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Yesterday we brought you part 1 of a story about Verne
Miller, a war hero who served with the ND National Guard in WWI. He was
clean cut, tall, and blond with chiseled features. When he came home,
he became a policeman and was then elected sheriff. But, in July 1922,
he was found to have embezzled some $6,000 from the South Dakota county
that employed him.
The law caught up with Miller in St. Paul the day after Halloween. The
fugitive sheriff gave up without incident and pled not guilty. But, when
the case went to trail, he approached the bench and pled guilty. He was
fined $5200 and sentenced from 2-10 years in the SD State pen.
Miller turned out to be a model inmate. He didn’t drink, gamble or
use snuff, and the warden soon made him his personal chauffeur. After
18 months, Miller was released and worked as a farmhand for $70 a month
until the terms of his parole were met.
Miller was soon indicted for violating prohibition laws, and in June 1925,
he turned himself in. But, as soon as his father and uncle posted bail
for him, he skipped town. The next summer, he met Vi Mathis, who had recently
divorced her husband – he was in prison for 1st degree murder. Vi
was a working at a carnival in Brainerd, MN, when a belligerent customer
started bothering her. Miller came to the rescue, and the two were soon
inseparable.
A year later, it was rumored Verne Miller was the driver of a getaway
car when a bank was robbed by six men back in Huron. Miller was by now
hooked up with one of Al Capone’s guys as a bootlegger. He and Vi
were running liquor between Chicago and St. Paul, and delivering to hotels
and speakeasies across the Dakotas.
Things went well for the pair until February 1928, when Miller was involved
in a brawl, in which two patrolmen were shot and wounded at the Cotton
Club in Minneapolis. Miller’s partners, Kid Cann and Bob Kennedy,
were indicted but let go due to lack of witnesses.
About this same time, Miller’s name was also linked to a bank robbery
Good Thunder, MN. Witnesses described two “short and shabby”
men, along with one who was tall and well dressed. One of the witnesses
identified the clean-cut suspect as Miller.
A few months later, Miller was also indicted for shooting a prohibition
agent, so he and Vi skipped town. They landed in Montreal, where they
opened several casinos with a New Jersey mobster. Miller’s crime
network quickly expanded. When he and Vi came back to the States during
the depression, Miller soon became part of what the FBI dubbed the Holden-Keating
gang, which included Harvey Bailey, the leader, Tommy Holden, Francis
“Jimmy” Keating and accomplices Machine Gun Kelly and Frank
“Jelly” Nash.
Soon after, Miller and his gang robbed a bank in Willmar, MN, getting
away with $140,000. But, one gang member was killed, and two locals were
wounded. During their investigation officials soon came across three dead
or dying Kansas City men, Sammy Stein, Mike Rusick, and Frank “Weanie”
Coleman. All were shot with a .45-caliber machine gun. Machine Gun Kelly
said the killer was Verne Miller, who was soon running with the likes
of Pretty Boy Floyd.
For the next three years, Verne and Vi lived the high-life, robbing banks
across the country. Murder was commonplace in their world, and it was
inevitable Verne would die badly. Yesterday was the anniversary of his
death in 1933 – he was found dead on the outskirts of Detroit, nude,
beaten and trussed-up.
It’s perhaps ironic prohibition was repealed just one week later.
Source:
Verne Miller Time Line. SD Public Broadcasting. <http://www.sdpb.org/radio/oto/VerneMiller/timeline.asp>
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