OSAGE - About once a year, Mitchell County Sheriff Curt Younker pulls a machine gun out of a display case, goes to a shooting range and lets a round go.

The weapon is a Thompson submachine gun, better known by its nickname: Tommy gun.

"In the 1930s, rural counties were given the guns to help them fight gangsters," Younker said.

Many Iowans knew all about guns in the summer of 1934. In fact, Cerro Gordo, Howard and Mitchell counties were the stage where some of the era's most notorious outlaws played out their final acts.

John Dillinger made a run on the First National Bank in Mason City in March of that year. He died four months later in Chicago, killed by police outside a movie theater.

One of his henchman, Tommy Carroll, was shot and killed by Waterloo police in June 1934.

After Dillinger's death, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd took over as Public Enemy No. 1. He came to Mitchell County that summer and lived on a farm near McIntire.

Younker, a law-enforcement history buff, said gangsters 75 years ago found the Midwest easy pickings.

"There were small banks, small towns and little or no law enforcement," he said.

Floyd first spent time near Bonair in northeastern Howard County. Then, according to Younker's research, Floyd and two others - some believe one was Lester Gillis, also known as Baby Face Nelson - moved south of McIntire to the Lee Bosteter farm.

Vivian DuShane grew up in Little Cedar and says Floyd's sister lived in Mitchell County and had visited before.

"I had some friends tell me they had danced with him - he was a good-looking guy - in the dance hall above the store in David," DuShane said.

The store burned in 1933.

The late Arthur Keston said Floyd was in the county most of the summer of 1934, and the visitors came to Keston's nearby farm. When Keston looked inside their vehicle, he realized the men were carrying "enough guns for an arsenal."

Deputy Will Owens and A.G. Haight, a state agent for the U.S. Department of Investigation, later known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, went to the Bosteter farm Oct. 11, 1934. Their intent was to investigate whether Floyd was in the area.

Pulling into the farmyard, the pair saw a man later identified as Floyd. The gangster saw the lawmen and jumped into his Ford. Floyd sped out of the yard, heading east on a gravel road.

Owens reported that two men ran out of a cornfield north, and Floyd quickly stopped to pick them up before racing off. Owens and Haight pursued and got off four shots, hitting the auto.

Floyd headed down a dead-end road but spun around, and Owens and Haight abandoned their car to take cover in nearby woods.

The gangsters riddled the officers' car with bullets as Floyd drove by in a ditch. The lawmen returned fire.

Owens and Haight continued the chase but were outdistanced near Riceville, according to newspaper accounts of the day. Floyd's car was later found burned in Appanoose County. It carried license plates stolen from a woman's car in Britt.

The trail went cold in Missouri, but 11 days after the confrontation in McIntire, FBI agents killed Floyd in Ohio.

Floyd returns?

The Bosteter family figured prominently in another incident Oct. 20 when two men robbed a store north of Stacyville across the Minnesota state line.

John Freund, the storekeeper, was shot and killed. The men fled in a waiting car, getting away with $20 and cigarettes.

The proximity to McIntire led many to believe that Floyd was back. But authorities arrested Lee Bosteter, who owned the farm where the Floyd gang spent the summer. They also charged Francis McNeiley and Elroy McKeever of Missouri.

On Jan. 3, 1935, a grand jury indicted McKeever and McNeiley for first-degree murder. Bosteter, who claimed he was only the lookout man and never entered the store, was charged with second-degree murder and grand larceny. He was sentenced to five years.

McKeever later confessed that he shot Freund.

McKeever testified Bosteter ran into the store after the killing to steal cigarettes, and authorities charged Bosteter with first-degree murder. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and had another 15 years added to his sentence.

McKeever was sentenced to life in prison but was extradited to Missouri. He had confessed to slaying two police officers in 1933 and was hanged for his crimes.

By the end of 1934, all of the major players in Midwest bank robberies were dead.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed in May. Dillinger died in July, Floyd in October and Nelson in November. Part of the reason may have been that 1934 marked the first year FBI agents could either make arrests or carry weapons.

Younker said law-enforcement officials attribute seven murders to Floyd, including six police officers.

At Floyd's funeral in 1934, his mother screamed at the crowd.

"My boy never hurt nobody," she reportedly said.

"What a major case of denial," Younker concluded.