American History Hit - Outlaws: John Dillinger | Public Enemy Number One

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

What does it take to be the first person named as 'Public Enemy No.1' by the US Bureau of Investigation?In this episode, we're going to find out. Don is joined by Elliott Gorn to find out about the rise and fall of John Dillinger, the man who took this title in 1934.Elliott Gorn is the Joseph Gagliano Professor of American Urban History at Loyola University, Chicago. His books include 'Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till' and 'Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number 1'.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Nick Thomson. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's 1933 on a steaming summer day in the American Midwest. We stroll downtown, keeping to the sliver of shade on the hot sidewalk.

As we pass the entrance of a movie theater, we note the marquee. It's a double feature tonight. Edward G. Robinson, in The Little Giant, is paired with James Cagney's Mayor from Hell, both posters promising plenty of murder and mayhem. On the newsstand at the corner, Detective Magazine's scream of Gangland Sessions, assassinations in New York and Chicago. Ever since the Depression began, it seems like outlaws and crooks are everywhere in American life. Further down the block, in a U.S. Post Office, there are more posters displayed.

But these are far less glossy. No Hollywood make-believe here. These are wanted posters, and one features a glowering face you recognize. John Dillinger, the infamous bank robber, here to remind you that danger isn't confined to the silver screen or magazine covers. Here in America, Dillinger is real. He's out there somewhere, and the law is desperate to catch him. Hello, listeners, I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. Glad you're here.

In the days of the Great Depression, a new generation of criminals arose. For many Americans reminiscent of the outlaws of the American West, the bank robbers, roguish gangsters riding roughshod in their Hudson's and Fords, breaking laws and social moors, aiming their tommy guns and pistols not only at trembling bank tellers counting cash, but symbolically at the tired traditions of a nation that was failing its citizens. The crimes of these vicious thugs, the robberies, the murders, the threat of violent mayhem, represented in a way the angry resentments of a nation. The most notorious of these gangsters was John Herbert Dillinger.

Declared Public Enemy Number One by J. Edgar Hoover, his crime sprees, coupled with a wave of Hollywood gangster films at the time, time helped make a living legend of the man across the country until the G-men finally caught up with him in a back alley on the north side of Chicago. It's a tale told in the book Dillinger's Wild Ride, written by author and historian Elliot Gorn of Loyola University, who was with us today. Hello, sir, welcome to the podcast. Nice to have you. Thanks for having me. The story of John Dillinger is indeed a ride. Reads like a movie script with scenes cooked up by a screenwriter. It's fast and furious.

cast of heroes and anti-heroes and lots and lots of gunfire. But before we get into this long list of astonishing events, why is it that you think this story, this man, has endured so long? Why does it still matter to us? Well, that's a great question, Don. It's a very American story in so many ways, as your introduction indicated. There's a longstanding, not just during the 1930s, a longstanding fascination with criminals and outlaws and those who break the norms. So there's that alone. It's also a story that does come down to us from the Great Depression, and that's an important part of it. But the fact that this is set in a moment in American history when people are really losing their confidence in the American dream, the idea of American success,

I should say the very words American dream were invented in this era to look back in some ways on something that's maybe going people fear. So the kind of mayhem and violence and robbing banks become a very, very potent image for people. Banks are enemies. Ten thousand banks close in the early 1930s, taking people's life savings, people's money for businesses as the economy contracts. So Dillinger does become legendary, and that legend continues to this day, really. Yeah, it's very much a shift in the culture and the economy, basically from this sort of laissez-faire feeling of businesses right. And we've just been through the roaring 20s at this point. And things have been booming for a while and then suddenly boom the floor falls out and that is a sense of

instability that leads to a lot of mythology that we'll be talking about now. Let me just say, I think that's exactly right. I think the story, you have to understand the 20s and the 30s, the prosperity of the 20s, the kind of loosening of cultural mores in that era and then the Great Depression crashes in and that's an important part of the story. Dillinger is born in the Midwest where most of the story takes place, 1903 in Indianapolis, to a father who was a grocer. And as Dillinger describes to reporters later, a very harsh man. Mother dies when he's four, home life, a mess, drops out of school as a teenager. Classic stuff for the juvenile delinquent tale, you know. How much was his life of crime in the cards for John Dillinger, would you say?

I don't think that much, actually. Lots of people. And in 1920s, when he drops out of school, well, that's when my father drops out of school after eighth grade. It was not very common for that many people to go to high school. For example, then marriages break up, people die. Dilliger is described mostly by people as a fairly normal kid, rambunctious, a little high strung, not super focused on things, but he holds down several jobs in the 1920s and gets bored. I don't think that background, I know some authors have talked about this, I don't think that background. I know some authors have talked about this. I don't think that background. ground leads him specifically anywhere. I think 10 years in prison leads him and really into becoming a serious criminal. It's the move to Moorsville, you know, from Indianapolis that gives him the sense of independence. He starts commuting basically back and forth between his original home and workplace where he's working in a machine shop. And he begins, you know, that young life of boozing and fighting and the one we all live. But he actually joins the Navy and then quits and goes AWOL. ends up back in Indiana where at 20, he does the thing all smart young men do.

He marries a 16-year-old girl named Berl Bovius. I mean, these are names out of a movie. It's unbelievable. Baril Bovius. April 12th, 1924. I mentioned these dates, and this is important to understand the time frame of the story, because it all happens so fast. You know, we're talking about a decade of life that this guy goes through, which is a roller coaster.

It is six months after he comes back, gets married, that he's arrested for his first robbery. Let's talk about this first crime of his. It does take place again. He's in small town, Indiana. He's no longer in Indianapolis when this happens. And hanging around pole halls, he befriends a man named Ed Singleton. Singleton had a record, had been convicted of crimes before he's older than Dillinger. And they decide to rob an old man who's a grocer, much like Dillinger's father used to be.

Basically, when he's taking the week's receipts to the bank Friday afternoon, Friday evening, they accost him, Dillinger accosts him, hits him over the head, tries to take the money, but he fights back. And a gun goes off, Dillinger flees the scene, and really gives himself away by going around town and asking people, did you hear that it was a robbery? You know, is everything okay? He's arrested. And what happens is that Singleton, who really was the brains behind this, the one who instigated it, the Singleton goes to court, claims Dillinger did it. Dillinger's father tells Johnny to, you know, make a clean breast of it, not hire an attorney, tell the truth. Singleton gets a two-year sentence. Dillinger gets a 10 to 20-year sentence in the Indiana State Reformatory.

That's incredible. Why so different? This is so formative a part of his story. It's important to realize. You know, I could only speculate the judge is a strict judge. They say strong sentences against crime. But one man cooperated with the court. The other man didn't. This is not that unusual. So the one who cooperates and knows to do it quickly immediately knows how the game is played, he gets off not Scott Free, but he sure gets off a lot lighter than Dillinger. Wow. Never mind the irony that his first crime is against a grocer, which is his father's trade. This lands him for a good long time, as we're saying, in prison, during which time so much happens,

not the least of which is his wife will divorce him. It all leaves him with a very bitter feeling, obviously. He at one point requests to be transferred to a harsher prison, which is interesting, Indiana State Prison. Why that move? Because a lot of the friends he made in the State Reformatory, the first place where he was incarcerated, themselves move on to the state prison, mostly for one infraction or another, just being recalcitrant as prisoners, which Dillinger was himself. I mean, Dillinger was written up for many things, gambling, trying to break out once, actually.

a variety of things, and he requests the move. Some say there was a story that the reason they wanted him moved and he wanted to be moved was because he was quite a good baseball player, quite a good shortstop on the local team in Martinsville, Indiana. He denied this later, said that that simply wasn't true. He had no intention of playing ball and apparently didn't in the state prison. But yes, he goes, he spends about, I think it's about five years in the state prison. That's a rough place. There's some serious. felons there, and he gets to know a lot of them. When he gets into prison, he says, I will be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get

out of here. These are quotes that come out of later interviews that he does with reporters and so forth. But it really does have a huge effect on him. I mean, he's the opposite of the rehab, you know, he's the futility of rehab, if you will. It's in Indiana State Prison that he meets Herman K. Lamb, an experienced bank robber who shows in the ropes. This is where he really learns the trade of how bank robbery will. happen, right? Absolutely. I mean, and several of the guys he meets did all kinds of different crime.

How to case a place, how to decide where to go to, how to decide when the money might be there, hasn't been transferred out, how to set up a robbery, you know, the best time, how to have a getaway car there, all of that sort of thing. It's a trade school. There's just no doubt about it, and he learns a trade well. I do want to say one thing, though, about that. I'll be the meanest bastard, and there's no doubt that Dillinger is mean, violent between, say, middle of, say, of 1933, middle of 1934. Yet most people who talk about John Dillinger describe him as sort of a regular guy, not someone you would make as a hardened, vicious criminal, which clearly he is. At least one person is dead out of a bullet from Dillinger's gun during this crime spree.

But that's not usually how he's described. And I think that's part of his persona, is that people are not identifying with a guy who's at mean SOB. They're identifying with someone who seems charismatic even. It's a real contradiction. Sure. But he spends his 20s in prison. That's the important factor of this chapter of his life. While people in the outside are having their normal lives is getting family started and career started, this guy is learning the ropes of crime and feeling more and more bitter towards society at this time. Six months later, as he is in Indiana State Prison, the stock market crashes and we are off to the Great Depression. Perhaps this is the most interesting part to me, the juxtaposition of this story of, that many, many stories have been told like this of the life of crime developing, but it's against the backdrop of the whole nation going through this terrible angst that it's about to enter into.

That is fundamental to the Dillinger story, isn't it? Oh, it's absolutely critical. I mean, when Dillinger does come out in the middle of 1933, that's really the bottom of the Great Depression. That's four years after the market crash. roughly a quarter of the population is unemployed. Contrast that with people think the economy isn't so good today. Many people see that, and we're in an era of 4% unemployment. Right. 25% unemployment. If you've managed to keep your job, you might be being paid less. You might be working fewer hours to be able to bring home less. Everything has fallen apart.

Stocks, major, big stocks have lost 90% of their value on the market. It is a crisis unlike any before an American history. And with that, not just the difficulties of economic hard times, but the loss of confidence, the loss of the sense, will we ever get out of this? After a succession of presidents who were so pro-business, Calvin Coolidge said a man who builds a factory, builds a temple, a worker who works their praise in it. Well, all of that is collapsing around people's ears. And there are real questions about not just any particular administration, and Roosevelt beating Hoover in 1932, but the very future of American capitalism seems to be on the line.

At the same time, we've gone through 10 years of prohibition, and then it's going to be repealed soon. It's this extraordinary time, coupled with the rise of mafia, in the organized crime, at least through life and work of Al Capone. You know, these are big stories in the newspaper. And Hollywood has followed this. They've made these movies about gangsters, and they've glamorized this whole story.

People love it. up, Jimmy Cagney, you know, Edward G. Robinson, all of this stuff. And these different factors have sort of come together in a weird constellation that sets up with John Dillinger to join. It's really interesting. No, that's absolutely true. I mean, they used to say in, or prohibition, they used to say in Chicago, if you want to drink, just ask a cop where you can get one. Yeah, yeah. And it is the 20s, again, the era of prosperity. And all these films about the outfit in Chicago, the, what comes to be known eventually as the mafia or the organized crime. And that is a backdrop, this fascination with crime, even in film. If in case I don't say it at some point,

it's very important, I think, that Dillinger loved the movies. It's not a coincidence that he dies coming out of a movie. He wanted his life to be made into a movie. There really is this situation of life imitating art, art imitating life, and the relationship between the two. And puffing these guys up, they talk among themselves. They all like the movies, I'm sure. They sure like to see themselves portrayed in it. It's just like John Gotti did. You all these guys love that thing. And it puffs them up into the sort of folk hero mentality, like we have the right to do these things and run around being our own men with our own little army happening. The Dillinger gang, where does that come from? How is that formed?

There are several Dillinger gangs, actually. He gets out of prison in the spring of 1933, and he's met enough guys who were out now, or who have gotten out of prison or who others in prison knew to form a small gang, know what who's particularly famous, but they start really within three weeks of getting out of prison and vowing that he'll go straight. Dillinger starts doing bank jobs with these guys, several of them, almost every month or even every few weeks for the next several months, $3,000 here, $10,000 there. Nothing famous. There's still, it's a local story. It's not in any sense of national story yet. And then for one of those bank robberies, he is in Lima, Ohio.

He is arrested and in the local jail in Lima, Ohio. Just days before that, Dillinger had managed to ship into the Indiana State Prison a few guns hidden. Things are very porous, remarkably so that he could do this. He no sooner gets into the Lima jail held by the sheriff, Jess Arbor. A day or two later, several of his friends break out of the Indiana State Prison and a few days later, they come to Spring Dillinger. They come to spring the man who got him out. They tell Sarber, Harry Pierpont, who's an important part of the second Dillinger gang, tells Sarba that they're there to bring his prisoner back to Indiana. He doesn't believe them asked for credentials.

Pierpont shoots him dead and they get Dillinger out. Then things really start. That's when that's when things really begin. The crime spree that we're talking about really happens over just, just, a year's length of time, right? I mean, he's paroled in the spring of 1933. He will be dead by the middle of the summer of 1934. This really just happens over about an 11-month period, but it's quite a few events that happen all over the country. Suffice to say these guys are basically hitting banks running for cover, you know, hideouts and so forth. But if you sort of drew a map between them or drew some lines between them, it's sort of Chicago, it's Indiana, Chicago, Ohio, St. Paul, fascinating conversation we've had about St. Paul in the past, kind of a haven for

these criminals that they could go and live there for a while. And they do. But it goes all the way down to Tucson, Arizona. He's all over the place. This really speaks to something to, it's really important to understand. Law enforcement in those days was very local. The biggest it was was state. And you could kind of cross state lines and be forgotten by everything that was happening elsewhere because we didn't have a lot of federal enforcement of law. And that's the other juxtaposition of this story that's fascinating, too. How much was law enforcement and the practice of it in those days a part of Dillinger's rise, this crime wave? Oh, absolutely. It was so limited. No radios in squad cars yet. As you say, very, very limited by jurisdiction, town lines, county lines. And the bank robbers, other criminals know that. They know that if they do a job near a county line or even a state line and make it across, they will not be pursued. There's a lack of communication. There is a Bureau of Investigation in Washington.

and not yet the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is growing and has certainly is involved, but it's not involved in this kind of crime. Finally, when the Dyer Act is passed, taking a car across state lines will make any crime. It's about bank robbery, for example, a federal crime. That happens in the middle of the Dillinger spree. So law enforcement is very, very limited. I mean, there really is a game of, even in technology for the criminals and the cops to catch up with each other. I should see one thing, the first thing the Dillinger gang does after the Pure Pont and the others are sprung from the Indiana State Prison, they rob a couple of state armories for Thompson machine guns, right, for all kinds of weaponry.

They know to do that. That's where the heavy equipment is. They're heavily armed. It's still an issue for police today, how much criminals have. And these guys really know what they need to outgun the cops. Yes. So much of this comes from Herman Lamb, isn't he? That's the key to this story, really, is how well-organized Dillinger is because of his training. Yeah, I think, I mean, there's no doubt that Dillinger was an absolute, nearly absolute novice compared to some of the others. Pierpont, again, as some people said, it really should be called the Pierpont gang, that he was really the brains behind it. I'm not so sure of that. Dillinger might not have had their expertise, but he certainly had the guts, the lack of caution the kind of go-for-it quality. And the admiration of the cops. I mean, that's what was weird

about this is that for killing cops and officials and sheriffs and so forth, he's in some chummy photographs with these guys, isn't it? Because of his personality, I suppose. Yes, absolutely. That's an important story. I guess I'm just trying to explain that there's this fertile ground for this guy. You know, certainly what's in the papers that people are reading about, what they're hearing in real time. There's a lot to encourage gangsters in this day and age, like Bonnie and Clydes and and Pretty Boy Floyds and all these guys are sprouting all over the place because this land is, the opportunity is there. And there's encouraging things, not least of which it's easy to hit a bank and get away with it, it seems. That's absolutely true.

And also, as you said, crime might be condemned, roundly condemned, crime doesn't pay and so on. But they're in the movies. They're talked about on the radio for someone. Think about someone from Dillinger's background, working class kid from Indianapolis, moves to the country. really very obscure. And at the end of the story, he's going into movie theaters and on newsreel seeing himself, his image projected a hundred times bigger than life on the screen, and others around him, a full house looking at him.

As I said, Ellie, this is about a year long. So about six months into this, January of 1934, we kind of end up, this is sort of the final act in play. January 15th, 1934, most of the gang is in Tucson, Arizona, hiding out. after a while from killing a number of police in their robbery. Dillinger leads a small crew to a bank in East Chicago, Illinois. They get away with $20,000. A police officer is killed in the fire exchange. Dillinger says later he always felt bad about Officer O'Malley getting killed,

but only because of his wife and kids. He stood right in the way with me and kept throwing slugs at me. What else could I do? His escape to Tucson is short-lived. Take us from there. How does he get back to Chicago and all what happens then? Oh, man. that's a long story.

Dillinger, the first they go down, it gets too hot in the Midwest. They drive down to Florida, to Daytona Beach for New Year's 1934. They drive from there to Tucson, Arizona. Think about that. This is 1920s roads and 1920s cars,

and it's one big road trip. Four cars go down to Daytona. Four cars go eventually get to Tucson, each of the members of the gang and a girlfriend, usually, with almost all of them. I mean, and this is being covered in the papers. They get to Tucson, Arizona, figure they found a place near the Mexican border to hang out.

It's quiet. Their pictures show up in True Detective magazine. And there's a fire in the Congress Hotel where they're staying. And some of the firemen recognize the pictures from True Detective and the guys whose stuff they're trying to carry out of the hotel. The cops move in and arrest all of them without a shot being fired. Nothing. One by one, they take them. bring them to court in Arizona, and then they're extradited. Three of them, Pierpont, Mackey, Clark, are extradited back to Lima, Ohio, where they will stand trial for the murder of Sheriff Sarber. Dillinger is sent to Crown Point, Indiana. The shooting of officer William O'Malley took place in a town called East Chicago, which is actually in Indiana. It's not in Illinois. He sent back to Crown Point to stand trial for that.

There's this plane ride from Tucson to, it's like six stops from Tucson to Crown Point in that era. He gets there, and he noticed when it gets there. Then photographers are there, camera, you know, for the journalists. And there's the district attorney, William, Robert Estelle, and the local sheriff, Lillian Holly. She took over from her husband who had passed away. And Dillinger puts his arm around Estelle's shoulder, and the photographers take a picture of Dillinger, smiling, Holly, Estel smiling, and this goes around the country and the Attorney General explodes with anger. All right, so here's their prisoner, right? And this finally is getting the national

traction now in the press. A month later, he escapes. I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an email at a HH at historyhit.com. We'd love to hear from you. A month later, someone passes him a wooden gun. Probably some corrupt official in East Chicago. There's a connection to East Chicago here, which is, again, part of the shoreline of Lake Michigan, of the mills and this very, very rough town,

also Hammond, Indiana, East Chicago. Someone, through a bride probably gets him. Some say he carved it. Probably not. Someone probably passed him. And he manages to escape. This is only three months later. I mean, he's only been in jail for three months.

He hasn't even been there that long, but yes, it's not that long. This is we're still in March. He gets out and this is where, you know, steals the sheriff's car, drives with another prisoner to Chicago. And along the way it's reported, he's singing, get along little doggies, you know, like he's in a Western. This dramatic story. And this is all over the press. And now the FBI has to get involved. Then do the dire act.

He's cross state lines after committing a crime goes to Chicago. from there, then the story really explodes. It just is all over the press. Every time he, you know, he and his girlfriend, Billy Fischett, a Native American woman from Wisconsin, they go up to St. Paul, Minnesota. They're discovered. They have a shootout and escape. Where do they go? They go down to Morseville to Dillinger's family. The FBI is staked out Moresville. He eludes to the FBI. There's a photo of Dillinger taken in front of his father's house in Moresville with a, he's holding a submachine gun and the wooden gun that he used to escape. He's in a sharp suit. He's smiling for the camera and they escape. This is humiliating to the FBI. Humiliating to J. Edgar Hoover. James Hoover almost loses his job over all

of this. Yeah. This is really a big engine for the creation, eventual creation of the FBI. It started as a bureau of investigation, becomes the Department of Investigation, finally, the FBI. All of this, much of it anyway is a reaction to the gangsters in general, but certainly to Dillinger's story, which was getting so much notoriety driving Jay Edgar Hoover crazy. Yes, absolutely. And it continues. They do arrest Billy Fershett in Chicago. Dillinger gets away.

This is in April of 1934. Dillinger, there are more bankrupties, a whole new Dillinger gang because Pyrrott and the others are sitting in a lame of jail and will be executed for murder. A whole new gang forms. Most notably, this one with Babyface Nelson, who really is a psychopathic killer? I mean, he's really, he's really. There's something wrong there. Well, there's something wrong everywhere, but you get my drift. Yeah. Talk to me about the Lake Bohemia event. It was a disaster for the FBI.

Absolute disaster. They managed to hold up in far northern Wisconsin and a little resort called, called Little Bohemia, and word gets out. Someone gives a tip to the FBI office in Chicago, Melvin Purvis, who's in charge of the investigation, leads a couple of dozen of FBI men, by plane, they come into a plane, they come into their cars, and at night surround Little Bohemia. Somehow, again, there's all kinds of tipsters. Oh, you know, this is, you know, people are paying and taking bribes to give information away. Somehow Dillinger and the others in the, in the Little Bohemia Lodge find out about it, escape through a window at night. When the FBI closes in in the morning, they're not there. A couple of the girlfriends are still there, but Dillinger and

company are gone. The FBI, in the meantime, manages to shoot up a few people, kill one, injure a couple of others, baby-faced Nelson, kills a couple of cops. Will Rogers, the most famous, one of the most famous humorous of the time, says that the only way the FBI is going to get John Dillinger is if he happens to stand next to an innocent bystander, and they go to shoot the innocent bystander by mistake, they get Dillinger. And this story is all over the press. It is just a humiliation. In the end, I mean, he ends up coming back to Chicago, and the conclusion of this story is an elaborate one. We need to take carefully. But I want to say in general, this will be about betrayal.

This will be finally about the reward system, which has been approved by FDR. The FBI can suddenly release a public reward for these people. I mean, this is really the evolution of the FBI becoming a national force that people start to recognize. A sidebar, we've mentioned so many times Hollywood glamour. the mob. At this point, Hollywood, the officials, the studio chiefs, agree not to make any more glamorized versions of the gangsters. I mean, this is how deep in the culture this is really going and reaching. It's changing everything. And the Dillinger story is explicitly part of it. It's called the Hayes Commission, which oversees the creation of Hollywood films, what will and won't be

released. And it's explicit. You will not make films that glamorized criminals like John Dillinger. And that lasts until the 1960s, really. Exactly. I mean, it takes, you know, Al Pacino to change everything for real. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess in some ways the first really big gangster film that does, is Bonnie and Clyde, 1967. Yeah, which was what was so scandalous about that, wasn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. Hollywood had never seen anything like that in decades. So here we are, Elliot, and the end of the spring of 1934, what brings Dillinger back to Chicago with this half-cocked idea of getting plastic surgery. Don't forget, plastic surgery, it's important to remember that plastic surgery was something that developed in World War I. There were so many horrible injuries in that war that doctors begin to develop the techniques of really allowing people to go forward without the most horrible kinds of injuries. So it's something that's out there. It's done. Dillinger, after several bank or several more bank jobs,

more and more of the cops are closing it. Dillinger, manages to get a doctor to perform plastic surgery on him, remove a mole. They don't do that much, really. It's not that big a change. Remove a cleft from his chin. He dyes his hair. He wears glasses. He grows a mustache. And yet when you see photos of him like this, he's still quite recognizable. But he goes through this. He almost dies from the anesthetic that's so haphazardly done. It's done at the back of a bar. I mean, it's really quite remarkable all this stuff. The doctor has to revive him by squeezing his ribs and the whole thing is very dramatic. Yes, very. And so how much does it actually alter his appearance? It really doesn't that much. I mean,

again, including the dyeing of the hair and the wearing glass, he looks like the, you know, he's recognizable. And again, this is a man whose photo has been everywhere all over the newspapers, in the newsreels at the movies. I love the detail of him getting his fingerprints removed for $100 a fingers, $500 a hand. You can have all your fingerprints stick off. Yeah, with acid. And, of course, that's one of the things that the FBI touts about itself. We're a very scientific organization. Fingerprints are indelible, and they mark you.

It's the predecessor of genetics, almost, in terms of how each is individual. When does he get called Public Enemy Number One? That does happen shortly after Crown Point. He had been called in Chicago, public enemy number one of Chicago, his whole gang was part of that list. And then shortly after Crown Point, more shootups, more bank robberies, that title, that list didn't even exist. Dillinger is the first public enemy number one. It's something that, thank you, John Dillinger, for giving us that. When he arrives in Chicago, this is a very famous man we're talking about.

He has to be careful with whom he associates. So, of course, he houses himself with a sex worker. Great, great idea. Take me through the events at this time, which set up this betrayal. John Dillinger is staying in Chicago. You know, I'm guessing, but I think he probably knows the noose is tightening that they're closing in. He's trying less to be out of harm's way. I mean, to go to Chicago, you know, with an enormous police department, all kinds of people who can spot you and see you.

He has had the plastic surgery. he's staying at a woman named Anna Sage. Her real name was Anna Kompana. She was a Romanian immigrant. She had a brothel on Halstead Street. And he was staying there. He develops a relationship with a woman who's a friend of Anna Sage probably is working for her. A woman named Polly Hamilton. And as I say, he's not very cautious. He's doing things like going to Cubs games, which is always the kiss of death if you think about it. You know, I mean, my God, the Chicago Cubs. that they go to nightclubs and so on. There's a fearlessness that's described, and that sounds like really foolhardiness. In any event, Anna Sage is in trouble with the law. They're going to deport her for running a brothel.

She agrees to help them, to help Melvin Purvis find Dillinger. For which she will get the reward and her deportation will be canceled. That's her hope. And so she calls them on the sly and tells them they're going to the movies tonight, her and her friend and John Dillinger. July 22nd, 1934 Manhattan melodrama is playing at the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue. With Clark Gable. That's right.

A story about a criminal whose best friend becomes the district attorney and sends him to the chair. And it's one of the great movies of that era. They come out of the theater. The FBI is waiting. Purvis has his met there. If you know Chicago, the Biograph Theater is still there right on Lincoln Avenue. It's not just the FBI who's there. There's also cops from the East Chicago Police Department.

Anna Sage's boyfriend is an East Chicago cop named Martin Zarkovich. And there's some speculation that he had reason to want Dillinger dead, that he was involved in some of the corruption in East Chicago that helped spring Dillinger from Crown Point. That's never been proven. But there's speculation there. Melvin Purvis lights his cigar, the signal to the other. FBI meant to close in Dillinger, Polly Hamillinger. on one arm, Annesage on the other realizes they're there. He breaks from them, runs south just a few

steps along Lincoln Avenue and starts to turn into an alley and they shoot him down multiple times and basically dies in the alley. Live by the gun, die by the gun. There you are. The story of John Dillinger. What kind of legacy do you take away from this, having written a book on the subject and step back for a few years to think about it? You know, it's amazing how the Dillinger, legend, hangs on for years and years, decades, really. And even today, I mean, there's all kinds of legends about him that he didn't die that day, that he's still alive, that he goes to Hollywood. There's even a story. Goes to Los Angeles. There's stories that his ghost haunts areas in Indiana, some of the places where bank robberies took place and so on. It's a very, very

durable legend. There's stories that Dillinger was extremely well endowed as a man, and that his appendage, we'll call it, is kept by the federal government at the Army Medical Museum or at the Smithsonian or most grotesquely in a jar of formaldehyde on Jay Edgar Hoover's desk. This is a legend that's around, especially in the 60s, and it's very, it's quite popular and quite, it was well known at the time. He's been unmanned. He's been castrated, but he was one hell of a man. Yes. So there is a whole part of the legacies is about manhood and violence and how do we think about manhood in America in the Great Depression when being a breadwinner and the head of a family, all of that is sort of failing. And here's this alternative vision of guys who are out there

with their girlfriends on the lamb, on the road, robbing banks. You can see the attraction of, you know, a legend like that. And his family, I mean, one week after Dillinger's death, his family signs a contract to talk about his life. I mean, it's going to be pervade. There's going to be money made off this man for a long time to come. Here we are doing it now. Absolutely. And again, it's a relatively poor family. It's a little bit grotesque that they do that. And yet it's understandable too. These are not well-off people by any means. And to put this in, again, the historical context, what comes on the heels of his story as the 30s march onward is the emergence of the federal government in this story, certainly because of law enforcement. But in response to the

Great Depression, FDR's New Deal kicks in, and the world changes forever. American life changes forever because the federal government becomes a larger part of life. It's a fascinating juxtaposition, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. As one historian, Claire Potter has argued that it's just in the whole area of crime and the bureaucracy of crime, especially the FBI. But it's called the New Deal on Crime, the bill that passes while Dillinger is still on the loose, that extends federal power, the federal bureaucracy in the Justice Department extends it tremendously. Elliot Gorn is the Joseph Galliano Professor of American Urban History at Loyola University, Chicago. He has examined various aspects of urban life in the 19th and 20th century.

His books include most recently, Let the People See, the Story of Emmett Till. And his book on this subject, Dillinger's Wild Ride, The Year that Made America's Public Enemy Number One, came from 2009. Thank you for stepping back and taking this time. I know it's tough to go back to a book you spent so much time on in the paper. I really appreciate it. Don, my pleasure, really. Hello, folks.

Thanks for listening to American History Hit. Each week, we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of great content, like mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements, to some of the biggest battles across the centuries.

Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.

Bye for now.