Baby Face Nelson

In 1928, Baby Face Nelson married Helen Wawzynak, a 16-year-old salesgirl, despite strong objections from his family. The couple had two children: Ronald and Darlene

A devoted family man, he was usually accompanied by Helen on his escapades. Helen survived Nelson but surrendered to the authorities on Thanksgiving Day and served a sentence of one year in prison.

Baby Face Nelson was born as Lester Joseph Gillis in the Patch’area of Chicago, Illinois on December 6, 1908. He was the seventh offspring of Joseph and Mary Gillis, both Belgian immigrants. His father who worked in a tannery and labored to raise a loving family

On July 4, 1916, when he was just seven, Nelson was arrested for inadvertently shooting a friend and was sent to the state reformatory for a year.

By the time he turned 12, he was already an expert car thief, operating in a neighborhood gang of juveniles involved in assorted petty crimes. In 1921, when he was just 13, the police arrested him again for car theft and consequently he was sent for a year to the juvenile correctional facility.

In 1922, he was once again arrested for a similar offence and sentenced to 18 months to St. Charles School for Boys, a penal school; during this time, his father committed suicide. Even during his school days, Nelson had a short temper and would often get into altercations with his classmates.

The sole member of his family who had taken to crime, Baby Face Nelson held himself responsible for his father’s death and started to support his mother and siblings with a part of his ill-gotten gains even though he was constantly in and out of juvenile correctional facilities.

By the time he married, Baby Face Nelson was employed at a neighboring ‘Standard Oil’ station frequented by a gang of car tire thieves. He associated with them as well as some local criminals, including one for whom he would deliver bootleg alcohol in the suburbs of Chicago.

In the 1930s, he was associated with the ‘Touhy Gang’ in organized crime, primarily armed robbery of the homes of the rich. Their use of adhesive tape to truss up the homeowners earned them the name of ‘The Tape Bandits’.

Nelson committed his first bank robbery on April 21, 1930, and then looted the ‘Itasca State Bank’. While both the robberies yielded only $4,000 and $4,600 respectively, he more than made up with richer pickings from robbing homes, including that of the Chicago mayor ‘Big’ Bill Thompson from where he got $18,000 worth of his wife’s jewelry. The aggrieved lady described her attacker, saying "He had a baby face. He was good-looking, hardly more than a boy…”

A roadhouse robbery in Summit, Illinois November 23, 1930, that went wrong ended in three people losing their lives and another three wounded.

Nelson committed his first murder when he killed Edwin R. Thompson, a stockbroker, while robbing a Waukegan Road tavern on November 26, 1930.

Baby Face Nelson holds the record for having killed the maximum number of law enforcement officers, a count that includes three FBI agents

Famous as ‘Baby Face’ Nelson due to his youthful looks and boyish stature, few of his associates had the courage to call him by this name, preferring ‘Jimmy’ though Nelson commonly referred to himself as ‘Big’ George Nelson.

He committed his first crime at the age of seven when he shot a playmate in the jaw after finding a pistol on the ground.

Al Capone cut short his association with Nelson as he found him to be too vicious and violent.