Nebraska’s Missing Public Enemy: The Last of the Ghost Gang

In 1934, a band of desperadoes known as the Ghost Gang terrorized bankers across the state of Nebraska with a series of daring robberies. A posse of lawmen traced the gang to a Gage County ghost town, and the hideout was raided on a cold November night. One by one, all the members of the gang faced prison or death, until only Maurice Denning remained at large. Denning, the son of a respectable farm family, had drifted into bootlegging and, ultimately, bank robbery. For ten years, he was at the top of the FBI’s list of Public Enemies, but incredibly, he was never found. Although rumors about his whereabouts swirled for decades, his final fate remains a mystery. In this book, writer and researcher Brian James Beerman brings the fascinating true story of the most wanted man in Nebraska back to light and recounts the circumstances surrounding his mysterious disappearance.