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Bill Gulish thought the granite headstone looked a little too nice for a man killed way back in 1934.
But then again, Gulish pondered, the man was a notorious bank robber who worked with John Dillinger. So maybe it is reasonable that the simple gravestone for Homer V. Van Meter at Lindenwood Cemetery still looks pristine when you consider he was buried more than 70 years ago.
“They must’ve saved some money from all those bank robberies,” the Columbia City resident said jokingly.
In the wake of the release of “Public Enemies,” the Dillinger biopic starring Johnny Depp, Lindenwood officials are bracing for the possibility of more visitors like Gulish – people excited about the movie who want to see Fort Wayne’s connection to both gangster history and the summer blockbuster.
And the officials will gladly direct such crowds to the gravestone for one Homer Van Meter, a lieutenant in John Dillinger’s famous gang of Midwest bank robbers.
Van Meter has been described by some as Dillinger’s mastermind in planning various bank robberies. He was also an integral component in raids on at least three Indiana police stations where Dillinger’s gang made off with machine guns, bulletproof vests and tear-gas bombs.
Killed in a police ambush a month after Dillinger, Van Meter’s body was brought back home to its final resting place at Lindenwood shortly afterward.
In “Public Enemies” he is played by actor Stephen Dorff, and, no, the gravestone isn’t still so nice because money was saved up from all those bank heists.
“Actually, it’s been stolen more than once,” said Craig Lake, prearrangement manager for Dignity Memorial and Lindenwood Cemetery, in response to Gulish.
Reports about Van Meter’s death in an alley in St. Paul, Minn., that ran in The Journal Gazette on Aug. 24 and 25, 1934, called him “the finger man” for the gang and described him as the “sleepy-eyed but deadly Dillinger machine-gunner.”
Police apparently laid a trap for Van Meter, and when he fired two shots from his own gun at officers they answered with machine-gun fire, riddling his body with bullets.
“Van Meter’s death was a continuation of the disasters wreaked upon the Dillinger gang by love of a pretty face,” read one story in the paper. “He made the fatal mistake by choosing a girl whose parents notified police.”
Other newspaper reports in The Journal Gazette quoted family who believed Van Meter honed his criminal craft while he was young and living in Chicago. He eventually met Dillinger in the Indiana State Reformatory, and an “unruly record” for both led them to prison in Michigan City.
While Van Meter was content to stay out of the limelight and in the background, the newspaper reported, he showed plenty of cunning in his heist plans.
In preparation to rob the police station in Peru, he passed himself off as a writer for a detective magazine and convinced an officer to show him around the facility, including where the station’s arsenal was kept. The next day, Dillinger and others arrived and robbed the station.
“Possessed with an ingratiating personality, Van Meter was able to perform tasks for his gang which sounded like fiction,” read one story in The Journal Gazette.
Lake said Van Meter’s grave gets sporadic visits from people every year.
And while Gulish and his wife, Henrietta, were among about five groups who visited the Van Meter grave Wednesday – a high total for one day – hundreds have been flocking to see Dillinger’s grave at the Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.
Keith Norwalk, president of Crown Hill, said there were three or four cars full of people at Dillinger’s grave at any given time throughout the day Wednesday, when the movie opened. He was swamped with media interviews, which had to constantly be interrupted by more people waiting to see the Dillinger family plot.
“We saw nothing like (Wednesday),” he said.
As of Thursday afternoon, no one else had come to the office asking for help finding Van Meter’s grave. Plenty were still flocking to see Dillinger’s, Norwalk said.
Gulish came to Van Meter’s grave after reading a book about Dillinger. He took the trip at the behest of his wife, who he said enjoys looking around a cemetery. After he heard Lake explain how the gravestone has been stolen several times over the years, needing to be replaced each time, he thought for a second.
Then, looking down at the purple stone, he found it ironic for a known thief.
“Maybe, in a way, he would’ve gotten a kick out of that,” Gulish said.
