Infamous America - DILLINGER Ep. 10 | "No Escape"

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

In the Season Finale, Dillinger plans one last robbery. He wants a big score to send him into retirement, but he doesn't know that someone close to him is working with Special Agent Melvin Purvis. Purvis and the "woman in red" organize the final conflict. The end of John Dillinger's story is here. 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

In 2019, the American media reported there was a chance the body of John Dillinger would be exhumed from its grave in the Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ultimately, a judge denied the request for exhumation. For 85 years, there's been suspicion that the body buried in the grave is not John Dillinger. Some have claimed the man who was killed on July 22nd, 1934, was a look-alike. But the FBI calls the idea a myth. The agency says it has plenty of evidence to support the identity of the man buried in the Crown Hill Cemetery. And it's also hard to believe that John Dillinger, Sr. didn't recognize his own son when he

made the 225-mile trip from Mooresville, Indiana to Chicago to pick up the body. John Sr. said, I'm awfully sorry that John got into this trouble. He was a good son to me, and I want people to know that I tried to raise him right, and that he's always been a good-hearted boy. From Black Barrel Media, this is the final chapter of Season 4 of Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we've been telling the story of the most notorious bank robber in modern American history.

John Dillinger. This is Chapter 10. No Escape John Dillinger and his gang escaped South Bend, Indiana with $28,000. They left numerous casualties in their wake, and they suffered several injuries themselves. Babyface Nelson had been shot in the back, but his steel vest had deflected the bullet. Even so, he said it stung like a wasp. Jack Perkins had been hit in the shoulder and the jaw, and Homer Van Meter was the worst of the bunch.

He'd been hit three times by police officers as he drove the getaway car away from the bank. The most critical injury was the bullet that slashed through the right side of his scalp and buried itself four inches into his head. Somehow, he survived the initial impact. A doctor fixed the wound, and Van Meter made a miraculous recovery. After the job in South Bend, newspapers shouted about the event in their headlines. The officer who fired the bullet that ended up in Van Meter's head said he was pretty sure the man he'd shot was John Dillinger, but he was quickly overruled.

Authorities agreed it was probably Homer Van Meter. Indiana State Police Captain Matt Leach told the papers he didn't believe Dillinger was behind the robbery. He said the resulting bloodbath made him think it was Italian gangsters from Detroit or Toledo. It's unclear if Leach actually believed the statement or if he simply didn't want to take the blame for yet another missed opportunity to capture Dillinger. Either way, pretty much everyone agreed Leach was wrong. A journalist said of Dillinger, the Midwest has come to look on this machine-armed modern Jesse James as an incredible wraith who will go on forever.

In reality, Dillinger would be dead within a month. The reward for his capture went up again, this time to $25,000. That would be worth about half a million dollars today. With the heat growing, the gang wanted one last big score. Dillinger wanted enough money to retire and disappear. To get it, he began planning a type of job he'd never tried before, one that Jesse James would have recognized well. a train robbery.

The target was a mail train on the South Pacific Railroad. It was rumored to carry over a million dollars. Dillinger said it would be one of the biggest jobs in the world. He and Homer Van Meter watched the train in its route. They chose Stevens Point, Wisconsin for the site of the ambush. They would use nitroglycerin to blow the doors of the mail car. As late as July 20, 1934, Dillinger was making plans for the train robbery he would never carry out. Two days later, he was surrounded by federal agents in an alley outside a movie

theater. As Dillinger planned the train robbery, Sergeant Martin Zarkovic made a plan of his own. He was a longtime member of the East Chicago Police Department, despite numerous problems with his service record. He'd been indicted for corruption three times in the 1920s and had actually been convicted of violating prohibition laws, but he was still on the force, and he was about to knock over the first domino in a line that would eventually lead to John Dillinger. Zarkovych's wife filed for divorce in 1920. In her paperwork, she named brothel owner Anna Sage. Clearly, Zarkovic had some sort of relationship with the madam who connected Dillinger to his current girlfriend, Polly. And some people think Zarkovic was directly connected to Dillinger

himself. Many believe Zarkovic provided protection for Dillinger in East Chicago. Dillinger reportedly called the sergeant by the nickname Zark during a conversation with a friend. Some Dillinger historians believe Zarkovych suggested the robbery of the First National Bank of East Chicago, which Dillinger carried out six months earlier. But the suggestion, if it happened, will never be confirmed. What can be confirmed is that Zarkovic visited Dillinger at the Crown Point jail before Dillinger escaped using the wooden gun. Afterward, Zarkovych involved himself in the investigation to an unusually high level. He claimed that his extreme interest was because Dillinger had killed his friend Pat O'Malley during the East Chicago robbery.

Indiana State Police Captain Matt Leach had a different theory. To put it bluntly, Leach believed Zarkovic was trying to cover his own ass. Leach thought Zarkovic wanted to stop Dillinger before Dillinger could reveal Zarkovych's corruption. But that meant Dillinger could never be. taken alive. Now, Leach was certainly angry that he was left out of the operation to come, but he might not have been wrong. On July 21st, 1934, Sarkovic and his captain secretly met with a Chicago police captain. They apparently offered to serve Dillinger up to the Chicago police right there in Chicago. Then they would all split the reward money. The only catch was that

Dillinger had to be killed. He could not be allowed to talk from a jail cell. The Chicago police captain declined, so Zarkovych took the idea to special agent Melvin Purvis. Purvis was unaware of the corrupt reputation of the East Chicago Police. He pitched an operation to J. Edgar Hoover, and Hoover approved. Sarkovic arranged a meeting between Melvin Purvis and brothel owner Anna Sage. Sage had the ability to get close to Dillinger without raising suspicion. She was willing to do it under two conditions. She would receive the majority of the $25,000 reward, and she would receive help with her immigration status. She had been convicted of prostitution two years earlier and had been recommended for deportation. She'd been able to delay

for two years, but she was probably running out of time. Purvis wasn't eager to agree to her terms. He made some sort of half-hearted deal, but after the events that followed, he denied the entire thing. But at this meeting between Purvis, Sage, and Zarkovych, Anna made the suggestion that changed history. Dillinger and Polly liked to go to the movies. They often invited her to go along. Tomorrow was Sunday, and they would probably want to go to a picture show that evening. If they did, Anna would call Melvin Purvis. Chicago was in the middle of a historic heat wave. Sunday, July 22nd, 1934, was the third day. of unbearable temperatures.

Two days later, Chicago hit a record high of 105 degrees. 17 people died on Saturday from the heat. Another 30 died on Sunday. But that night, the most noted death in the city was not due to the weather. The Bureau-Chicago field office was a hive of frenzied activity. Almost 30 agents had been called in to prepare for the capture of John Dillinger. Anna Sage told them that the Marlborough Third, theater was Dillinger's movie palace of choice. Melvin Purvis and an agent named Samuel Cowley

reviewed every detail. They surveyed the theater. They made notes about the entrances, exits, and fire escapes. Cowley went inside the theater and sketched the layout. They debated every possibility and every difficulty that might arise, except the one that actually happened. On July 22nd, Dillinger sat in front of a metal fan all morning in Anna Sage's third floor apartment. Residential air conditioning was still about 20 years away from being common, so he made do with the fan during the heat wave. Polly worked the breakfast and lunch shifts at the sandwich shop. When she got back to Anna's apartment that afternoon, she was exhausted. Dillinger bought her some ice cream.

Then he put her in bed in front of a large electric fan. Anna now had Dillinger and Polly in her apartment, but she still had to find a way to call Melvin Purvis without raising suspicion. She was going to make fried chicken for dinner that night. It was one of Dillinger's favorite meals. As she worked in the kitchen, she thought of an idea. She told Dillinger she was out of butter. She needed to run to the store to get more.

She hurried out of the apartment and found a pay phone and called Melvin Purvis at 5.30 p.m. She confirmed they were going to a movie that night. But the problem was, she didn't know which one. This was the curveball Purvis had not anticipated. She said they would go to the Marlborough Theater or the Biograph Theater. Both locations were playing films involving gangsters, although they were very different. Little Miss Marker was at the Marlborough.

In the film, gangsters held Shirley Temple as collateral for a bet made by her father. Manhattan melodrama was at the biograph. It starred Clark Gable and William Powell as childhood friends who grew up on opposite sides of the law. Gable became a gangster, and Powell became a district attorney. Anna didn't know which film they would see. Purvis and his men would just have to wait for her signal when the trio was en route to the theater. Purvis was alarmed. His team had done no reconnaissance of the biograph.

The venue had never been discussed as a possibility. He sent two agents to the theater immediately. After the secret phone call, Anna completed her errand and returned home to finish dinner. She and Dillinger and Polly ate their fried chicken and then played Pinnuckle. Polly was feeling better after a long, hot day at work. She would be ready to go to a movie before long. At 7 p.m., the Law Enforcement Coalition gathered in the Chicago Field Office. Purvis had 30 agents, and there was a team of East Chicago Police.

officers provided by Martin Zarkovych. Zarkovych briefed the team on the latest details. He described the effects of Dillinger's plastic surgery. He said the outlaw would be wearing a gray checkered suit, white shoes, and a straw hat. Dillinger would be with Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton. Sage would be wearing a white blouse and a bright orange skirt. She should be easy to spot.

If she were also wearing a white, wide-brimmed hat and an angle, they were going to the Marlborough Theater. If she wasn't wearing the hat, they were going to the biograph. Purvis reminded the men that they all knew the character of John Dillinger. If they spotted him and he escaped again, it would be a major disgrace. They thought Dillinger would only be with Polly and Anna, but they had to be ready for the possibility that one of Dillinger's gang might join the group at the theater. Lastly, Pervis said they wanted to take Dillinger alive.

This was the moment they'd been waiting for. But they should not endanger their own lives. If Dillinger resisted, each man was ordered to do what he thought was necessary to make sure Dillinger did not escape. With that, Pervis and one of his agents drove to the biograph theater. Zarkovic and one of his officers drove to the Marlborough. The rest of the team stayed at the office. The pair that spotted the woman in the bright orange skirt would call the office and everyone would rush to the theater. Purvis arrived at the biograph at about 7.30 p.m.

One hour before Manhattan melodrama was supposed to start. He and one of his men parked their car about 60 feet from the entrance. The bright marquee in front of them advertised the film and another feature that might have been more important during the crippling heat wave. The sign said, cooled by refrigeration with iced fresh air. Purvis and his colleagues sat in the front seat of their car. They were not cooled by ice-fresh air as they stared at the entrance, studying every person who passed by. Purvis wanted them to look as natural as possible in the car.

He said that if they were out on the sidewalk looking around or even parked in such a way that they needed to crane their necks to see, they might tip off Dillinger. So they sat and waited. At Anna's apartment, the group got dressed for the night out. Polly put on a tan suit. Anna changed into a white blouse and a bright orange skirt. Dillinger put on a gray suit with white shoes and a straw hat. He stuffed $3,300 into his pockets. He always carried lots of money in case he had to make a quick getaway.

But the final question before he walked out the door was, should he bring his gun or not? Typically he wore a Colt 380 handgun in a shoulder holster under his suit jacket. But with the oppressive heat, he didn't want to wear the jacket, which meant he couldn't wear the shoulder holster. He probably thought about his recent success walking in and out of Chicago police stations unnoticed. They were only going to a movie, and the theater was right around the corner. Did he really need the gun?

Around 8.30, Dillinger, Polly, and Anna Sage walked out of Sage's apartment building. Dillinger still hadn't revealed their destination, and Sage was ready with her white hat. If he chose the Marlboro, she would put it on. If he chose the biograph, she would leave it off. Moments later, she had the answer. She kept it off. Dillinger chose the biograph, which was probably an obvious choice in hindsight. It was essentially around the corner from Sage's apartment,

and there was probably very little chance Dillinger was going to pick a Shirley Temple movie over a serious gangster picture. They began their walk to the theater, and they were going to be late for. for the movie. Melvin Purvis sat in his car outside the biograph. He checked the time. It was past 8.30. The movie had started, and there was no sign of Dillinger. And there was no word from the team at the Marlborough. Pervis began to think the whole thing was a bust. But then, at 8.38 p.m., he watched in amazement as John Dillinger strolled up to the ticket office at the biograph theater. The outlaw was just 60 feet away. He had Polly on one.

side and Anna Sage on the other. Sage wore her white shirt and bright orange skirt like she said she would, and she didn't have her hat on, but that didn't matter now. Pervis was staring straight at Dillinger. As Purvis studied Dillinger, he couldn't tell if the gangster was armed. Purvis couldn't see a weapon, but Dillinger could have a gun in his pants pocket. Pervis thought about taking Dillinger right then and there, but he hesitated. He thought about what he considered to be Dillinger's ruthless nature and disregard for human life. He decided the risk to innocent bystanders was too high. He could not afford a repeat of the gun battle at Little Bohemia,

so he let Dillinger go into the theater. The theater was packed. Dillinger, Polly, and Anna couldn't find seats together. Dillinger and Polly took two seats side by side in the third row, and Anna sat by herself in the back. Outside, Melvin Purvis and his colleague, jumped out of their car. The other agent ran to a phone to call the field office. Pervis hurried to the box office and bought a ticket. Pervis stepped into the air-cooled theater. He scanned the crowd for

Dillinger. He hoped to find two empty seats behind the outlaw. Agents could slip into those seats and grab Dillinger before he could react. But the theater was already dark, and Pervis couldn't find his target. He didn't want to walk up and down the aisles and draw attention to himself, so he went back outside. He asked the woman at the ticket booth about the running time of the movie. She said it was 94 minutes, plus another 30 for newsreels. Purvis was jittery. After a moment, he asked her the same question again, and she gave him the same answer.

Another 20 minutes passed as Pervis waited for the agents and the officers to make it from the field office to the biograph. He went back to the ticket booth and asked the woman about the schedule for a third time, Not surprisingly, she told him the schedule had not changed since the last time he'd asked. Finally, reinforcements arrived. Agents and officers parked their cars in the area around the theater. Purvis moved from car to car telling the men that Dillinger should walk outside a little after 10.30 p.m. When Agent Cowley arrived, he and Purvis mapped out a strategy. They placed their agents in coordinated positions around the outside of the theater.

Sergeant Martin Zarkovych and his East Chicago police officers were scattered amongst the agents. Then Cowley called Jay Edgar Hoover to ask for final approval. Hoover said yes. He said Dillinger should be taken alive, but not at the expense of the safety of the agents. He told Cali that the life of one government agent was worth a million Dillinger's. The plan was in place and the men were set. When it was time to move in, Melvin Purvis would light a cigar with a single match. That was the signal. But right now, all he could do was wait,

and his nerves were on fire. Dillinger could walk out at any moment. There was no guarantee he would stay for the whole movie. Anything could spook him and make him leave early, like he'd planned to do it Little Bohemia. Purvis stood on the sidewalk. He nervously chewed the end of his cigar. He probably didn't realize it,

but he was becoming the type of thing that could spook Dillinger. The woman at the ticket booth told her manager about Purvis. He hadn't identified himself as a federal agent, of course. He was undercover. But now his anxious behavior was making the woman anxious. She alerted her manager to the sweaty man who kept asking when the movie would let out. The manager looked at Purvis, who was dressed in a suit on a sweltering summer night. Then he looked around the area. There were men in suits in every alley and on every street corner. The manager thought the theater was about to be robbed. He hurried inside and called the Chicago police, who had no idea that federal agents in Indiana cops were trying to arrest the

most wanted man in America in their city. Hoover didn't want to risk a leak that would tip off Dillinger, so no one had told the Chicago cops about the operation. Within moments, Chicago police cars screamed up to the theater and flashed bright headlights at Purvis and his men. Plain-clothes officers with riot guns shouted at the men in suits to show them identification and explained what they were doing at the theater. Luckily, the cops and the agents avoided a shootout. But as they sorted out the situation, the clock struck 10.30 p.m. Movigowers began to walk out of the biograph theater.

In Clark Gable's last scene of Manhattan melodrama, before he goes to the electric chair, he tells a fellow prisoner, die the way you lived all of a sudden. Don't drag it out. Living like that doesn't mean a thing. As the film ended, Dillinger didn't immediately get up from his seat. He waited for the lights in the theater to come up. Then he and Polly rejoined Anna Sage, and they all headed for the exit.

Purvis saw Dillinger walk out of the theater. Dillinger and his dates turned toward Pervis. Pervis said he looked directly into the eyes of John Dillinger. But Dillinger apparently didn't recognize him. The outlaw just kept walking. When he passed Purvis, Pervis struck a match and lit his cigar. But none of the agents or officers seemed to notice.

Some of them were still dealing with Chicago cops. Dillinger was now about a hundred feet from an alley. Purvis tried to signal again by striking another match, but he didn't know if his men had seen the second attempt, so he followed a few steps behind Dillinger. Dillinger was closing in on the alley. He was about 50 feet away. Then Pervis spotted a couple agents moving in Dillinger's direction.

They must have seen one of his signals. Dillinger, Polly, and Anna Sage passed the car Pervis had spent half the night sitting in. Agents closed in from everywhere. If Dillinger tried to run forward, he'd run straight into an agent. If he turned around and tried to double back, he'd run straight into Pervis. According to Polly, Dillinger did sense something was wrong. She felt his arm tense up. He noticed one of the agents.

Then he quickly scanned the area, assessing the possible escape routes. He was only a few steps from the alley. That was his best chance. Dillinger reached into his pants pocket. He gripped the handgun that he had ultimately decided to bring along tonight. Another agent fell in with Purvis a few steps behind the gangster. Neither man was a great shot with a handgun, so Hoover had sent a few agents who were known for their sharpshooting. Dillinger and the women passed two of these marksmen, Charlie Winstead and Clarence Hurt, who were waiting in a doorway.

Winston joined Purvis and the other agent. There were now three agents on Dillinger's heels. Clarence Hurt crossed in front of Dillinger. Dillinger and the two women walked arm and arm. They made it to the mouth of the alley and found two agents standing there with guns drawn. Dillinger was surrounded. There were at least six agents within a few feet of him. Dillinger separated from Polly and Anna Sage. He crouched down and started to run. He tried to dig the gun out of his pocket.

He bumped into a woman which caused him to spin around. While he was briefly distracted by the woman, Winstead and Hurt opened fire. Dillinger was hit three times before the fourth bullet took his life. That bullet entered the back of his neck and fractured a vertebrae. It continued through his spinal cord and up through the right side of his brain. It came out his face below his right eye. Dillinger started to fall but caught himself.

He stumbled into the alley and then fell hard onto his elbow in his face. The brim of his straw hat snapped. One of the lenses in his eyeglasses shattered. His pistol was in his hand, but he hadn't been able to get the safety off. Dillinger laid face down in the alley as his blood started to pool on the cement. Winstead and Purvis rolled him onto his back. Winstead said later, Dillinger mumbled some words that he couldn't understand. Purvis took the gun from Dillinger's hand.

He said he tried to talk to Dillinger and tried to get Dillinger to speak, but the outlaw was already dead. John Herbert Dillinger died one month to the day after his birthday. He had just turned 31 years. years old. Dillinger's father said he would rather have his son shot than captured, and John would have wanted it that way too. But John Sr. also expressed dismay over his son's death. He said, they shot him down in cold blood. He was surrounded by 15 men, and that ain't fair. As John Dillinger lay dead in the alley, onlookers hurried to collect souvenirs. They dipped

newspapers and handkerchiefs in his blood. Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton escaped the crowd. Sage would be forever known as the infamous Woman in Red, despite the fact that her skirt was orange, not red. She thought she'd made a deal with the Bureau to collect most of the $25,000 award and to have her deportation stopped. Neither happened. She received $5,000 and was deported to Romania, despite a public statement on her behalf made by Melvin Purr. Polly Hamilton claimed she didn't know Dillinger's true identity until the night he was killed, but that seems highly unlikely. She passed away in 1969, a little over a month after Billy Fischett.

Billy served two years in prison and then toured in a theatrical production with members of Dillinger's family called Crime Does Not Pay. She died in 1969 from cancer. The majority of the $3,300 that Dillinger had in his pockets disappeared before his body made it to the morgue. An East Chicago detective claimed he saw a colleague take the money. The detective identified his colleague as Sergeant Martin Zarkovic. No charges were ever filed.

Dillinger's last surviving gang members did not survive very long. One month after Dillinger died, Homer Van Meter was shot and killed by police. in St. Paul, Minnesota. Babyface Nelson went on to have one of the wildest and bloodiest careers of the era. He was the third public enemy number one, and he's believed to have killed more FBI agents than any other person in history. One of his victims was Agent Samuel Cowley, the man who helped Melvin Purvis plan the operation at the biograph theater.

After bringing down John Dillinger, Melvin Purvis chased the new public enemy number one, Pretty Boy Floyd. Purvis had a storied career with the Bureau, but it ended in tragedy. We'll revisit these events down the road when we come back to the gangsters of the 1930s. Sooner, cut you down. Sooner later, God'll cut you down. Thanks for listening to the story of John Dillinger here on Infamous America.

We're going to take a week off and return April 1st with one of my favorite stories of all time, the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. If you grew up in American school systems, you learned about Booth's assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. But the textbooks never told you about the 12 days Booth was on the run after the murder.

It was the largest manhunt in American history up to that time. It's an incredible story of the chase for America's most infamous assassin. That story begins in two weeks. We'll see you then. Well, you know I've been down. on a bending knee talking to the man from a galilee he spoke my name and my heart stood still when he said son go and do my will

i tell that a long tongue a liar and go and tell that a midnight writer i tell the rambler the gambler the back a bite or better tell them all Primary research for this season is going to cut them down, yeah, sooner or later God'll cut them down. Oh, no. 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 and myself. 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 and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening.

You can visit our website at blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're BlackBarrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrel Media on Twitter. If you want to contribute to the production of our shows, please visit our Patreon page. You'll also find discounts on our merchandise. That's patreon.com slash blackbarrel media. Thanks for listening.

We'll see you in two weeks. Well, on time. Sooner later, God'll cut you down. Sooner later, God'll cut you down. Well, you can throw your eyes. And hide your hand A work in the dark against your fellow man As sure is God Almighty made the black and white

What's done in the shadows will be brought to light I tell that a long tongue a liar And go and tell that a midnight writer I tell the rambler the gambler The back a bite or better tell them all All that God is gonna cut them down, yeah, sooner or later God'll cut them down. Wrong, wrong time.

Sooner or later God'll cut you down. Sooner or later God'll cut you down.