W. Carter Baum was a 29-year-old White/Caucasian man and a special agent with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Division of Investigation, the agency that would soon become known as the FBI. Born in Washington, D.C., in July 1904, Baum attended George Washington University and entered federal service in 1930. He was initially assigned to the New York Field Office before transferring to Chicago.
By the spring of 1934, Baum was involved in the rapidly expanding federal manhunt for John Dillinger and the heavily armed criminals traveling with him.
On April 22, 1934, federal investigators received information that Dillinger and members of his gang were hiding at Little Bohemia Lodge near Manitowish Waters in northern Wisconsin. Agents from Chicago and St. Paul rushed to the area, hoping to surround the secluded resort before the gang could escape. The operation quickly deteriorated in the darkness. Gunfire erupted around the lodge, alerting the fugitives before agents had completely sealed off the property. Dillinger and several companions escaped through the rear of the lodge and disappeared into the surrounding woods. Lester J. Gillis, the violent Dillinger associate better known as “Baby Face” Nelson, fled separately.
As the operation unfolded, Baum and Special Agent J. C. “Jay” Newman were accompanied by Spider Lake constable Carl Christensen to an area roughly two miles from Little Bohemia. Accounts describe the officers as responding to a reported disturbance and attempting to use a nearby telephone to communicate with other agents arriving in the region. Near the residence and resort property of Alvin Koerner, they noticed an automobile that Christensen recognized as belonging to a local resident. Unknown to them, Nelson had reached the area after escaping from Little Bohemia and had taken local people hostage while trying to obtain transportation out of the area.
When the officers pulled alongside the vehicle, Nelson confronted them with an automatic weapon. After the lawmen identified themselves, Nelson ordered them out of their automobile and then opened fire. Newman was struck in the head and knocked semiconscious. Christensen was hit repeatedly and gravely wounded. Baum was struck by Nelson's gunfire and went down at the scene. Contemporary FBI material described him as being killed during the attack as Nelson fired on the three officers at extremely close range. Nelson then seized the federal agents' automobile and sped away into the darkness, leaving Baum dead and the other two lawmen seriously injured.
Investigators identified Lester Gillis, alias George “Baby Face” Nelson, as Baum's killer. The federal government circulated an identification order specifically describing Nelson as wanted for the murder of Special Agent Baum, and the killing became one of the central reasons authorities intensified the nationwide search for him. At the time Baum was killed, murdering a federal investigative agent was not yet itself a separate federal crime; prosecution for the homicide would have fallen under state law. Less than a month later, on May 18, 1934, a new federal law was approved making the killing or assault of designated federal officers, including Division of Investigation agents, a federal offense.
Several people connected with the Dillinger gang were taken into custody after the Little Bohemia raid. Helen Gillis, Nelson's wife, along with Jean Delaney and Marie Comforti, were among the women left behind when the gang fled and were arrested in connection with harboring fugitives. A federal grand jury in Madison later returned indictments involving members of the gang for harboring fugitives, but the evidence concerning Baum's actual shooting consistently identified Nelson as the gunman. John Dillinger and other gang members present at Little Bohemia were not identified by federal authorities as the person who fired the shots that killed Baum.
Nelson was never brought to trial for Baum's murder. He remained a fugitive through the summer and fall of 1934, and after Dillinger was killed outside Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, Nelson became an even greater focus of the federal manhunt. On November 27, 1934, agents encountered Nelson near Barrington, Illinois. A prolonged gun battle followed in which Nelson mortally wounded Special Agents Herman Hollis and Samuel Cowley but was himself severely wounded. Nelson escaped the immediate scene with his wife and associate John Paul Chase, but he died from his wounds later that evening. His body was recovered the following day. Because Nelson died before he could be captured and prosecuted, there was no murder trial or conviction for the killing of W. Carter Baum.
Baum's death became one of the defining tragedies of the Little Bohemia operation. The raid failed to capture Dillinger or the principal members of his gang, but Baum's killing helped intensify public and governmental pressure for stronger federal crime-fighting authority. He left behind a wife and two children, and decades later the FBI continued to recognize him as an agent killed in the line of duty. His death on April 22, 1934, remains directly attributed by the FBI to Lester “Baby Face” Nelson.
