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He and his gang robbed twenty four banks and four police stations.
He escaped from jail twice.
The media portrayed him as a modern day Robin Hood, and the public was enamored with him.
His name was John Herbert Dillinger, and he was the world's greatest bank robber, a criminal
agent so nefarious that his pursuit led J. Edgar Hoover to establish the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show- today we're going to take
a look at the brief life and times of the greatest bank robber in history: John Dillinger.
John Herbert Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
His father was a grocer and known to be a strict man who did not believe in sparing
the rod for fear of spoiling the child.
Sadly, little is known about his mother as she died when Dillinger was only three, and
when his father re-married six years later, Dillinger intensely disliked his stepmother-
although years later in his teens he would begin a brief affair with her.
As a kid he was frequently in trouble, and was known to be a bit of a bully.
He eventually quit school and got a job in a machine shop, not an uncommon thing for
pre-depression era youth to do in the United States.
Known as a very smart young man, Dillinger excelled at his job but his wild side inevitably
got the better of him and he began to stay out until all hours of the night.
Worried that the city life was corrupting his son, Dillinger's father sold the family
home and business and moved his family to a rural farm.
Dillinger would not take well to living in the boonies though, and the move to the countryside
did little to curb his wildness.
At constant odds with his strict, disciplinarian father, Dillinger eventually wound up stealing
a car to go on a joy ride and was caught by the police.
In order to avoid legal trouble though, and believing that a bit of military discipline
would do wonders for the young Dillinger, the police agreed to release him if he enlisted
in the US military.
Dillinger would go on to enlist in the US navy, and put his engineering talents to use
as a Petty officer third class Machinery Repairman aboard the battleship USS Utah.
He'd go on to be as poor a fit in the military as he'd been at home with his father though,
and after getting into trouble with his superior officers on several occasions, he eventually
jumped ship while docked at Boston and deserted the Navy.
A few months later the Navy would officially dishonorably discharge him.
Dillinger returned home to an angry father, but reconnected with an old flame and married
16-year old Beryl Hovious in 1924.
Determined to get out of their one-horse town and live in the big city, Dillinger and Hovious
left home and moved to Indianapolis.
Unfortunately, Dillinger had no luck finding any work in the city, and eventually fell
in with the wrong crowd, striking up a friendship with local pool shark, Ed Singleton.
The duo decided that the square life wasn't for them, and if society wouldn't let them
have the good life they deserved, then they'd just take it for themselves.
The duo planned their first robbery together and decided to return to Mooresville, Dillinger's
home town, to rob a local grocer.
The two were spotted by a local minister though who identified the men, and the duo was quickly
arrested.
His father took pity on the troubled young man, and perhaps felt guilty for the way Dillinger
had turned out, so he encouraged his son to plead guilty in the hopes that such a plead
would lead to leniency from the judge.
Unfortunately, Dillinger's military desertion and previous arrest for grand theft auto had
stained his reputation, and the judge charged him with two joint sentences of two to fourteen
years for intent to rob, and ten to twenty years for conspiracy to commit a felony.
Singleton on the other hand had plead guilty and only received a sentence of two years.
Embittered by the harsh sentence and resentful of his father for encouraging him to plead
guilty, Dillinger entered prison claiming that he would “come out the meanest bastard
you ever saw”.
While in prison he would meet several prominent and experienced bank robbers such as Harry
“Pete” Pierpont, Charles Makley, Russell Clark, and Homer Van Meter, who all took the
young Dillinger under their wing and taught him how to successfully plan and execute a
bank robbery.
The group of criminals also plotted future crimes they would commit together once released,
adding not just to Dillinger's criminal ambitions, but his growing knowledge too.
Meanwhile Dillinger's father campaigned for years to have his son released, even getting
a petition with one hundred and eighty eight signatures all attesting to the sweet, misunderstood
angel his son really was.
A judge eventually bought the claims, and Dillinger was released after nine and a half
years.
Unfortunately he came home to a country in the grip of the Great Depression, and with
no job prospects anywhere.
It was only a matter of weeks before Dillinger returned back to his life of crime, robbing
a bank in Bluffton, Ohio.
Sadly it seems Dillinger hadn't learned nearly as much as he thought he had in prison, because
he was quickly arrested by the police on September, 22, 1933, just four months after leaving prison.
Housed in a local county jail to await trial, police discovered what seemed to be a prison
escape plan while frisking Dillinger, though he denied any knowledge of such a plan.
Days later, eight of Dillinger's friends escape prison using those same plans, with the help
of shotguns and rifles that had somehow been smuggled into their cells.
Not long after, four men showed up at the jail where Dillinger was being held and claimed
to be prison staff who were there to take Dillinger to Indiana State Prison for violation
of his parole.
The suspicious sheriff asked to see credentials and one of the men pulled a gun and shot him,
then beat the wounded man into unconsciousness.
The men freed Dillinger and locked up the deputy and the sheriff's wife into an adjacent
cell as the sheriff bled to death on the floor in front of them.
J. Edgar Hoover's nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation was contacted by local police
who requested help in locating these very dangerous criminals, and while the feds began
the investigation that would lead to Dillinger's downfall, Dillinger for his part began his
legendary crime spree.
First the men plundered police arsenals in Auburn, Indiana and Peru, Indiana, stealing
several machine guns, rifles, revolvers, bulletproof vests, and ammunition.
Then the men began a string of bank robberies across the state, raking in tens of thousands
of dollars.
During the crime spree the Dillinger gang, as it was now known, killed a police detective
in Chicago, and a month later a police officer during the robbery of the First National Bank
of East Chicago.
With a lot of local heat building up in the area against the men, the gang decided to
go south to Florida, and after a string of local robberies there, moved far west to Tucson,
Arizona, always trying to keep one step ahead of the FBI and its agents.
While in Tucson though a fire broke out on January 23rd, 1934 at the hotel where two
of the gang members were hiding under assumed names.
Firemen responding to the blaze recognized the men from their wanted posters and contacted
the police, who promptly arrested them.
The duo gave up the fact that Dillinger was also in the area, and shortly after the police
ambushed and arrested Dillinger and the fourth gang member as well.
Police held Dillinger at the local county jail in Crown Point, Indiana, with the local
police chief boasting that the jail was escape proof- although extra guards were posted just
in case another breakout by associates of Dillinger was attempted.
On March 3rd, 1934 though Dillinger broke out of the escape-proof jail with the help
of a wooden gun he claimed to have whittled inside his cell.
Others would say that the gun was made from a potato, while others yet claimed that a
real gun had somehow been snuck into Dillinger's cell by a visitor.
Whatever the truth, Dillinger was free once more, and grabbing two machine guns he locked
up the guards and fled once more.
Unfortunately for Dillinger though, he stole the sheriff's car and drove it across the
Indiana- Illinois state line, resulting in a violation of the National Motor Vehicle
Theft Act, which was a federal felony and drew the full attention of the FBI.
Assisting local police up to this point, the FBI now had Dillinger fully in its sights,
and the resulting chase would prove fatal in the end for the young career criminal.
Dillinger returned to Chicago and joined up with several of his former prison mates, forming
a fearsome gang that continued its pillaging of local banks.
During this time Dillinger lived with his girlfriend, Evelyn Frechette, in a small apartment,
but on March 30th, 1934, two FBI agents spoke to the manager of the apartment building after
the man had reported two suspicious tenants.
The FBI surveilled the apartment and suspected that the tenants, under the name of Mr. and
Mrs. Hellman, were actually Dillinger and his girlfriend.
The next day a field agent and a police officer knocked on the door to Dillinger's apartment
and Evelyn Frechette answered, only to quickly slam it shut upon seeing the law enforcement
officers at her doorstep.
Police quickly surrounded the building, and during the siege Dillinger's friend, Homer
Van Meter was shot and killed in a shootout with the cops.
Under the cover of machine gun fire though, Dillinger and his girlfriend escaped through
a back door, Dillinger having suffered a gunshot wound during the escape.
Dillinger and Evelyn fled to Mooresville, Indiana, where the duo stayed with his father
until his wound healed.
His father, perhaps overcome with fatherly devotion, kept the two's location secret from
law enforcement.
Evelyn eventually left to go to Chicago and visit a friend, but was immediately arrested
by the FBI upon arrival.
Not shedding many tears for his criminal love bug, Dillinger, now fully healed, left home
and robbed a police station in Warsaw, Indiana of its guns and bulletproof vests.
Dillinger then moved to Upper Michigan, narrow avoiding a posse of FBI agents that had been
sent to Warsaw by plane.
A few days later though, the FBI task force received a tip that men resembling Dillinger
and his longtime accomplice, Baby Face Nelson, had checked in to the summer resort of Little
Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin.
Under the cover of darkness, FBI agents make their way up to the lodge and turn off their
vehicle lights as they get within two miles of the resort.
The agents take off into the woods and close the remaining distance on foot, determined
to not let Dillinger out of this trap.
Unfortunately as they got near, machine gunfire rained down on the men from the roof, and
the agents desperately called for backup- but to no avail.
Dillinger once more had escaped and evaded law enforcement.
Two months later though, a woman named Anna Sage, madame of a local brothel in Gary, Indiana,
contacted the FBI.
She claimed that Dillinger was staying in her brothel and offered to turn him in in
exchange for a cash reward and for help in fighting her deportation, as she was scheduled
for removal to her native Romania.
The FBI agreed to the cash reward and to lend what help they could in her deportation, and
for her part, Anna Sage informed the agents of Dillinger's exact whereabouts- even going
so far as to telling them his plans for the following Sunday night.
On Sunday, July 22, FBI agents waited in ambush as Dillinger exited a local theater.
Walking with two female companions at his side, an agent waiting in a doorway lit a
cigar as a signal, and suddenly FBI men swarmed the alley Dillinger was walking down.
Realizing what was going on, Dillinger pulled out a pistol as he tried to run away, but
three bullets found their mark and Dillinger fell to the pavement.
Just twenty minutes later the infamous bank robber would be pronounced dead.
John Dillinger was famously portrayed as a Robin Hood character by the media, and he
and his gang frequently gave interviews to local papers.
While he was charged in at least one homicide, Dillinger was adamant his entire life that
he had never, and would never shoot anyone, using his pistol for its fear value rather
than its killing potential.
Whatever the case, Dillinger's life of crime inevitably caught up with him and like so
many other criminals before him, would lead to nothing more than laying dead on the cold
pavement.
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If you found this video interesting, make sure you check out our other video waiter
who stole 1.4 billion dollars.
Thanks for watching, see you next time!