Gangster, born in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. The most famous of all US bank robbers, he specialized in armed robberies, terrorizing Indiana and neighbouring states (19334). After escaping from Crown Point county jail, where he was held on a murder charge, he was shot dead by FBI agents in Chicago. Some researchers have claimed that another man, not Dillinger, was killed by the FBI, as a hoax by his allies, and that he escaped.
Early days
Dillinger, the son of a farmer, was born on June 22, 1903, in Brightwood, Indiana, and grew up in nearby Mooresville. Dillinger returned to Indiana where he married a local girl named Beryl Hovious and attempted to settle down. One night in 1924, while out on a drinking binge, Dillinger and a friend assaulted and robbed a well-known local grocer, Frank Morgan. Dillinger's friend employed a lawyer and received only a few months in jail, while the lawyer-less Dillinger was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison, despite having no prior criminal record.
Robbery career
The experience embittered Dillinger. Once Dillinger was released from Michigan City Prison, he helped conceive a plan for the escape of Pierpont, Clark and several others, most of whom worked in the prison laundry. The group known as the "first Dillinger gang" included Pierpont, Clark, Charles Makley, Edward W. Baby Face Nelson) were among those who joined the "second Dillinger gang" after he escaped from the county jail at Crown Point, Indiana. Altogether, gangs with whom Dillinger was believed to have been associated robbed about a dozen banks and stole over $300,000, an enormous sum in the Depression era.
Dillinger served time at the Indiana state penitentiary at Michigan City, until 1933, when he was paroled. Dillinger alone was sent to the Lake County jail in Crown Point, Indiana. During this time on trial, the famous photograph was taken of Dillinger putting his arm on prosecutor Robert Estill's shoulder when suggested to him by reporters.
On March 3, 1934, Dillinger escaped from the "escape-proof" (as it was dubbed by local authorities at the time) Crown Point, Indiana county jail which was guarded by many police and national guardsmen. Newspapers reported that Dillinger had escaped using a wooden gun blackened with shoe polish.
Dillinger further embarrassed the town, as well as then-42-year-old Sheriff Lillian Holley, by driving off in her brand new V-8 Ford.
Incensed, Holley declared at the time, "If I ever see John Dillinger again, I'll shoot him dead with my own gun.
Driving across the Indiana-Illinois state line in a stolen vehicle, Dillinger violated a federal law and thus caught the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The governor and Illinois state Attorney General Philip Lutz eventually chose not to release information because they did not want Dillinger to know of the informants with whom they spoke. As a result the findings about the gun in the escape were never made public, and this, coupled with Dillinger himself actively perpetuating the wooden gun story as an ego boost, is a reason many believe the "wooden gun" escape was real. The United States Department of Justice offered a $10,000 reward on June 23 for Dillinger's capture, or $5,000 for information leading to his apprehension. It was only after the FBI mistakenly gunned down 3 innocent Civilian Conservation Corps workers (as they were about to drive away in a car) that the Dillinger gang awoke.
Death
Dillinger's last day of freedom was July 22, 1934. Dillinger attended the film Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph Theater in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago with his girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, and brothel owner Ana Cumpanas (a.k.a. Sage worked out a deal with Purvis and the FBI to set up an ambush for Dillinger and drop the deportation charges against her. When they exited the theater that night, Sage tipped off the FBI who opened fire into the back of Dillinger, killing him. Though she had delivered Dillinger as promised, Sage was still deported to her home country of Romania in 1936, where she remained until her death 11 years later.
To this day, loyal fans continue to observe "John Dillinger Day" (July 22) as a way to remember the fabled bank robber. Members of the "John Dillinger Died for You Society" traditionally gather at the Biograph Theater on the anniversary of Dillinger's death and retrace his last walk to the alley where he died, following a bagpiper playing "Amazing Grace". Dillinger and his men had a hideout in Langlade county just south of Forest county Wi.
Was it Dillinger?
To this day, there are doubts whether Dillinger actually died on July 22, 1934. Some researchers (chief among them famed Chicago crime writer Jay Robert Nash) believe that the dead man was in truth a petty criminal from Wisconsin named Jimmy Lawrence, who had dated Dillinger's sometime girlfriend Billie Frechette and bore a close resemblance to the famed bank robber. in fact, Dillinger's father had suddenly exclaimed when first seeing his son's corpse, "That's not my boy!" After all, John Dillinger did receive rather crude plastic surgery some time before his death. Moreover, if indeed the agents did mistake Lawrence for Dillinger, the FBI would have had a strong incentive to cover up such a blunder, since J. The body showed signs of some childhood illness which Dillinger never had The body showed a rheumatic heart condition, yet according to the later testimony of Dr. Patrick Weeks--Dillinger's physician at Indiana State Prison--Dillinger could not have suffered from this disease as he was an avid baseball player while in prison and had served in the Navy.
However:
The body was positively identified as John Dillinger by his sister Audrey, through a scar on his leg received in childhood. Though scarred by acid, the prints were clearly identifiable as those of John Dillinger.Yet another disturbing fact remains: The small Colt semiautomatic pistol that Dillinger had allegedly drawn on the approaching FBI agents outside the Biograph (and was for years shown in a display case at FBI Headquarters along with Dillinger's death mask) was not his; it in fact had been manufactured five months after Dillinger's death, which supports the claim that the FBI agents, without warning, shot and killed an unarmed Dillinger.
In 1963 the newspaper The Indianapolis Star received a letter from a person called "John Dillinger" with a return address in Hollywood, CA. The letter contained a photo of a man who looked like a more aged Dillinger.
Trivia
Many legends surround John Dillinger.
John Dillinger is one of the main characters in the series of science fiction books The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, which plays off the rumor that Dillinger was not the man gunned down outside the Biograph. In the trilogy, Dillinger is depicted as having been present at the assassination of John F. It is also revealed that the Dillinger of this work is not one man but five -- quintuplets, born before the Dionne Quintuplets.
An Indiana history, Dillinger, Hidden Truth, contains the facts about the man John Dillinger as told by his wife Beryl Hovious.
Stephen King wrote a short story called "The Death of Jack Hamilton", printed in Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales, in which Dillinger is a main character.
The "Lady in Red" story stems from a poem allegedly chalked on the alley wall where Dillinger was shot: "Stranger stop and wish me well, Just say a prayer for my soul in hell. Burroughs dedicated his 1989 short story collection Tornado Alley to Dillinger "in hope that he is still alive."
Tributes to Dillinger
A math metal band from New Jersey named the Dillinger Escape Plan was named after Dillinger himself.
There is also an American pop-punk band named Dillinger Four on Fat Wreck Chords.
The English band These Animal Men recorded a song entitled 'Im not your Babylon' which was about Dillinger's girlfriend Billie Frechette.
In the film Reservoir Dogs, Joe Cabot states that Mr. Blue, one of the robbers, was "Dead as Dillinger." Though Mr. Blue's fate is not shown in the film, in the video game of the same name, he is shot by the police in a movie theater as a nod to Dillinger's death.
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