Bank robberies and prison escapes may be rare, but when they occur they gain media attention
and the public interest, and even sometimes cause scandals.
So that today, we are going to discover more about one of the cleverest criminals.
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There was an American bank robber during the depression era who robbed two dozen
banks and four police stations, and escaped the prison twice during his career.
John Herbert Dillinger, known as one of the most famous notorious american criminals, was born on
June 22, 1903 in Indianapolis from a harsh father who owned a grocery store and four houses. His
mother died when he was three years old in 1907, his sister Audrey who was 14 years old, took care
of him until she got married a year later and she had seven children. His father remarried again
in 1912 when John was 9 years old. John Dillinger’s life was full of action,
he spent his childhood suffering from his father bullying and beating. some days his father would
lock him in the house all day, and on the other days let him roam the neighborhood until dark.
Dillinger became the leader of a street gang called The Dirty Dozen
which mostly ran around the neighborhood pranking people and stealing things.
This childhood life made John Dillinger get in many troubles with the law as a teenager,
either for fighting or theft. Also he was noted for his bewildering personality and bullying of
small children. Besides, he quit school at the age of 16 to work in a machine shop. His
father decided to move the family to Mooresville, Indiana, in 1921 because he feared that the city
was corrupting his son, while John Dillinger would not change his rebellious behaviour in
the new life of the rural area, he kept his job by driving 18 miles on his motorcycle to Indianapolis
and spending the night life fighting, drinking and visiting prostitutes.
This teenager's life was really going crazy. In 1922 John Dillinger was arrested for auto
theft for the first time which led to the deterioration of the relationship with his father.
After one year John’s troubles led him enlisting in the United States Navy and was assigned to
the USS Utah as a fireman 3rd class, his job was shoveling coal into the ship’s burners,
but after a few months he decided to abandon because he felt that he shouldn't have to do that,
then he went back to Mooresville where he got married to Beryl Ethel Hovious on april 12,
1924. But he faced some difficulties including holding a stable job and preserving his marriage,
so that John and his accomplice Edgar Singleton who was an ex-convict and a referee for the
semi professional baseball team, they commit a grocery store robbery, but it didn’t go well when
the agent victim recognized John Dillinger. After that John Dillinger and his accomplice Edgar
were arrested the next day, but Edgar pleaded not guilty because he had a lawyer, and John Dillinger
was imprisoned in the Indiana State Reformatory after his father convinced him to confess the
crime, but later after the sentence, the father told the reporters that he regretted his terrible
advice and was appalled by the sentence. John Dillinger was sentenced 10 to 20 years
at Pendleton Reformatory in Indiana State, but the crime which got him was a foiled stick up because
it didn’t go as planned with Edgar Singleton. Dillinger was supposed to confront the grocery man
while Singleton waited in the alley with a car to get away, But the grocery man fought back against
Dillinger, the gun went off and Dillinger fled to the alley where he supposed to meet Singleton,
but there was no sign of him or of the car which they were supposed to get away with.
While John Dillinger in prison his wife visited him for a few years, and Dillinger sent her
frequent letters of love, but they eventually got divorced in 1929. Dillinger’s heart was broken and
he became a deeply bitter man, but he also became more engaged in a criminal lifestyle,
and he always used to say ( I would be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get out of here)
because he became embittered against the society because of his long prison sentence.
During the period he spent in prison, he made several attempts to escape the prison
but he failed, then he was adopted by a group of professional bank robbers such as Charles Makley,
Russell Clark, Homer Van Meter and the leader Harry Pierpont, but the closest ones were
Pierpont and Homer Van who taught him the ways of how to be a successful criminal,
then they planned that they would commit heists soon after they were released.
After some time Dillinger felt he paid his debt in the prison, the great opportunity came when
Dillinger’s lucky granted parole came in order to visit his stepmother who got ill, but she
passed away before he could return home, and it was obvious that wasn’t Dillinger's Point.
On June 21, 1933 after Dillinger Lucky Parole, he robbed his first bank taking 10.000 $ from
the New Carlisle National Bank to finance the Pierpont gang inorder to escape the prison as he
was tasked. Then he carried a series of robberies that would give them the money to bribe the guards
and facilitate their escape from the Michigan city prison. On August 14 Dillinger robbed a bank in
Bluffton, Ohio then he was tracked and captured by the police with a document which appeared
to be a prison escape plan and later he was transferred to the Allen County Jail in Lima.
Four days after Dillinger was captured, Ten men were able to escape the prison with the
conceive plan of Dillinger and other friends who smuggled guns into cells. Harry Pierpont,
Charles Makley, John Hamilton, Wlter Dietrich and Russell were among the prisoners who escaped.
On October 12 Pierpont and two others came to Ohio to free Dillinger from Lima city jail, and
during the successful operation of breakout, the lima sheriff Jesse Sarber was killed and the four
men escaped back to indiana to join the rest of the gang which later turned to Dillinger Gang.
The Dillinger gang raided police stations for guns and ammunition.
The gang became famous and gained its notoriety because of the bank robbery operations they did.
They robbed banks in Indiana, Wisconsin and Chicago for more than 130.000 $, after that
they headed to Arizona, Tucson to settle down for a period of time but, by that time four police
officers had been killed and two wounded. The Chicago police had established an elite
squad to track the fugitives and they were able to capture them on the 25th of january.
Dillinger was extradited to Indiana’s Crown Point Prison with the accusation of killing a police
officer named William Patrick O’Malley who was the one who responded to a robbery at the First
National Bank of east Chicago on January 15, 1934, he was also accused of shooting a dog
in Chicago.But Dillinger denied that and said (Hell this is going too far. How could I shoot
a dog in Chicago from down here in florida. I wonder if the dog’s name was Matt).
Dillinger was transported on an airplane and because of his struggle,
a police officer had shackled him. The local police boasted to the newspaper
that the jail was escape proof and posted extra guards as a precaution. But on march 3,
while Dillinger was still awaiting for his trial, he made the most celebrated escape
which was the last jailbreak. He had carved a wooden fake pistol and then blackened it with a
shoe polish and waved it around until the guards scared and let him out, then he locked every
employee in a cell. The gun may also have been a real gun smuggled into the prison by an associate.
During the escape Dillinger found two sub machine guns and enlisted an african american prisoner to
help him, they made their way with the sheriff’s car which they found in the prison garage.
John Dillinger’s jailbreak was a mistake because he stole the sheriff's car
and used it to cross from indiana to illinois, and this was a violation of the national motor
vehicle theft act and a federal offense which made Dillinger the most wanted fugitive and was
transformed by the FBI into a Public Enemy. John Dillinger loved the spotlight, but for him
being a celebrity it isn’t a good way of escaping the police. So that he decided to make a surgical
face to conceal his identity, and he also burned off his fingerprints with acid.
After some successful robberies John Dillinger was foiled by his friend Anna Sage;
a Romanian brothel woman lived in Chicago, also known as the woman in red
who turned up that she agreed to cooperate with The FBI and provide them with some information
about Dillinger in order to not be deported back to homeland, and also to get a bounty
of 10.000 $ that had been put on John’s head. John went to see a movie named Manhattan Melodrama
at the Biograph Theater around the corner of Anna’s house. The Theater was surrounded with 20 FBI
agents and police officers waited for Dillinger to show up with Anna who would be wearing an
orange dress to identify herself. Dillinger quickly recognized the operation and fled into
an alley where he was shot by agents who ended his crime spree on 22 july 1934 at approximately
10:40 pm according to a new york times report the next day. According to investigators,
John Dillinger died without saying a word. The death of John Dillinger came two months
after the deaths of the notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde.
John Dillinger was a famous Bank robber who made a total of 500.000 $ taking from different banks,
he was a bad guy, yet for some reasons he gained the public’s love. His body was available for
public display at the cook county morgue and it was seen by an estimated 15.000 people over a
day and half. His family gave him a christan burial on July 25, 1934 in Indiana cemetery.