John Dillinger

Dimitris Stamatios | May 27, 2023

Summary

John Herbert Dillinger (Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, May 11, 1903 – Chicago, Illinois, id., July 22, 1934) was an American bank robber, considered one of the many icons of popular culture in that country. His fame is due to the idealization that has been made of his procedures as a thief and the easy way in which he escaped from the police and jail. His exploits, along with those of other robbers of the time, such as Bonnie and Clyde or Kate “Ma” Barker, caught the attention of the American press and its readers during the 1930’s. His popularity has made him a legend, even though he was one of the most wanted robbers of his time.

He was born on June 22, 1903 in Indianapolis, Indiana. His parents were John Wilson Dillinger (1864-1934) and his first wife, Mary Ellen Lancaster (1860-1907). He enlisted in the U.S. Navy, but deserted within a few months, for which he was discharged without military honor. He returned to Indiana, where he married his bride, Beryl Ethel Hovious, only 16 years old, on April 12, 1924, in an attempt to settle down. However, he had difficulty getting a job and his marriage fell apart, so they divorced on June 20, 1929. Dillinger was of German and English descent.

One night in 1924, Ed Singleton, an occasional criminal and friend of his, convinced him to assist in the robbery of a well-known local grocer named Frank Morgan. The police caught them after the robbery. Singleton hired a lawyer to appeal his sentence, for which he was sentenced to only two years in prison, while Dillinger himself, who could not count on legal representation, was convicted and sent to prison. His sentence was nine years. In prison, he was an outstanding member of the baseball team: he played so well that it was commented that under normal conditions, he could have become a professional player.

Dillinger gave in to the criminal lifestyle during his time in prison and learned the tricks of bank robbery from his fellow inmates. Together with several of them, he planned some robberies, especially when they met during their work in the laundry of the Indiana State Prison. Some members of his first gang were Harry Pierpont, Russell Clark, Charles Makley, Walter Dietrich and John “Red” Hamilton.

His major crimes were committed beginning in May 1933, when he was paroled after serving eight and a half years. Soon after, he robbed a bank in Bluffton, Ohio. Police arrested him on September 22, and he was committed to the Ohio State Prison, awaiting trial.

Four days later, some of Dillinger’s friends (Harry Pierpont, Russell Clark, Charles Makley and Harry Copeland) who had escaped from the Indiana State Prison, appeared in uniform before Sheriff Jessie Sarber of the Lima prison, posing as agents who wanted to take the prisoner back to the Indiana prison. The sheriff didn’t believe them and when he asked for their credentials, one of the criminals pulled out his gun and shot him. They then took the keys, dragged Dillinger out of his cell and locked the sheriff’s wife in another cell before fleeing.

Although none of these offenders had specifically violated any federal law, the FBI was requested to assist in identifying and locating them. After the FBI’s Identification Division confirmed their identity by their fingerprints, their search for apprehension began.

Meanwhile, the Dillinger gang robbed several banks. In these robberies there were very few deaths – in some cases none at all – and the newspaper-reading public, annoyed with the bankers for the recessionary effects of the Great Depression, began to romanticize Dillinger as a vigilante robber with remarkable personal style. Even the gang’s numbers seemed to be discreet in terms of the violence used in their robberies, although after the rescue of their leader, they stole an entire arsenal of weapons from the Auburn police in Indiana. Then, on December 14, John Hamilton, one of their members, shot and killed an officer in Chicago. A month later, during a shootout, the gang killed police officer William O’Malley in the robbery of the First National Bank of East Chicago in Indiana.

The gang subsequently moved to Florida, and subsequently, to Tucson, Arizona. There, on January 23, 1934, a fire broke out at the Historic Hotel Congress where Clark and Makley were hiding out under assumed names. Firemen recognized the men from their photographs, and a local policeman arrested them, as well as Dillinger and Harry Pierpont. They were found with several guns and more than $25,000 in cash, representing a fortune for the time, part of the Chicago bank robbery.

Dillinger was taken to Crown Point, Indiana, prison to await his trial for the murder of Policeman O’Malley, killed in the Chicago East Bank robbery shootout. Authorities bragged a lot about the prison being escape-proof, but on March 3, 1934, Dillinger used one of his tricks to escape. He carved a gun-shaped object out of an as-yet-unspecified material – possibly a bar of soap or a piece of wood – and bullied prison guards into opening his cell so he could escape, after locking up his guards. This made his path to fame even easier.

After embarrassing the authorities, Dillinger escaped in Sheriff Lillian Holley’s car, a brand new Ford V8. The press mocked the action and ran headlines mocking Sheriff Holley, boosting the thief’s popularity. However, the fugitive made the mistake of crossing the Indiana-Illinois state line in the stolen vehicle, thus violating a federal law and involving the FBI in his capture.

Meanwhile, Pierpont, Makley and Clark were returned to the Ohio jail and sentenced for the murder of the Ohio sheriff. Pierpont and Makley were sentenced to death and Clark to life in prison. But in an escape attempt, Makley was killed and Pierpont suffered an injury. A month later, Pierpont recovered enough to be executed.

The second band

Once in Chicago, Dillinger met with his girlfriend, Evelyn Frechette, and then teamed up with Homer Van Meter, Lester Joseph Gillis (Baby Face Nelson), Eddie Green and Tommy Carrol, among others. With this second gang he also managed to pull off major bank robberies.

The FBI followed the gang’s trail and on April 3, in a confrontation, Eddie Green and Dillinger himself were wounded. The latter managed to escape, but Green died eight days later in a hospital.

After the confrontation with the FBI, Dillinger and his girlfriend Evelyn went to Mooresville, Indiana, where they stayed at the home of her father and stepbrother until his wound healed. Evelyn then went to Chicago to visit a friend, and there the FBI secured her arrest. She was sentenced to a $1,000 fine and two years in prison.

Soon after, Dillinger rejoined his companions and took refuge in a small place called Little Bohemia Lodge. The gang had everything that happened there under surveillance, but even so they could not prevent someone from alerting the FBI, who arrived at the place and without being able to surprise the group, confronted them with bullets. Baby Face Nelson killed agent W. Carter Baum, and all the members of the gang fled in various directions, throwing the agents off the scent.

By the summer of 1934, Dillinger returned to Chicago under the name Jimmy Lawrence. He got a job and found a new girlfriend, named Polly Hamilton, who had no knowledge of his true identity. In a large metropolis like Chicago, Dillinger was able to lead an anonymous life for a while.

On the day of his death, Dillinger, who was the most wanted man at the time, went with Polly and her friend Anna Sage, who ratted him out to avoid deportation, to see Public Enemy Number One at the Biograph movie theater in Lincoln Park, Illinois.

The orders of J. Edgar Hoover, in command of the BOI (predecessor of the FBI) were clear: wait for the hoodlum to come out of the movie theater and, at that moment, shoot to kill. He was shot by Melvin Purvis, an FBI agent, mortally wounded in the back and one of the bullets went through his eye, killing him on the spot.

The crisis caused by the Great Depression of 1929 caused the bankruptcy of several banks, which harmed working people, since they had their savings invested there and ended up losing the effort of a lifetime. Economic instability caused distrust in financial institutions, which did not offer any solvency. This situation, which affected all nations, favored the emergence of gangsters and bandits in the United States.

The social environment of resentment and distrust produced animosity towards bankers, so people transferred their hatred and annoyance, reflecting it in the satisfaction they felt for bank robbers like John Dillinger, especially when the fatal victims of their robberies were very few, and they were only authority figures, never people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Over the years, the myth of Dillinger as an avenging rebel has survived, vindicated more for his social anger towards authority than for his contribution to the people, which was nil. His death so young (barely 31 years old), his notorious escapes, his virile image, his sexual attractiveness and his apparent and idealized criminal cleanliness – by allowing himself so few deaths – have served to earn him a prominent place in popular culture. Dillinger, by the way, had no children.

John Dillinger has been represented several times in the cinema. The first of them in 1945, with the film of the same name, directed by Max Nosseck, and Lawrence Tierney in the role of Dillinger, starring Edmund Lowe and Anne Jeffreys.

Later, John Milius directed Dillinger, a 1973 film starring Warren Oates, and the last characterization in 2009 was by Johnny Depp, in the film Public Enemies, which also stars Christian Bale, playing Melvin Purvis, and Marion Cotillard, playing Dillinger’s girlfriend, Evelyn Frechette.

Sources

1. John Dillinger
2. John Dillinger
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5. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037644/
6. (en) Darry Matera, John Dillinger : The Life ad Death of America’s First Celebrity Criminal, Caroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 2005, 448 p. (ISBN 978-0-7867-1558-9)
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8. Bernd Winter: John H. Dillinger, 1933/34 Amerikas Staatsfeind Nr. 1. In: Unsere Heimat. Mitteilungsblatt des Landkreises Saarlouis für Kultur und Landschaft. Jahrgang 35, Heft 2, 2010, S. 53–58.
9. DILLINGER, John Herbert, F1c auf togetherweserved.com. Abruf am 18. Juli 2022
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