Verne Sankey : University of Oklahoma Press : 9780806155913 : 0806155914 : 30 Oct 2016 : In late January of 1934, as authorities delivered John Dillinger to an Indiana jail, the United States Justice Department announced, for the first time, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had just captured America&;s Public Enemy No. 1. It was not Dillinger the Justice Department was referring to, but an affable railroader turned outlaw, Verne Sankey. Now Timothy W. Bjorkman has written the first full-length biography of this overlooked criminal, relating how a South Dakota family man became a bootlegger, a bank robber, and eventually, a kidnapper whose deeds heralded a nationwide crime spree. In the early days of Prohibition, Sankey, then a locomotive engineer, was drawn to the easy money he could make bootlegging. When crime syndicates monopolized the trade and Prohibition&;s end was in sight, he turned to the occasional bank robbery and eventually to a ransom scheme. In tracing the life o