the Bradley Gang shootout (1929)

The Bradley Gang shootout of 1929 was a pivotal, violent event in Derry's history that marked the beginning of a new cycle of terror in the town, characterized by a brutal, extrajudicial massacre of the gang by armed townspeople, a slaughter that was subsequently covered up and denied by the community.

Background and Causes

The Bradley Gang, led by Al Bradley and his brother George, was a group of Midwestern bank robbers and kidnappers who, after finding their usual territory too dangerous, moved northeast and rented a farmhouse just over the Derry town line in Newport in the summer of 1929. On October 7th, the gang came into Derry to purchase a large quantity of ammunition at Machen's Sporting Goods. The proprietor, Lal Machen, recognized Al Bradley and, instead of calling the police, secretly spread the word among trusted townsmen that the gang would return on October 9th to pick up their order. This was not a call for lawful arrest but a summons to a vigilante execution. The town's old line, including members of the Town Council and the Maine Legion of White Decency, was deeply offended by the gang's presence, and the community's violent undercurrent, which Mike Hanlon's research would later link to a twenty-seven-year cycle of escalating horror, was ready to erupt.

What Happens

On October 9th, 1929, the Bradley Gang drove into the three-way intersection of Canal, Main, and Kansas Streets in two cars. The town was eerily quiet, and Al Bradley, sensing a trap, tried to flee. As he did, Lal Machen and his helper ran out of the store and opened fire. In response, between fifty and sixty armed men, who had been hiding in doorways, on steps, and behind windows, began shooting. The gang was caught in a crossfire; their cars were quickly disabled and became bullet-riddled wrecks. The shootout lasted only four or five minutes but was a scene of savage carnage. The Bradley brothers, their associates Joe and Cal Conklin, Arthur "Creeping Jesus" Malloy, Patrick Caudy, and the two women with them, Kitty Donahue and Marie Hauser, were all killed. The townspeople, including Sheriff Sullivan who was supposed to be out of town, continued to pour rounds into the cars even after the gang was dead. A clown, later identified as Pennywise, was seen at the scene, dressed in farmer's biballs with a painted face, shooting a rifle and casting no shadow.

Consequences and Aftermath

The shootout was immediately covered up. The official story, published in the Derry News, claimed that the State Police and FBI had gunned down the Bradley Gang in a pitched battle, with local police lending support. In reality, the townspeople had committed a mass execution. The event was never prosecuted or even openly discussed; it was simply "forgotten" by the community, a pattern of denial that Mike Hanlon would later recognize as characteristic of Derry's response to its periodic outbursts of violence. The shootout served as the bloody prelude to the 1929-30 cycle of murder and disappearance, a cycle that would culminate in the fire at the Black Spot a year later. The event also demonstrated how the town's latent violence could be mobilized, and how a figure like Pennywise could participate in and feed upon such collective brutality.