Citation Needed - John Dillinger

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

John Herbert Dillinger (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster of the Great Depression. He led a group known as the "Dillinger Gang", which was accused of robbing 24 banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprisoned several times but escaped twice. He was charged, but not convicted, of the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest during a shootout; it was the only time Dillinger was charged with homicide. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

I just don't understand how you go on vacation without hunting a human. What's okay, it's not like they give up brochures for that, Tom. Not in the hotel's use, Stan, maybe. There's plenty of them. No. Okay, how about this one? Uh, obviously no, I'll look at the tear marks. Oh, right, right, clearly.

Yeah. Hey, Eli, I'm gonna regret asking this, but what is with the jars of Dix? Oh, hey guys, well, so you know how this week's episodes about John Dillinger, whose giant penis is famously on display at this Smithsonian? I figured I'd get out my own Dixium. That's not a real thing. Okay, Eli, first of all, that's an urban legend.

Dillinger's penis is not on display at this Smithsonian. And secondly, Dixium? Yeah, yeah, you're going with that. You know how we always die in the little intro sketches that we do for our show? Yeah. Well, as soon as I come back, I usually harvest the Dix, just sort of as fun hobby. And you know, this was my Tom's,

that over there is Manolas, that small shelf there is my Eats, hard to get him before he rips him off in an incestory. And I swear, I swear I see that's true. Yeah, he does that a lot. Yeah. Great. Love this. Yeah, miss this bit.

This is fun. This is fun. Okay. But um, he like, do you not keep my dick? Oh, I do. I just, I don't put him in jars. Okay. Well, what do you do with them? I don't see anything. It's actually not important. You guys are going to do podcasts. Let's do some podcasts. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Sure. Okay. Sure. Okay. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.. I don't put them in jars. Okay, well, what do you do with them? I don't know what's the A-L-L-I-S actually not important. You guys ready to do podcasts?

Let's do some podcasts. Yeah! Sure, yeah. Okay, that's what I'm here for. I guess. Guys, wait, Eli, No, it's very important to me that you answer this question. What do you do with my Dix Eli? They're gone.

Fuck. Hello and welcome. Citation needed. Podcast where you choose a subject, you're just a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts This is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Heath and I'll be leading this very diverse gang of We have mr. White Well, I'll have you know I'm mr. White in the streets, but I'm also Mr. White in the sheets. So yeah, and I'm the only one here who's cut a guy's ear off.

So I want my own nickname. This is nothing. Yeah. Right? And I'm a related note. What? I'm not. No.

No. Yeah, I wanted to be Mr. Black, but I'm not. I'm definitely not. Yeah, no. Okay, but I'm not. I'm definitely not. Yeah, no. Okay, so Tom, what person's like staying concept phenomenon or event? Are we gonna be talking about today and changing the subject? We're gonna be talking about John Dillinger.

Fantastic. And how'd you pick that topic? All right, well months ago, actually, I marked this topic in our schedule to claim it. Not because I knew all the details of the story, but because I knew that I wanted to. I vaguely knew Dillinger was a sort of local Chicago criminal folk hero, and I thought it would be a fun hometown, ye oldy crime story, and I'm also kind of ashamed to admit

that I had him mixed up in my mind with pretty boy Floyd, who is not at all acting to be confused with Dillinger. Or in fact, the many, many other high profile bank robbers that would come to define celebrity crime in the 1930s. There's a fucking lot of them actually. Dillinger was a bank robber for sure, but his exploits are so much more insane than just sticking up a few banks. And the nationwide manhunt for Dillinger would actually become the event that legitimized

the nascent federal agency we now known as the FBI. Yeah. Also, we're contractually obligated to have an episode where the FBI did a thing right so this is sort of, and that bureau would stay legitimized for another 83 years. Well, I'll get too excited. They don't actually equip themselves very well. Right. Yeah. Did they do't actually equip those very well. Right, yeah. No, no.

Yeah, did they do anything right here? Yeah, I wrote my jokes in order. The John Dillinger was born in 1903 to John Wilson Dillinger and Molly Dillinger in an Indian apolis, Indiana. The elder Dillinger was described as a harsh man who subscribed to the spare the rod, spoil the child ethos of child rearing, which is, I think Wikipedia's clumsy sideways way of saying he was a religious not who beat the shit out of his kids. Just before John turned four, his mother Molly quite rudely died, and John was raised for a time by his sister who was 14 years older than John and married.

John was raised for several years this way until his father remarried. And John again moved back to live with his dad. Hey, can you look after your little brother? The the in house helped died and I have to rehire. It's a whole thing. That's really how you have to read that too. It's what the. Now you might think that the untimely death of his mother and the shuttling back and forth

between caregivers at a young age would be readily offset by the religious, fatherly beatings, but strangely enough, Dillinger never really seemed to get the hang in normal life. As a teenager, he was described and I'm quoting here because I don't know what else in the world. It means he was described as having a quote bewildering personality. Oh, Tom, in my experience, people start saying that if you ask if you can safely fuck the toasters in the question session on Amazon, you just go through all the toasters and do it.

They start saying that fair. Anyone who was going to know fair. Yeah. So I'm not sure how that affected Dillinger prior to Amazon a hundred years back. Anyway, he was also a violent bully who was also often in trouble for fighting and petty theft to traits which don't lend themselves well to the boundaries of the traditional school setting. So naturally teenage John Dillinger quit school to work in a machine shop.

I'm sorry, but petty theft is a weird fucking term. Is it not? It sort of contains an unstated challenge to think bigger doesn't it? That's right. Still all the fighting and stealing and wild behavior just wouldn't stop. And John Dillinger senior thought he knew just why.

He feared that big city of Indianapolis was corrupting his impressionable son. So he packed up all their shit and he moved the family to Moore'sville in 1921. And as everyone knows, if you've got a rambunctious teenager that just isn't responding to a good Christian-ass weapon, the best thing to do is to isolate them socially by moving out in the middle of rural nowhere. I mean, after all, if there's nothing to do all day, the mind of a troubled young man will naturally find a sort of internal piece like a, like a cornfield set, you will.

Yeah. Cornfield set. Yeah. I do that or the boredom itself will just add fuel to the internal drive to fuck shit up and he'll get arrested for auto theft. I mean, in this case, it was the second one. It was definitely so. It could have been I. Yeah. Well, or maybe both.

You just set still for an hour and he was like, cool. Yeah. So time definitely a flat circle. And I'm stealing his car now. So by 1923, Dillinger was in trouble so frequently he had no choice but to join the Navy. Wait, what? That's because back in the day, if you were a young man who couldn't seem to get their shit together, you would often be given a choice of enlistment or prison. Dillinger chose enlistment and was very briefly a petty officer, third class machinery

repairman assigned to the USS Utah, except that when the USS Utah docked a few months later in Boston, Dillinger deserted and was eventually dishonorably discharged. Yeah, a few years later, the military would become much more meticulous gathering recruits, a selective service, if you will. You can just say, hey, guys, see, so you're being a nice, nice, nice, nice. John returned home to Moore'sville, where he met and married Betty Ethel

Hovius in 1924, but settling down was even harder than staying in the Navy and very soon, Dillinger was struggling, unable to find work, despite a terrific resume of auto theft and desertion. Dillinger soon began to contemplate a more straightforward approach and began to plan a robbery with his friend Ed Singleton.

And then Wikipedia just throws this little factoid out there and then never does anything with it, but it's kind of fascinating and it's total lack of follow-ups. I'm gonna include it here. Ed Singleton was, quote, an ex-convict and umpire for a semi professional baseball team, the AC athletics for which Dillinger played shortstop and quote, really nothing else about his athletic interest or career seems to be anywhere before or after this one

moment. But I guess he was also a minor league shortstop for a hot minute. Based on the time period, he was probably just in it for the racism though, you know, for the game fixing sure. There's a whole action. Old fair. So together, John and Ed robbed a local grocery store, making off with about $50, which is $800 in today's money. The robbery was not a smooth affair, however. And John

Dillinger struck a man upside the head with a machinery bolt wrapped in a cloth and he fired his gun sometime during the robbery. Nobody was shot. The bolt in the cloth is weird. It feels like that guy who got hit made fun of the bolt wrapped in the cloth. That's the gun. Don't you got mad? He's a kid of all of us. You know how hard it's to find a chase? You can just get it anywhere. Unleaving the store, the pair were recognized by a local minister who reported the robbery and the two men were arrested the following day. Okay, so hey pro tip.

If a clergyman ever recognizes you during a crime, quickly confess that crime to him and suddenly he's duty bound to keep your seat. No. One simple trick. That's pretty great. So John Dylan's your senior. Well, he was a big swing and dick in Moore'sville, Indiana, since he was the local church deacon.

And he discussed his son's case with the prosecutor. John's compatriot Ed leaded not guilty to the robbery. But after much discussion with his father. John's compatriot, Ed, pleaded not guilty to the robbery, but after much discussion with his father, John confessed to the whole thing without a lawyer to represent him. It appears that John's senior really thought he had worked something out with the prosecutor, but being a deacon is not the same thing as being an attorney,

and a confession is basically prosecutor of Viagra. So Dillinger was convicted of assault and battery with intent to rob and conspiracy to commit a felony and was subsequently sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. Minister father rural America always in trouble. If before he goes to jail, he raged dances in a barn and doesn't uneven bar routine, we got a screenplay folks. Now, while he was being transported to testify against his friend Ed, Dylan, you're briefly escaped from the cops, but he was captured again in a few moments. Nevertheless, he marked this one on his bed.

So he just ran like five feet. I think so they don't give a lot of detail about that. Just wait around for the other side of the car. You have to put this in front of the computer. You have to. So nevertheless, he marked this one on his bedpost as a notch number one. And Dylan's your head no illusions about using his time in penal system.

That's trying to become a better man and secret rehabilitation. He's quoted as saying, I will be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get out of here. He would not turn out to be wrong. Dillinger really thought he was gonna get probation, not a sentence of a decade or more behind bars.

The perceived injustice of his situation infuriated him and he became deeply involved with some of the more dangerous elements of the career criminal set within the prison, including veteran bank robbers. And I love these names. Harry, Pete, Pierpont. What? It's over for Harry.

It's over for Harry. Charles MacLe, Russell Clark, and Homer Van Meter. Nice. Van Meter took Dylan Giorunder's wing and taught him, and this is a quote again from Wikipedia, how to be a successful criminal and a quote, a phrase I did quote because Van meter was evidently holding forth on his criminal success while in prison. Yeah. Okay, kid, new meat, fresh meat. Look at me here. Number one, don't wind up in here. Okay. That's the extent of my lesson plan. Hey, that's all I got. The PowerPoint's done.

What was number one again? Meanwhile, John Dillinger Jr. he felt like a huge dick. He's giving his son. There it is. It makes him some appearance. Yeah, we're giving this son. There it is. It makes sense. A bit of a huge dick for giving a son terrible legal advice. And he worked on securing his release, even going so far as gathering 188 signatures for a petition for his son's release. Okay.

That doesn't sound like much, but that's like almost 3,000 in today's. That's not at all clear how successful the petition was, but John Dillinger was paroled after nine and a half years, released from prison at the very height of the depression in May of 1933. Dillinger almost immediately robbed the bank in Ohio, making off with $10,000, which was a shit ton of money. It's about $210,000 in today's currency. It's just that the front desk of the jail getting paroled, getting released. Okay, you guys have my watch and my oversized bolt and my cheese box. I need them.

I don't have anybody listening who has terrible solace job gets any ideas. You can't make that much money robbing banks anymore. They keep it all locked in time safes and so you only get like a couple hundred bucks. I mean, don't steal stealing his back. Don't steal. Emboldened by that success and certainly not yet in need of more money, Dillinger robbed another bank a month later in August of 1933. This time however, John was caught by the police. When the cops were searching Dillinger

before transferring John into the actual prison, they found a document that looked to hell of a lot like a prison escape plan. The authorities could man up and tell him about the plan, but John was like and spoiled a surprise. Fuck you. Okay, good, good arrest. You got me.

You got me question though, unrelated, completely unrelated. If I take a shit, the size of me came out. Is that like an out? What could pipes that flush it out? I don't know. It has the fence. Okay, wait, so no, I got an idea though. Instead of bringing your fucking

wily coyote escape from jail footprints to your prime, maybe you focus on escape from the fucking crime without getting a rest. I'm a little bit worried. See, this is what fucking happens when you take criminaling advice from a guy in prison. Yeah. This is what fucking happens when you take criminally advice from a guy

That meter These pipes are really small. Yeah, I thought they were human eyes This is ridiculous It's like for instance And there were a lot of surprises in store while John was in prison the first time He hatched a scheme to break all of his buddies out of jail And even though John had been paroled from that prison, he still made good on his plan. Dillinger had some friends from the outside smuggle guns into the old prison and into the hands of his buddies just four days after John had been re-arrested.

John's friends used the guns they had been provided to escape from the prison laundry. The group would be known as the first Dillinger gang and consisted of Pete Pierpont, Russell Clark, Charles McLean, Ed Schrauss, Harry Copland and John Red Hamilton. The names are going to get a bit confusing from time to time, but Dillinger's friends were tight and they knew they owed their freedom to John. Good thing you're in the laundry. You can disinfect the prison pocket pistol there. Yeah, I mean, John's great. No, but I feel like they really owe their freedom to John. Good thing you're in the laundry. You can disinfect the prison pocket pistol there. Yeah, I mean, John's great. No, but I feel like they really owe their freedom to whoever snuck into syncing with six dudes worth of guns. How do you even hold it? You got a heart that was just too fingers. You know what I mean? How do you do that? How

do you a? It looks a lot like a transformer, right? It's just me. I'm a real Megatron vibe. So this part is fucking bonkers me. Three of the newly sprung criminals then made their way to the prison where Dillinger was being held. They spectacularly ballsy moves since they had just broken out of prison themselves and they then pretended that they were Indiana state police. There to extradite John back to Indiana. When the sheriff at the prison asked for their credentials, they shot him dead, walked into the prison, found Dillinger,

released him from his cell, and then the four men walked the fuck out and went back to Indiana to meet up with the rest of their crew. We're like the other guards, part of an alien hive mind. What the hell are you? The sheriff dies, they just run around screaming. guards part of an alien hive mind. I'm sorry.

Sure, if dies, they just run around screaming. I don't know what this is. No, it's telling me. No, no, no, that's just how a lot of extra dishes cases were settled back then. It's just. Now, that Dillinger gang would go on to rob at least 12 banks, beginning in June of 1934. And these were not quiet affairs.

Sometimes people were killed in the process. Fairly quickly, Dillinger and company were captured in Tucson, Arizona. John was extradited, four reels these this time, backed Indiana to face charges for the murder of a policeman killed during a robbery. The local police bragged about the security of their prison, which is a very weird thing to do since you would think security in a prison should be something of a given.

It took Dylan to your only three months to escape. Okay. Well, apparently you could escape from prison with a place mat from Long John Silver. They'll tighten that up a little. We'll find out after a quick break. There's some opera above nothing. And now I imagine a little maze with John Dillinger in the middle and you've got to get him.

Now, do you get along John Silver's? A human-sized shit. That's what you do. I'm not a fan of you. I'm not a fan of you. John Jr. my boy. Oh, hey, hey dad, what are you doing here? Look John, I know you need to be as fan of you, but'm having it, but I don't know you are right, Colonel. And I hope that you use it to make yourself a better mate.

You did? I did, I did. I walked right into that prosecutor's office with your sign confession, and I told him to set my boy free and on the path of righteous. So you what? I didn't sign a confession.

He didn't need to. I did all the right and for you then. I looked up that project, you're right. And I said, I think we understand each other. Okay. And, and then I left. Then you left. Wow. Uh, you need to be just so much more explicit about the puzzles. Come on. Come on. John, there's a way these things are done among man. Is there? I feel like that's's a way these things are done among men.

Is there? I feel like that's not a thing. I feel like you just made up a crazy... Would you set your boot leather in a man's office and lock eyes with his pocket watch? Time ticks to a different tune by Danny. No, none of that made any sense. This is just nonsense words.

I know I haven't always ripen the big as the daydream dances, but I tell you, you're gonna corner your whisper before Willow whisk and sing a cream frog on a jamey's eye. It's not even English at the end there. I don't know what you're saying. Hey, Dillon Cher! You're up! Judge Says you gave a full confession, so... Get real comfy in this damn boy!

Flash, wrangle, sprangles, redoodle. Hey, so much. Weim plan. And we're back. When we left off, John Dillinger had a bazooka inside a giant hollowed out Bible like a sartre. And we got to make that up to his. And what's next? Okay, you're pretty close.

On March 3rd, 1934, Dillinger produced a pistol during morning exercise. No, no, no, no. pistol during morning exercise. Let's leave. This took rather everyone by surprise since guns were something of a no no general prisoner population. Sure. Yeah. John was able to leave prison without firing a single shot, which was rather a good thing since it is also not entirely clear that the gun was actually real. According to Sam Kahoon, a trustee that Dillinger took hostage during his escape, the gun

was actually carved from a piece of shelving from his cell. What? The FBI files corroborate. Yeah, FBI files corroborate that story, though the local police with these super secure jail totally insist it was a real gun. Listen, it had a flag that said bang. This is serious. when he shot you. That's right, Glee.

This is serious. I'll show you. Let me take the photos down from my gun. I mean, shelf, I'll show you. I'll show you. I'm just gonna pick this. His shelf has a gun shaped cut out on, I don't know. All his books are just balanced on guns along the walls.

Oh, I see the issue here balanced on guns along the walls. I see the issue here. A nationwide manhunt was launched to catch Dillinger and the Bureau of Investigations, the precursor to the FBI was taking the lead. None of this mattered much to the unflappable Dillinger who left prison and immediately sought out his girlfriend, Evelyn Billy for shut. Together, Dillinger and Evelyn traveled to Minneapolis where they stayed for a couple of weeks before meeting up with John Red Hamilton, who had been recovering from bullet wounds he received at the last Dillinger gang robbery.

Reunited, Dillinger and Red assembled a new gang, joining up with that of baby face Nelson. The Nelson Dillinger combo gang, Rob De DeBank and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a week later, they robbed of Bank and Mason, City, Iowa. See, that's a problem with celebrity collaborations like that everybody's suddenly trying too hard. Right? Right.

On March 20th, 1934, Dillinger and Evelyn moved into an apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota under the aliases, Mr. and Mrs. Carl T. Helman. Okay. The landlord. The Mayo and they saw it. They made it. They brought out their best.

The landlord. One, one Daisy coffee was suspicious of her new tenant and spied on the pair from across the complex under the guise of refurnishing the opposite unit. On March the 30th, Daisy filed a report at the FBI's St. Paul Field Office giving information about the couple and identifying their vehicle. You would think at this point that maybe the jig was up. The FBI placed the building under surveillance by two agents, but and here I'm going to quote right from the wiki because there's so fucking absurd quote They saw nothing unusual mainly because the blinds were

The place to all we heard was Lulu Lulu doing normal apart Yeah, sorry I should clarify from earlier we're contractually obligated to talk about the time the FBI tried to do a thing, but we're confounded by Venetian blinds. That's right. This is the case that legitimized it. So the next day, the two agents knocked on the door of the apartment and Evelyn answered, but don't you only open the door like a couple of inches, claiming she wasn't decent, and she asked the officers to come back another time.

The FBI agents, and I'm not making this up, they were like, no, no, that's cool. We'll just wait here while you get dressed. So after a few minutes, one of the officers decided he needed a call back to the home base for help, but it's fucking 1934, so we had to go to someone's apartment in the building and ask to use their phone. And after he got back, they continued to just wait in the hallway for Evelyn to finish

getting dressed when they encountered Van Meter walking toward the apartment. Now if you don't recall, Van Meter was one of the Dillinger gang. Facing each other in the hall a very strange exchange took place. Van Meter tried to be inconspicuous and smooth, asked the first agent. Is your name Johnson? When the agent replied that it was not, he then insisted on a name from Van Meter. And Van Meter was like, oh, me?

I'm a soap salesman. It's done the FBI guy naturally express some confusion about his noticeable absence of saleable so young. Then they both kind of looked at each other and then Van Meter turns around and heads down the stairs. And after a few seconds, one of the agents follows Van Meter down the steps where upon Van Meter turns around and begins shooting at my you asked my name. It's so I sell. Vans and meters. Okay, bye. And the cops were like, yeah, check that out. Wait a minute. Why? Why did he ask the agent's name as his cold open was was he open

a trip in that Zinger? Shit is my name Johnson was like so sales. Yeah So the shots missed and the two ran around for a bit and it gets kind of confusing and Van Meter ran toward his car. The other agents recognize what was happening so they shut out the back tire to disable it. Meanwhile, they still needed backup. So one of the agents ran to the corner store to call the local cops and to try the field office again, and I love this, but he couldn't get through because their lines were busy. Van Meter then jumped onto a passing cold truck and cold truck. I don't even know. It's so

Charlie chapter. It's so ridiculous. He just grabbed onto a two by four being driven by a guy on a bicycle. They were going to try to chase him across the street, but there were guys carrying blasts. For his part, Dillinger began firing a Thompson submachine gun out the window of the apartment, eventually coming out of the apartment and then trading shots with the agents. Neither of the agents were hit by the submachine gun, but Dillinger was shot in the calf. Despite the injury, the agents were outgunned and out of ammo and Dylan Jeren Evelyn escaped out the back door and drove away.

Oh, why are we even wearing three-piece suits if we're not going to carry extra bullets? I hate now. I hate it. So many pockets. So problem was, of course, the getting shot means you now need a doctor. So Dylan Jinger headed to his buddy Eddie Green's place in Minneapolis. Eddie had a sneaky side doctor buddy who was happy to help for the promise fee of $500 for both his services and his discretion. Eddie was shot and killed by the FBI just a couple of days later and on April 4th after five days of convalescing, Dillinger was again on the move. The doctor was never paid for his service. Okay, I'm going to say it. That's a lot of petty.

I understand correct. Evelyn and Dillinger left Minneapolis to return to Moore'sville, Indiana to see Dillinger's boss. The cops would never think to look from there. Right? They then spent a couple of very strange days visiting the parents of other gang members, driving hundreds of miles to see the parents of gangster Henry Peerpont on April 7th at 330 in the morning, Dillinger and his half brother Hubert rammed a car in Noble'sville, Indiana after falling asleep at the wheel. They then careened off

the road through a farm fence before coming to a stop a couple of hundred yards into the woods. The pair then ditched the car and headed back to Moore'sville on foot. Police swarmed the accident site, recognizing the car that Dillinger had been driving. And in that car, they found maps, a machine gun magazine, a length of rope, and a bull whip. And here again, I'm going to quote directly from the wiki, quote, according to Hubert, his brother planned to pay a visit with the bull whip to his former one armed shyster lawyer.

John, honey, come on. We have to hit the road. We're going to we got to get to grandma's house. Give me a minute. I got to find my bull whip. We have to hit the road. We got to get to grandma's house. Give me a minute. I got to find my bowl with this.

The order of that sentence is so weird. Sorry. Former one armed shister. So now this no armed. Yeah. Or we got one. Right, he got one back. Right.

That was what the whip is for. They was going to use that as a prosthetic. He was going to whip hard. Because he have weak hands. He's got to be. Yeah. Dillinger and Evelyn needed new wheels. And so they used a pseudonym and bought a Ford V8.

I only mentioned this because at this point, Dillinger had become so famous that brands had begun unofficially using the Dillinger name in their actual advertising. That's amazing. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure.

That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure.

That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. Amazing next commercials. Just like, okay, well the cops bought some board V8s from us now. Now it's a tie Exciting, but he and her usually leaves a little bit first. So you know, they're not gaining we're losing Dillinger again escaped capture on April 8th when under surveillance by the FBI, the delinjas were having a family picnic. Dillinger and Evelyn suspected that they were under watch

by the feds, so they hatched a daring plan. You see, instead of Dillinger driving the big, recognizable car, Evelyn drove. Dillinger crouched out of sight on the floor, and their wacky plan worked. What? And why? I have no idea.

A female motorist. And Dillinger, Dillinger and Evelyn escaped out from under the noses of the FBI again, this time heading to Chicago. All right, Dillinger's getting into the car and he vanished. He vanished. It's a female motorist. I don't even know what the fuck at. We're gonna head back to the office. This is ridiculous. We have some major suspenders snapping to

do. We got a room. We are heavily funded. A look, however, had run out for Evelyn. The following day, Dillinger was supposed to meet some guys at a tavern in Chicago. Evelyn went in before John, however, and she was immediately arrested, which honestly seems really stupid since they were really after John, and now they just spooked him. Dillinger was beside himself at the capture of Evelyn, and he began to talk about breaking Evelyn out of custody. Most of Dillinger's gang tried to talk him out of it, but Van Meter, the guy who was not a convincing soap salesman, thought this was a fine idea.

If they had bullet profess, that is a good idea with bullet proof. Don't worry, John, I have this bit where I ask them their name. It works. 100% of the time. No, no, trust me. I'll bring the% of the time. No, no, trust me, I'll bring the soap samples this time. So while Dillinger didn't have a bulletproof vest of his own, Van Meter knew where they

could get some. You see, cops have lots of bulletproof vest. So if you need them, you just need to rob the cops, which they did. Van Meter and Dillinger took hostage, a police officer need to rob the cops, which they did. Van Meter and Dillinger took hostage, a police officer named Judd Pitinger, and they marched him into the police station at gunpoint. And once in the station, they robbed the police station of all their guns and bulletproof feasts.

Okay. And why, you just like shoot the, you know, commissioner and all the rest of the cops apparently fall on the ground. I'm the commissioner of that works too. Well, successful. It turns out that robbing a police station and taking a cop hostage brings rather a lot of heat. So the gang again had to move this time, heading to the upper peninsula of Michigan to stay with the sister of one of the gang.

Did they know they could stay at other places other than family members houses? this time heading to the upper peninsula of Michigan to stay with the sister of one of the gang. Did they know they could stay at other places other than family members houses? Right. It seems like they'd start to run out at a certain point, right? There's on the phone. A second cousin Murray twice removed. Can we clash with you? We're doing a crime thing.

Hello. After hiding out for a time in Michigan, the gang then moved to a small vacation lodge in Wisconsin called Little Bohemia. The Bureau of investigation got a tip. The gang was hiding out there and headed over to check it out. As they approached, a car with three men in it began driving off. The agents yelled for the car to stop, but the men in the car were too drunk to listen and kept driving. The agents opened fire on the car, killing the driver. That's they didn't stop. So as you can just shoot them, I got to stop. I didn't think. Dillinger and the gang were actually upstairs when they heard the commotion. And so they began shooting out of the windows at the agents. The agents ran for cover and Dillinger and the gang

all escaped out the back of the logic. Cool, yeah, and then like, I don't know, a bunch of decades later, law enforcement would learn about, you know, the back of stuff. Would they heath, would they? Not exactly. At this point, the pressure to catch Dillinger and company was intense. And so Dillinger in company was intense.

And so Dillinger headed once more to Chicago, hoping that the size of the city would offer him some anonymity. It worked. Well, no, yeah, that's Chicago's superpower, not matter. So for months, the FBI had no leads on Dillinger. And Dillinger was able to lead a somewhat quiet life. This time, this time under the alias Jimmy Lawrence. The FBI finally figured out that Dillinger was in town when they stumbled upon his blood-soaked

getaway car abandoned in a Chicago out. Okay, but that's pretty common for every alley in Chicago. Did they find a bull lip in the car? Something that let him some delinquent. If Dillon was going to have any hope of evading arrest, he was going to need to make some changes. Surgical changes. To obscure his appearance, John Dillon just sought out plastic surgery to alter his face and remove his face.

I'm sure we were thinking to the plastic. This point. This is insane. Now, this section of the wiki is kind of a mess and it has citationated flags just all over it. But from what I can gather, Dillinger had his first plastic surgery to remove two distinctive facial moles, remove his dimples in his cheeks and alter the shape of his mouth. Now it was 1934, so this of course a fucking nightmare, and he was immediately nearly killed with an overdose of ether.

The cure for this, by the way, when he started overdosing, was to grab his tongue with four seps and pull while jamming their elbows into Dillon Jury's ribs, until he stopped suffocating somehow from the ether overdose. I don't know why that worked, but it did. Though notably, Dillinger continued with surgeries under local rather than general anesthetic from that point out.

Hey, Doc, thanks for, you know, almost killing me and then saving my life. Well, from you, saving my life for you. But now I look like a Dick Tracy bad guy. You see how that's not helpful, right? That's like, yeah, I'm not helpful. I mean, a bunch of Dick Tracy villains are based on you, John. So no, I don't see how that's happening.

That's not actually, I'm gonna blend. Get it. So Van Meter eventually wanted in on the surgery game two and the pair then employed a small team of surgeons. They alternated procedures and doctors from chair to couch as needed in a bid to alter their appearances. They also had their fingertips removed, and once more, I want to quote from the wiki directly, just because this sounds so insane to me. The procedure was to quote,

exposed the lower skin. In other words, take off the epidermis and expose the derma, then alternately the acid and the alkaloid was applied as was necessary to produce the desired results." That sounds to me like they fucking peeled their fingers like bananas and then chemically burned them smooth. That's what they sounded like. The doctors charged $100 of finger for that work. The doctors were then also all arrested fairly quickly,

and one of them fell to his death from the 19th floor of a building, while in police custody. I'm guessing he might have been the black doctor because that was his did say. Pretty sure that's true though. All that surgery didn't save Van Meter either who was shot dead in an alley in St. Paul, Minnesota,

that August by the chief of police. How is that even helpful to do that to your fingerprints? If the cops arrest the guy and he has none fingerprints, he's the guy, right? So even worse, now the cops have records of your prints at all the crime scenes. Now remember how broken up Dillinger was when his girl got arrested. He was so distraught that he robbed a police station and then didn't do shit for her after that. Yeah, well, evidently, he never stopped pining for her because in a very weird gross twist, Dillinger met in June of 34, Polly Hamilton, a former teen runaway in prostitute who looked

in awful lot like Evelyn. So the two started seeing each other fairly quickly. Oh, I'm sorry, do they start Corton Tom? Did he leave his conning con and her child brothel and hopes of accompanying her to the opera? Calm down, you know, he said former teen. It's like a former one I that's true. Yeah, she was. She won.

She started. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. To be clear, I don't think that she was still a teen when they when they started seeing each other, but Polly, Dylan, she's new girlfriend who looked just like his old girlfriend. Used to work at a brothel run by a Romanian immigrant named Anya Componence. Anya wasn't some trouble with the law. I was facing deportation for her work as a madam. So she agreed to work with the FBI in exchange for not being deported. Oh, I didn't write this part. After all this work, they still deport her. I just want to point that out. It's still fucking deport her at the end. Anya and Polly were still friends.

So Anya agreed to meet up with Polly and Dillinger to see a show. This next part seriously all sounds like it comes from a budget film noir screenwriting class. So, so the police would be able to easily spot her. Anya agreed to wear a bright orange dress the afternoon of the outing. The only problem was that Anya wasn't able to tell the FBI which theater they were going to until the last minute.

You see, there were two options. There's the Biograph and the Marbrow. When Dillinger told her he wanted to see something at the Biograph, Ania invented an excuse to run to the store to buy butter to make them all some fried chicken. And while the store, she called her handlers. And importantly, she bought the butter for the specific. The Biograph. Oh, that's a fried chicken theater.

Yeah, that's, I will be back in a second wearing a safety vest. Don't worry about it. Now that evening, the trio went to the biograph as planned. And the FBI was so good at staking the place out unobserved that the theater manager totally observed them and then called the cops thinking that they were there to rob this. The FBI then had a wave off the cops without alerting Dillinger and Polly who were watching the crime drama of the Manhattan Melodrama.

Once that was done, they waited for the movie to end and for Dillinger to file out, at which point the agent, who had his eyes on Dillinger, signaled to the rest that he was on the move by lighting a cigarette. And as he was exiting, somehow Dillinger made the feds and he quickly moved ahead of the ladies before reaching into his pocket for his gun and taking off running down a nearby out. The agent who just learned about the back of things

is like, well, fuck, now they have sides too. This is it. How many dimensions are there? This is ridiculous. This is what I mean. The Bureau, guys, this is why. Three agents pursued Dillinger down the alley and they shot at him multiple times. He was hit four times.

Two of the shots just grazed him. They did very little damage. The bullet that killed him struck him in the back of the neck killed them pretty much immediately The heroic FBI agents also shot two random women who were just nearby and had to be taken to the hospital The FBI's first nationwide manhunt had ended and Dillinger's insane streak of capture escape and close calls had come to an end escape and close calls had come to an end. Dylan, your head at this point, becomes such a celebrity that throngs of gross shitty people mobbed the pool of blood in the alley, seeking to dip their handkerchiefs, skirts

and newspapers in it to get us skirts. Like real gross, real gross, to get us to get us to the nearer. Yeah, it's reasonable with a newspaper or a handkerchief. A newspaper, thank you. Yeah, right. Thank you. Not wearing that later. I had a nice paper. Thank you. Yeah, right. Thank you. Not wearing that later. To get a souvenir of the dead criminal, very weirdly for a criminal also John Dillinger's

body was put on display for public view over 15,000 people. Okay, Eli, the dick story never had was all because his arm, his arm was in an upward position, but they took the picture. It looked like a enormous erect. Yeah. Over 15,000 people came to see the body of John Dillinger as it lay in the morgue of Cook County. There was some controversy about whether or not Dillinger actually died that night. And in 2019, guys, there was a plan to exume the body. That plan was subsequently scrapped because it was fucking stupid. The history channel was actively feeding the conspiracy because that's just what we do now, but I'm guessing the 2020 had plans of its own that rather eclipsed this little

tidbit of trivia. In any case, I think the important thing to remember here is that at the height of a terrible national crisis, we were all too glad to deify anyone who is willing to take vengeance on the institutions that so grossly failed to people, even if those people were immoral murderers without any noticeable redeeming qualities. All right, Tom, if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? That Dillinger is not the same person as pretty boy,

but I will forget the rest of the details, which is different people. You learned a lot. That was the first sentence, I think. All right, are you ready for the quiz? Let's do it. All right, Tom. Hollywood loves John Dillinger's story so much

so that they've made several biographical films about him, including Guns Don't Argue, Beledi and Red, Dillinger, Dillinger, Dillinger, Dillinger, Dillinger, and Public Enemies. But which of the following movies did Hollywood reject? A. One where John fights off infection called penicillinger. B. One where they resurrect him into the modern day using his DNA from the preserved penis, that was called Dylan Jurassic Park. So good.

So good. Or C, one where Paulie Shore gets him acquitted called Dylan jury duty. That's, you said Paulieore. I don't like that. Well, it can't be a because in 1934, nobody was fighting off a lot of infections. So I don't think that last probably the case. Polyshore is never the answer. So it's got to be. Well done. Well done.

Yes. That's how this correctly figured it out. All right. Tom. Yes. You managed to cover the fact that he was a shortstop baseball player. His friends failed attempt at being a soap salesman and left out the tremendous amount of speculation around John Dillon, just Venus in this essay. Why?

Hey, you hate me. You hate comment. See? Largely untrue. Largely. Yes. As if that ever stopped us. Right. D, you didn't want to disrupt your counterfeit dark web penis in a jar business. Okay. Well, first of all, we're not supposed to talk about D. You said that when we became business. Partridge. That's a little rude. But it's, obviously it's a I do hate you. That's fair. Yeah. How do you buy penises on the dark web with naughty Bitcoin? I can get you to a Rogan's penis. I'm just saying. All right, Tom. What other brands profited off of John Dillinger's popularity? A, bullwhip topping. Hey, I can't believe you got butter or sea. The Chevy Bolt rag top.

Oh, those are all good, but it's got to be B. I can't believe you got butter is great. It is. Yes, that's true. It is, it is B. All right. Well, Eli wins because I said so. Yeah. That's how this game works.

No way to do an essay next week. All right. Well, for Tom Noah, Cecil and Eli, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then Noah will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear Tom and Cecil on Cognitive Distance, and you can hear Eli know and myself on God off the movies, skating atheists, the Skeptocrat, and D&D Monis.

And if you'd like to become a better person, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com-sciitationpod. If you want to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media or take a look at the show notes. Pick out citationpod.com. If you donate enough, we'll preserve your penis and a jar. Sure. That works really big. If you might already be doing that. Fred, you're taking care of Buddy.

We're planning on this. You choose the body part. Not everybody's got a penis. You just tell us what you want to preserve. We'll put in a jar. Chi, I don't know.. We'll put it in a job Gee, I don't know floppy. I'm scared to the dark. Don't be scared Eli. We could do anything if we do it together We can do it. Eli, have you see oh my god, don't you knock you don't knock?

Never mind. Never mind. It's right never mind Sorry floppy you were saying God, don't you knock, you don't knock. Never mind, never mind. That's right, never mind. Sorry, floppy, you were saying.