About the Author

Crime writer Ellen Poulsen lives in New York, New York.

Lori Hyde is a John Dillinger historian, who has researched both Dillinger and police tactics of the 1930s for over forty years. The creator of award-winning websites about Depression-era desperadoes, she lives in Corunna, Indiana.

Reviews

"Finally a full-length biography of Indiana State Police Captain Matt Leach has been written. In the war on crime of the early 1930s Leach and Melvin Purvis, Special-Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago FBI office, became famous in the hunt for Public Enemy No. 1, John Dillinger, and became rivals of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. After the death of Dillinger, Hoover and the FBI were able to destroy them in only a few years. In 1937 Leach was fired for lack of cooperation with the FBI."--Jeffery S. King, author of The Rise and Fall of the Dillinger Gang, The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd and Kill-crazy Gang: The Crimes of the Lewis-Jones Gang; "While the F.B.I. took credit for bringing down John Dillinger, the man who pursued him from the start was Matt Leach, head of the Indiana State Police...and he continued to track the famous bank robber after he became a federal fugitive. A state police captain, Leach antagonized the federal bureau, which angrily wrote him out of their script. Leach was all but lost to posterity until Ellen Poulsen and Lori Hyde resurrected his role as a dynamic force in the nation's most famous manhunt of the 20th Century. The perceptiveness and lucidity of Ellen Poulsen's writing make this a hard book to put down."--William J. Helmer, author, Dillinger: The Untold Story and Baby Face Nelson, Portrait of a Public Enemy; "Thought you knew everything about notorious 1930s bankrobber John Dillinger and the lawmen who pursued him until his death outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago? Think again. Chasing Dillinger reveals for the first time the behind-the-scenes turf wars between local police, state officials and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, as they competed for Dillinger's apprehension. Author Poulsen uses her vivid, warts-and-all portrait of Dillinger hunter Matt Leach to explore the battles between law enforcement agencies that underpinned their legendary manhunt against Public Enemy #1."--Paul Maccabee, author, John Dillinger Slept Here.