John Paul Chase
American bank robber and member of the John Dillinger gang (1901-1973)
John Paul Chase (December 26, 1901 – October 5, 1973) was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw. He was a longtime criminal associate of the Karpis-Barker Gang and most notably Baby Face Nelson who later brought him into the John Dillinger gang. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover once referred to Chase as "a rat with a patriotic-sounding name". Chase and Nelson continued to rob banks with John Dillinger until Dillinger's death in July 1934. After the death of Nelson in November 1934, Chase fled back to California where he was arrested a month later on December 27, 1934. Chase was sent to Alcatraz where he became one of the longest-serving inmates; (March 31, 1935 – September 21, 1954).
Biography
John Paul Chase was born in San Francisco, California on December 26, 1901. He left grade school to work on a ranch and later became an assistant machinist in a railroad yard. In 1926, Chase was fired from the railroad and was hired as a chauffeur for a professional gambler in Reno, Nevada. He spent the next few years as a bootlegger in Sausalito, San Rafael and San Francisco but was not involved in major crime until his association with Baby Face Nelson in the early 1930s, possibly in March 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Paul Chase” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.