John Dillinger was a bank robber whose legendary heists during the Great Depression turned him into a cultural icon. From September 1933 to July 1934, he and his gang staged a series of bank robberies in the upper Midwest. During this time, he was involved in three jailbreaks, one of which resulted in the killing of a sheriff. All told, ten men were killed and seven wounded during his yearlong crime spree.
Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Dillinger’s father was a grocer and a stern disciplinarian. His mother died when he was three, and he resented the woman his father married six years later. Despite his being intelligent, Dillinger’s adolescent years were troubled and he quit school. Having been kicked out of the house by his father and facing possible jail time due to car theft, he joined the U.S. Navy and tried to straighten out his life, although he ended up deserting a short time later.
John Dillinger (1903–1934) shortly before he was gunned down in a shoot-out with federal agents. Dillinger ranked amongst the most infamous bank robbers of the 1930s. He was named “Public Enemy Number One” by the U.S. Justice Department in 1934 and subsequently became the subject of the country’s greatest manhunt. (Library of Congress)
At the age of twenty-one, Dillinger married and moved back to Indianapolis, where he decided to embark upon a life of crime with a local pool shark. The two robbed a grocery store, but were quickly captured by police. Dillinger confessed and was sentenced to ten to twenty years in prison; his partner pleaded not guilty and was sentenced to only two years. After having served eight years, Dillinger was granted early parole. His time in prison had not rehabilitated him, and within six weeks he had formed a gang and begun robbing banks. From late June to early September of 1933, he robbed five banks in Indiana and nearby western Ohio.
Captured on September 22, 1933, Dillinger was held at the local county jail in Lima, Ohio. Security guards discovered evidence that he had plans for escaping the prison, but were unable to stop it from happening. Using guns that had been smuggled into the prison and state trooper disguises, he escaped on October 12. Dillinger next formed a gang, which consisted of the following individuals: Charles Makley, Pete Pierpont, Red Hamilton, Russell Clark, Ed Shouse, and Harry Copeland. His gang staged a series of bank robberies that were marked by even higher levels of violence.
The brazen nature of Dillinger’s escape, as well as the death of a law enforcement official, led to calls for federal assistance in the ensuing manhunt. Even though it had no jurisdiction, state officials asked the Bureau of Investigation to intervene, especially due to their superior use of fingerprinting technology. Although it had been formed in 1908, the Bureau (later renamed Federal Bureau of Investigation) had not acquired much authority by the mid-1920s, which changed with the ascendancy of J. Edgar Hoover to the directorship in 1924.
Hoover’s well-documented thirst for power came at a time of increased criminal activity during Prohibition. The media’s fascination with Capone, Dillinger, and other gangsters resulted in greater calls for justice, and federally charged law enforcement agencies began to grow in power, for the first time superseding local and state agencies. The manhunt for Dillinger would eventually establish the credibility of both the Bureau and its leader.
During the fall and winter, Dillinger and his gang robbed banks in Indiana and Wisconsin, and also brazenly robbed several police arsenals in Indiana. They were now very well armed and in possession of bulletproof vests, giving them an advantage against police officers. Two officers, in fact, were killed in gun battles: a detective in Chicago and a police officer in Indiana. By this time the Bureau had widely distributed photographs and fingerprints of all gang members. Beginning to feel the heat from the dragnet, Dillinger and his gang fled first to Florida, then to Texas, and finally to Tucson, Arizona. On January 23, 1934, firemen responding to a hotel fire recognized several gang members. Police subsequently captured Dillinger and three of his confederates.
Dillinger was extradited to Indiana to await trial for the murder of police officer William Patrick O’Malley, whom multiple witnesses had claimed was killed by Dillinger himself at the end of a bank robbery. O’Malley remains the only person Dillinger is thought to have killed personally, although some doubt lingers that he was the responsible party. Due to media fascination with the case and Dillinger’s previous escape, authorities at the Crown Point Jail boasted that their facility was “escape proof.” However, on March 3 Dillinger escaped using a fake wooden gun that he had spent several weeks carving. His mistake at Crown Point, however, was in stealing a car at the site and then driving it from Indiana to Illinois. This act violated the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act and constituted the first federal crime of his career. Thus far, the Bureau had contributed to the manhunt primarily through informational channels, running fingerprints and distributing photographs to law enforcement offices. Now, the Bureau could become involved in more substantive ways, and dozens of field agents were stationed in the upper Midwest, particularly in Chicago and Indianapolis.
The Bureau’s more active involvement wasn’t the only setback for Dillinger. Makley was killed in his own escape attempt, Pierpont was executed, and Clark was sentenced to life imprisonment. After visiting Chicago to collect his girlfriend, Evelyn Frechette, Dillinger moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and started a new gang, this one consisting of Baby Face Nelson, Homer Van Meter, Eddie Green, and Tommy Carroll. A series of successful bank robberies in South Dakota, Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana throughout the spring solidified Dillinger’s notoriety.
People all over the country read daily about Dillinger’s latest exploits, and he was a chief topic of discussion among groups of unemployed laborers hoping for work. Although he was a criminal who needed to be brought to justice, Dillinger was also viewed as having certain heroic qualities, as he was willing to stand up for himself and overcome the realities of an economic situation in which so many people found themselves trapped. And finally, due to the widespread distribution of his image, everyone knew what he looked like, giving him a sense of personality. In some of the photos, he smiled charismatically and was generally viewed as being handsome.
Eventually, the Bureau’s approach began to pay dividends. Dillinger was recognized by the caretaker of his St. Paul apartment complex, and he was wounded during a gun battle with police on March 30, although he escaped along with Frechette and Van Meter. After convalescing in Minneapolis for a week, he visited his family in Mooresville, Indiana. By the time he left several days later, the Bureau had him under surveillance, although Dillinger’s instincts saved him yet again when he sent Frechette ahead for a scheduled meeting with a friend. The Bureau had set a trap, and upon Frechette’s arrest Dillinger was able to escape once more.
The crime wave continued throughout the spring and into the summer. The gang was encircled and nearly captured by Bureau agents in Wisconsin, but the agents mistakenly attacked a few local residents going to work, and the gang was able to escape. Red Hamilton and Tommy Carroll were killed in shootouts. Dillinger moved back to Chicago and tried to keep a low profile, although he continued to visit brothels and was recognized at one in nearby Gary, Indiana. Madam Ana Cumpanas reported to the Bureau that Dillinger would be taking her and one of her workers to a movie the next day. She agreed to wear an orange dress—which was incorrectly labeled red in the sensationalist news stories following the ambush—to help the agents identify Dillinger. Although two bystanders were slightly injured by ricocheting bullet fragments, the ambush went off without a hitch, and Dillinger was killed after he ran into an alley and attempted to return fire.
At the time, Dillinger was the most notorious and celebrated member of the Class of 1934, a series of high-profile, somewhat romanticized criminals (including Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson) who were killed during that year. A nation mired in the Great Depression clamored for distraction, and found it in John Dillinger.
The frenzy of interest in Dillinger continued even after his death. Reports held that witnesses outside the Biograph Theater overwhelmed the federal agents to grab pieces of his clothing or dip handkerchiefs in his blood. During the next decade, his gravestone at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis had to be replaced several times due to people chipping off pieces for souvenirs. Although the celebrity enjoyed by Bonnie and Clyde would eventually eclipse his own, Dillinger has remained an important cultural touchstone revealing the relationship between crime and media. He has been the subject of numerous books, documentaries, and films, and a number of actors have played him across at least three generations, including Lawrence Tierney, Martin Sheen, and Johnny Depp. Tucson’s “Dillinger Days,” an annual festival that includes a reenactment of his arrest, has run since 1992, demonstrating the manner in which the master criminal still has appeal eighty years after his death.
Hoover, J. Edgar (1895–1972)
Equally associated with the rise of the “G-men” who took down gangsters like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd and with conspiracy theories regarding McCarthyism, the Kennedys, and Martin Luther King Jr., J. Edgar Hoover became a figure of American folklore and legend during his nearly fifty-year reign at the helm of the FBI. Hoover gave us American icons such as the Bureau’s “Ten Most Wanted List,” as well as being associated with Communist witch-hunts and escalating fears of government surveillance of U.S. citizens. Hoover himself shunned the limelight, although his extensive files on politically significant figures ensured that he represented a real “power behind the throne” during the tenures of eight United States presidents. Hoover’s sexuality and private life, long supposed to be at complete odds with the persona he projected, likewise has become the stuff of legend, most recently brought to life by a 2011 Clint Eastwood film starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.
C. Fee
Andrew Howe
See also Boles, Charles E. “Black Bart”; Bonney, William “Billy the Kid”; Bonnie and Clyde; Capone, Alphonse “Scarface”; James, Jesse; Outlaw Heroes
Further Reading
Burrough, Bryan. 2004. Public Enemies. New York: Penguin Press.
Girardin, George Russell, with William J. Helmer. 1994. Dillinger: The Untold Story. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
“John Dillinger.” 2014. Federal Bureau of Investigation website. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/john-dillinger. Accessed July 5, 2015.
May, Allen and Marilyn Bardsley. 2014. “John Dillinger.” Crime Library website. http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/outlaws/dillinger/1.html. Accessed July 5, 2015.
Nash, Jay Robert. 1973. Bloodletters and Bad Men. New York: Warner Books.
Stewart, Tony. 2002. Dillinger, The Hidden Truth: A Tribute to Gangsters and G-Men of the Great Depression Era. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris.