cap was carefully hung up behind him.
The switch was thrown at 12 26. He was dead within four minutes.
If all that sounds clinical. This note might give you pause. Each of the condemned men required multiple shocks before they died.
Merton was electrocuted four times Irving five times and abe also four times as if that wasn’t bad enough.
The Globe notes that it became necessary to adjust the electrodes on Irving’s head twice.

[51:57] On june 9th, Each of the defendants was interred as executed criminals. A rabbi did not preside over the funerals.
Rather a reverend, which was a title and scattered use among reform Judaism at the time, indicating a clergyman who had not attained the rank of rabbi lead the funerals.
Abe Faber was up first, hearst brought his body to the family home on Blue Hill Avenue, where Mourners quickly formed a funeral procession and drove to the jewish cemetery on Grove Street on the west Roxbury Denham town line.
At the graveside, the small group of mortars was surrounded by a larger group of curious onlookers, some of whom jeered by the reverend led prayers.
Fights broke out between the family and onlookers and only a strong boston. Police presence prevented a riot.
The unrest and a heavy rain kept the ceremony short and the service was finished in 20 minutes.

[52:51] The Mylan’s were up next, their bodies were laid out at the family home in Roxbury and Mourners were welcomed inside.
Soon thousands gathered to gawk at the spectacle.
They tried to force their way into the house and were stopped by uniform BPD officers at the doors.
The viewing was cut short and the funeral party proceeded to the baker street jewish cemeteries on the west Roxbury Newton town line, apparently ignoring martin’s requests to be cremated, the brothers were taken to a plot in the puritan section of the cemetery.
This party was larger than the one that favors internment, but there was also a crowd of at least 250 Spectators.
Again, the Spectators jeered, but this time the two sides were more evenly matched. The situation turned into a complete free for all for about 15 minutes until police arrived to separate the rioters.
After the excitement died down, the brothers were buried with the spot marked today by a double headstone that’s carved in both Hebrew and english.

[53:49] While that was the end of the story from the Mylan brother’s name, Faber, it was the beginning of a new chapter for norma Brighton Millen, she got the news of her husband’s death while she was still serving her year at the denim jail,
she was excused from her prison duties for the day and cried quietly in her cell while the other prisoners politely ignored her.
Two months after martin’s death, Norma was given parole. A U.
P. I. Wire story describes how she was preparing for her release, Norma Brighton Millen, pretty 20 year old daughter of a clergyman and widow of an executed killer leaves Dedham jail tomorrow.
She was nervous but happy as she gathered her personal belongings preparatory to facing the world, a new, the violet eyed norma hoped to take up her former life. At the point it was broken by your ill fated marriage to the machine gun bandit Merton Millen.
Her father was quoted saying that she would be going either on a camping trip to new Hampshire or a tour of the midwest to enjoy some peace and quiet.
The article continues no jail pallor marks, norma’s finely chiseled beauty Since spring. She has spent as much time as possible exercising in the jail yard.
Her skin has taken on a light tan and her cheeks are tinged with readiness.

[55:04] I couldn’t find many details of enormous life after her release, but one profile makes it sound as if she was never again as happy as she was with Mert.
The article by Judge Mark Kantrowitz says Norma later married and had a son.
She died of acute alcoholism in 1964 at age 48.
Shortly thereafter, her son who had mental problems and was institutionalized, murdered a fellow patient, he killed himself a year later.
How’s that for a happy ending?

Cessna Strafer

Jake_:
[55:38] Our second tale of a strange shooting this week involves a North Shore man, an assault rifle and a single engine Cessna plane,
and one of the strangest stories that I’ve ever heard, a veteran and postal worker murdered his ex wife, stole the plane at gunpoint and then flew around, shooting up the city of boston with an Ak 47 with an entire crate of ammunition on board.
He was spotted firing at Newbury Street Logan airport and it ships in the harbor.
Most of his attention, however, was devoted to his employer, the South boston Postal, an ax, which he strafed, repeatedly giving reporters enough time to set up nearby and capture part of his rampage on video.
This story was originally published in July 2019 as episode 1 42.

Jake-:
[56:27] We opened with a clip from video shot by scott Hess for NBC News.
Yeah, here he comes. Get, get yourself under cover yourself, Get yourself under cover.

[56:53] That’s the sound of a small plane repeatedly diving down out of the sky toward the south boston postal annex along the four point channel.
While the pilot fires an Ak 47 assault rifle out the window.
The man behind the wheel was an employee at the annex and his rampage that night may be the only known example of somebody going postal in the air.
Before the night was over, one person would be dead. The pilot would be arrested and there was a trail of destruction across greater boston.
There were bullet holes in police vehicles in Lynn in the prudential Tower skywalk in several buildings at Logan airport and a plane belonging to Continental Airlines in the post, Atlanta hawks and in rows, wharf,
pedestrians on Newbury Street and around Kenmore Square had been narrowly missed as had a tugboat captain on the harbor.

[57:42] Alfred J. Hunter the third always wanted to be a pilot.
He grew up in Lynn where his father had a pilot’s license and flew small planes.
The younger hunter was desperate to follow in his footsteps, but he kept falling short of his dreams.
When he graduated from high school, he enrolled in a technical college in texas with the goal of getting a degree in aviation probably intending to become a commercial pilot.
After less than two years, he dropped out Of course in 1967.
There was a very common career path for college dropouts.
A biographical sketch in the book Going postal by Don Lasseter says In 1967 at age 20, he enlisted in the US Army with the same goal in mind this time, Hunter hope to learn the skills of piloting a helicopter.
Once again, he failed, lasting only a few weeks at the fort Rucker Alabama flying school.
The army transferred the disappointed hunter to Mississippi to become an air traffic controller. But that plan aborted as well.
He ended up taking medic training at Fort Sam Houston. Next stop Vietnam.

[58:50] I couldn’t find an account of hunters. Vietnam service that I fully trusted, but he later regale friends and acquaintances with tales of spraying the jungle with full auto fire. As he rode into a hot LZ is to retrieve wounded soldiers.
It’s not clear to me what parts of his war stories are true, but he did serve as a combat medic and he was sometimes deployed on Huey’s.
That same profile In Going postal describes how the next chapter of Alfred Hunter’s life unfolded after Vietnam.
Hunter returned to stateside duty and tried to settle down with a new wife.
Like many of his previous commitments. This one also failed, ending in divorce.
He reenlisted in 1975 to serve tours of duty in Germany and Korea as an armored reconnaissance specialist.
His travels took him to the Philippine islands where he met a bright, attractive young woman, Elvira Sanchez A whirlwind courtship of the quiet, conservative Filipina 11 years, his junior convinced her that she had a future with hunter in her hometown of angular.
The couple stood side by side while the town’s mayor presided over their wedding ceremony.

[59:55] They returned to the U. S. After Hunters. Second enlistment was completed in 1978.
They moved into a cottage at a little motel on route 1 33 in Ipswich that was owned by his father over the years. It was sometimes known as the All Seasons Lodge of the Sunnyside Lodge.
On may 11th 1989 the boston Globe interviewed a friend of the couple who said that friends knew them as LV and jimmy.

[1:00:18] We used to have barbecues at the hotel them and our parents and all said the friend everybody got along fine. She was real sweet when she first got there. She didn’t speak much english, she was real deferential to him.
She would do everything for him. A real housewife, you know the article continues as time went on. However Elvira became more accustomed to her new home.
She began to open up to talk more at family gatherings. Soon she began to wear slacks and express her opinions more forcefully.
She also began to work at home making plastic pieces that are attached to clothing to prevent shoplifting.

[1:00:55] A few years after she gave birth to Stephen in 1980 for Elvira went to work for new perspectives.
A temporary employment agency in Beverly Elvira who had a degree in accounting, did mostly number work such as bookkeeping during her 2.5 years there she left that job about six months ago.
She was lovely said Brenda help her owner of new perspectives. She was a hardworking person during this period. Jimmy Hunter kept his dream of flight alive by purchasing an ultralight.
If a plane has a single seat is less than £254 and has a top speed under 63 MPH, it can be classified as an ultralight.
That means it doesn’t need an airworthiness certificate, doesn’t have to be registered and the pilot doesn’t have to have a license or any training or experience perfect for a man who had washed out of multiple pilot training programs.

[1:01:52] While those first few years together may have seemed idyllic from the outside, there were signs of trouble In 1979, Alfred Jimmy Hunter was convicted of assault after getting into a fight with two men in a bar and pulling a knife.
He was sentenced to probation, but his case seems to have fallen through the cracks of the massachusetts court system.

[1:02:12] By the mid 1980s, the signs of trouble were becoming billboards. Jimmy’s father, Alfred Hunter Jr, was deeply in debt by this time and owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes.
He sold the motel and moved to florida, forcing the couple to find new accommodations.
They ended up moving into a houseboat in danvers.
The Lassiter profile describes how Jimmy’s obsessions caused a growing strain on the marriage and this is a moment when sensitive listeners might want to fast forward by about a minute, Lasseter wrote.
Hunter complained to a co worker that his wife became too Americanized and he didn’t like that so he had to seek other companionship.
According to another acquaintance on the job, 100 not only talked of his passionate attraction to asian women, but he brought amateur pornographic videotapes to the workplace to show selected colleagues.
They featured Hunter cavorting with various women from the far east.
Hunter claimed he had traveled to the Philippines and Thailand to seek out ladies who would perform in his videos in massachusetts. The coworker said Hunter would get tired of one girl and then move on to another.

[1:03:21] By 1987, the marriage was falling apart On May 24 of that year, Elvira went to Salem District Court and testified that Alfred had caused her physical harm and placed her in fear of imminent physical harm.
The court issued a restraining order barring Alfred from any in person contact. For one year.
They filed for divorce jointly in 1988 and by november, the divorce was granted on the basis of irreconcilable breakdown in their marriage.

[1:03:51] Even as their divorce cited irreconcilable breakdown, the couple reconciled at least partly Sometime in mid 1988, Alfred moved into Elvira’s apartment in Beverly.
It didn’t last long. On December 31, 1988, Elvira told police that Alfred had assaulted her.
She reported that they had been watching Tv together when she changed the channel without his permission and enraged Alfred quote punched me in the face and help me down to the floor.
Then he dragged her by the hair into the bedroom.

[1:04:23] On January 3, 1989, they were back in court and Alfred was charged with us all When the case was heard on May nine, Hunter would get a year of probation and the restraining order was renewed.
In the meantime, Elvira moved out and found a new apartment in Danvers.
If the record of Alfred’s 1979 assault conviction hadn’t been lost due to a clerical error, Prosecutors might have been inclined to pursue an assault charge in the 1987 case and hunter almost certainly would have gotten a harsher sentence at the May nine, trial.
As a convicted felon, Hunter should also have been forced to turn in his gun license in 1979.
Instead, those same clerical errors allowed them to retain a Massachusetts F.I. D. card through 1989 which permitted him to purchase a rifle or shotgun.

[1:05:14] After working all day at the south boston postal annex on january 17th 1989 he drove up to Saulsbury and went to bob’s tactical shooting range and gun shop,
That morning, a man named Patrick Purdy had opened fire on an elementary school playground in stockton California with an AK 47.
He killed five Children and injured 30 more.
All the dead and many of the wounded were southeast asian refugees and the attack was believed to be racially motivated that day at work. Hunter confided in a coworker.
I really like what happened there. I need a gun. I really want one That night Bob’s tactical sold him an AK 47 assault rifle just like parties.
The globe quoted that same coworkers saying that Alfred would take his toy to new Hampshire to practice firing it in the woods.

[1:06:07] After getting a sentence of probation on May nine, Alfred Hunter put his AK 47 in his gray van and drove to Danvers are more sensitive listeners might want to skip forward about two minutes.
At this point, According to court documents, Alfred knocked on the door of Elvira’s apartment between 9:30 and 9:45 pm.
Their five year old son steven opened the door and Alfred told him to go to his room.
Alfred came inside the apartment and Elvira stepped into the hallway, neighbors called the police after hearing her scream, oh please don’t, don’t do it.
And then hearing what sounded like gunshots.
Alfred a charter at close range. When a neighbor came to see what the disturbance was, Five year old steven said my daddy just shot my mommy.

[1:06:56] By that time Alfred was gone and the police were on their way.
Officers would later describe a room by room search during which they found Elvira’s quote body lying facedown in a pool of blood so substantial that the blood had seeped through the floor and pulled on the basement floor.
She had seven gunshot wounds to the chest, head and both wrists.
She had been shot three times in the front of her body and once to the temple as she lay on the floor.
She was shot at close range and each of the wounds to the head and torso was fatal.
The wounds tour wrists were described as defensive type wounds unquote.

[1:07:34] Later, after he was arrested, Hunter would tell a fellow prisoner that he had shot Elvira once in each breast, once in the crotch and once in the head as punishment for allegedly cheating on him.

[1:07:47] It was the first homicide in Danvers in over 20 years.

[1:07:52] After leaving Elvira’s apartment, Alfred drove to Route one and began looking for another car.
He tried and failed to steal a car in the parking lot of calories restaurant, Then use the rifle to carjack somebody at the Oriental Jade Chinese restaurant at about 9:50 p. m.
His next stop was Beverly Municipal Airport, about 10 miles away.
He arrived there at about 10:20 p.m. And found that Salem State College student and part time flight instructor robert Golder was the only person around holder remembered that.
Hunter said, I want an airplane and I want it. Now, I don’t want to hurt anyone saying I saw this rifle and he stuck it in my face and he demanded an airplane with full fuel.

[1:08:35] Hunter had Golder grabbed the keys for several planes and marched him to the runway at gunpoint.
Golder didn’t hesitate to comply because quote, it wasn’t like he had a crazed look on his face, but I knew he meant business. We didn’t have any with full fuel. But he took one with about a half tank.
He then went over to his car and grabbed a big steel strong box about two ft by one ft, which I assume was full of ammunition because it weighed about £75.
He then told me to get out of the airplane. He said, I haven’t flown in a couple of years but I can fly it. Just start it for me.
As he loaded up the plane, Hunter ordered Golder. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t use the phone. I know who you are.
Golder told NBC, he told me that he had killed somebody tonight so don’t do anything stupid.
Apparently putting his expertise flying his ultralight to work. Alfred Hunter got his stolen red and white Cessna off the ground.
Reports say that he started out just circling the airport in Beverly possibly getting a feel for the plane. Then he flew north into New Hampshire.
Turning around, he made a loop or two around Wakefield then flew all the way down to the south shore, looping around Duxbury.
Perhaps he was feeling more confident or maybe he just thought he was running out of time. But whatever the reason that’s when he made a beeline for downtown boston.

[1:09:55] The timeline gets a little jumbled from that point on. But he seems to have been everywhere at once in the skies over boston, he was spotted buzzing low over the cars in the southeast Expressway, taking potshots at a tugboat on the harbor.
And at one point he even flew under the lower span of the Tobin Bridge.
Mostly though he flew around taking an aerial tour of boston’s neighborhoods, He flew over Kenmore Square right after the sox lost to the Minnesota twins.
That’s when people on the ground began to realize that they were dealing with something a bit more than just a disoriented pilot or a daredevil.
A few blocks away from Fenway Park, a 30 year old stockbroker named Andrew Smith was walking down Newbury Street on his way to a restaurant.
When he saw the plane approaching him from the direction of the stadium, he told the boston globe the plane was flying very low and all the lights were out. Then it started popping again.
At that point it was so low I thought it was about to crash. But when I saw the shell casings lying around, I realized what was going on.

[1:10:57] He called the police with a report and eventually ended up giving his story to a very skeptical BPD Deputy Superintendent named robert Hayden, who said, I looked at him very closely to see if he was drunk or insane.

[1:11:11] However, when Hayden called BPD operations, he learned that a tugboat captain had just reported a similar encounter a small red and white plain without any lights on it. Buzz low over his boat, making popping sounds.
What’s the captain assumed were firecrackers.

[1:11:27] As the police began to realize what was happening, Hayden and other leaders went into an incident command room on the seventh floor of the old B. P. D. Headquarters on the corner of Berkeley and Stewart streets and they began coordinating a response.
Hayden told the Globe This was the most unusual night I’ve had as a police officer in 22 years, we were helpless. We were totally out of our element.
We were bound to the ground. We were trying to go where we thought he was going to go and deploy our men and deploy our ambulances.
So I brought up the idea of sending up a helicopter to try to track or even shoot down hunters plane.
But a state Police spokesperson later told the press why that would have been a terrible idea.

[1:12:10] Trooper Barbara Bennett said, authorities decided to track the two seat Cessna by radar from the ground and wait for it to run out of fuel instead of sending up a helicopter after it because you’d be a sitting duck in the air.
There was a high degree of frustration for authorities on the ground, but it wouldn’t have made sense to go up after him. Bennett said.

[1:12:29] The Associated Press quoted FAA spokesperson, Michael culturally is saying he was an intermittent blip on the radar screen.
It was very difficult to keep him in full sight.
There were attempts to contact the airplane but there was no voice contact.
Even without radar tracking. Hunter wasn’t too hard to follow from the ground.
Soon Hayden and the rest of the task force could watch his plane out the window of their command post as it repeatedly dove down toward the south boston postal annex where Hunter worked,
officers were ordered to converge on the area and the streets were sealed off for two blocks around and feared that he might decide to crash the plane into the postal building and put a fiery into his flight.

[1:13:09] The police asked postal employees to leave the building or shelter in the basement though it’s hard to make out in the NBC television coverage that will link to in the show notes, Hunter kept firing his Ak 47 at the postal annex and at the surrounding buildings.
During a series of aerobatics, The press would report that bullet holes were later found in the building.
In fact, when I tweeted about this incident a few weeks ago, I got many comments from people who remembered that night, including this one from Tim.
I worked at the South boston Post Office General mail facility. When Al Hunter strafed the building, I saw bullet holes in a fluorescent light fixture the next day as the plane ran low on fuel.
Alfred Hunter’s attention shifted from the postal annex to Logan airport As he banked over the airport, he raped airline buildings and at least one parked plane with gunfire. Shortly before one a.m.
Then he began diving directly at the control tower, pulling up in a way at the last moment. Then coming around and doing it again.
The same FAA spokesperson told the ap the fourth time controllers were directed to literally vacate the tower and relocate to the radar room until further notice.

[1:14:21] John Lydon, another FAA spokesperson told the new york times.
We have a very thick handbook on the rules of air traffic control, but there’s nothing in there about what to do.
If a maniac comes shooting an Ak 47 at you in the control tower,
the FAA ordered airport operations to shut down and temporarily closed the airspace over Logan to commercial flights, luckily it was a slow time of night And only one flight was affected, forcing it to circle until it finally landed about 45 minutes late.

[1:14:52] At 12:57 a.m. Hunter landed a stolen plane on one of Logan’s runways and began taxiing towards terminal C.
With cruisers from the state and boston police departments in hot pursuit.
However, as they closed in on the Cessna, he turned the plane suddenly toward another runway, slams the throttle forward again and took off.

[1:15:14] Finally, with less than five minutes worth of fuel remaining in the tank, he landed again at 1:15.
This time he taxied to terminal C shut off the engine and surrendered awaiting officers.

[1:15:29] Somehow, despite all the close calls, nobody was injured by the many shots Hunter fired from the air.
Neither the rifle nor the creative ammunition was ever found. Caller from Dorchester had reported seeing the plane flying low and a large box being thrown from it.
Perhaps that was the metal ammo box that Robert Golder had described Hunter wrestling into the Cessna.
A few loose, live and spent shell casings were found in the cockpit, but that’s it.
Authorities speculated that he had thrown the rifle out the window on one of his many passes over the harbor before landing.

[1:16:03] The next day, Hunter was arraigned for Elvira’s murder in a Salem courtroom and pleaded not guilty.
The judge ordered a 20 day psychiatric evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital to see if the hunter would be competent to stand trial.
When that period was over. A competence hearing was held at the hospital.
A psychiatrist who treated them during that state testified that he was severely depressed and suicidal and he was found incompetent.
The judge ordered him to be committed to Bridgewater for six months with another hearing to be held at that time. If he was again found incompetent, he’d be indefinitely committed with a competency hearing to be held at least once a year.
Six months later. Like clockwork, the court held another hearing. This time, the psychiatrist said that Hunter was mentally able to understand the charges and he could participate in his own defense.
He was ruled competent for trial on December 27, 1989.

[1:17:00] The trial dragged on for nearly two years with Hunter’s defense resting on his state of mind at the time of the crime.
His lawyers argued that he had been in decline in early 1989 and he didn’t know what he was doing because he was suffering from terrible PTSD brought on by his combat experience in Vietnam.
During one hearing, Hunter sat in court while a video of jungle fighting was played than an expert witness testified about his mental state.
I didn’t observe that there was a market change in his behavior. He was not able to see it. It was behind him. It was facing you all, but there were gunshot wounds, gunshots and audio parts of it.
And I didn’t observe any particular change in his behavior during that period.
If he had a post traumatic stress disorder, you might expect that he would have reacted rather strongly to that.

[1:17:49] Now as a society, I hope our understanding of PTSD is a bit more nuanced today than it was in the early 1990s.
But in 1992 that was enough evidence for a jury to decide that hunter was not suffering from PTSD in a way that would make him unable to tell right from wrong.
Not only that, but during the hours after his initial arrest in 1989, Hunter told two different prisoners in jail with him that he had shot Elvira because he was mad at her.
On March 13, to a jury found him guilty and Alfred J. Hunter III was given a life sentence for the murder of his ex wife.
He also received two concurrent 5 year sentences for charges of assault with a dangerous weapon.
Hunter’s arrest and trial fell right in the middle of the first wave of activism that eventually led to the 1994 federal assault weapons ban the stockton’s schoolyard shooting.
That had motivated Hunter to buy an Ak 47 had also motivated state and local lawmakers across the country to take steps to curtail the availability of semiautomatic assault rifles, California was the first effectively banning assault rifles in the state.
In May of 1989, a week after hunters crime spree, the boston City Council passed a resolution requesting that the state government strengthened rules requiring that whenever a firearms I. D. Card was renewed, court records should be searched for new convictions.
It also asked that the legislature passed a pending home rule petition to allow boston to ban assault rifles within city limits.

[1:19:18] That July Republican President George H. W. Bush approved a permanent ban on the import of several assault rifles, including the AK 47.
After another mass shooting in 1991. Momentum was building for a nationwide ban on assault rifles,
By 1990 for over 75% of Americans supported a ban on assault weapons and former presidents Carter Ford and Reagan all wrote to the House of Representatives in support of such a ban.
Finally, President Clinton signed a bill banning semiautomatic rifles, pistols and shotguns with certain often cosmetic features in September 1994.

[1:19:56] The ban expired in 2004 and I’m sure that had nothing to do with the increasing number of mass shootings we’ve seen since then, two years after his conviction, Alfred Hunter’s legal team was back in court.
They had pursued an appeal before the mass SJC laying out six areas where they believe the trial judge had made mistakes.
The Supreme Judicial Court concurred with them on two points in a murder case where the sole issue at trial concerned the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the killing,
the judge committed error in denying the defendant of wadi here on the issue properly raised of the voluntariness of statements the defendant made to two civilian witnesses on the day of his arraignment in the district court from whence he had been committed.
After an examination by a psychiatrist to the Bridgewater State Hospital for determination of his competence to stand trial in the circumstances of a criminal case in which the defendant was ordered to submit to one examination by a psychiatrist.
The judge committed error and admitting testimony on direct examination that the defendant had refused, on advice of counsel to submit to a second examination.

[1:21:02] On January 25, 1990 for the sGC overturned Hunter’s conviction and remanded the case to the Superior Court for a retrial,
On November 8, 1995, Alfred Hunter, now 48 years old, was back in court facing a first degree murder charge.
He again did not contest having killed Elvira and stolen the plane and his attorneys again argued that he had been mentally ill at the time of the murder.
Less than two weeks later, he was convicted and sentenced to a term of life without possibility of parole.
In 1990 800 mounted another appeal, this time claiming that his trial had been unfair because the jury was not screened for implicit bias against white men,
and because having an expert judges reaction to seeing a combat video was akin to forcing him to testify against himself.
This time, the SJC found in favor of the commonwealth and Hunter’s conviction was upheld.
He disappears from the headlines after the 1998 appeal, but a state record search reveals that as of mid july 2019, Alfred J. Hunter the third remains in state custody in a medium security unit at M. C. I. Norfolk.

Outro

Jake_:
[1:22:13] To learn more about the melon favor gang stolen Tommy gun and the stratfor stolen Cessna.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 246.
I’ll have links to news coverage and primary sources for both stories, as well as NBC video coverage of the Cessna stratfor and a ton of photographs of the Mylan Faber gang.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hub history dot com.
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Track 3

Jake_:
[1:23:07] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.