Minneapolis cop Joseph Ollinger had an eerie feeling when he headed to his beat Saturday night, July 15, 1911.
"There may be something doing tonight," he told his wife, Anna, as he kissed her goodbye.
He'd been nervous all day, according to his sister-in-law, who heard him declare: "I'm going to get that fellow tonight if I come home in a box."
At 52, Ollinger had been a patrolman for 15 years. He and Anna lived with their 13-year-old son, William, and other relatives in a white frame house that still stands at 800 19th Av. NE.
A couple hours before midnight, Ollinger stopped at the home of his priest, the Rev. Robert Fitzgerald, founder of St. Clement's parish. The patrolman wanted advice on how to handle an impending confrontation with a notorious criminal.
Try to take him alive, the father told him, and don't fire first to kill.
A former prizefighter, career criminal Jerry McCarty had wrists so thick police couldn't get handcuffs on him when he was arrested for shooting at an officer two years earlier. That earned him 10 years in Stillwater prison.
But McCarty was deft at escaping. He busted out of a Montana penitentiary after serving five years for a diamond heist in Butte. He broke out of an Iowa prison while facing time for robbery.