On the night of November 28, 1934, the body of Lester Gillis arrived at the Sadowski Funeral Home in Chicago. The world knew him as Baby Face Nelson, and just 24 hours earlier, he had been J. Edgar Hoover’s Public Enemy Number One. The men waiting inside had no idea what they were about to face.
Nelson had died from wounds sustained in the Battle of Barrington. FBI agent Herman Hollis had hit him with a blast of shotgun buckshot that tore through his legs. A Thompson submachine gun round then ripped through his abdomen, shredding internal organs and severing major blood vessels.
Despite the damage, Nelson did not die immediately. He managed to kill both federal agents before being driven away by his accomplice, John Paul Chase. Nelson spent his final hours bleeding internally in a safe house, with his wife Helen at his side.
Before the body reached the funeral home, Chase and Helen stripped Nelson naked. They wanted to destroy any forensic evidence on his clothing. The mortician was left to deal with every wound in full view, with nothing to soften the sight.
Embalming relies on the circulatory system holding pressure. Chemicals are pumped into the arterial system, and blood vessels distribute the fluid throughout the body. Nelson’s circulatory system was destroyed. The embalming fluid found the path of least resistance and poured back out of all 17 bullet wounds.
The mortician had to work through each wound individually. He used metal tools to dig into the torn flesh, find broken blood vessels, and tie them shut with string. The large hole in the abdomen required deep stitching to close. The leg wounds, saturated with shotgun pellets, needed dozens of individual clamps.
The work was done in a small, poorly ventilated basement room. Old blood mixed with the sharp fumes of early formaldehyde filled the space. Before any real work could begin, the body had to be cleaned. Nelson’s naked body had been dumped in a freezing ditch, and his skin was caked in mud and dried blood.
Postmortem lividity had also set in. The blood had pooled in the lower portions of his body, leaving deep purple discoloration that would not fade. The mortician used soap and stiff brushes just to find clean skin underneath.
The internal work was just as difficult. Nelson had spent hours bleeding into his own belly, and the cavity was full of trapped blood. The mortician used a trocar, a long metal rod attached to a surgical pump, to drain the fluids from the body. Once hollowed out, concentrated cavity chemicals were poured inside to dry everything out.
The scene outside the embalming room was chaos. FBI agents stood over the table, watching every move. They stopped the work to take fingerprints and photographs of Nelson’s face and wounds for official files.
When the public learned that Baby Face Nelson was inside the funeral home, thousands of people swarmed the streets. Police formed a human wall to keep the crowd from rushing the doors.
The final task was restorative work. Nelson’s family wanted a private burial, and the mortician had to make the face presentable. He injected special liquids under the skin of the cheeks to plump them back up. He closed the eyelids and wired the jaws shut from inside. Heavy makeup was applied to hide the pale colors of death.
When the work was finished, Nelson was dressed in a clean suit and placed in a plain casket. The funeral service was held behind locked doors, with only a small group of family members allowed inside. His wife Helen was not among them. She was locked in a federal holding cell at the time.
The casket was taken out the back door to avoid the reporters waiting outside. Nelson was buried at St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois. His gravestone reads simply, “Lester G. Gillis.” There is no mention of the name Baby Face Nelson.
To the public, he remains a movie villain who went down fighting. To the morticians who spent hours plugging 17 holes in his ruined body, he was an unforgettable, grotesque mess of a work day.