Author: Matt Blitz / Source: Today I Found Out
It was a record-breaking hot July night as three people, one man and two women, exited Chicago’s Biograph Theater. They had just seen Manhattan Melodrama, a crime film starring Clark Gable. As they left the theater at about 10:30 pm, a man standing at the door lit a cigar.
While seemingly an innocent act, it was a signal. With little delay, FBI agents started closing in. They were about to end the reign of one of the most famous bank robbers in U.S. History, John Dillinger.The story of Dillinger has been immortalized in numerous documentaries, books, and film. He’s been compared to Robin Hood for his habit of stealing from powerful banks during the Great Depression. Dillinger has been romanticized and turned into a legend. But, in truth, his life and his ultimate demise at the hands of the FBI was violent and brutish. His story ends not with him standing up for something, but by being double-crossed by a brothel owner under threat of being deported. Here’s the rather odd tale of how John Dillinger was finally caught – and killed – by the FBI.
Dillinger was pretty much always a troublemaker. Growing up in the city of Indianapolis, he frequently got in trouble for petty crimes like stealing chickens, fighting, and apparently once roping a “farmer’s outhouse to a freight train with predictable results.”
His mother died when he was four years old and, at least, one biographer accuses Dillinger of committing a lot more than small offenses as a young teenager (i.
e. stealing coal, assault, and gang rape).Thinking the big city was a problem, his extremely strict father, who apparently took the “spare the rod, spoil the child” parenting style to the extreme, moved him to the small farming community of Mooresville, Indiana. Resentful, Dillinger stole a car from a couple who went to the same church and drove back to Indianapolis. Luckily for him, no charges were pressed in the incident.
Perhaps trying to straighten out his act, or just get away, he enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to the USS Utah (which would be sunk two decades later in Pearl Harbor).
He couldn’t deal with the discipline there and was ultimately dishonorably discharged. He returned home to Mooresville and, while he married, he began to hang with a bad crowd.
Not long after, the turning point of his life occurred on one September night in 1924. In a nutshell, he got really drunk with a friend and robbed a local grocer, netting the pair $50 (about $720 today).
Unfortunately for him, he and his companion were recognized while fleeing the store and the pair found themselves in jail the next day. Also unfortunately for Dillinger, without consulting a lawyer, he took his father’s advice to admit to the crime and plead guilty. His father, a church deacon, had apparently spoken with the Morgan County prosecutor and seemingly secured a vague deal for leniency if Dillinger confessed.
Instead, once Dillinger pled guilty, they pretty much threw the book at him. For the minor assault on the grocer and petty robbery, he got a 10 year prison sentence, of which he served nine and a half years before being paroled.
In jail, he was written up often for infractions like gambling, crude language, and not obeying orders. He even attempted to escape once. More important to his future life, he befriended other criminals, many of which he would work with during his infamous robberies.
Needless to say, when he was released…
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