Original antique 1936 press photograph of Evelyn "Billie" Frechette

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Mary Evelyn "Billie" Frechette (September 15, 1907 – January 13, 1969) was an American woman known for her personal relationship with the bank robber John Dillinger in the early 1930s.

Frechette had told True Confessions magazine that as result of her husband's incarceration, she had a "blurred attitude toward life." In November 1933, she met John Dillinger at a dance hall. She said, "There was something in those eyes that I will never forget. They were piercing and electric, yet there was an amused carefree twinkle in them too. They met my eyes and held me hypnotized for an instant."
Frechette is known to have been involved with Dillinger for about six months, until her arrest and imprisonment in 1934. She finished two years in prison in 1936, then toured the United States with Dillinger's family for five years with their "Crime Doesn't Pay" show. She married and returned to the Menominee Indian Reservation, where she was born, for a quieter life in her later decades.

Early life
Mary Evelyn ("Billie") Frechette was born in Neopit, Wisconsin, on the Menominee Indian Reservation. She described the background of her mother (née Mary Labell) as "half French and half Indian",[1] and that of her father as simply French.

Frechette's father died when she was eight years old. She attended a mission school on the reservation, and then was sent to a government boarding school for Indians in South Dakota. After time there, she moved to her aunt's to become a nurse. At the age of 18, she moved to Chicago to be closer to her sister.

On April 24, 1928, she gave birth to her only child, William Edward Frechette, while residing in an unwed mother's home in Chicago. William lived for three months before dying on July 24, 1928.

Marriage and family
Frechette and "Walter Sparks" (Welton Walter Spark) married on August 2, 1932, in Chicago. Spark was sentenced, with two others, on July 20, 1932, to a 15-year term at Leavenworth for three counts of robbery of postal substations in drug stores. Walter Spark and his co-defendant, Arthur Cherrington, both married the same day, Cherrington to Patricia Young. Their marriage ceremonies were conducted at the Cook County Jail by Chaplain E. N. Ware. Spark and Cherrington entered Leavenworth on August 13, 1932.

Involvement with John Dillinger
Frechette met John Dillinger at a cabaret in November 1933. They began a relationship soon after that. Frechette was quoted as saying, "John was good to me. He looked after me and bought me all kinds of jewelry and cars and pets, and we went places and saw things, and he gave me everything a girl wants. He treated me like a lady".   Frechette assumed more marital roles with Dillinger than an accomplice. She once drove a getaway car after Dillinger was shot by the police. She was arrested on April 9, 1934, for allowing him to hide in her St. Paul, Minnesota, apartment and for obstruction of justice. Dillinger and a companion watched the arrest from a block away. Dillinger wanted to attack the lawmen and rescue her, but accepted the argument that he would die in the attempt.

Frechette served two years at the Federal Correctional Farm in Milan, Michigan, for violating the Federal Harboring Law. She was released in 1936.

Later life
Frechette traveled with the Dillinger family for five years after her release and his death. The traveling show was "Crime Doesn't Pay." Frechette returned to the Menominee Reservation, where she had two subsequent marriages. She died of cancer on January 13, 1969, at age 61 in Shawano, Wisconsin. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery next to her third husband, Arthur Tic.

Unlike Bonnie Parker, who was Clyde Barrow's active accomplice, Frechette gave Dillinger minimal assistance. She made purchases for him, such as clothing and cars, but for the most part, she performed the role of a housewife. Besides being Dillinger's lover and companion, Frechette did his cooking and cleaning. Only once did she drive a getaway car, when the St. Paul police had discovered their apartment -- and that was only because Dillinger had been wounded in the leg.

The two lovers were reunited in Chicago after Dillinger's escape from Crown Point, Indiana — an escape which she may have facilitated by smuggling money and maps into the jail during a jailhouse visit with Louis Piquett. They remained together until Frechette was arrested by Department of Investigation Special Agents on April 9, 1934. Dillinger drove around the block several times before Pat Cherrington, the girlfriend of Dillinger gang member John Hamilton, convinced him that he would be killed if he tried to rescue Frechette. Cherrington later said that he started "crying like a baby."

Dillinger paid Louis Piquett, his own lawyer, to take on Frechette's case, and try to free her through legal means. During her trial in St. Paul, Frechette testified that during her D.O.I. interrogation, she had been slapped and deprived of food and sleep for two days. Dillinger became so angry that he vowed to kill Harold H. Reinecke, the agent in charge of Frechette's interrogation. Dillinger reluctantly gave up his intention only after Piquett threatened to leave him if he killed anyone.

Before his death, Dillinger frequently met Piquett or his legal investigator, Arthur O'Leary. Each time he asked about Frechette's appeal, even though he was already dating Polly Hamilton. In one letter Frechette sent Dillinger through O'Leary, she begged him not to try to rescue her, for fear he would be killed. In spite of her protests, on July 11, 1934, Dillinger told O'Leary on about a recent trip to Milan, Michigan. He had driven there to see the federal prison where Frechette was being held. After looking over the surrounding area, he reluctantly decided that any escape attempt would be impossible.

Escape from Crown Point, Indiana
On January 25, 1934, Dillinger and his gang were captured in Tucson, Arizona. He was extradited to Indiana and escorted back by Matt Leach,  the Chief of the Indiana State Police. Dillinger was taken to the Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana and jailed for charges for the murder of a policeman who was killed during a Dillinger gang bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana, on January 15, 1934. The local police boasted to area newspapers that the jail was escape-proof and had posted extra guards as a precaution. However, on Saturday, March 3, 1934, Dillinger was able to escape during morning exercises with 15 other inmates, Dillinger produced a pistol, catching deputies and guards by surprise, and he was able to leave the premises without firing a shot. Almost immediately afterwards conjecture began whether the gun Dillinger displayed was real or not. According to Deputy Ernest Blunk, Dillinger had escaped using a real pistol. FBI files, on the other hand, indicate that Dillinger used a carved fake pistol from wood. Sam Cahoon, a trustee who Dillinger took hostage in the jail, also believed Dillinger had carved the gun, using a razor and some shelving in his cell. In another version, according to an unpublished interview with Dillinger's attorney, Louis Piquett, investigator Art O'Leary claimed to have sneaked the gun in himself.

On March 16, Herbert Youngblood, who escaped from Crown Point alongside Dillinger, was shot dead by police in Port Huron, Michigan. Deputy Sheriff Charles Cavanaugh was mortally wounded in the battle and later died. Before he died, Youngblood told officers Dillinger was in the neighborhood of Port Huron, and immediately officers began a search for the escaped man, but no trace of him was found. An Indiana newspaper reported that Youngblood later retracted the story and said he did not know where Dillinger was at that time, as he had parted with him soon after their escape.

Dillinger was indicted by a grand jury, and the Bureau of Investigation (a precursor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation) organized a nationwide manhunt for him. Just hours after his escape from the Lake County Jail, Dillinger reunited with his girlfriend, Evelyn "Billie" Frechette.

According to Frechette's trial testimony, Dillinger stayed with her for "almost two weeks." However, the two had actually traveled to the Twin Cities and taken lodgings at the Santa Monica Apartments Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they stayed for 15 days.

Dillinger then met John "Red" Hamilton and the two mustered a new gang consisting of Baby Face Nelson's gang, including Nelson, Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll and Eddie Green.

Three days after Dillinger's escape from Crown Point, the second Gang robbed a bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A week later they robbed First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa.

John Herbert Dillinger ( June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster during the Great Depression. He commanded the Dillinger Gang, which was accused of robbing 24 banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprisoned several times and escaped twice. He was charged with but not convicted of the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer, who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest during a shootout; it was the only time Dillinger was charged with homicide.

Dillinger courted publicity. The media printed exaggerated accounts of his bravado and colorful personality, and described him as a Robin Hood.
 In response, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), used Dillinger as a rationale to evolve the BOI into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, developing more sophisticated investigative techniques as weapons against organized crime.

After evading police in four states for almost a year, Dillinger was wounded and went to his father's home to recover. He returned to Chicago in July 1934 and sought refuge in a brothel owned by Ana Cumpănaș, who later informed authorities of his whereabouts. On July 22, 1934, local and federal law-enforcement officers closed in on the Biograph Theater. When BOI agents moved to arrest Dillinger as he exited the theater, he tried to flee, but was shot; the deadly shot was ruled justifiable homicide.

Escape at Little Bohemia
The Bureau received a telephone call Sunday morning, April 22 that John Dillinger and several of his confederates were hiding out at a small vacation lodge called Little Bohemia near present-day Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin.

Special Agent in Charge Melvin Purvis and several BOI agents approached the lodge when three men exited the building and began to drive away. Agents yelled for the car to stop but the driver did not hear the agents. Agents opened up fire and the driver was killed.

Dillinger and some of the gang were upstairs in the lodge and began shooting out the windows. While the BOI agents ducked for cover, Dillinger and his men fled from the back of the building.


Known Gang members
* 1. John Dillinger
* 2. Baby Face Nelson
* 3. John "Red" Hamilton
* 4. Homer Van Meter
* 5. Harry "Pete" Pierpont
* 6. Charles Makley
* 7. Russell Clark
* 8. Ed Shouse
* 9. Harry Copeland
* 10. Tommy Carroll
* 11. Eddie Green
* 12. John Paul Chase
* 13. Eddie Bentz
* 14. Tommy Gannon
* 15.Joey Aiuppa


BANK ROBBERIES
Before Lima
* New Carlisle National Bank, New Carlisle, Ohio, of $10,000 on June 21, 1933;
* The Commercial Bank, Daleville, Indiana, of $3,500 on July 17, 1933;
* Montpelier National Bank, Montpelier, Indiana, of $6,700 on August 4, 1933;
* Bluffton Bank, Bluffton, Ohio, of $6,000 on August 14, 1933;
* Massachusetts Avenue State Bank, Indianapolis, Indiana, of $21,000 on September 6, 1933;
After Dillinger was broken out of Allen County Jail in Lima, Ohio (& killing Sheriff Jess Sarber)
* Home Banking Company, Saint Marys, Ohio of $12,000;
* Central National Bank And Trust Co., Greencastle, Indiana, of $74,802 on October 23, 1933;
* American Bank And Trust Co., Racine, Wisconsin, of $28,000 on November 20, 1933;
* First National Bank, East Chicago, Indiana, of $20,000 on January 15, 1934;
After Dillinger's escape from Crown Point
* Securities National Bank And Trust Co., Sioux Falls, South Dakota, of $49,500 on March 6, 1934;
* First National Bank, Mason City, Iowa, of $52,000 on March 13, 1934;
* First National Bank, Fostoria, Ohio, of $17,000 on May 3, 1934;
* Merchants National Bank, South Bend, Indiana, of $29,890 on June 30, 1934.