Maine / Investigations and local memory
The Brady gang in Bangor: the store reports behind the stakeout
Bangor remembers the Brady gang through the gunfight on Central Street. But the investigation had turned before anyone fired there. A sporting goods store reported unusual requests, an employee recognized a photograph, and the visitors had indicated when they would return. Those ordinary exchanges made a national search specific enough to become a local stakeout.
Explore the source records ↓A name behind the storefront
The Bangor Historical Society's photograph record identifies the business as Dakin Sporting Goods Company, at 25 Central Street. It also names the owner who alerted authorities: Everett S. Hurd, known as Shep. That local record gives a person and address to an episode that the FBI's longer history describes largely through store employees, police officers and agents. Hurd was part of the information trail, not simply a spectator at its violent end.[3]
The archive preserves a Bangor Daily News photograph made immediately after the October 12, 1937 shooting. Its caption identifies Hurd in the street holding a movie camera. The photograph records the aftermath, while the accompanying description explains the earlier warning. The image alone cannot show what was said during a gun purchase or establish every step that led to the confrontation.[3]
Suspicion became an identification
The FBI's case history records visits on September 21 and October 5. Requests for additional weapons and accessories prompted reports to police. Information reached the Maine State Police, then the FBI's Boston office. An agent brought photographs to Bangor; the manager identified James Dalhover, and a clerk confirmed that identification. The account describes the wider conclusion that the visitors were probably the Brady gang. Recognizing one man and identifying an entire group were related steps, but not identical ones.[1]
The expected return mattered too. According to that history, the men had said they would come back on October 11 or 12. Investigators therefore had more than a report of people who had already disappeared: they had a named suspect, a place and an anticipated visit. This is the point at which the chronology explains more than a general account of a nationwide manhunt can. The lead offered a chance to find the men again.[1]
The federal story and the local one
The Boston office's institutional history puts the arrival of fifteen FBI agents and state police partners on October 9. It describes cooperation among federal, state and local officers before the gang returned three days later. Read beside the Bangor record, that account changes the scale of the story. A business owner's report did not replace the broader investigation; it gave the agencies already searching a location around which to organize their work.[2][3]
The Boston history describes a brief gunfight in which Brady and another gang member died and a third was taken alive. Its compressed account gives the encounter a clear ending. The local archive identifies the men who died as Alfred Brady and Clarence Lee Shaffer Jr., and the survivor as Dalhover. The preserved location on a public street, with named businesses and people, gives the violence a scale beyond an abstract contest between gangsters and agents.[2][3]
Capture and prosecution were different endings
Dalhover's case continued after Bangor. The FBI history records his conviction for the murder of Indiana State Policeman Paul Minneman and execution on November 18, 1938. The deaths of Brady and Shaffer on Central Street were not trial verdicts. Keeping those outcomes separate prevents the familiar account of the gang's destruction from erasing the different legal paths of its members.[1]
These sources also have different purposes. The FBI histories explain an institutional success; the Bangor collection preserves a local artifact and identifies people visible in it. Neither is a complete trial file. Together they support a more grounded question than who outdrew whom: how did information move from a shop counter to the officers conducting the search? In Bangor, that chain is a substantial part of the story.[1][3][2]
Sources and references
References identify the named sections of the FBI histories and the Bangor Historical Society's item description. The two FBI pages share an institutional perspective and are not treated as independent witnesses.
- Brady Gang · FBI historical case account
The sections Final Stop: Bangor, Maine and The Shootout support the lead, identification and later prosecution. This is the agency's retrospective account, not a neutral transcript of every encounter.
- FBI Boston History · FBI field-office history
The 1930s section records the arrival of agents and the participating police agencies. It is a second institutional account, not independent eyewitness corroboration.
- Brady Gang shooting, Bangor, 1937Photograph dated October 12, 1937 · Bangor Historical Society artifact record, Maine Memory Network
Item 31219 identifies the store, owner and photograph provenance. The newspaper photograph has reuse restrictions and is linked here, not reproduced. The linked image shows the aftermath of a fatal shooting.
This article examines the 1937 Bangor investigation and the separate 1938 outcome of Dalhover's prosecution. Sources checked October 3, 2026.