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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: History Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash History Stuff.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm debling in Chuck

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Speaker 1: Reboarding and I'm fair doubting And earlier this year we

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Speaker 1: talked a lot about Ned Kelly and some other famous

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Speaker 1: bush rangers, who are essentially Australian outlaw was viewed as

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Speaker 1: folk heroes by many of their contemporaries. A couple of

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Speaker 1: times we compared that bush ranger phenomenon to the American

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Speaker 1: wild West and Jesse James, but the United States has

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Speaker 1: seen some more recent examples of these outlaw hero hybrids

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Speaker 1: in the form of the Depression era bank robber gangster.

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Speaker 1: Why would the public, or at least a portion of it,

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Speaker 1: root for a criminal with a scary Tommy gun. That's

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Speaker 1: what we asked ourselves, and it's similar to the bushranger situation,

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Speaker 1: is what we found. It had less to do with

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Speaker 1: people liking the bank robbers than it did with their

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Speaker 1: disliking the banks. Basically, what that meant was that in

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Speaker 1: the twenties banks speculated on stocks and then went bust

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Speaker 1: and left people who deposited money high and dry. And

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Speaker 1: then in the thirties banks foreclosed on farmers who had

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Speaker 1: been hit hard by drought, forcing thousands of people to

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Speaker 1: leave their land. So banks were the enemy. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: some of the criminals, like the one that we're going

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Speaker 1: to focus on in this episode, John Dillinger, we're really

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Speaker 1: kind of likable guys. Dillinger was known for being charismatic.

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Speaker 1: He's been called Gentleman John or the Gentleman Bandit, and

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Speaker 1: even though his infamous crime spree only lasted for one year,

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Speaker 1: he was arguably the biggest celebrity criminal of his day.

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Speaker 1: He was the first criminal to be named Public Enemy

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Speaker 1: number one by the FBI, and Dillinger's demise also marked

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Speaker 1: the beginning of the end of the nineteen thirties gangster

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Speaker 1: era and the rise of the FBI. In fact, when

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Speaker 1: former and the first FBI director Jed gre Hoover, who's

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Speaker 1: been in the spotlight recently because of the movie, when

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Speaker 1: he was asked as an old man with his greatest

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Speaker 1: thrill or the high point in his career was, he said,

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Speaker 1: it was the night they got Dillinger. So we're going

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Speaker 1: to take a look at that night and some of

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Speaker 1: the mysteries and the myths surrounding it. But of course

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit about Jillinger's early

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Speaker 1: days first and how he became a star of the

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Speaker 1: crime world in the first place. So John Herbert Dillinger

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Speaker 1: was born June nineteen o three in a middle class

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Speaker 1: neighborhood in Indianapolis called Oak Hill. So most sources say

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Speaker 1: he was bull from a pretty early age, not mean spirited,

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Speaker 1: not a bully necessarily, but mischievous. According to an article

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Speaker 1: by Peter Carlson in American History, Dillinger's life of crime

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Speaker 1: really started in grade school, when he formed a gang

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Speaker 1: called the Dirty Dozen. They apparently stole watermelon. Some sources

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Speaker 1: say that they might have stolen coal um, but instability

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Speaker 1: from family life probably didn't help things. Dillinger's mother, Mary Ellen,

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Speaker 1: died when he was only about three or four years old,

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Speaker 1: and he was cared for it, mostly by his sister Audrey.

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Speaker 1: His father, John Wilson, who was a grosser, remarried when

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Speaker 1: Dillinger was about ten years old, but Dillinger wasn't very

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Speaker 1: fond of his stepmother, at least at first, so Dillinger

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Speaker 1: quit school when he was about sixteen and he went

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Speaker 1: to work in machine shops. He was a decent worker,

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Speaker 1: but he wasn't that into his work, so he started

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Speaker 1: staying out late like a lot, and in ninety his

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Speaker 1: father moved the family from the city to a farm Mooresville, Indiana,

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Speaker 1: presumably in part because he thought Dillinger was on the

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Speaker 1: road to getting into serious trouble. But moving to the

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Speaker 1: farm really didn't help with that problem very much. Dillinger

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Speaker 1: ran wild, and he got into trouble, or what or

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Speaker 1: was about to get into trouble, I should say, for

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Speaker 1: stealing a car. So at age nineteen, he joined the Navy,

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Speaker 1: but after only five months he went a wall when

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Speaker 1: his ship was docked in Boston, and later he was

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Speaker 1: dishonorably discharged, so he came home to Morrisville for a

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Speaker 1: little while. He got married to sixteen year old Beryl

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Speaker 1: Hovious in April of nineteen twenty four, and also for

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Speaker 1: a brief time he showed promise as a baseball player

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Speaker 1: for a team in Martinsville, Indiana, But it wasn't long

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Speaker 1: before Dillinger started to get into trouble again. That same

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Speaker 1: year in four he and an older friend named Ed

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Speaker 1: Singleton assaulted and robbed a local grocer, and they really

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Speaker 1: botched the crime. They messed up completely, and they got

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Speaker 1: caught and Singleton pled not guilty got off with a

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Speaker 1: light sentence. But Dillinger took some really bad advice from

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Speaker 1: his father, who convinced him not to get a lawyer

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Speaker 1: and to plead guilty. And uh, they were just sort

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Speaker 1: of assuming that maybe, since Dillinger had no prior criminal record,

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Speaker 1: maybe the court would show mercy let him off easy,

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Speaker 1: but it didn't go down that way. Dillinger was sentenced

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Speaker 1: to ten to twenty years in prison. So what a

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Speaker 1: way to start life. Yeah, pretty serious sentence, of course,

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Speaker 1: though he didn't just take it lying down and accept

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Speaker 1: his fate. At first. Dillinger attempted to escape from prison

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Speaker 1: a few times, acted up, got in all kinds of trouble.

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Speaker 1: He seemed to become more and more bitter about a

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Speaker 1: situation as time went on, especially when he was denied

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Speaker 1: parole and when his wife divorced him in nine while

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Speaker 1: he was still in there. After a while, though, Dillinger

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Speaker 1: settled down, or at least he appeared to. He worked

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Speaker 1: in the prison shirt factory and started making friends with

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Speaker 1: some of the older inmates, like Harry Pierpont, who could

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Speaker 1: school him and danced criminal tactics like the finer points

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Speaker 1: of robbing banks, for instance. Then in May if nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty three, after nearly nine years in prison, Dillinger's good

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Speaker 1: prisoner facade paid off and he was paroled just a

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Speaker 1: few weeks later. On June tenth, nineteen thirty three, he

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Speaker 1: robbed his first bank in Ohio, and he made off

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Speaker 1: with somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars on

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Speaker 1: that first job, and he also started recruiting a few

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Speaker 1: friends and pulled off several more robberies that summer, but

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Speaker 1: it wasn't long before he was back behind bars again.

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Speaker 1: Really just at the end of the summer. He was

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Speaker 1: arrested in Dayton, Ohio and September twenty, nineteen thirty three,

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Speaker 1: and then he was thrown into the county jail and Lima,

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Speaker 1: Ohio UM. According to the FBI's website, when Lima police

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Speaker 1: were frisking Dillinger, they found a document which seemed to

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Speaker 1: be a plan for a prison break, but Dillinger said

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Speaker 1: he didn't know anything about that. But just a few

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Speaker 1: days later, eight to ten of Dillinger's prisoner buddies escaped

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Speaker 1: using the exact plan the police had found. So turned

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Speaker 1: out that Dillinger had arranged for guns to be smuggled

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Speaker 1: into the prison to aid the escape, so presumably this

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Speaker 1: had been the plan all along. Dillinger would make parole,

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Speaker 1: get out of jail, pull off some jobs to get money, UM,

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Speaker 1: to get guns, get m oh whatever, and then return

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Speaker 1: to prison to get his friends out. And his friends

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Speaker 1: didn't forget the favor either. Just a couple of weeks later,

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Speaker 1: several of the escape ees showed up at the jail

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Speaker 1: again where Dillinger was being held and at first they

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Speaker 1: pretended to be there to return Dillinger to the Indiana

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Speaker 1: State Prison since he had of course violated parole. But

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Speaker 1: as soon as Sheriff just Sarber asked to see some

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Speaker 1: sort of I D they shot and killed him, took

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Speaker 1: his keys, and freed Dillinger. So a wild double part

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Speaker 1: escape here and the band of outlaws became known as

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Speaker 1: the Dillinger Gang or the Terror Gang. And during the

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Speaker 1: last few months of nineteen thirty three, Dillinger and friends

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Speaker 1: rated police arsenals for guns and AMMO and bulletproof vests,

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Speaker 1: and they robbed about a dozen banks across the Midwest

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Speaker 1: and picked up some serious cash in the process. In October,

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Speaker 1: for example, they robbed a bank in Greencastle and made

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Speaker 1: off with about seventy five thousand dollars. They eventually made

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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this, and there was

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Speaker 1: no real leader to the gang, but Dillinger became kind

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Speaker 1: of the star of these robberies. He was well dressed,

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Speaker 1: he was good looking, and he was athletic. He had

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Speaker 1: this signature move he would do where he would leap

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Speaker 1: over the bank counter to intimidate employees and get access

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Speaker 1: to the teller's cages and also impressed by standards. At

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Speaker 1: the same time, well, he'd also impressed them by telling

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Speaker 1: people who were there to deposit their cash that they

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Speaker 1: could keep their personal money. He was only interested in

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Speaker 1: getting the banks money. So there was that Robin Hood

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Speaker 1: kind of thing going on that keeps on popping up

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Speaker 1: in a lot of these outlaw episodes we talked about.

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Speaker 1: But the Dillinger gang did hurt people too. They killed

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Speaker 1: about fifteen people and wounded several others during their crime spree.

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Speaker 1: Dillinger was even wanted for murder after a policeman was

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Speaker 1: killed during robbery at a bank in East Chicago, Indiana,

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Speaker 1: in January nineteen thirty four. But by this time the

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Speaker 1: gang was making front page news, I mean, obviously for

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Speaker 1: for heists like this, and local law enforcement in the

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Speaker 1: Midwest wanted the FBI, which was then called the Bureau

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Speaker 1: of Investigation or Division of Investigation, to get involved give

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Speaker 1: them a little help with all of this. But by

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Speaker 1: the letter of the law at the time, Dillinger and

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Speaker 1: his friends hadn't committed any federal crimes yet, so therefore

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Speaker 1: the future FBI couldn't couldn't lay a hand on him,

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Speaker 1: and I'm not officially at least that winter, Dillinger took

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Speaker 1: his girlfriend, Evelyn fri Schett, and the rest of the

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Speaker 1: gang to Florida on vacation in Daytona Beach for a

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Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and then after that the whole gang

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Speaker 1: headed west to Tucson, Arizona, and that's where they were discovered, recognized,

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Speaker 1: and arrested by police after a fire broke out in

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Speaker 1: one of the hotels a couple of them were staying

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Speaker 1: in under assumed names. They were all wanted all over

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Speaker 1: the Midwest at this point, so states were actually competing

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Speaker 1: over who would get them. Most of the gang ended

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Speaker 1: up going to Ohio, but the East Chicago police got

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Speaker 1: Dillinger and threw him in Crown Point, Indiana Jail, which

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Speaker 1: was supposedly escape proof. At this time. There was a

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Speaker 1: media frenzy surrounding Dillinger when he was there. The warden

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Speaker 1: would let reporters interview him, and Dillinger apparently joked with

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Speaker 1: them and really just charmed them all. I mean, some

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Speaker 1: of them thought, Hey, this is a shame that this

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Speaker 1: guy is gonna end up getting executed because he murdered somebody,

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Speaker 1: because he really is kind of likable. But less than

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Speaker 1: two months later, Dillinger put the jail security to the test.

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Speaker 1: On March third, four, Dillinger escaped by waving a pistol

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Speaker 1: to force guards to let him out of his cell.

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Speaker 1: He then captured Crown Points, Warden and guards and locked

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Speaker 1: them in a cell and fled. According to the popular

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Speaker 1: version of the Store, the gun Dillinger used in this

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Speaker 1: instance was one that he'd carved out of wood and

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Speaker 1: darkened with boot black, so basically shoe polish. And some people,

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Speaker 1: of course think that this is totally bogus and that

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Speaker 1: he actually had a real gun. But it's one of

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Speaker 1: those one of the many myths out there about Dillinger

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Speaker 1: that just you want to believe it because it's such

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Speaker 1: a good story. Encyclopedia Britannica says that he was singing

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Speaker 1: as he left, quote I'm heading for the last round up.

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Speaker 1: And in Carlson's article, he says that Dillinger later wrote

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Speaker 1: about the incident in a letter to his sister and

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Speaker 1: said quote you should have seen their faces, ha ha ha,

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Speaker 1: with all exclamation points there too. So right after this

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Speaker 1: escape is when Dillinger made the mistake that would eventually

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Speaker 1: lead to his downfall. Is part of his escape from jail,

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Speaker 1: he stole a sheriff's car and crossed the Indiana Illinois

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Speaker 1: state line, which violated the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act.

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Speaker 1: So finally there was a federal offense in Jaeger Hoover,

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Speaker 1: the Bureau of Investigation could at last go after Dillinger

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Speaker 1: full force. Dillinger had, of course, basically made a full

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Speaker 1: out of law enforcement officials with this latest escape and

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Speaker 1: the possible boot blackened gun, and catching him would be

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Speaker 1: a huge accomplishment and a much needed win at this

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Speaker 1: point for Hoover's fledgling bureau, So Hoover put his Chicago

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Speaker 1: Bureau chief, Melvin Purvis, in charge of finding the outlaw,

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Speaker 1: but they didn't have any luck at first. All of

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Speaker 1: their initial attempts to capture him through raids failed. In

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Speaker 1: the meantime, though Dillinger was busy. He put together a

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Speaker 1: new gang since all of his other friends were in

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Speaker 1: jail already, and the new members of the Dillinger gang

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Speaker 1: included the likes of baby Face Nelson, who was generally

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Speaker 1: considered an unbalanced homicidal psychopaths. He Denistan with al capone

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Speaker 1: and people were I mean, this guy was a guy

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Speaker 1: to be feared, but he wasn't necessarily the type of

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Speaker 1: person that Dillinger had worked with in the past. But

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Speaker 1: they set off together on another series of robberies. Purvis

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Speaker 1: and his guys have been searching for Dillinger all over

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Speaker 1: the place, but they kept not finding him or kind

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Speaker 1: of just missing him, and they'd find out that he

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Speaker 1: was somewhere, but he'd escaped before they could catch him. Then,

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Speaker 1: in April of nine thirty four, the Bureau got a

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Speaker 1: tip that the gang was hiding out at the Little

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Speaker 1: Bohemia Lodge north of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, while Dillinger recovered from

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Speaker 1: a wound he'd gotten on their last job. So Purvis

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Speaker 1: and Hugh Clegg, the assistant director of the Bureau at

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Speaker 1: the time, led a small army of agents and approached

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Speaker 1: the lodge at night, trying to ambush the gang. But

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Speaker 1: as they approached, the owner's watchdogs began to bark, and

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Speaker 1: around the same time, three men were leaving the building

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Speaker 1: and they got into a car. Apparently, Purvis tried to

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Speaker 1: yell at the car where government agents, but the men

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Speaker 1: didn't hear him and started the car and they started

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Speaker 1: to pull away, and as the car pulled away, agents

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Speaker 1: opened fire. They ended up wounding two of the men

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Speaker 1: and killing one of them, and they were all non

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Speaker 1: gangster civilians, so big embarrassment there. And after that, Purvis

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Speaker 1: and his men opened fire on the lodge, but as

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Speaker 1: soon as Dillinger and his men heard the shooting, they

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Speaker 1: managed to escape. They jumped out windows onto the first

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Speaker 1: floor roof and got away. But meanwhile, in an encounter

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Speaker 1: with baby Face Nelson at a neighboring resort, one Bureau

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Speaker 1: agent was wounded and another one killed, and their government

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Speaker 1: vehicle was stolen too. So all of this, you know,

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Speaker 1: shooting innocent men, um having one of their own agents

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Speaker 1: killed by baby Face, Losing Dillinger yet again was a

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Speaker 1: huge embarrassment for Purvis and Hoover, and newspapers were calling

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Speaker 1: them to be fired, and some members of the Roosevelt

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Speaker 1: administration we're thinking that they might need to get a

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Speaker 1: new SBI director. But after the Wisconsin incident, Dillinger and

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Speaker 1: his gang went on to rob another bank in Ohio,

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Speaker 1: and Hoover went ahead and dubbed the outlaw public Enemy

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Speaker 1: number one and put up a pretty significant cash reward

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Speaker 1: of ten thou and dollars for any information about his whereabouts.

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Speaker 1: He was he I think he knew at this point

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Speaker 1: his job was kind of riding on on catching him. Yes,

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Speaker 1: he did, and their speculation that this may have made

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Speaker 1: Dillinger a little bit more cautious finally, maybe to the extreme.

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Speaker 1: Even he's rumored to have undergone plastic surgery around this

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Speaker 1: time to change his appearance and his fingerprints, but of

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Speaker 1: course we don't have any proof of that. That's just

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Speaker 1: kind of a story that's out there. Even if Dillinger

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Speaker 1: did go to this extreme, though ultimately it didn't help

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Speaker 1: him at all. On July twenty one, and a stage

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Speaker 1: contacted a police officer with information Sage was a Romanian

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Speaker 1: immigrant who was the madam of a brothel in the

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Speaker 1: Chicago area. Her real name was actually on a Coumpanus.

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Speaker 1: Because of the profession she was in, she was being

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Speaker 1: deported and in exchange for giving the Bureau information about Dillinger,

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Speaker 1: she wanted the cash reward and the FBI's help in

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Speaker 1: preventing her deportation. So Purvis and his colleagues agreed on

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Speaker 1: at least the first part, and they said maybe her

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Speaker 1: cooperation would help her with the second part of it,

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Speaker 1: so she told them she knew Dillinger's current girlfriend, Polly Hamilton's.

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Speaker 1: Some sources say that Anna and Polly were roommates, others

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Speaker 1: say that they were just girlfriends, but regardless, she said

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Speaker 1: that she, Dillinger and Hamilton's we're all going to see

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Speaker 1: the Clark Gable movie Manhattan Melodrama, which was ironically a

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Speaker 1: gangster movie, and either the Biograph or the Marlborough Theater

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Speaker 1: in Chicago the following night. So Stage said she'd let

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Speaker 1: them know which theater they were going to, and she

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Speaker 1: also said she would wear an orange skirt so that

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Speaker 1: they could pick her out. That's how she became known

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Speaker 1: as the Woman in Red later on. So when Sunday

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Speaker 1: July rolled around, Stage still didn't know what theater they

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Speaker 1: were going to, so agents were sent to both locations.

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Speaker 1: Then around eight thirty pm, Stage, Dillinger, and Hamilton's all

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Speaker 1: showed up at the Biograph, whoever, wanted the agents to

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Speaker 1: wait until Dillinger came out so that they wouldn't hurt

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Speaker 1: anyone who was inside the theater watching the movie, So

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Speaker 1: all of the agents that the other theaters used that time.

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Speaker 1: During the movie to come over to the biograph and

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Speaker 1: to serve as re enforcement. So at ten thirty pm,

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Speaker 1: Dillinger came out of the theater with the ladies and

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Speaker 1: purpose was supposed to light his cigar as the signal

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Speaker 1: for the agents to close in and surround Dillinger, but

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Speaker 1: there's some question as to whether the cigar was actually

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Speaker 1: ever lit or not. They may have just rushed in. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they may have just gone for him as soon as

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Speaker 1: they saw him. The agents did surround Dillinger. Some witnesses

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Speaker 1: say that Dillinger went for its gun, others say that

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Speaker 1: he didn't, but the agents claim he did and the

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Speaker 1: outlaw was shot trying to escape down the alley. That's

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Speaker 1: their story at least so bystanders apparently tried to crowd

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Speaker 1: around Dillinger's body in the street and dip their handkerchiefs

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Speaker 1: and the edges of their skirts or bits of paper

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Speaker 1: in his blood as souvenirs. Another case of these grizzly

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Speaker 1: gangster souvenir things going on. But the remaining gang members

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Speaker 1: were all captured or killed not too long after Dillinger's death,

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Speaker 1: which really just added to the prestige age of the

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Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation, which became the FBI in nineteen thirty

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Speaker 1: five and really boosted Hoover's reputation. By mid nineteen thirty six,

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Speaker 1: the heyday of the nineteen thirties outlaws was really pretty

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Speaker 1: much over, and Hoover said to have kept Dillinger's gun, straw,

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Speaker 1: hat and death mask in a glass case outside of

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Speaker 1: his office. The shrine stayed there until Hoover's death in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. But of course it's never just that

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Speaker 1: simple when it comes to a famous outlaw. Some researchers

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Speaker 1: claimed that Dillinger wasn't really killed that night. They think

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Speaker 1: that the Bureau of Investigation agents killed another man in

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Speaker 1: his place. In his book History's Greatest Lies, which was

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Speaker 1: exerted in a two thousand nine issue of History Magazine,

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Speaker 1: William Weir references a letter that Emil went Not Jr.

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Speaker 1: Received in nineteen sixty eight. Now Emil went not Ka Junior,

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Speaker 1: just to remind you guys, he's Um, the son of

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Speaker 1: the man who owned the Little Bohemia Lodge, the lodge

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Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, Um. When Dillinger stayed there in nineteen thirty four,

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Speaker 1: the play they had, the innocent guys were shot exactly. So,

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Speaker 1: since Dillinger had escaped in such a hurry, he left

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Speaker 1: his stuff at the lodge, and the owners had used

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Speaker 1: those belongings to set up a little Dillinger museum. The

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Speaker 1: person who had sent the letter to when Nanka said

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Speaker 1: that Dillinger was still alive and had been living in

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Speaker 1: Hollywood under an assumed name since the shooting. Here she

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Speaker 1: also included a photo with the letter, offering it for

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Speaker 1: use in the museum, and that was, I guess, supposedly

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Speaker 1: the purpose of the letter. And it apparently looked a

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Speaker 1: lot like Dillinger could have looked as an older man.

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Speaker 1: So we have to ask what pieces of evidence have

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Speaker 1: people put forth to actually support this theory. Some say

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Speaker 1: the person shot had black hair and Dillinger was supposed

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Speaker 1: to have brown hair, but that could be a pretty

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Speaker 1: easy fix. You can dye your hair and everything. Um.

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Speaker 1: There was, however, also a discrepancy in eye color, so

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Speaker 1: Navy records say that Dillinger's eyes were blue, but the

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Speaker 1: autopsy showed that the person shot had on eyes. Um Again,

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Speaker 1: though you know, you never know with eye color, people

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Speaker 1: can have different interpretations. But finally, the man autopsy had

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Speaker 1: a heart condition that there's no record of Dillinger having

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Speaker 1: that's kind of the strange outlier here. So what do

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Speaker 1: people who buy this theory think really happened. Well, it

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Speaker 1: said that before he died, Dillinger was going by the

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Speaker 1: alias Jimmy Lawrence in Chicago. But there really was a

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Speaker 1: low level Chicago criminal named Jimmy Lawrence who kind of

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Speaker 1: resembled Dillinger and also had a heart condition. So some

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Speaker 1: people think this man was killed instead of Dillinger and

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Speaker 1: that Dillinger got the last laugh. Although we should say

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Speaker 1: that the FBI really considers this one of the top

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Speaker 1: ten myths out there about Dillinger, and there are so

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Speaker 1: many myths out there about him, it's sometimes hard to

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Speaker 1: separate fact from fiction because you, I mean, you'll see

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Speaker 1: this theory kind of posed in regular sources all over

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Speaker 1: the place. But also, if you're gonna cupe Dillinger's gun

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Speaker 1: straw hat and death map in a glack case for decades,

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Speaker 1: you'd better stand by your story. That's true too. So

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Speaker 1: people continue to explore Dillinger's life and all of these

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Speaker 1: theories through books and stories and film of two thousand nine,

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Speaker 1: for example, in two thousand nine, there was a movie

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Speaker 1: called Public Enemies that John Death started in and he

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00:21:19,400 --> 00:21:22,800
Speaker 1: was he played Dillinger. So this is another great opportunity

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Speaker 1: I think for us to play one of our favorite games,

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Speaker 1: which is tell us one of your favorite movies related

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Speaker 1: to our podcast. You should write in and tell us

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Speaker 1: which movie that features Dillinger in his life is RST

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Speaker 1: Gangster Movies. Yeah, so right to us. You can find

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Speaker 1: us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: or on Facebook or on Twitter at mt in history.

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Speaker 1: And if you want to learn about a few other

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Speaker 1: public Enemies out there after we've covered Public Enemy number one,

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Speaker 1: we do have an article you can search for Public

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Speaker 1: Enemy on our homepage at www dot how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. This podcast is brought to you by Audible

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Speaker 1: than eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all types of

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