John Dillinger
John Dillinger was a notorious American bank robber and gangster during the Great Depression, born in 1903 in Mooresville, Indiana. He had a troubled early life marked by the loss of his mother and struggles with direction, leading to a series of criminal activities that began with joyriding and progressed to robbery. After a stint in military service that ended with a dishonorable discharge, Dillinger's criminal career escalated following his release from prison in 1933, where he formed a gang with fellow inmates.
Dillinger became infamous for his audacious bank heists, often executed with meticulous planning and sometimes involving violence, including the killing of law enforcement officers. His charisma and public persona garnered him significant media attention, leading many during the Depression to view him as a folk hero rather than a criminal. Ultimately, Dillinger's life ended in a dramatic confrontation with FBI agents outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago in 1934, marking him as a public enemy and solidifying his status in American criminal lore. His legacy has continued to captivate audiences through films and literature, reflecting a complex interplay between crime and celebrity in American culture.
John Dillinger
- Born: June 22, 1903
- Birthplace: Indianapolis, Indiana
- Died: July 22, 1934
- Place of death: Chicago, Illinois
American bank robber
Cause of notoriety: During the Great Depression, many Americans made heroes of outlaws who took what they wanted at gunpoint. Dillinger was perhaps the most famous of these outlaws, earning celebrity and admiration both for his criminal audacity and for his affable, polite manner.
Active: September, 1924-June, 1934
Locale: Midwestern United States
Sentence: Ten to twenty years’ imprisonment for assault and two to fourteen years for conspiracy to commit a felony in 1924; served nine years
Early Life
Raised in Mooresville, Indiana, John Dillinger (DIHL-ihn-juhr) was born to a farmer who also ran a small grocery. His mother died when he was three, and John was raised by his older sister. A natural athlete and an excellent baseball player, Dillinger nonetheless had no particular life direction, and he quit school in the seventh grade. In 1923, after joyriding in a stolen car, Dillinger was forced to enlist in the navy to avoid punishment. He soon deserted the military and got a dishonorable discharge. He married sixteen-year-old Beryl Hovious in 1924, the same year in which he and an ex-convict tried to rob a grocer by hitting him over the head with an iron bolt. Dillinger pleaded guilty in order to get a reduced sentence; his partner received only a few months in jail. Sentenced to ten to twenty years’ imprisonment for assault and two to fourteen years for conspiracy to commit a felony, Dillinger went to a reformatory, and his wife divorced him. He was transferred to the Michigan City Penitentiary in Indiana, where he met bank robbers Harry Pierpont and Homer Van Meter, both of whom agreed to form a gang with him upon release. Dillinger was paroled in May, 1933.
Criminal Career
In September, 1933, Dillinger robbed his first bank. He also threw guns over the wall of Michigan City to break his friends out of jail but was arrested in Dayton, Ohio, before the reunion. Dillinger was held in a Lima, Ohio, jail, but his gang freed him by killing the town sheriff. The subsequent robbery spree attracted great publicity. The gang walked into the Auburn, Indiana, police station, took police hostage, and stole guns and bulletproof vests. In Peru, Indiana, the gang struck again. Newspapers widely reported it, and the gang was admired for its audacity. There was scant sympathy for banks or for law enforcement among the public during the Great Depression; many Americans rooted for criminals.
Indiana police captain Matt Leach blamed Dillinger for bank robberies throughout his region, inflating Dillinger’s notoriety. Dillinger disliked Leach and taunted him through the mail. Although not the gang’s leader (a position held by Pierpont), Dillinger became its star. He looked like actor Humphrey Bogart, and he was affable and polite. The public viewed him as a small-town boy gone bad as a result of a too-harsh jail sentence.
The gang robbed banks about twice a month, hiding out in Chicago or St. Paul. Each bank was cased, and getaways were meticulously planned. In January, 1934, the gang robbed a bank in East Chicago, during which Dillinger killed an officer. Someone triggered an alarm, and the robbers walked out with hostages. Officer William O’Malley fired shots into Dillinger’s bulletproof vest, but Dillinger killed him with a machine gun.
Several gang members were recognized and arrested in Tucson, Arizona, in January, 1934. Dillinger was sent to jail in Crown Point, Indiana; gang members Pierpont and Charles Makley were sent to Lima, Ohio, for trial. Dillinger escaped in March using a smuggled wooden gun and driving away in the chief deputy’s car. Driving over state lines violated a federal law, so Dillinger became a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Pierpont and Makley got death sentences for killing the sheriff. Dillinger was then declared public enemy number one. He visited his family in Mooresville, and a photograph of him smugly holding the wooden pistol from his escape was widely distributed.
In April, 1934, the gang—now including infamous robber George “Baby Face” Nelson—hid out at Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin, but they were recognized and surrounded by FBI agents. The FBI opened fire in the dark and killed three innocent men exiting the lodge. The gang escaped out back windows.
In an attempt to avoid recognition, Dillinger and Van Meter had plastic surgery in May, 1934. Their last robbery was in South Bend, Indiana, in June, 1934. A wild shoot-out occurred with police, and civilians were hit; Van Meter was wounded but used his machine gun to kill an officer. Dillinger hid in Chicago with brothel owner Anna Sage.
Legal Action and Outcome
Sage offered to betray Dillinger in exchange for not being deported back to Romania, to which the authorities agreed. On July 22, 1934, Sage told the FBI that Dillinger was going to take her and a friend to the Biograph Theater to see a gangster film that evening. Dillinger entered the theater at 8:30 p.m., and dozens of agents took their positions outside. As Dillinger exited at 10:35 p.m., agents approached him from behind and either executed him on the spot or shot him as he ran up an alley. Whatever the truth, he died after being shot through the back of his head and in his torso. He was thirty-one years old. Van Meter was killed in St. Paul a month after Dillinger’s death, and Pierpont and Makley were executed. Sage was deported to Romania.
Impact
The death of John Dillinger edged J. Edgar Hoover closer to becoming a national icon. Within two years, G-men (FBI agents) replaced bank robbers as national heroes. Dillinger’s photograph became the official target on FBI’s firing ranges and remained so into the twenty-first century. It was reported that Hoover hung Dillinger’s death mask in his office as a favorite memento.
Dillinger continued to fascinate writers and filmmakers as a smiling “rogue hero,” who seemingly was more bad boy than criminal. Bryan Burrough, in his book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934 (2004), relates a visit to Dillinger’s grave, where he imagined touching his face. Many films have been made about Dillinger, although most were critical failures. Dillinger (1945) starred Lawrence Tierney; Dillinger (1973) starred Warren Oates and an excellent supporting cast, but its screenplay had little to do with historical reality. Public Enemy Number One, a documentary produced for the television series The American Experience, was aired by the Public Broadcasting Service in 2001.
Bibliography
Burrough, Bryan. Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Recounts Dillinger’s robberies in exciting detail and in chronological sequence along with discussion of other criminals of the era. The reader comes to understand how short and packed with violence the public enemy era was.
Girardin, G. Russell, with William J. Helmer. Dillinger: The Untold Story. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1994. Girardin interviewed Dillinger’s attorney and various criminal cohorts in the 1930’s, giving an intimate portrayal of Dillinger. The manuscript was unpublished until 1994.
Matera, Dary. John Dillinger: The Life and Death of America’s First Celebrity Criminal. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. Details Dillinger’s youth and personal traits but is somewhat speculative about Dillinger’s thoughts and motives.