spmack wrote:
Wait, when did JORR and Darkside start beefin?
To answer that question, you have to go back in time a little bit. By today’s measures, early 20th century gangsters may seem almost quaint, disarmed by sepia tones and time. Bonnie and Clyde. John Dillinger. Baby Face Nelson. The reality is there was nothing quaint about them. They were thugs, thieves, and cold-blooded killers. And a small cadre of Bureau agents like JORR—also known as G-Men—were called upon to stop them.
JORR worked a lot of big cases. Acting on a tip, it was JORR who discovered the body of Baby Face Nelson in 1934 after a shootout that left Nelson and two FBI agents dead. However, it was his role in ending the Brady Gang’s deadly cross-country robbery spree that would plant the seed of rivalry between JORR and Darkside. The chase came to a head in September 1937. Having terrorized the Midwest and points east, Alfred Brady and two alleged members of his gang—Clarence Shaffer (Darkside's grandfather) and James Dalhover—traveled to Bangor, Maine to stock up on ammunition and weapons. They wanted magazines that could hold lots of bullets and were even looking for a Thompson sub-machine gun if they could purchase it. So that set off the "just ain't right" alarm in the head of the store manager, who then talked to the local police—that was how JORR got drawn in.
JORR and the other FBI agents knew that the Brady gang would be back. So they set up a stake-out with local police, positioning themselves to cover as many angles as possible. JORR recalled that several of them would be pretending to do different businesses or being pedestrians, that sort of thing, and basically just waiting for the gang to show. JORR was pretending to be a salesman in the gun store, working as a clerk, doing the job for a couple days. Finally, Dalhover comes in and is immediately arrested by JORR and his partner (also working in the store.)
JORR asked Dalhover, "Where are your pals?" He said they were outside, so JORR leaves for the door. But as he starts moving towards the door, Shaffer comes into the store. Darkside doesn't come from a line of dummies—seeing the agents with an arrested Dalhover tells him he's not getting out of here without some lead flying. He opens fire, and the rest of the gang outside starts taking a defensive position as the various undercover agents uncloak and start firing on the gang.
This is where JORR and Darkside's versions of the story start to separate. They both agree that JORR went for cover behind a counter and started returning fire. Both agree that in the chaos that Dalhover takes a shot to the shoulder. He staggers out of the building and down the small flight of stairs. JORR maintains that Dalhover's wound hit the artery and that Dalhover was bleeding out and wouldn't have made it to the hospital. JORR went back inside to check if his partner was wounded -- he was, a superficial wound to the thigh. JORR bandaged it up, and after the gunplay outside had ceased, he walked out the door and finds Dalhover dead no more than three feet from the base of the stairs. Autopsy would show that he died from wounds sustained in gun fire.
Darkside maintains that Dalhover hadn't taken a fatal shot to the shoulder, that it had missed the artery. It was a brutal hit for sure, but he hadn't been fatally shot. He maintains that once JORR determined his partner had been hit by Dalhover, that JORR came outside and in cold blood shot Dalhover through the chest. Darkside has some eyewitness testimony from a farmer who was in the area selling grain to a distillery (but had been known as an anti-government type) and a bank clerk who said Dalhover put his hand up in defense before being shot by JORR. When these facts were brought up in a tribunal several months later, the doctor who had performed the autopsy had died at the age of 37 under indeterminate circumstances. Darkside's father was raised alone by his mother, who insisted that the FBI had always been responsible for his death -- that he wasn't a great man, but he was honorable, and that one day, some way, some how, Darkside must avenge his grandfather's death.
Obviously we're not living in the 30s anymore where you whip out a gun to resolve differences. Now we do it via message board post or via PM. The JORR and Darkside family feud lives on.