John Dillinger

His mother died when he was three, and the man left raising him was an Indianapolis grocer who swung between harsh and permissive. John Dillinger quit school for a machine shop, was arrested for auto theft, and enlisted in the Navy in 1923 partly to get clear of his father. He deserted the USS Utah at Boston within months. Back in Mooresville, he married 16-year-old Beryl Hovious, found no work, and in 1924 joined the town pool shark Ed Singleton in robbing a local grocer of 50 dollars. Singleton fought the charge and got the lighter term. Dillinger took his father's advice, confessed, pleaded guilty without a lawyer, and drew 10 to 20 years. He was 21.

Paroled on May 10, 1933, he robbed his first bank within weeks. What followed ran 14 months. The FBI places him at a dozen robberies and suspects him in many more, plus raids on police arsenals, three jailbreaks and 10 men dead. Two of them wore a badge. Sheriff Jess Sarber of Allen County, Ohio, shot by Harry Pierpont on October 12, 1933, while breaking Dillinger out of the Lima jail. East Chicago patrolman William O'Malley, killed during a bank robbery on January 15, 1934, the only homicide Dillinger was ever charged with, and never tried for.

The romance was under way while he was alive. Newspapers printed his bravado, and Americans who had watched banks take their farms and savings cheered a man taking it back at gunpoint. He was not taking it back for them. The money went to him and his partners. On April 22, 1934, at Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin, Bureau agents fired on a car of departing dinner customers and killed Eugene Boisneau, wounding two others. Baby Face Nelson shot Special Agent W. Carter Baum dead a mile away. The gang left through the back. What the public kept was the other story, the walk out of the escape-proof jail at Crown Point seven weeks before. Dillinger said he had whittled the gun. A deputy said it was real. His own lawyer's investigator later claimed he had smuggled it in.

The Biograph hung a sign offering souvenir pictures of the chair he had sat in, and 15,000 people filed past the body at the Cook County morgue. The stone at Crown Hill in Indianapolis has been replaced more than once by visitors chipping at it. Hoover took more than a corpse. Dillinger driving a stolen sheriff's car across a state line was the hook that gave the Bureau jurisdiction, and Congress spent 1934 passing crime bills written with gangs like his in mind. Public Enemy Number One was a phrase borrowed from a Chicago civic committee and run as publicity. A small, persistent minority still argues the man outside the theatre was someone else. Three sets of fingerprints say otherwise.

John Dillinger's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Michigan City escape plan mission
  He drew it up inside and had guns smuggled in. Eight men used it four days after his own arrest, shooting two guards on the way out. 1933
• The first Dillinger Gang other
  Built from men he had met in the Indiana State Prison — Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, Russell Clark, Harry Copeland and John Hamilton 1933
• The Crown Point escape mission
  March 3, 1934. Whether the gun was carved wood, a real pistol or smuggled in has never been settled. 1934
• The second Dillinger Gang other
  Assembled in St. Paul with Baby Face Nelson, Homer Van Meter, Eddie Green and Tommy Carroll 1934
• A new face other
  Dr. Wilhelm Loeser removed moles and a lip scar and burned the fingertips with acid. Dillinger was unhappy with the result. 1934

• June 22, 1903 aged 0 Born in the Oak Hill section of Indianapolis His mother died before his fourth birthday. His father, a grocer, remarried six years later.
• 1923 aged ~20 Deserts the USS Utah at Boston months into a Navy enlistment He had joined after a break with his father and an auto theft charge. The discharge was dishonorable.
• 1924 aged ~21 Confesses on his father's advice and draws 10 to 20 years The robbery took 50 dollars from a Mooresville grocer. Ed Singleton, who fought the charge, got a far lighter term.
• May 10, 1933 aged 29 Paroled into the worst year of the Depression Accounts of the time served differ. The FBI says eight and a half years, other sources nine and a half.
• October 12, 1933 aged 30 Harry Pierpont kills Sheriff Jess Sarber to break him out of the Lima jail Sarber had asked the men posing as officers for their credentials. They left him to die on the floor.
• January 15, 1934 aged 30 East Chicago patrolman William O'Malley is killed in a bank robbery The only homicide Dillinger was ever charged with. He escaped before trial and was never tried for it.
• March 3, 1934 aged 30 Walks out of the jail at Crown Point that officials had called escape-proof He said afterward that he had whittled the gun. A deputy insisted it was real, and his lawyer's investigator claimed to have smuggled it in.
• April 22, 1934 aged 30 The raid on Little Bohemia Lodge kills a bystander and an agent Agents shot Eugene Boisneau, a customer leaving dinner. Baby Face Nelson killed Special Agent W. Carter Baum nearby. The gang got away.
• July 22, 1934 aged 31 Shot by federal agents in the alley beside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago Ana Cumpanas had tipped the Bureau and wore an orange skirt to mark herself in the crowd. The red dress was a newspaper invention.

• J. Edgar Hoover 1895–1972
  Longtime FBI director who built a powerful national police institution while conducting extensive political surveillance and abuses. hunted by
• Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945
  32nd President who led the nation through the Great Depression and most of World War II. crime bills signed by
• Al Capone 1899–1947
  Gangster whose criminal empire made him the defining symbol of Prohibition-era organized crime. named a public enemy before him
• Jesse James 1847–1882
  Missouri bandit and ex-Confederate guerrilla whose Robin Hood legend was built for him in the press. inherited the outlaw myth of