Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. Not too long ago on the show,
Speaker 1: we talked about a series of six prison breaks, and
Speaker 1: one of the more famous prison breaks that we did
Speaker 1: not get into on the show was John Dillinger's four
Speaker 1: escape using a fake gun that he had made, and
Speaker 1: we didn't because there's already a podcast on Dillinger by
Speaker 1: previous host Sarah and Bablina that came out on December jess.
Speaker 1: As a very general guideline, it is not really necessary
Speaker 1: to send in corrections for pronunciations in eleven year old
Speaker 1: podcast episodes, especially when they are hosted by people who
Speaker 1: do not work here anymore. But just in case, we do,
Speaker 1: as totally random examples, know how to say the words
Speaker 1: mischievous and Lima, Ohio, Welcome to Stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, A production of I Heart Radio, Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast I'm to Blieve in chark Reboarding
Speaker 1: and I'm Fair Doing And Earlier this year, we talked
Speaker 1: a lot about Ned Kelly and some other famous bush Rangers,
Speaker 1: who were essentially Australian outlaws, viewed as folk heroes by
Speaker 1: many of their contemporaries. A couple of times we compared
Speaker 1: that bush ranger phenomenon to the American wild West and
Speaker 1: Jesse James. But the United States has seen some more
Speaker 1: recent examples of these outlaw hero hybrids in the form
Speaker 1: of the Depression era bank robber gangster. Why would the public,
Speaker 1: or at least a portion of it, root for a
Speaker 1: criminal with a scary Tommy gun. That's what we asked ourselves,
Speaker 1: and it's similar to the Bushranger situation, is what we found.
Speaker 1: It had less to do with people liking the bank
Speaker 1: robbers than it did with their disliking the banks. Basically,
Speaker 1: what that meant was that in the twenties banks speculated
Speaker 1: on stocks and then went bust and left people who
Speaker 1: deposited money high and dry. And then in the thirties
Speaker 1: banks foreclosed on farmers who had been hit hard by drought,
Speaker 1: for seeing thousands of people to leave their land. So
Speaker 1: banks were the enemy. Yeah, and some of the criminals,
Speaker 1: like the one that we're going to focus on in
Speaker 1: this episode, John Dillinger, we're really kind of likable guys.
Speaker 1: Dillinger was known for being charismatic. He's been called Gentleman
Speaker 1: John or the Gentleman Bandit, and even though his infamous
Speaker 1: crime spree only lasted for one year, he was arguably
Speaker 1: the biggest celebrity criminal of his day. He was the
Speaker 1: first criminal to be named Public Enemy Number one by
Speaker 1: the FBI, and Dillinger's demise also marked the beginning of
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen thirties gangster era and the
Speaker 1: rise of the FBI. In fact, when former and the
Speaker 1: first FBI director jed Gar Hoover, who's been in the
Speaker 1: spotlight recently because of the movie, when he was asked
Speaker 1: as an old man with his greatest thrill or the
Speaker 1: high point in his career was, he said, it was
Speaker 1: the night they got Dillinger. So we're going to take
Speaker 1: a look at that night and some of the mysteries
Speaker 1: and the myths surrounding it. But of course we're going
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about Jillinger's early days first
Speaker 1: and how he became a star of the crime world
Speaker 1: in the first place. So John Herbert Dillinger was born
Speaker 1: June nineteen o three in a middle class neighborhood in
Speaker 1: Indianapolis called Oak Hill. So most sources say he was
Speaker 1: trouble from a pretty early age. Not mean spirited, not
Speaker 1: a bully necessarily, but mischievous. According to an article by
Speaker 1: Peter Carlson in American history. Dillinger's life of crime really
Speaker 1: started in grade school when he formed a gang called
Speaker 1: the Dirty Dozen. They apparently stole watermelon. Some sources say
Speaker 1: that they met have stolen coal um, but instability from
Speaker 1: family life probably didn't help things. Dillinger's mother, Mary Ellen,
Speaker 1: died when he was only about three or four years old,
Speaker 1: and he was cared for mostly by his sister Audrey.
Speaker 1: His father, John Wilson, who was a grosser, remarried when
Speaker 1: Dillinger was about ten years old, but Dillinger wasn't very
Speaker 1: fond of his stepmother, at least at first. Sod Linger
Speaker 1: quit school when he was about sixteen and he went
Speaker 1: to work in machine shops. He was a decent worker,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't that into his work, so he started
Speaker 1: staying out late like a lot, and in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: his father moved the family from the city to a
Speaker 1: farm in Mooresville, Indiana, presumably in part because he thought
Speaker 1: Dillinger was on the road to getting into serious trouble.
Speaker 1: But moving to the farm really didn't help with that
Speaker 1: problem very much. Dillinger ran wild, and he got into
Speaker 1: trouble or what or was about to get into trouble,
Speaker 1: I should stay for stealing a car. So at age nineteen,
Speaker 1: he joined the Navy, but after only five months he
Speaker 1: went a wall when his ship was docked in Boston,
Speaker 1: and later he was dishonorably discharged, so he came home
Speaker 1: to Morrisville for a little while. He got married to
Speaker 1: sixteen year old Beryl Hovious in April of nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: and also for a brief time he showed promise as
Speaker 1: a baseball player for a team in Martinsville, Indiana, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't long before Dillinger started to get into trouble again.
Speaker 1: That same year, in four he and an older friend
Speaker 1: named Ed Singleton assaulted and robbed a local grocer, and
Speaker 1: they really botched the crime. They messed up completely, and
Speaker 1: they got caught and Singleton pled not guilty and got
Speaker 1: off with a light sentence. But Dillinger took some really
Speaker 1: bad advice from his father, who convinced him not to
Speaker 1: get a lawyer and to plead guilty. And uh, they
Speaker 1: were just sort of assuming that maybe, since Dillinger had
Speaker 1: no prior criminal record, maybe the court would show mercy
Speaker 1: let him off easy. But it didn't go down that way,
Speaker 1: Dillinger was sentenced to ten to twenty years in prison.
Speaker 1: So what a way to start life. Yeah, pretty serious sentence,
Speaker 1: of course, though he didn't just take it lying down
Speaker 1: and accept his fate at first. Dillinger attempted to escape
Speaker 1: from prison a few times, acted up, gotten all kinds
Speaker 1: of trouble. He seemed to become more and more bitter
Speaker 1: about a situation as time went on, especially when he
Speaker 1: was denied parole and when his wife divorced him in
Speaker 1: while he was still in there. After a while, though,
Speaker 1: Dillinger settled down, or at least he appeared to. He
Speaker 1: worked in the prison shirt factory and started making friends
Speaker 1: with some of the older inmates like Harry Pierpont, who
Speaker 1: could school him in an advanced criminal tactics like the
Speaker 1: finer points of robbing banks, for instance. Then in May
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty three, after nearly nine years in prison,
Speaker 1: Dillinger's good prisoner facade paid off and he was paroled
Speaker 1: just a few weeks later. On June tenth, nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: he robbed his first bank in Ohio, and he made
Speaker 1: off with somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: on that first job, and he also started recruiting a
Speaker 1: few friends and pulled off several more robberies that summer.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't long before he was back behind bars again.
Speaker 1: Really just at the end of the summer, he was
Speaker 1: arrested in Dayton, Ohio and September twenty second, eighteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: and then he was thrown into the county jail and Lima,
Speaker 1: Ohio um According to the FBI's website, when Lima police
Speaker 1: were frisking Dillinger, they found a dot commit which seemed
Speaker 1: to be a plan for a prison break, but Dillinger
Speaker 1: said he didn't know anything about that. But just a
Speaker 1: few days later, eight to ten of Dillinger's prisoner buddies
Speaker 1: escaped using the exact plan the police had found. So
Speaker 1: turned out that Dillinger had arranged for guns to be
Speaker 1: smuggled into the prison to aid the escape, so presumably
Speaker 1: this had been the plan all along. Dillinger would make parole,
Speaker 1: get out of jail, pull off some jobs to get money,
Speaker 1: um to get guns, get m oh whatever, and then
Speaker 1: return to prison to get his friends out. And his
Speaker 1: friends didn't forget the favor either, just a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks later, several of the escapees showed up at the
Speaker 1: jail again where Dillinger was being held, and at first
Speaker 1: they pretended to be there to return Dillinger to the
Speaker 1: Indiana State Prison, since he had of course violated parole.
Speaker 1: But as soon as Sheriff Jess Sarber asked to see
Speaker 1: some sort of I D they shot and killed him,
Speaker 1: took his keys, and freed Dillinger. So a wild double
Speaker 1: part escape here and the band of outlaws became known
Speaker 1: as the Dillinger Gang or the Terror Gang. And during
Speaker 1: the last few months of ninety three, Dillinger and friends
Speaker 1: raided police arsenals for guns and AMMO and bulletproof vests,
Speaker 1: and they robbed about a dozen banks across the Midwest
Speaker 1: and picked up some serious cash in the process. In October,
Speaker 1: for example, they robbed a bank in Greencastle and made
Speaker 1: off with about seventy five thousand dollars. They eventually made
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this, and there was
Speaker 1: no real leader to the gang, but Dillinger became kind
Speaker 1: of the star of these robberies. He was well dressed,
Speaker 1: he was good looking, and he was athletic. He had
Speaker 1: this signature move he would do where he would leap
Speaker 1: over the bank counter to intimidate employees and get access
Speaker 1: to the miller's cages and also impressed by standards at
Speaker 1: the same time. Well, he'd also impressed them by telling
Speaker 1: people who were there to deposit their cash that they
Speaker 1: could keep their personal money. He was only interested in
Speaker 1: getting the bank's money. So there was that Robin Hood
Speaker 1: kind of thing going on that keeps on popping up
Speaker 1: in a lot of these outlaw episodes we talked about.
Speaker 1: But the Dillinger gang did hurt people too. They killed
Speaker 1: about fifteen people and wounded several others during their crime spree.
Speaker 1: Dillinger was even wanted for murder after a policeman was
Speaker 1: killed during robbery at a bank in East Chicago, Indiana,
Speaker 1: in January nineteen thirty four. But by this time the
Speaker 1: gang was making front page news, I mean, obviously for
Speaker 1: for heists like this, and local law enforcement in the
Speaker 1: Midwest wanted the FBI, which was then called the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Investigation or Division of Investigation, to get involved give
Speaker 1: them a little help with all of this. But by
Speaker 1: the letter of the law at the time, Dillinger and
Speaker 1: his friends hadn't admitted any federal crimes yet, so therefore
Speaker 1: the future FBI couldn't couldn't lay a hand on him,
Speaker 1: and I'm not officially at least that winter, Dillinger took
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, Evelyn Frischette, and the rest of the gang
Speaker 1: to Florida on vacation in Daytona Beach for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, and then after that the whole gang headed
Speaker 1: west to Tucson, Arizona, and that's where they were discovered, recognized,
Speaker 1: and arrested by police after a fire broke out in
Speaker 1: one of the hotels a couple of them were staying
Speaker 1: in under assumed names. They were all wanted all over
Speaker 1: the Midwest at this point, so states were actually competing
Speaker 1: over who would get them. Most of the gang ended
Speaker 1: up going to Ohio, but the East Chicago police got
Speaker 1: Dillinger and threw him in Crown Point, Indiana Jail, which
Speaker 1: was supposedly escape proof. At this time. There was a
Speaker 1: media frenzy surrounding Dillinger when he was there. The warden
Speaker 1: would let reporters interview him, and Dillinger apparently joked with
Speaker 1: them and really just charmed them all. I mean, some
Speaker 1: of them thought, Hey, this is a shame that this
Speaker 1: guy is gonna end up getting executed because he murdered somebody,
Speaker 1: because he really is kind of likable. But less than
Speaker 1: two months later, Dillinger put the jail security to the test.
Speaker 1: On March third, thirty four, Dillinger escaped by waving a
Speaker 1: pistol to force guards to let him out of his cell.
Speaker 1: He then captured Crown Points, Warden and guards and locked
Speaker 1: them in a cell and fled. According to the popular
Speaker 1: version of this story, the gun Dillinger used in this
Speaker 1: instance was one that he'd carved out of wood and
Speaker 1: darkened with boot black, so basically shoe polish. And some people,
Speaker 1: of course think that this is totally focus and that
Speaker 1: he actually had a real gun. But it's one of
Speaker 1: those one of the many myths out there about Dillinger
Speaker 1: that just you want to believe it because it's such
Speaker 1: a good story. Encyclopedia Britannica says that he was singing
Speaker 1: as he left, quote I'm heading for the last round up.
Speaker 1: And in Carlson's article, he says that Dillinger later wrote
Speaker 1: about the incident in a letter to his sister and said,
Speaker 1: quote you should have seen their faces ha ha ha,
Speaker 1: with all exclamation points there too. So right after this
Speaker 1: escape is when Dillinger made the mistake that would eventually
Speaker 1: lead to his downfall. As part of his escape from jail,
Speaker 1: he stole a sheriff's car and crossed the Indiana Illinois
Speaker 1: state line, which violated the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act.
Speaker 1: So finally there was a federal offense in jade, Hoover
Speaker 1: and the Bureau of Investigation could at last go after
Speaker 1: Dillinger full force. Dillinger had, of course, basically made a
Speaker 1: full out of law enforcement officials with this latest escape
Speaker 1: and the possible boot blackened gun, and catching him would
Speaker 1: be a huge accomplishment and a much needed win at
Speaker 1: this point for Hoover's fledgling bureau. So Hoover put his
Speaker 1: Chicago Bureau chief, Melvin Purvis, in charge of finding the outlaw,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have any luck at first. All of
Speaker 1: their initial attempts to capture him through raids failed. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, though, Dillinger was busy, he put together a
Speaker 1: new gang since all of his other friends were in
Speaker 1: jail already, and the new members of the Dillinger gang
Speaker 1: included the Likes of baby Face Nelson, who was generally
Speaker 1: considered an unbalanced, homicidal psychopath. He'd denis stint with al
Speaker 1: Capone and people were, I mean, this guy was a
Speaker 1: guy to be feared, but he wasn't necessarily the type
Speaker 1: of person that Dillinger had worked with in the past.
Speaker 1: But they set off together on another series of robberies.
Speaker 1: Purvis and as guys had been searching for Dillinger all
Speaker 1: over the place, but they kept not finding him or
Speaker 1: kind of just missing him, and they'd find out that
Speaker 1: he was somewhere, but he'd escaped before they could catch him. Then,
Speaker 1: in April of four, the Bureau got a tip that
Speaker 1: the gang was hiding out at the Little Bohemia Lodge
Speaker 1: north of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, while Dillinger recovered from a wound
Speaker 1: he'd gotten on their last job. So Purvis and Hugh Clegg,
Speaker 1: the assistant director of the Bureau at the time, led
Speaker 1: a small army of agents and approached the lodge at night,
Speaker 1: trying to ambush the gang. But as they approached, the
Speaker 1: owner's watchdogs began to bark, and around this same time,
Speaker 1: three men were leaving the building and they got into
Speaker 1: a car, apparently Purvis tried to yell at the car,
Speaker 1: we're government agents, but the men didn't hear him and
Speaker 1: started the car and they started to pull away, and
Speaker 1: as the car pulled away, agents opened fire. They ended
Speaker 1: up wounding two of the men and killing one of them,
Speaker 1: and they were all non gangster civilians, So big embarrassment there.
Speaker 1: And after that Purviose and his men opened fire on
Speaker 1: the lodge, but as soon as Dillinger and his men
Speaker 1: heard the shooting, they managed to escape. They jumped out
Speaker 1: windows onto the first floor roof and got away. But meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in an encounter with baby Face Nelson at a neighboring resort,
Speaker 1: one Bureau agent was wounded and another one killed, and
Speaker 1: their government vehicle was stolen too. So all of this,
Speaker 1: you know, shooting innocent men, um having one of their
Speaker 1: own agents killed by baby Face, losing dillenjer yet again
Speaker 1: was a huge embarrassment for Purvis and Hoover, and newspapers
Speaker 1: were calling them to be fire heard and some members
Speaker 1: of the Roosevelt administration we're thinking that they might need
Speaker 1: to get a new FBI director. But after the Wisconsin incident,
Speaker 1: Dillinger and his gang went on to rob another bank
Speaker 1: in Ohio, and whoever went ahead and dubbed the outlaw
Speaker 1: public Enemy number one and put up a pretty significant
Speaker 1: cash reward of ten thousand dollars for any information about
Speaker 1: his whereabouts. He was he I think he knew at
Speaker 1: this point his job was kind of riding on on
Speaker 1: catching him. Yes, he did, and there's speculation that this
Speaker 1: may have made Dillinger a little bit more cautious finally,
Speaker 1: maybe to the extreme. Even he's rumored to have undergone
Speaker 1: plastic surgery around this time to change his appearance and
Speaker 1: his fingerprints, But of course we don't have any proof
Speaker 1: of that. That's just kind of a story that's out there.
Speaker 1: Even if Dillinger did go to this extreme, though ultimately
Speaker 1: it didn't help them at all. On July twenty one,
Speaker 1: four Annas Sage contacted a police officer with information. Sage
Speaker 1: was a Romanian immigrant who was the madam of a
Speaker 1: brothel in the Chicago area. Her real name was actually
Speaker 1: on a companus because of the profession she was in.
Speaker 1: She was being deported and in exchange for giving the
Speaker 1: Bureau information about Dillinger, she wanted the cash reward and
Speaker 1: the FBI's help in preventing her deportation, So Purvis and
Speaker 1: his colleagues agreed on at least the first part, and
Speaker 1: they said maybe her cooperation would help her with the
Speaker 1: second part of it. So she told them she knew
Speaker 1: Dillinger's current girlfriend, Polly Hamilton's. Some sources say that Anna
Speaker 1: and Polly were roommates, others say that they were just girlfriends,
Speaker 1: but regardless, she said that she Dillinger and Hamilton's We're
Speaker 1: all going to see the Clark Gable movie Manhattan Melodrama,
Speaker 1: which was ironically a gangster movie, at either the Biograph
Speaker 1: or the Marlborough Theater in Chicago the following night, So
Speaker 1: Sage said she'd let them know which theater they were
Speaker 1: going to, and she also said she would wear an
Speaker 1: orange skirt so that they could pick her out. That's
Speaker 1: how she became known as the Woman in Red later on.
Speaker 1: So when Sunday, July twenty two rolled around, Stage still
Speaker 1: didn't know what theater they were going to, so agents
Speaker 1: were sent to both locations. Then, around eight thirty pm, Stage,
Speaker 1: Dillinger and Hamilton's all showed up at the Biograph, whoever,
Speaker 1: wanted the agents to wait until Dillinger came out so
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't hurt anyone who was inside the theater
Speaker 1: watching the movie. So all of the agents at the
Speaker 1: other theaters used that time during the movie to come
Speaker 1: over to the Biograph and to serve as reinforcements. So
Speaker 1: at ten thirty PM, Dillinger came out of the theater
Speaker 1: with the ladies and purpose was supposed to light his
Speaker 1: cigar as the signal for the agents to close in
Speaker 1: and surround Dillinger, But there's some question as to whether
Speaker 1: the cigar was actually ever lit or not. They may
Speaker 1: have just rushed in. Yeah, they may have just gone
Speaker 1: for him as soon as they saw him. The agents
Speaker 1: did surround Dillinger. Some witnesses say that Dillinger went for
Speaker 1: his gun, others say that he didn't, but the agents
Speaker 1: claim he did and the outlaw was shot trying to
Speaker 1: escape down the alley. That's their story, at least so
Speaker 1: by standards apparently tried to crowd around Dillinger's body in
Speaker 1: the street and dip their handkerchiefs and the edges of
Speaker 1: their skirts or bits of paper in his blood as souvenirs.
Speaker 1: Another case of these grizzly gangster souvenir things going on.
Speaker 1: But the remaining gang members were all captured or killed
Speaker 1: not too long after Dillinger's death, which really just added
Speaker 1: to the prestige of the Bureau of Investigation, which became
Speaker 1: the FBI in ninety five, and really boosted Hoover's reputation.
Speaker 1: By mid nineteen thirty six, the heyday of the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties outlaws was really pretty much over, and Hoover said
Speaker 1: to have kept Dillinger's gun, straw, hat and death mask
Speaker 1: in a glass case outside of his office. The shrine
Speaker 1: stayed there until Hoover's death in nineteen seventy one. But
Speaker 1: of course it's never just that simple when it comes
Speaker 1: to famous outlaw Some researchers claimed that Dillinger wasn't really
Speaker 1: killed that night. They think that the Bureau of Investigation
Speaker 1: agents killed another man in his place. In his book
Speaker 1: History's Greatest Lies, which was exerted in a two thousand
Speaker 1: nine issue of History Magazine, William Weir references a letter
Speaker 1: that Emil Went Not Could Junr received in nineteen sixty eight. Now,
Speaker 1: Emil Went Not Could Junior, Just to remind you guys,
Speaker 1: he's um the son of the man who owned the
Speaker 1: Little Bohemia Lodge. The lodge in Wisconsin, um, when Dillinger
Speaker 1: stayed there in nineteen thirty four, the place where they
Speaker 1: had exactly so, since Dillinger had escaped in such a hurry,
Speaker 1: he left his stuff at the lodge, and the owners
Speaker 1: had used those belongings to set up a little Dillinger museum.
Speaker 1: The person who had sent the letter to when Naka
Speaker 1: said that Dillinger was still alive and had been living
Speaker 1: in Hollywood under an assumed name since the shooting. Here.
Speaker 1: She also included a photo with the letter, offering it
Speaker 1: for use in the museum, and that was I guess,
Speaker 1: supposedly the purpose of the letter. And it apparently looked
Speaker 1: a lot like Dillinger could have looked as an older man.
Speaker 1: So we have to ask what pieces of evidence have
Speaker 1: people put forth to actually support this theory. Some say
Speaker 1: the person shot had black hair and Dillinger was supposed
Speaker 1: to have brown hair, but that could be a pretty
Speaker 1: easy fix. You can dye your hair and everything. Um.
Speaker 1: There was, however, also a discrepancy in eye color, so
Speaker 1: Navy records say that Dillinger's eyes were blue, but the
Speaker 1: autopsy showed that the person shot had brown eyes. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: though you know, you never know. With eye color, people
Speaker 1: can have different interpretations. But finally, the man autopsy had
Speaker 1: a heart condition that there's no record of Dillinger having.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the strange outlier here. So what do
Speaker 1: people who buy this theory think really happened. Well, it
Speaker 1: said that before he died, Dillinger was going by the
Speaker 1: alias Jimmy Lawrence in Chicago, But there really was a
Speaker 1: low level Chicago criminal named Jimmie Lawrence who kind of
Speaker 1: resembled Dillinger and also had a heart condition. So some
Speaker 1: people think this man was killed instead of Dillinger and
Speaker 1: that Dillinger got the last laugh. Although we should say
Speaker 1: that the FBI really considers this one of the top
Speaker 1: ten myths out there about Dillinger, and there are so
Speaker 1: many myths out there about him it's sometimes hard to
Speaker 1: separate fact from fiction. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
Speaker 1: r L or something similar over the course of the show,
Speaker 1: that could be obsolete. Now. Our current email address is
Speaker 1: History Podcast at I heart radio dot com. Our old
Speaker 1: health stuff works email address no longer works, and you
Speaker 1: can find us all over social media at Missed in History,
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
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