On a spring afternoon in I934, three cars pulled up in front of an isolated roadhouse eight miles southeast of Mercer, Wisconsin. Emil Wanetka, the owner and barkeep, looked out the window of the Little Bohemia, the local pub, and took a hurried swipe at the bar with his towel. The visitors he was about to receive were to play havoc on his place of businesses and provide us with an interesting Treasure site.

The occupants of the cars consisted of America’s notorious Dillinger gang headed by John Dillinger himself. It is normal to expect that Dillinger is larger than life when viewed by his exploits; however, in reality he is a rather small effeminate man who surrounded himself with ruthless killers to boost his ego. The group with him that day, entering into the tavern, was identified as Van Meter, Hamilton, Tommy Carroll, Pat Reilly, and "Baby Face" Nelson --as nice a group as ever machine-gunned an unarmed bank teller.

The soft, entertaining, side of the mob was represented by Helen Gillis, Marie Comforti, Van Meter's girl, and Jean Delaney, the sweetheart of Tommy Carroll, and a newcomer to the mob.

Inside the group made themselves comfortable at the bar and informed the owner that they were going to be staying, for a while, and would need suitable accommodations.

The plans of Dillinger were not going to come to fruitation, because the FBI had other plans. Through the grapevine the FBI learned that Dillinger and his gang had taken over the roadhouse and made immediate preparations to capture them.

They arrived by plane on Sunday afternoon and began to take their assigned places around the tavern. Darkness fell before the order to attack could be given. Therefore the attack was set for the next morning and in the meantime, the G-men were to keep the place under surveillance from their hiding places.

Shortly into the vigil, three men came out of the front door of the roadhouse and got into a car parked nearby. They were three WPA workers, John Hoffman, Eugene Boisoneau, and John Morris. Hoffman got into the driver's seat and started the motor and the car proceeded toward the highway.

One of the G-men ordered the car to halt. It is not known whether or not the order was heard or understood, in any event, the car didn’t stop and continued to the highway. The Federal men, thinking this was a part of the Dillinger mob, opened fire. Boisoneau was mortally wounded and died a short time later; Morris was seriously wounded but not fatally hit, and Hoffman jumped out of the car and escaped into the deep woods.

Inside the roadhouse an alerted Dillinger took command and a raging battle between the government officers and the mobsters ensued. While the officers were trying to learn the identity of the occupants of the WPA car, the gangsters took advantage of the confusion by crawling out of the back window into the woods and safety. There they separated and met later by prearrangement.

Meantime the Federal police had no way of knowing that the Dillinger mob had fled to safety so they acted as they normally do, in these situations, at dawn they blasted the tavern with tear-gas bombs and machine guns. On entering they found only the three women hiding behind the bar. This event was to be come known as “The Little Bohemia Fiasco” and was destined to be repeated in other places like Waco Texas, Montana et al.

The Dillinger gang had picked this isolated outpost in northern Wisconsin for a hideout, because they needed cash, and needed it quickly. Dillinger had in his possession more than a million dollars' worth of negotiable stocks and bonds. This loot is hard to sell, but the bandit knew a "fence" in Minneapolis and needed a hideout nearby as a place of operations while negotiating the sale of the securities. A fence would normally buy items of this type at about 20 cents on the dollar and then try to resell them piecemeal across the nation.

Dillinger from his hideout near Mercer initiated the transactions by sending one of his mob to the Minnesota city for the cash with a suitcase full of stolen securities. Patricia Charrington was picked for the job.

She left Chicago for Minneapolis three days before the mob began their trek to the north woods of Wisconsin. Patricia reached Minneapolis and contacted the fence. After a day of negotiating the million-dollar loot was sold for two hundred thousand dollars in cash. The money, all in small bills, was packed in a suitcase, and she left on the return trip. She planned to meet the rest of the gang at the Wisconsin hideout.

She arrived safely on Sunday morning, just as the G-men were arriving by plane in Mercer. She gave the suitcase to Dillinger and then received instructions to proceed to Chicago and to find a new hideout on the west side of town. She left an hour later.

After Dillinger's escape from “The Little Bohemia Fiasco” he drove to Chicago and through connections learned where the new hideout was located. He took Pat Charrington into a room and told her what had happened to the suitcase with the two hundred thousand dollars.

He said that the men had all escaped out of the window and then, after agreeing to meet at a little tavern about a mile from Little Bohemia, had scattered into the woods. Dillinger ran exactly five hundred yards straight north. Stopping, he got to his knees and dug a trench in the soft earth and buried the suitcase. He quickly covered up the hole and p1aced dead leaves and twigs over the spot. There were three large trees, two pines and one oak, he thought, in a semicircle. He picked a spot directly in the center. No one was present when he buried his loot.

Then he turned south and ran the mile to the tavern, where Hamilton and Van Meter were waiting for him. Dillinger expected to return to Wisconsin as soon as plastic surgery could change his face. Then after recovering his ill-gotten money, he planned to go to South America and retire.

Fortunately, this never happened. A short time later he was captured and killed near the Biograph Theater in Chicago. Pat Charrington was subsequently arrested and served time in the state prison. After her release she returned to Chicago and became a respectable citizen. She worked as a hatcheck girl in many nightclubs in Chicago and Miami. She never returned to Wisconsin in search of Dillinger's buried loot. Patricia Charrington had learned a bitter lesson.

On the face of it this may sound like an easy fortune to recover. You would be surprised to learn how many fortunes are still missing that have been located even closer than this. In the excitement of a pitched gun battle such as engaged Dillinger, directions and details are bound to become confused.

The desperate killer might have been running west after he rolled out the window of Little Bohemia. Also, in cases such as this, the tendency is often to run in a curve. He might have run five hundred yards, or eight hundred, or two hundred feet! Excited persons are not reliable witnesses. Here again is a Treasure site from the past, how long will paper money last in a suitcase underground is a guess, and what is there in the area now is another guess, but if it’s there! It is under only a few inches dirt and some leaves.