Infamous America - DILLINGER Ep. 1 | "Birth of a Criminal"

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Public Enemy No. 1 — that was John Dillinger in the early 1930s. He robbed banks and took hostages and shot it out with the cops for 13 months. But before he was the first celebrity criminal in modern America, he was an unskilled petty thief who idolized the Old West outlaw Jesse James. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's an old Clark Gable film, mostly forgotten today, called Manhattan Melodrama. If it's remembered at all, it's not because of the plot where two childhood friends grow up to be a gangster and a district attorney. And it's not because of the cast, which included the first pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy, who would go on to star together in the immensely popular Thin Man series of films. It's because of what happened after the 8.30 p.m. showing at the biograph theater in Chicago, Illinois, on July 22nd, 1934. That night, the captivating journey of the most infamous gangster in America came to an end. For a little more than a year, John Dillinger and his gang of bank robbers kept the country

on the edge of its seat. They pillaged dozens of banks across numerous states. They shot it out with local law enforcement and federal agents. And it seemed no prison was secure enough to hold them. The Indianapolis Star newspaper wrote, The entire crime-fighting resources of the nation have been united for months against one man, and he has continued to strike and vanish at will with apparent immunity. Every policeman and every school child of the Middle West has Dillinger's facial characteristics graven in his mind. And yet, John Dillinger is as loose and as free as ever.

Dillinger's ability thus to shoot and run away and live to shoot another day, has led the public to believe he is a mastermind, a super criminal of brilliant intellect. And he might have been. There were other gangsters in America and criminals of every stripe in description. But there was only one, John Dillinger. From BlackBarrel Media, this is season four of infamous America.

I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling the story of the most notorious bank robber in modern American history. It's the portrait of public. enemy number one, John Dillinger. This is chapter 1, birth of a criminal. John Dillinger stood in front of a judge in an Indianapolis courtroom. He exhibited an obvious disdain for the court, crossing his arms and doing two things no defendant would usually dare to do before a judge, chewing gum and wearing his cap indoors. He had been brought in for leading a gang of thugs

who were stealing anything that could get their hands on, often watermelons to eat or buckets of coal to sell for profit. The judge ordered him to straighten up, which John did with typical contempt, moving so deliberately slow that the furious judge announced, Your mind is crippled. John was 10 years old. Instead of correcting his behavior, the young criminal and his crew of misfit children kept going. They once tied an unpopular kid to a sawmill carrier. They cackled like cartoon villains. They lids. They looked like cartoon villains. They let the kids scream and flail helplessly until the enormous blade was just inches from the child's head. And then they let him go. His behavior as a child was somewhat reminiscent of another

infamous criminal from a couple generations earlier, Billy the kid. John seemed a little more mean-spirited, but like Billy, most people saw him as a typical rambunctious boy. His Sunday school teacher said, Johnny was mischievous just like the rest of them. But he was such a half. He was such a healthy, normal specimen of a boy that you couldn't help liking him. He always tipped his hat to me. Dillinger would display this kind of dual persona for the rest of his life. He was perfectly willing to rob banks and take hostages and get into gunfights, but he could also be jovial and good-natured and well-mannered, just like Billy. But it wasn't Billy the kid he idolized. It was another Old West outlaw, the most famous bank robber in American history until Dillinger came along,

Jesse James. And like Jesse, it took time for Dillinger to evolve into the swaggering, cocky, larger-than-life character that he's remembered as today. The evolution began in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 22nd, 1903. When Dillinger was born on the 22nd, he did not yet have a name. His family debated five options. His older sister Audrey noted them in her journal, Harold, Alfred, Harry, Theodore, and John. Ultimately, the family christened the newborn John Herbert Dillinger, John after his father. Audrey also noted that he looked just like John Sr. with black hair and dark eyes. And like his future idol, Jesse James, John Jr.'s family experienced loss and upheaval when he was very young.

When John was three years old, his mother died from a stroke. When Jesse was three, his father left the family to find gold in California and never returned. John's sister Audrey moved back home with her husband to help care for her younger brother. She was 13 years older than John, and by the time she moved back into the family home, she was married and pregnant. Audrey's family rapidly grew to include seven children, and they were finally forced to get their own home. Then John Sr. remarried and began to have a brood of children with his new wife. As John grew into the 10-year-old who would stand in front of a judge for the first time,

he was surrounded by nieces and nephews and step-siblings, yet he was somewhat alone. His mother was dead. His sister was managing her own family, and his father had a new wife and three small children to care for. John Jr. initially resented his stepmother. And with this combination of factors, it might not be surprising that he ran away from home numerous times. But he always came back. He eventually formed a bond with his stepmother, but the death of his birth mother always haunted him. He said later in life, I only wish I had a mother to worry over me, but she died when I was three. I guess that's why I was such a bad boy.

And so John Dillinger developed into a boy who was a petty thief and who tortured other kids with threats of extreme bodily harm, and who dreamed up clever pranks that were beyond the capacity of the rest of his friends. John convinced some of his buddies to help him tie one end of a rope to his neighbor's rose trellis and the other end to a streetcar.

When the streetcar pulled away, it yanked the rose trellis and sent it flying through the air. When John Sr. confronted his son about the act, John Jr. was indignant. He said, So what if I did wreck his roses? The old bastards mean anyhow.

By the age of 10, John Dillinger proved he was smart and creative and a troublemaker. It was a wonderful recipe for what was to come. When John Dillinger was 16, he decided he was just about done with school. His career of petty theft graduated from stealing watermelons and coal to stealing whiskey from train cars, which meant that even when he was in school, he was drunk at least some of the time. His grades were mostly Ds and Fs, which led to heated arguments with his father. Finally, John dropped out and worked a series of labor jobs in southwest Indianapolis. But he still lived at home, and his home was about to change, and the change pushed him further away from his family.

In 1920, when John was 17, his father bought a 62-acre farm in Mooresville, southwest of Indianapolis. Mooresville was the hometown of John's stepmother Lizzie, and John's father decided he wanted to pursue a life of farming corn and raising chickens. Being closer to Lizzie's family also meant John's parents started attending a Quaker worship center called Friends Church. For a young man who was already restless and full of mischief, life in the country was a bad fit for John. His father said later that he, John Sr., liked the land,

but John Jr. never did. John Jr. was a city kid from Indianapolis, and the city had a firm hold on him. An electric rail car connected towns like Moresville to Indianapolis, and John Jr. took full advantage of it to commute back to the city. In Indianapolis, he gambled and played billiards and drank and flirted with young women. Like Billy the kid, John was popular with young ladies. Back in Moresville, he made the best.

out of the slower lifestyle. He made friends with other teenagers at his parents' church. He played baseball for the local athletic club. And he became what his father called a dead shot with a gun while he hunted rabbits, squirrels, and possums. And then when he was 20, three years into his time on the farm, he became enamored with stories of Jesse James.

John devoured the dime novels that created a legend out of Jesse by mixing a tiny bit of fact with a whole lot of fiction. The stories about Jesse's adventures featured the two-part titles that were popular at the time. Things like Jesse James, Knight-errant, or The Rescue of the Queen of the Prairies, and Jesse James Bluff, or the Escape from the Chinese Highbinders.

That one is particularly funny. As a person who's done a lot of research about Jesse James over the last couple years, I have absolutely no idea what that one's about. out. John began to fashion a new persona for himself. It was a blend of Jesse James and the movie gangsters he saw at the Saturday matinees at the theater. He started walking with a swagger and tilting his hat to the side to give himself a rakish quality. He wanted to emulate Jesse James' alleged qualities, to be respectful and chivalrous to women and children, and

courageous and daring in his escapades. Forty one years after Jesse was shot and killed, John Dillinger got his first real taste of the outlaw life. John Dillinger's motive for his adventure on a night in July 1923 is still unclear. With a pistol in his pocket, he stole a car and went on an erratic joyride of sorts. Many people believe the strange incident was linked to romantic troubles. His first real relationship had just ended, and the breakup could have prompted his spontaneous behavior. John had been dating his uncle's stepdaughter, Francis Marguerite Thornton. With dark hair, darker eyes, and a vibrant spirit, she was exactly his type of girl.

He had wanted to marry her, but their families encouraged them to wait until they were more financially secure. Francis sided with her father and refused to marry John. When John heard the news, he angrily ended the relationship. So it might have been that, or something that. else entirely that pushed him to steal the car. But whatever the reason, he went to his parents' Quaker Church and stole a shiny Overland sedan that was parked outside. He drove the car 15 miles to Indianapolis and parked it beneath the soldiers and sailors' monument, right out in the

open for anyone to see. He made no effort to hide it. Then he walked east, directly into an African-American neighborhood, where he stuck out like a sore thumb. He stopped at the corner of Toledo and Tippecanoe streets, and he was quickly approached by two police officers. It was around midnight. The officers asked for his name. He blurted out the only alias he could come up with on short notice. He said his name was Charles, Charles Dillinger. He clearly hadn't developed the coolness under pressure that would become his trademark. He volunteered that his car, the stolen overland, was four blocks away, and he told the officers, He was from Moresville. The cops patted him down and discovered the pistol in his pocket.

One officer grabbed him by the coat collar and led him to a nearby police call box. This was 1923. Radio had just been invented, but it would be years before the cops could communicate from their cars. The officer called the station and ordered a transport to take John to the precinct. John had fumbled for the first half of the incident, but he was about to win the second half. Before the officer fully realized what had happened, John slipped out of his coat and sprinted down the street. The officer suddenly found himself holding an empty coat while he watched his prisoner escape. Both officers pulled their pistols and fired at John.

They unloaded a total of seven shots at the fleeing auto thief, but all of them missed. It was one of the closest calls in the history of American crime. The man who would become the century's most famous bankrupted, robber could have died in the middle of the night, on a random street in Indianapolis, before the wider world even knew his name. But he didn't. Instead, he hid in a nearby barn and spent the night thinking about his desperate situation. He needed a plan, and by morning, he had one. John Dillinger joined the Navy. Dillinger was recorded as 20 years old, five feet seven inches tall, 155 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, and

2020 vision. He had a number of scars, the most noticeable being a half-inch trail on the right side of his face. He provided a fake address. Four days later, he shipped out to the Great Lakes Training Station. He completed basic training in October 1923, and he received his assignment. Fireman, third class. His job was to shovel coal into the huge boilers on the USS Utah battleship. He lasted 22 days before jumping ship in Boston. He was AWOL for a day, and it must have been a glorious day away from the back-breaking labor in stifling hot temperatures. And of course, his absence was noticed.

When he came back to the ship, he was fined $18, which was nearly a month. pay and given 10 days in the brig with only bread and water, along with a court-martial. But the sentence wasn't carried out immediately, and in the meantime, Dillinger made it worse. He left his post again, which added five days of solitary confinement to his punishment. Not surprisingly, John's time in the Navy was brief. A few weeks later, he was given a 24-hour leave and never returned. The Navy listed him as a deser and placed a $50 bounty on his head,

the first reward ever offered for the capture of John Dillinger. But the Navy made no effort to track him down, and he headed home to Mooresville. In the months after Dillinger abandoned his ever-so-promising military career, he stayed busy by jumping back into his old routine as if he'd never left.

He picked up odd jobs, found a way to drink liquor during the years of prohibition, played pool, and flirted with women. And then, in the spring of 1924, he made the first of two big decisions. He got married. Several weeks earlier, he met 17-year-old Beryl Ethel-Hovius and fell in love. He proposed within weeks, and they were married in April 1924 at the county courthouse. They lived at her family's farm for a while before they got their own apartment in a near

by town, and it seemed like John was growing up. He was almost 21 years old, with a new wife in his own living space for the first time, but it wasn't enough for him to stay away from petty crime. He committed small burglaries and then progressed to bigger and more dangerous heists, including, apparently, stealing live chickens. And his escalation to a full-fledged armed robber was right around the corner. He teamed up with a distant, in-law named Eddie Singleton, who had a longer, more impressive criminal history. Eddie was 10 years older than John, and he had a rare distinctive physical feature, in addition to a heftier track record as a criminal. He had webbed fingers.

The crime that altered John Dillinger's life forever was not the work of a brilliant mastermind. But ironically, it led him to meet the men who would enable him to become a mastermind in the future. It happened in September 1920. when John and Eddie robbed Frank Morgan. September 6th, 1924 was a Saturday, and John and Eddie were out drinking. They hatched a plan to rob an elderly man who owned a small grocery store in Moorsville.

Frank Morgan, the owner, was a friend of the Dillinger family, and John had been told that Mr. Morgan usually walked home after closing the store with the day's profits in his pockets. The two bandits picked a spot along Morse, Morgan's route and waited. Eddie parked the getaway car in an alley and waited behind the wheel.

John would have to perform the actual robbery. Dillinger hid in the bushes near a church and waited for the old man to begin his casual stroll home for the night. John had an Ivor Johnson-32 caliber pistol tucked into his belt, and in one hand, he held a heavy iron bolt that was wrapped in a cotton handkerchief. Dillinger spotted Frank Morgan approaching. As Frank passed the church and turned toward his house, Dillinger sprang out from his hiding spot in the bush.

He smashed the old man on the head with the iron bolt and crushed Morgan's straw hat. Frank fell to his knees, but he was tough. The blow didn't knock him out. John hit him again. Frank screamed and then John drew the pistol. He aimed it at Frank's face, but Frank slapped it away. In the scuffle, the pistol went off.

The gunshot pierced the still night, along with Frank's screams. Frank struggled to his feet and raised his hands in the air. He bent his elbows into a square to form the Masonic grand hailing sign of distress for anyone who might come running. Lights turned on in nearby houses. People scrambled to investigate the screams and the gunshot. As the neighborhood came to life around him, Dillinger decided to be. it was time to run. He grabbed the cash out of Frank's pockets and ran toward the alley where Eddie waited with the car, only to discover that Eddie was gone. The gunshot spooked Eddie,

and he made a getaway without waiting for John. Dillinger panicked. He hurried on foot toward a local pool room that was only a few blocks away. He counted the money he had taken from Frank Morgan. It amounted to a grand total of $120. When John arrived at the pool room, he was nervous and frazzled. He had blood stains on his hat and his trousers. He asked people in the pool room how badly Frank had been hurt, and of course, they had no idea what he was talking about. His anxious, confusing questions, and the blood on his clothes made him a very suspicious character.

Soon afterward, he walked all the way back to his father's farm. The next morning, Deputy Sheriff John Hayworth knocked on the family's door and took John in for questioning. Dillinger denied all involvement in the assault and robbery, even though he'd implicated himself the night before in the pool room. The police had enough evidence to hold him, but they wanted a confession, which they eventually got from the young man after advice from a very upset John Dillinger, senior. On September 15th, 1924, in the same courthouse where John and Barrel had tied the knot just five months earlier, Eddie Singleton and John Dillinger stood in front of Judge Joseph Williams. Eddie had a lawyer. John did not. Eddie's lawyer asked for a continuance, which he received.

A prosecutor suggested to Dillinger that if he confessed and apologized, the judge was likely to be lenient. Dillinger pled guilty to conspiracy to commit a felony and assault with intent to rob. The people of Morgan County were furious about the vicious attack, and Judge Williams sentenced Dillinger to two to 14 years for the conspiracy and 10 to 20 years for the assault. The sentences were to be served concurrently. In short, the judge did not go easy on Dillinger because he confessed. John was sent to Pendleton Reformatory in late 1924. Within two weeks, he had already made two escape attempts.

In the first, he was found hiding in a trash pile. The second occurred while he was being transported back from court. Dillinger was taken out of prison to testify against Eddie Singleton. Eddie's lawyer managed to get a different judge for the trial, and when it was all said and done, Eddie received a sentence of two to 14 years, of which he only served two. On the way back to prison, with Dillinger facing the possibility of maybe 20 years behind bars for stealing $120, he made a break for it.

Morgan County Deputy Russell Peterson became friendly with Dillinger during the transport and decided to buy him a soda on the way back. Peterson extended the 21-year-old young man one last act of kindness. He let Dillinger drink the soda at a picnic table outside. It allowed him a final chance to breathe free air before going back to jail, and Dillinger took advantage of it. He and Peterson sat across from each other at the table. Dillinger was handcuffed, but he suddenly leaned back, braced his feet against the table, and shoved. The table slammed into Peterson's midsection and knocked the deputy onto his back. John sprinted down the street and quickly turned into an alley, but his luck was no different in this.

sally that it had been after he robbed Frank Morgan. It was a dead end. Deputy Peterson rounded the corner and found Dillinger in the alley. Peterson was irate as he took Dillinger back into custody. But on the long ride back to Pendleton, Deputy Peterson cooled off. I knew John's dad, he said later. I thought well of him. Besides, John was just a kid and you can't take 10 years out of a kid's life. That's almost what the system did. John Dillinger went to prison for nine years. During that time, he transformed himself from a petty criminal to a shrewd and calculating mastermind.

An American law enforcement had no idea what it was up against. Train won't you take me on? Train won't you take me on? I want to see the land where they don't know who I am. They don't care how I spend my days. Next week, Dillinger's nine years in prison become a kind of criminal college. It amounts to a master class in bank robbery. And while John is in jail, the world around him changes just as much as he does.

The Justice Department creates the Bureau of Investigation with a strict fanatical bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover at the helm. The era of the American gangster forces the Bureau to find a new kind of agent and to adopt a new set of tactics to battle criminals armed with machine guns and fast cars. That's next week on Season 4, John Dillinger. Train won't you take me on? Train won't you take me on? I want to see my past disappearing down the tracks

and wave this time goodbye because I'm never coming back. Primary research for this season was provided by Derry Matera, author of the best-selling book, Dillinger, The Life and Death of America's First Celebrity Criminal. If you want to know more about this story, that's the book you start with. This season was written by Sean Paglisi, vocal editing by Molly Bach,

music editing and sound design by Mike Hisong at Sneaky Big Studios. Artwork by Matt Lockery of My Colorful Past. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. Train won't you take me on? Train won't you take me on? Because I might not survive if I stay another night. You'll see me by the tracks and then I'm gone.

Leave them all behind. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating in a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Please visit our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrel Media on Twitter. And new in 2020, if you want to contribute to the production of our shows, please visit our Patreon page. You'll find discounts on our merchandise. That's patreon.com slash Blackbarrel Media.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.