Depression Era Gangsters | John Dillinger | 1 | Mosaic of Crime | True Crime

Until the mid-1920s, bank robberies were relatively rare in the United States of America. Banks were mostly burglarized. You see, in a robbery, someone  enters a bank during office hours and demands money by  force or threat of force. In a burglary, someone breaks into  a closed bank to steal the money. Historians had a meeting and decreed that Frank and Jesse James associates committed the first legit  bank robbery in the United States on February 13, 1866.

The James Boys,  a gang of ex-Confederate irregulars, robbed the Clay County Savings Association  in Liberty, Missouri, owned by Republican ex-militiamen. Their take was $60,000,  or 1.1 million today. The James Boys teamed up  with outlaw Cole Younger and robbed trains, stagecoaches,  and banks for many years, often in front of large crowds.

They became legends. The Wild Bunch,  with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, was another iconic train robber gang  of the Wild West who also swiped  several banks along the way. The press glamorized the gangs who were considered the  larger-than-life anti-heroes of the Wild West and the old Confederacy. However, as the Western Frontier  gradually disappeared, the bank robberies were  once again the boring, non-headline-grabbing nighttime burglaries.

Meanwhile, bank security improved. For instance, after the Newton Gang  used nitroglycerine to blow up safe doors, reinforced safes  and alarms were introduced. In the 1920s,  a new breed of bank robbers emerged. The press called them  “Yeggmen,” or “Yeggs.” These Yeggs were a reaction to the Roaring Twenties, the era of relaxation and prosperity  after World War One.

Mass produced goods like clothes,  washing machines, and radios became widely available. But the working class had  no access to this wealth. An average household income in  states like Oklahoma and Missouri was below $500 a year, but an average bank robber could rake in a cool $10,000  for a morning’s work.

Bank robbery became  a viable alternative to hard labor. Though robbing a bank was easy, making a clean getaway was not. Many robbers were caught with the loot  and ended up in prison. That is… until Herman Karl Lamm. In 1917, while serving time in a Utah prison for a botched hold-up, Herman “The Baron” Lamm developed  a highly effective method for robbing banks:  the Lamm Technique.

He turned bank robbery  into a profession. The Baron introduced “casing” a bank. His men spent hours observing  the bank guards, alarms, and tellers. They would study floor plans,  identify the safes, and make contingency plans. Lamm assigned every gang member  a role in the robbery, such as the lookout, the wheel man, the lobby man, and the vault man.

Each robber had a task  that was timed to the second. Once time was up,  everyone had to leave, regardless of how much money was collected. Lamm’s most important invention was the getaway map marked with landmarks and back roads. He called them “gits.” The gits were stuck to the dashboard of a high-powered non-descript getaway car, ideally driven by a race car driver.

He used a stopwatch to time distances and rehearsed the gits  in different types of weather. The Lamm Technique was very successful and a highly guarded secret, until the Lamm gang was caught and one of its members  taught it to John Dillinger… I am Yvette  and this is Defragged History. Thank you for tuning in to episode 1  of the story of John Dillinger: how it started, how it ended, and everything in between.

CHAPTER 1: JUNIOR On June 22, 1903, at 2 AM, a baby boy was born to John Wilson Dillinger and  Mary Ellen, Mollie, Lancaster in Oak Hill, Indianapolis, Indiana. Mr. John Dillinger owned  a grocery store and several homes and was a deacon at the  Hillside Christian Church in Indianapolis. He was a kind but somber man with  stern religious and moral principles.

The baby’s 13-year-old sister, Audrey, was rather excited  to have a little brother and speculated in  her diary about his name: “It will be either John, Harold,  Alfred, Harry, or Theodore.” The parents decided on John.  John Herbert Dillinger. In case you are wondering, and I know you’re not, the Dillinger name should  actually be pronounced Dillinger.

Here’s a clip of John Senior saying it: I’m John Dillinger’s father. However, for some reason, that will forever remain a mystery, people back then started saying Dillinger, and they still do today, and so will I. I’m sorry, I’m conforming  to the masses here. Little Johnnie was a happy toddler, but disaster struck when he was three.

His mom got ill and was hospitalized. Big sis Audrey had just gotten married  to Emmet Hancock and was pregnant. However, she moved back home to take over mothering duties while Dillinger Sr. spent time  at the hospital. Mollie had an apoplectic stroke and  died after surgery on February 1, 1907. On the day of the funeral,  little Dillinger disappeared.

The family discovered him  by his mother’s coffin. He’d managed to drag a chair up to it and was shaking her,  trying to wake her up. He didn’t stop looking for his mom. Father Dillinger recalled: “It wrung my heart […]  to see Johnnie’s bewilderment at his mother’s continued absence. He toddled around hunting  Mollie and crying for her.

He was so young that in a few weeks,  he forgot his loss.” CHAPTER 2: DARK JOHNNIE Johnnie’s upbringing was inconsistent. Though Daddy Dillinger believed in  “spare the rod, spoil the child.” He didn’t spare the rod one moment, the kid was severely beaten  for the slightest misbehavior or was locked up, but spoilt him the next by giving him  the first bicycle on the block or allowing him  to run around after dark.

Dillinger Jr.,  though a shy and timid boy, exuded an assuring self-reliance. He had a quick wit and always had  a ready retort when needed. In other words,  he was a cocky smart mouth. Like most boys,  Johnnie was mischievous. Among other things, he raided strawberry  and melon patches and orchards, snagged a neighbor’s chicken,  and teased the town drunk.

Once, he tied a rose trellis to  a street car standing on nearby tracks. Dillinger thought the end result was funny. His father was not amused. When confronted, he told his father: “What if I did wreck his roses.  The old bastard is mean anyhow.” Dad gave him a severe beating  for his attitude. Johnnie attended  the local elementary school but wasn’t a very studious child, certainly no prodigy.

He didn’t care for arithmetic,  but he loved to read. When he ran out, he’d often borrow books from neighbors. Johnnie inhaled ‘dime novels’ with embellished, factional  stories of the old Wild West. His favorites were the romanticized  tales of outlaw Jesse James, who showed courage and daring but was also chivalrous and kind  toward women and children.

He developed a fascination for  marbles, baseball, and, later, guns. When exploring the woods  for hours with his dog, he brought a gun  to shoot rodents and crows. When Johnnie got older, he  helped his father at the grocery store. One day, he gave a girl he liked some chewing gum for free. His father snatched the gum  from the girl’s hands and smacked his son so hard  that Johnnie bled.

But the boy didn’t cry and just stared uncannily  at his father. This was the first emergence of  “Dark Johnnie.” When Johnnie was nine, John senior  married Elizabeth – Lizzie – Fields, a 32-year-old shy country woman. He had met Lizzie at  his father Mathias Dillinger’s funeral. With the new mom moving in, big Sis Audrey moved out and settled down with her husband in the village of Maywood, Indiana.

Her firstborn had died after a day, but she and Emmett had six more children. Still, Audrey always treated  Johnnie like a son, almost like a replacement  for the one she’d lost. Audrey, a classically trained pianist, tried to teach Junior music,  but the kid couldn’t sit still. In 1914, Johnnie’s stepmom  gave birth to a boy, Hubert, followed by two girls, Doris and Frances.

But she loved Junior as her own, and Dillinger grew very fond of her. As Johnnie entered puberty, his shyness disappeared, and he started hanging out  with troublesome youth. Shortly after World War I broke out, Johnnie joined the Dirty Dozen gang and was their leader by age twelve. They got in all sorts of trouble, but their main crime was stealing coal from the Pennsylvania Railroad  and selling it to neighbors.

One day, some women who’d  come to help for a discount were caught by the railway detectives and ratted the Dirty Dozen out. The whole Gang trembled as they were brought before  the Judge in Juvenile court, but not Dillinger. He just stared the Judge in  the eye with his arms folded, cap on his head,  chewing gum.

The Judge ordered him to remove  the cap and take out the gum. Dillinger smirked and stuck  the gum on his cap instead. The Judge said: “Your mind is crippled.” Still, there wasn’t much truth or evidence for the stories going around that he was somehow evil incarnate, which would one day bubble over  into a life of crime.

His youth was fairly ordinary. He was a genial, high-spirited kid who liked pranks and  sometimes got into fights, which he usually won. Johnnie entered high school  and became sexually active. He started fooling around  with the local girls. When he was 16,  he dropped out of school, much against his father’s wishes and became a mechanic at  the Reliance Specialty Company.

He was very skilled and  loved working on cars and machines. Taking them apart and  putting them back together. But Johnnie plus money equaled freedom  to do what he wanted. He started staying out at all hours of  the night doing God knows what. Father Dillinger stepped in to save  his son from potential ruin.

He’d already planned to retire and decided to move his family  to a farm in the countryside. He sold the store and his four houses and bought a 62-acre spread  in Mooresville, Indiana, Lizzie’s hometown of 1800, to run a corn and chicken farm. Johnnie still lived at home  and had to move with them. The Dillingers came from  a long line of farmers, and the old man figured rustic farm life  might calm Young Dillinger down.

Well, it didn’t. CHAPTER 3: TEMPERANCE The Temperance Movement  in the United States gained momentum during World War I. They loudly proclaimed  the negative effects alcohol had on people’s health, personalities,  and family lives. They were campaigning to get  the government to ban it. Factory owners backed the plan.

No alcohol meant  an increase in productivity and fewer workplace accidents. It looked like a ban was coming when the United States  entered World War I in 1917. President Woodrow Wilson  prohibited alcohol production to save grain for food. When the war was over,  Congress decided to make it official, submitted the 18th Amendment, and passed the Volstead Act in 1920, which banned  the manufacture, transportation, and sale of intoxicating liquors.

However, enforcing  this Prohibition law proved very difficult. Because liquor went underground. Enter “bootlegging,”  the illegal production and sale of liquor, “speakeasies,”  the hidden stores or nightclubs that secretly sold alcohol in backrooms, and homemade “moonshine” or “bathtub gin.” Bootleggers and speakeasies  were the domain of gangsters ruled by mob bosses and crime lords.

The most notorious gangster…  er… businessman, Al “Scarface” Capone in Chicago, Illinois, raked in millions of dollars  during the Prohibition Era. Mainly because he eliminated  the competition, one Gang at a time. All this meant that, although alcohol  consumption dropped by 30 percent, and arrests for drunkenness went down, police corruption, crime,  and gang violence rose sharply.

Frying pan, fire. CHAPTER 4: YOUNG AND RESTLESS John Dillinger Junior moved  into a second-floor bedroom of the white, two-story farmhouse  in Mooresville, Indiana. But he had a job, so he commuted  the 18 miles to Indianapolis on the Interurban,  an electric streetcar. But riding the Interurban was for losers, so he bought and fixed up  an old motorcycle.

He rode it until he could afford  a car, an old prototype Chevy. Like most young men,  Johnnie had a need for speed and quickly caught  his first speeding ticket. The fine was $11,  nearly a week’s wages. He was thrilled  when his father let him drive the family Apperson Jack Rabbit sedan, which had a more  powerful engine than the Chevy.

Johnnie would take the local youth  for rides, and he became very popular. But during one of these rides, Dark Johnnie resurfaced. He thought a girl mocked him and put pedal to the metal to race  back into town like a madman, scaring the bejeezus  out of everyone. Afterward, the teens, including Mary,  a girl he was dating, dropped him like a hot potato.

He attempted to win her love back  by singing songs outside her window, but Mary ignored him. So, he dropped her like a hot potato and started looking for other ladies. Not to court them,  just to sleep with them. Meanwhile, he played baseball  at the Mooresville Athletic Club, first as a second baseman and  later as the club’s leading pitcher.

On Saturday afternoons, Dillinger  could be found at the Idle Times Theater to watch the popular gangster movies. During these early days of cinema, the larger-than-live crooks  were bad ass and awesome and always outsmarted  the bumbling cops who pursued them. He took on the movie gangster persona and mixed it with a dollop  of dime novel Jesse James.

He wore his hat tilted to the side, walked with a mobster swagger,  and talked tough. Then, unexpectedly, he fell  head over heels in love with his uncle’s stepdaughter,  Frances Thornton, a feisty auburn-haired girl  with big dark eyes. He didn’t know what hit him. His love for her was unusually intense. He proposed to Frances,  but she bent to her stepfather’s will and turned him down.

He was devastated  and never spoke to her again. He drowned his sorrows in the arms of  various girls in nearby Martinsville. But, once he burned through  the ones willing to sleep with him, he visited the houses of  ill repute in Indianapolis. He contracted gonorrhea for his efforts. According to a persistent legend, Dillinger stole a car from the  Quacker Church parking lot in Mooresville to visit a girl in Indianapolis  he’d supposedly gotten pregnant.

However, Dillinger swore he was with  a girl in Martinsville at that time. This mystery pregnant girl seems  to have been a later invention. Two days after this alleged ‘car’ incident, on July 23, 1923, John Dillinger enlisted in the Navy because a wild child like Johnnie  would totally thrive in regimented life.

Well, of course he wouldn’t. Four months later, Number 291-06-76 completed basic training  at Great Lakes Training Station and was assigned to the battleship Utah  as a Fireman Third class. The Utah was one of the ships sunk during  the 1941 Pearl Harbor attacks. His job? Shoveling coal  into the ship’s huge boilers.

Hot, backbreaking labor. Johnnie was court-martialed for  going AWOL twice in three days and had to spend time in  the brig on bread and water. On December 4, 1923, while the Utah  was docked in Boston, he went AWOL again and never returned. The Navy slapped a $50 bounty on his head. Johnnie AWOL fell off the grid  for two months – some claim he spent time in Indianapolis with another woman he’d gotten pregnant – but then the 20-year-old  strolled back into his father’s farm.

He told his dad he’d been  discharged from the Navy because of a heart murmur. CHAPTER 5: FOOLING AROUND Back at the Mooresville farm, John Dillinger Jr. was somber and aimless. He worked odd jobs  and slept his way around town. Then, on April 12, 1924,  seemingly out of the blue, he married Beryl Ethel Hovious, a gorgeous 16-year-old  from a poor working-class family.

To get around the parental consent laws, Hovious lied that she was 18. Many thought she was merely  a Frances Thornton stand-in and that Johnnie  didn’t really care for her. But they enjoyed each  other’s company very much. Beryl dropped out of high school and became a waitress  to help make ends meet. The newlyweds soon moved  into an upstairs apartment near Martinsville’s town square.

Johnnie joined  the Martinsville Baseball team and befriended the 30-year-old Umpire, William Edgar Singleton,  a distant cousin of Dillinger’s stepmom. Singleton was ten years older, worked for the local power company, and was married with two kids. At the local pool hall, Singleton told all  the youngin’s tall tales of when he served time at  Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.

Dillinger hung on Ed’s every word as though he was in the presence  of a real-life movie gangster. Dillinger was still job hopping, working at the machine shop, as  an upholsterer, and at a haberdashery. He tried a stable family life,  but it just didn’t suit him. He had taken up smoking  Bull Durham roll-your-owns and often stayed out late at night.

Beryl thought  her husband was fooling around and complained to her father-in-law. But Junior told his dad he was just  hanging out at the Interurban Barn. Well, that wasn’t any better. The Barn was a notorious hangout  for aimless youth. Johnnie was back to  “making trouble in the neighborhood.” When he and two of his buddies  were arrested for stealing chickens, his father compensated the owner, who then dropped the charges.

One day, Singleton convinced Dillinger to drink some White Mule or moonshine, and the lightweight got  pretty drunk, pretty darn fast. Singleton casually mentioned that he’d been shadowing B. Frank Morgan, the elderly owner of  the West End Grocery store. Every Saturday, the man  went uptown for a haircut and brought the day’s take.

They should go get it from him. Dillinger knew Morgan from  when he’d stolen pennies from his store when he was younger. The man hadn’t turned him in and instead given him  a lecture on kindness. This lesson was apparently lost on Johnnie. CHAPTER 6: ROOKIE MISTAKE On September 6, 1924, grocer Frank Morgan  locked up his store and headed for the John Smith’s  barbershop in Mooresville.

In his pocket, the day’s take of $120, which he dropped off  at home on the way over. After he was done, at around 10 PM,  Morgan walked home. When he rounded the corner of  the First Christian church, a man leaped from the bushes wielding an Iver Johnson gun in one hand and a bolt wrapped in  a handkerchief in the other.

The figure swung the bolt and let it land on the man’s head, or rather his straw-boater hat. The hat was crushed,  and the man fell to his knees, but the bolt had no heft to it and failed to knock the grocer out. Morgan didn’t stay down. He grabbed his assailant’s gun, and while the duo fought for it,  it went off, grazing the grocer’s left hand  between thumb and forefinger.

Porch lights snapped on left and right, and Morgan yelled for help. When several neighbors came running, the assailant fled down the street, ducked into an alley, and made a bee-line for the getaway car parked half a block away. The attacker was John Dillinger, the getaway car driver, Ed Singleton. Johnnie heard  the Model T crank and fire, but the sound of  the motor didn’t get louder; i

nstead… it faded! “Veteran” crook Singleton had gotten  spooked when he heard the shot. Johnnie was on his own. He ducked into the pool room  and was like: hey, so, gee,  what about that Mr, Morgan, huh? Ain’t that something? No one knew what he was talking about, and his nervous behavior raised suspicions. A

nd… were those bloodstains  on his hat and pants? John Jr. bailed and  hid out at his pop’s farm. Two days later,  on Monday morning, September 8, 1924,  Deputy Sheriff John Hayworth and Marshal Greeson drove  to the Dillinger farm. They told John Jr.  to get his hat and coat: he was going to the Martinsville jail. John Sr.

 figured his son had been  involved in an Interurban barn brawl or had done  more chicken snatching. Dillinger remained tight-lipped  during questioning. He denied being involved  in an assault on Mr. Morgan. They told him: well, Mr. Morgan identified you. Listeners: he hadn’t. But Dillinger said nothing. The police had enough to hold him and figured the young man  would regain his memory, spending some time in a nasty jail cell.

However, the County prosecutor needed  a confession to make the case. He promised Johnnie leniency  if he pleaded guilty, but Dillinger said nothing. CHAPTER 7: NEW START A week after his arrest, Dad Dillinger and big sis Audrey visited  Johnnie at the Martinsville jailhouse. The cell upstairs in  the old brick building was so dark they couldn’t see Johnnie  until he approached the bars.

Senior remembered  his son’s face looking cold and hard. The farmer didn’t know what to say and rambled on about  Johnnie’s stepmom, the farm, church, or whatever popped into his head. Johnnie just listened in silence. Morgan County Prosecutor  Fred Steiger had a problem. Mr.

 Morgan couldn’t  make a positive identification, and the case against  Young Dillinger was falling apart. So, Steiger told the Dillingers  that they had irrefutable proof. But not to worry,  if Johnnie pleaded guilty, he’d get a light sentence. And don’t bother wasting money  on a fancy lawyer. The court would be lenient. Old man Dillinger told his son: “Johnnie, if you did this thing,  the only way is to own up to it.

They’ll go easy on you, and you can get a new start. You’ll be okay, but you got to tell them the truth.” And so Dillinger came clean. He implicated his mentor Singleton, who had quietly  disappeared from town and said he  had participated in the attack. But when Singleton was arrested, he blamed Dillinger  for the whole thing.

John Sr. was convinced that making his son fess up  was the right move. Well, he was wrong. CHAPTER 8: MANDATORY MAXIMUM On September 15, 1924, John Dillinger and Ed Singleton . appeared before  Judge Joseph Warford Williams Johnnie had no lawyer, and the prosecutor  had assured Dillinger senior that he didn’t need  to attend the trial either.

However, this  wasn’t Singleton’s first rodeo. He had hired a  ‘smart’ lawyer from Indianapolis who entered a not-guilty plea and moved his case  before a different judge. As planned, Dillinger pleaded guilty, expecting a light sentence. However, Williams was  one of the toughest judges around. He sided with  the angry citizens of Mooresville who had elected him to the bench.

He handed Dillinger the maximum sentence: ten to twenty  for assault with intent to rob, and two to fourteen  for conspiracy to commit a felony. Williams gave Dillinger  a slight break by making the sentences concurrent, basically eliminating  the second prison term. However, he now had to serve  a minimum of ten years in the slammer.

It was a harsh sentence  for a first-time offender. Johnnie was not yet 21 years old,  married, came from a respectable family,  and had no previous criminal record. Plus, he’d committed the crime while under the influence of liquor  and an older individual. Judge Williams could  have granted probation, but he argued that Dillinger  had pleaded guilty.

Under the Statutes  of the State of Indiana, he had no choice but to give him  the mandatory maximum sentence. However, Williams neglected  his moral duty. He should never  have accepted a guilty plea, knowing Dillinger had no legal counsel and was unaware of what such a plea meant. Johnnie was enraged. He felt deeply betrayed  by the system and his father.

The following day,  the angry young man was handcuffed, shoved into the Interurban, and escorted to Pendleton Reformatory, Indiana’s newest corrections facility  for offenders under 21 years of age. John Sr. was stunned when  he found out what happened and rushed to Martinsville  to appeal to the Judge. But Williams shut him down.

He followed the law. “I should have got  a good lawyer for Johnnie. I should not have let him  face the music alone, depending on the glib promises of  a politically motivated prosecutor. Can you imagine my feelings  when rumors reached me that there had been talk  of turning Johnnie loose because of insufficient evidence until I butted in and persuaded him  to plead guilty?” The Navy was alerted that  their missing sailor had been found, filed paperwork for  a dishonorable discharge, and waived any claim to him.

When Inmate #14395  was brought before Pendleton’s Superintendent  A.F. Miles, a caring man who believed  in the ideal of rehabilitation, Dillinger fumed that he  had been tricked into confessing and then quietly: “I won’t cause you  any trouble except to escape. I can beat your institution. I’ll go right over  the administration building.

” Miles had met a thousand Dillingers before and told him he’d like to see him try. CHAPTER 9: SCREW LOOSE The Indiana Reformatory  wasn’t a prison, per se, but its 30-foot reinforced concrete walls and gun towers at each  of its four corners with powerful searchlights at night sure made it look like one. Johnnie Dillinger was led through  a maze of corridors and steel doors to a brightly lit,  triple-tiered cell block.

Pendleton was designed to  house 1,200 short-term “minors,” men under 21, but it was dangerously  overpopulated and understaffed. Most guards pulled double shifts to keep nearly 2,500 inmates in line. The inmates and the “screws,”  or guards, were constantly at war, usually about illegal smoking. Every Saturday night, when each man got a bag of tobacco, the place got rowdy.

John Dillinger couldn’t stand the noise, and three weeks into his stay, he was missing during the head count. The alarm was raised. Everyone, guards and other personnel  got dressed to hunt him down. They discovered him hiding in a  pile of wood shavings in the foundry. When a supervisor loudly announced that he would set fire to  the highly flammable heap, Johnnie scurried out.

Just like that,  barely thirty days into his sentence, he’d earned an extra six months. CHAPTER 10: MEANEST BASTARD On October 15, 1924, John Dillinger  was driven to Franklin, Indiana, where his partner in crime,  Ed Singleton, stood trial. Grocer Frank Morgan,  who had eleven stitches on his head, had recovered enough from his ordeal to share the story of  his brutal attack in court.

It took the jury only twenty minutes to find Ed Singleton guilty of conspiracy, accessory, and assault charges. However, Ed was sentenced only  on the conspiracy charge to two to fourteen years,  a fine of twenty-five dollars, and he was disenfranchised for a year. Dillinger was fuming  about Singleton’s lighter sentence and vowed to make good on his promise: “I’ll be the meanest bastard  you ever saw when I get out.

” However, on the way back to Pendleton, Dillinger seemed indifferent. On the Interurban,  he offered his friendly escort, Morgan County Deputy Russell Peterson, a peach and some candy. Peterson declined:  the treats might be doped. At the Interurban Barn  in Indianapolis, Peterson bought John Jr.

 a soft drink and allowed him to drink it  at a picnic table outside. But the handcuffs stayed on. The Deputy sat across from the young man when Dillinger suddenly pushed  his feet against the table’s edge and knocked Peterson backward. Johnnie took off. The Deputy scrambled after him and fired at the escaping felon. Johnnie knew Indianapolis well  but not well enough.

The chase ended in a blind alley. Peterson quickly cornered him, dragged him back to the Interurban, and returned him to Pendleton. He told interviewers later. “I knew John’s dad,  I thought well of him. Besides, John was just a kid, and you can’t take  ten years out of a kid’s life.” Once under lock and key, Young Dillinger was always  on the lookout for ways out of prison.

In November 1924, two fellow inmates had  gotten hold of a hacksaw blade and showed Johnnie how far  they’d sawed through the bars. Dillinger saw possibilities and told his wife  Beryl he’d be home for Christmas. The trio escaped into the hallway… where they were caught. And, just like that, inmate #14395 got  another six months added to his sentence.

Johnnie had served ninety days and had extended his stay an extra year. If he kept it up, at this rate,  he would never be released. CHAPTER 11: HANDSOME HARRY & THE PRISON CLOWN The Indiana Reform House  had four civilian-run factories that used the cheap, forced labor of  the prisoners to turn a nifty profit.

Inmates worked eight-hour days making shirts, underwear, pants,  kettles, tableware, and other objects. John Dillinger was assigned  to the most hated Foundry 4, with its 130-degree heat,  to make manhole covers. He accidentally, on purpose, poured  hot steel into one of his foundry shoes. He hoped for a transfer, but he wasn’t the first to try this  and stayed on.

So, Dillinger poured acid on his heel  to make the injury much worse, and he was transferred to yard duty. Dillinger – Prison Management 1 – 0. In 1927, he switched tactics  and became a model prisoner. As a reward for his good behavior, he ended up in Shirt Factory #2 as a seamster and made new friends. One such friend was Homer Van Meter  from Fort Wayne, Indiana, the prison clown.

A year and a half younger than Dillinger, Homer had run from home when he was twelve  and spent many years thieving. Eventually, he was busted  for a train robbery and was given ten-to-twenty-one. Van Meter was always involved  in one escape attempt or another and was frequently punished  for not finishing his jobs.

He may have been a mister funny man, but he was also a master at cunning. He may have suffered from some  undiagnosed psychiatric illness. Either way, everyone considered him  too dangerous to be cut loose. Another one of John’s new buddies was the equally  irredeemable Harry ‘Pete’ Pierpont. A year older than Dillinger, Pierpont was nicknamed  “Handsome Harry” for his chiseled, movie-star features  and bright blue eyes.

He’d already spent time inside  for attempted carjacking. However, his mother,  Lena Pierpont, had convinced officials to release him after serving  six months in 1924. Pierpont decided  to give “going straight” a whirl and worked at his father’s sand  and gravel business. But he got bored, assembled a gang of thugs  he had met in the joint, and robbed Indiana banks.

However, Pierpont and the Gang were betrayed by  one of his gangmate’s girlfriends, and Handsome Harry was hit with a  ten to twenty-one-year sentence. All of Pierpont’s breakout attempts failed, and he was eventually shipped off to Indiana State Penitentiary  in Michigan City to make him their problem. Van Meter was unloaded  on the big house soon after.

Dillinger took  his friends’ departures hard. He dropped the model prisoner act  and behaved like a child. The punishments were once more piling up. While Dillinger languished  in the Reformatory, Chicago was shaken by a violent massacre. CHAPTER 12: ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE The city of Chicago, Illinois,  had a decades-long reputation for lawlessness, violence,  and its ruthless underworld.

Corrupt police  and shady politicians allowed gangs  to roam the neighborhoods, which had wonderfully  uplifting names such as Hells Half Acre, Little Hell,  The Badlands, and The Black Hole, making the town nigh ungovernable. Crime-Lord-in Chief,  Al “Scarface” Capone was busy ruthlessly cleaning  the streets of competitor gangs.

On Saint Valentine’s Day,  Thursday, February 14, 1929, one such competitor,  Irish gangster George “Bugs” Moran of the North Side Gang, was running late for a meeting  with his men at his headquarters. He was lucky  because seven of his men were lined up and shot by unknown gunmen. Moran believed Capone was responsible  for the massacre, but Capone, conveniently  vacationing in Florida, denied it.

It remains one of  the biggest unsolved crimes in history, and the event shocked the nation. People were used to a little violence,  but this was next level. Soon after, Capone was  declared “Public Enemy Number One.” He was arrested and jailed several times, but no charge ever stuck. Ultimately, Scarface was  convicted of tax evasion in 1931, and he was sentenced to 11 years and ended up in Alcatraz after it was converted  to a Federal prison in 1934.

CHAPTER 13: PLAY BALL Inside Pendleton Reformatory,  John Dillinger attended school. He also played shortstop in baseball games organized by a semi-professional team  from a town nearby. Fortunately, Pendleton  wasn’t too far from home, so his wife Beryl  and his family could visit him. But the trips were  time-consuming and costly, and after a few years,  visitor fatigue set in.

Writing letters also became a chore, and Dillinger’s long letters  often went unanswered. Only Mary,  his favorite niece, remained true. She visited him whenever possible, but more importantly,  she wrote the prisoner long letters; truly a blessing for  the incarcerated uncle. Audrey pestered Beryl for  not visiting her husband more often.

But she claimed she didn’t  have money for the Interurban fair. She even sold a sweater  once to pay for the trip. Besides, the visits with  her prison hubby often ended in fights. And then she just stopped going. In April 1929, Beryl unexpectedly  showed up during visiting hours to bring Johnnie bad tidings.

She had filed for divorce. No one but John was surprised. On June 20, 1929,  the Judge granted her divorce on the grounds that  her husband was a convicted felon. A week later, Beryl married  a mechanic named Harold McGowan. Johnnie was devastated and spent hours silently brooding  in his cot. He couldn’t find the words  to express his grief.

Dillinger later said: “I began to know how you feel  when your heart is breaking. For four years, I had looked  forward to going back home, and now there wasn’t going  to be any home to go back to.” But the blows kept coming. His parole hearing didn’t go well. The chairman of the Parole Board told him: “Young man, you’ve only served  a small part of your term, and apparently, you aren’t  amenable to prison life.

Perhaps you’d better  go back for a few years.” Dillinger was stunned. He’d served nearly five years and behaved like a choir boy in the last two. There was simply no pleasing these people. Johnnie told the board to transfer him to the Indiana State Penitentiary  at Michigan City. It was the parole board’s turn  to be stunned.

Dillinger explained: “I want to go there and play baseball. They have a real team.” The board was like: doubt. But Indiana Governor Harry Guyer Leslie, who had seen him play, said: “It might be an occupation  for him later. I’d be in favor of his transfer.” And so, on July 15, 1929, John Dillinger was  transferred to Michigan City.

Listeners: he never had  the intention to play ball there. He just wanted to reunite with those who could teach him how to be bad: Harry Pierpont and Homer Van Meter. CHAPTER 14: CAULDRON OF CRIME The sprawling complex of the Indiana  State Prison at Michigan City, Indiana, was home to petty offenders  and hardened criminals alike.

Forgers, hold-up men,  con men, bank robbers, car bandits, and first-degree murderers  were all mixed together. The prisoners were promised rehabilitation, but once inside,  they were treated like scum, and many men became very bitter. As a result, petty offenders  learned from the pros to become hardened criminals, leaving the cauldron of crime  far greater threats to society than before they went in.

The lesser criminals held out hope for parole and wrote,  or got others to write, appeals to the parole board. Of the irredeemable inmates, the older crooks were generally  resigned to their fate, while the younger pros constantly  looked for ways to break out. When Dillinger arrived, tight restrictions  had just been put in place for the 2800 inmates at Michigan City.

After some unruly incidents, the Silent System was introduced  to control the prison population. Men ate, marched, and worked in silence and raised their hands if  they needed to go to the toilet. They learned to talk to each  other without moving lips. Like all the other prisoners, Dillinger lived in a cell of  six by nine by seven feet, lit by a bare 25-watt bulb.

On the wall hung a card with 27 rules. Inmates had no books, magazines,  or newspapers in their cells, and their only possessions  were one piece of soap, a towel, a corncob pipe, and tobacco. A prisoner could smoke  three times an evening with a trustee  moving from block to block with a torch to  light his pipe or cigarette.

Trustees were also inmates, but they were considered  harmless by the guards and had more freedoms. Indiana State Prison also  had private businesses inside to tap into  the forced labor of the prisoners. Seamster Dillinger was assigned to Shop 8A of the Gordon East Coast Shirt Factory and got mad skills  on the Tomcat sewing machine, setting collars on Blue Yank work shirts.

Among his coworkers at the Shirt Shop were his buddies  Harry Pierpont and Homer van Meter. Homer and Harry had already given  the guards a lot of trouble. Pierpont had tried and failed  to escape four times but was working on a fifth attempt. Though Dillinger was a nobody  in the big house, he was liked by almost  everyone for his humor and his willingness to help  a fellow inmate out.

Still, he misbehaved and  was punished for several offenses: “…broke into the garden house and  stole all the melons and tomatoes.” “…cooking over fire in cell,” “…possessing several books and  cigarette papers and a lighter.” He was put into  solitary confinement twice for “…having a razor in his cell  and shaving with it.

” But something changed when  he left solitary for the last offense. One inmate claimed he’d grown up from a “harebrained, good-natured kid  to a real man.” Since Michigan City was much  further north than Pendleton, it was harder for  Johnnie’s family to visit him. They just wrote letters. On October 24, 1929, five inmates,  led by Russel “Boobie” Clark, organized a strike in the prison shops.

However,  Deputy Warden Harry D. Claudy, responsible for security inside the walls, isolated the ring leaders  and ended the trouble. Warden Claudy was universally hated  and nicknamed I, God because of how he said, “My God.” Dillinger hadn’t joined the strike because he feared it would hurt  his chances at parole.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Each of Dillinger’s petitions  for clemency was turned down, and Johnnie became depressed. He was no longer interested  in joining the baseball team. He just wanted to get out. However, things on the outside were arguably about to get  a lot worse than inside. CHAPTER 15: BLACK TUESDAY Six months after  the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, the Roaring Twenties came  to a grinding halt and, worse, fell off a cliff.

Here’s the short version… The period after World War I  was party time USA. The economy was booming. Production was booming. People had money to burn, and many bought stocks  to make a quick buck. Banks loaned people money  to buy these stocks. Predictably, stock market figures went up, and even more stuff  could be produced.

However, factories  churned out products faster than people could buy them. As a result, the prices  of the products dropped, and with it, the stock value. Well, it should have. But it didn’t. These artificially inflated stocks  created an economic bubble. And bubbles can only burst. On September 20, 1929,  the London stock market crashed, and America panicked.

Just as the government  intervened during the 1907 crisis, capital was injected into stocks  to save the economy. But the market fluctuated too much. On October 28, 1929,  or “Black Monday,” people and companies started  selling their stocks en masse, and the investments became worthless. The DOW fell by 13%.

On October 29, “Black Tuesday,”  a record number of stocks were traded, and the DOW fell by another 12%. Within no time,  no one had money left to invest, and the American industry collapsed, taking the economy down with it. Thus began the Great Depression. Thousands of families lost their jobs and were forced into a nomadic life, going from town to town  searching for a better life, which was nowhere to be found.

Because people no longer had money, the banks collapsed as well. Nearly half the banks closed  due to bad investments, embezzlement, mismanagement, and massive withdrawal runs by a panicked public, and they took  their costumer’s money with them. People were furious  at these heartless institutions that stole money from loyal customers, and bank robbers became the new heroes, punishing the banks  for their evil behavior.

Of course, the bank’s losses were covered by insurance companies, but yeah… President Herbert Hoover did…  nothing to help the Americans. He firmly believed that  everyone should just suck it up and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, the good ole American way. But too few people  were left owning boots.

Protests erupted everywhere, and people marched on Washington, D.C. When things got violent, soldiers and tanks were deployed  to push back the starving crowds. It was not a good look  for the Republican President, and the Democrats got ready  to swoop into the rescue. CHAPTER 16: SHELTERED John Dillinger and inmates everywhere were sheltered from the disaster that unfolded beyond their prison gates.

They had lodging, heat,  and three squares a day, and one could argue  that prisoners were better off than the unincarcerated, who were free but homeless,  cold, and hungry. But the Penal system was in trouble. The Prohibition Era had  already massively driven up the costs for law enforcement,  jails, and prisons.

But in the Depression Era,  crime rates went through the roof. The prisons were bursting at the seams. No one had money to pay for it all. People wondered if perhaps  now was a good time to end the ban on alcohol,  drive down crime, and bring back jobs and revenues. Administrations everywhere realized they should  just let some inmates go.

Some wouldn’t wait for  this release lottery and helped themselves. On December 29, 1929, Harry Pierpont let himself out of his cell with a homemade key  and freed eleven others. They took apart their iron beds  to make a ladder but were caught while sawing out  the bars of a window. Dillinger shared Pierpont’s  desire to get out but couldn’t bring himself  to join his escape attempts.

He was counting on his parole  to set him free. Homer van Meter also set  his sights on parole and did a 180. He became a model prisoner and  studied law, history, and philosophy. His performance convinced many, but he had no intention of going straight. He just wanted to get on the outside… where the bank robbers were.

CHAPTER 17:  ON THE LAM On December 16, 1930, Lamm,  Walter Dietrich, James “Oklahoma Jack” Clark, and seventy-one-year-old  G. W. “Dad” Landy entered the Citizens State Bank of Clinton, Indiana. They gathered $15,000  in mere minutes and escaped in a new Buick sedan. However, when a local barber  emerged from his store with a shotgun, the getaway driver panicked,  made a fast U-turn, hit the curb,  and blew out a tire.

The Gang stole another car  belonging to an elderly man. It had been fitted with a limiter, with a top speed of 35 miles an hour. The next car they stole was a truck with almost no water in the radiator. The next car they commandeered only had half a gallon of gas, and the chase ended  in Illinois in a shootout.

Nearly 200 policemen and vigilantes  killed Lamm and the driver. Dad Landy unalived himself, and Clark and Dietrich were captured and sent to Michigan City for life. But there were plenty more gangsters  where they came from. CHAPTER 18: GANGSTERS GALORE In 1930, 26-year-old  Charles Arthur Floyd was paroled after serving five years  in a Missouri prison for a grocery store robbery in 1925.

Charles moved to Kansas  and tried to go straight, but the police constantly harassed him, and he became bitter. So, he teamed up with some prison pals and was right back at it In no time, he was arrested again  for a bank robbery which cost a police officer his life. But, while on the train ride to prison, he jumped out a window, and fled to Oklahoma to continue  his crime spree.

The world knows him  as Pretty Boy Floyd. There was the Barrow Gang. Clyde Chestnut Barrow,  or as he preferred, Clyde Champion Barrow, was a two-bit burglar who  ransacked stores throughout North Texas with his brother Ivan, named Buck. In January 1930, Buck was captured  and sent to jail. Clyde, who had just met  a babysitter named Bonnie Parker, was arrested shortly after.

He convinced Bonnie  to smuggle a gun into the prison and used it to escape with two other men. Clyde went right back to  stealing cars and burglarizing stores. He was caught again and sent  to prison for fourteen years but got out after two. Bonnie and Clyde were immediately reunited. While Clyde tried to go straight  and get an honest job, like Floyd, the police harassed him, and he swore to his mom: “Mama, I’m never gonna work again, and I’ll never [be arrested] again, either.

I’m not ever going back  to that [prison] hell hole. I’ll die first. I swear it, they’re gonna  have to kill me.” Clyde chose a life of crime  and started the Barrow Gang. Bonnie wasn’t involved other than  sometimes being in the getaway car. One time, it stalled,  and they were cornered. Clyde got away,  but Bonnie was arrested.

She was released three months later, and the Barrow Gang roamed the states, living out of their cars, and robbing random stores and gas stations. However, the Gang remained largely  unknown outside Texas, for now. Then there was the Barker Gang, a bunch of murderous hillbillies  from Tulsa, Oklahoma, consisting of two of  Kate “Ma” Barker’s youngest sons, ex-convicts Fred  and Arthur “Doc” Barker.

Don’t buy into  the FBI-sponsored myth that the sixty-something Ma Barker  was the uber-villainous. machine gun-wielding brains of the Gang. She was no criminal,  no mastermind, never fired a gun,  nor robbed a bank. Her only crime was caring deeply  for her criminal sons, who took good care of her. No, the brains of the Barker Gang was  Alvin Karpis, from Wichita, Kansas.

He was basically Ma Barker’s adopted son and referred to the Gang  as the Barker-Karpis Gang, which added more crooks along the way. They killed several cops, and with law enforcement on their tails, Karpis figured there were  safer ways to make money: kidnapping. He got his inspiration from kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s  infant son in New Jersey.

The ransom was paid,  but the kid was found dead. Compared to the high-risk,  potentially low-yield bank robberies, the low-risk potentially  high-yield kidnappings became all the rage  among various gangs. The Barker-Karpis Gang gave it a whirl. As did another gangster  named George Kelly Barnes, AKA “Machine Gun” Kelly, and his highly-experienced  criminal wife Kathryn Thorne.

More gangs and gangsters  terrorized the land, but these are the ones to remember. With all the gang action outside, the crooks on the inside  were itching to get out and become part of  this colorful mosaic of crime. Well, they were working on it  with a brand new escape plan. CHAPTER 19: ESCAPE PLAN In the summer of 1932, four men working in  the Shirt Shop teamed up and planned a joint prison break.

The leader, Harry Pierpont, was joined by 33-year-old  John “Red” Hamilton, 43-year-old Charles Makley, and 34-year-old Russell Clark. They were all bank robbers  with little chance of parole. Makley figured they should  just bribe a few key guards and find someone on the outside who could get three or four guns inside.

That guy would first need  to gather enough cash for the bribes, the guns,  and a solid hideout. But none of the men of Team Escapee had friends who fit  the bill on the outside, so they’d find someone on the inside about to be on the outside soon. Hellooo, John Dillinger. Pierpont promised Johnnie  that if he helped them escape, they’d make him the driver  in their bank-robbing team.

Dillinger, excited at the prospect  of becoming a real-life gangster, eagerly said yes. Over the next few months, the Gang taught Johnnie  everything they knew about how to get his hands on money. They gave him a “jug list” of  the easiest banks and stores to rob, the names and addresses  of reliable accomplices, the locations to fence  the stolen goods and money, and instructions on how  to exchange bearer bonds for cash.

As the plans progressed,  the group added more members. For one, Dillinger insisted that James Jenkins  be included in their escape. Jenkins was serving life  on a first-degree murder charge during a store robbery. He was considered  unreliable and unruly, but Dillinger insisted. He had a pretty sister Johnnie liked.

Another addition to Team Escapee was the highly knowledgeable  Walter Dietrich. He promised to train Dillinger  in the Lamm Technique. While Johnnie was getting  a top-notch gangster education, he ramped up the letter writing, pleading with his family  to help him get paroled. They more than answered his call.

By 1933, the Parole board was flooded with letters from Mooresville residents, many of them leaders of the community, who all believed Dillinger’s sentence  had been too harsh. However, none of the inmates  seemed to realize that the world outside  had changed dramatically… and was about to change a whole lot more…

there was a new sheriff in town… er… a new President in the White House. CHAPTER 20: F.D.R. By 1932, almost a quarter of all workers in the United States were unemployed. Hundreds of thousands had  lost their homes to foreclosure. And the many homeless  ended up making camps, mockingly called “Hoovervilles,” anywhere they could.

The effects of the Depression worsened because a severe drought hit the Midwest, turning precious farmland  into a so-called Dust Bowl. Tens of thousands of farms were abandoned. Without farms, jobs, and money, food, clothing,  and medicine became scarce. Hunger swept the nation,  and though there were breadlines, the charities running them eventually ran out of funds  to keep them going.

President Herbert Hoover did nothing still convinced Americans  were resilient enough to overcome adversity on their own. Besides, private businesses  should pick up the slack. Well, they didn’t. The Governor of New York,  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his advisors decided  to act to prevent mass deaths. In a first for State Government, FDR launched several employment programs.

And he ran for President after  securing the Democratic nomination. Once toe to toe on the national stage, the match was uneven. Hoover, not even really  backed by his own party, was considered  the passive status quo, and FDR was seen as  the proactive symbol of hope. Many blamed Hoover for the Great Depression and, worse, his non-action in  the years of hardship that followed.

On the campaign trail, angry citizens often threw objects  at him or his car as he rode through city streets. Roosevelt campaigned on  an ease-the-depression platform, presenting a series  of measures he called “a new deal for  the American people.” FDR vowed that  “Happy Days Are Here Again!” Better yet, he vowed to end Prohibition.

He argued that a legalized  liquor industry would create jobs, generate tax revenue, and ease the Great Depression. Once everyone can get drunk again,  legally, everybody wins! In November 1932, Roosevelt easily  defeated incumbent President Hoover and was elected the 32nd president  of the United States of America.

And tied in with his landslide win, many Democrats won  in the various state elections. Winning the popular vote  also guaranteed Prohibition’s end. In February 1933, Congress  adopted a resolution proposing a 21st Amendment  to the Constitution to repeal the 18th Amendment. By December, it was done, though it wasn’t until 1966  before all States ended the ban.

The new President also promised to tackle the destabilizing  crime wave sweeping the mid-west. On March 4, 1933,  in his inaugural address, Roosevelt famously speeched: “So first of all,  let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, nameless unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts  to convert retreat into advance.

[…] This Nation asks for action,  and action now. We must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for  the good of a common principle […] I shall ask the Congress for  the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis – broad executive power to  wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that  would be given me if we were, in fact, invaded by a foreign foe.

” Them fighting words scared the people. Roosevelt’s speech conjured images of martial law, anarchy,  and dictatorship. However, Roosevelt  did not declare war on the ordinary, law-abiding citizens but on the gangsters who had unleashed  the fracking fury on the American people. Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly,  and the Barrow and Barker-Karpis gangs had better watch out.

FDR wasn’t sending soldiers into battle to wage this war on crime but agents of the Justice Department’s  obscure Bureau of Investigation. This branch of government  would become known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, two years later in 1935. CHAPTER 21: FUZZY LINES The man in charge  of the Bureau of Investigation was a 38-year-old bureaucrat named John Edgar Hoover, who ran “an odd-job detective agency with fuzzy lines of  authority and responsibility.

” The Justice Department’s  Bureau of Investigation had been created in 1908 to investigate the  regulation of interstate commerce but had gained a horrific reputation. It had become a nest  of nepotism and corruption, with agents blackmailing congressmen, selling liquor licenses to bootleggers, and auctioning off  presidential pardons.

After a Senate probe kicked out  the Bureau’s Director and indicted the Attorney General for the unholy mess they’d created, the honest and industrious  Assistant Director J. Edgar Hoover was given interim leadership. The 29-year-old  had big and detailed plans. Hoover modeled the  new and improved federal force on UK’s Scotland Yard.

He was looking  for young, bright, clean, neat, well-spoken,  energetic white men between twenty-five and thirty-five, with law degrees,  from solid families. In other words,  all men like himself. And he got them. One such lawyer agent  was a Southern gentleman named Melvin Purvis, a loyal,  hard-working young man who quickly rose through the ranks to become the Special Agent  in Charge of the Chicago Field Office, one of the most  crime-ridden towns out there.

Remember him. Hoover ruled with an iron fist. He didn’t tolerate backtalk and punished agents  for the slightest infraction of the strict rules he’d implemented. His drastic measures transformed the Bureau into a modern, efficient  government organization. Hoover closed ineffective field offices, streamlined bureaucracy,  standardized paperwork, and created a chain of command.

He was devoted to “scientific policing,” crimefighting based on fingerprint-  and evidence-based analysis. Interim was removed from his title. Hoover’s role was strictly administrative, and he seldom left his office, but his agents roamed  the country constantly on weeklong, even monthlong assignments. The agents’ family lives,  if they had any, suffered greatly, and most agents  were or became bachelors.

There was one teensy weensy  problem with the Bureau. Hoover’s men were strictly investigators, or “Fact Finders” as he called them, not policemen. Crimes were handled by the state, the Bureau investigated federal offenses, including sedition,  interstate car theft, bankruptcies,  anti-trust violations, land fraud,  federal prison breakouts, and crime on Indian reservations.

The Bureau had also overseen the investigation of  the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. And Hoover had been instrumental  in passing the Lindbergh Law, which made kidnapping a federal crime once a kidnapper or victim  crossed state borders. But they didn’t carry guns. Once it was time to make arrests, they stepped aside and  let local or state police do the honors.

Often, these cops were  not the most… upstanding officers. Most men were hired  because no one wanted the job since the pay  was minimal and irregular. In some cases,  pay only came from rewards offered for criminals  the State wanted. Or… well, from bribes. As you can imagine, police departments were  not thrilled to see these snooty federal men  blow into town.

Their arrival upset the lucrative deals they’d made with the gangsters. The Agents jobs were often frustrated by corrupt policemen who tipped off those about to be arrested for a fee, giving them plenty of time to get away. After Roosevelt’s election win, his advisers pushed hard  for a strong central government with a strong federal police force.

Hoover and his supporters  wanted to prove their worth. They were champing at the bit to end police corruption in State  and local law enforcement. Hoover’s enemies, corrupt congressmen, and corrupter city governments, rejected his plans. Naturally. In fact, Hoover was deemed  so completely unlikable that everyone assumed  the President would fire him.

It was a close call, but Jayee lobbied something fierce, and the new  Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings kept him on. In quick succession, the Bureau was renamed United States Bureau of Investigation, Division of Investigation, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m just gonna stick to  Bureau of Investigation in this series to keep it simple.

The moment he realized  his job as Director was secured, Hoover demanded a chance to prove his  awesome force’s effectiveness by targeting a group completely  outside the Bureau’s jurisdiction: bank robbers. CHAPTER 22: STROKE OF A PEN 29-year-old John Dillinger’s  scheduled parole hearing was looking good due  to the relentless efforts of his family.

By April 1933, they’d gathered signatures of nearly 200 of  Mooresville’s upstanding citizens on a petition urging his parole. Junior was needed  on his aging father’s farm. His stepmother, Lizzie,  had been hospitalized with a long, lingering illness. Now, I know what you’re thinking: wasn’t this what happened to his mom? Yes.  But nothing nefarious was going on.

Thems the times. The Free-Dillinger-Now Fanclub got Mooresville physician J.E. Comer to write the newly elected  Indiana Governor Paul Vories McNutt: “He is a bright man  and, so far as I know, was never in trouble until  this unfortunate circumstance placed him in  the condition he is now in. I believe the community  at large would sanction his release and think all would help him to become the man he should.

” The cherry on top was  Frank Morgan’s signature, the poor old grocer  Dillinger had attacked. Audrey and crew kinda badgered  him into signing it, though. The bonus cherry was from former  County Judge Joseph Williams, who had put Dillinger away. He wrote: “I believe if this prisoner is paroled, that he had learned his lesson and that he will go  straight in the future and will make a useful  and honorable citizen.

” And for bonus cherry three, the Judge’s newly elected replacement,  Chester Vernon, also agreed. All ringing endorsements. But Dillinger needed a miracle: he had only served nine of  his ten-year minimum sentence. Therefore, the case wasn’t brought before the board of trustees  at the Indiana State Penitentiary but instead presented to the Governor’s  Clemency Commission in Indianapolis and Indiana Governor McNutt, who  happened to hail from Morgan County.

They were in the middle of trying  to balance the budget and considered cutting  certain prisoners loose to save money. The commission approved  the parole two to one abstain, and on May 9, 1933, paperwork to free  inmate #13225 hit McNutt’s desk. On May 10, the Governor  signed John Dillinger’s release order, Executive Order #7723,  with the stroke of a pen.

At the bottom, it stated: This Parole will be revoked  for any violation hereof and may be revoked at any time for the good of the prisoner and if the interests  of society so warrant. Dillinger heard the news while  he setting collars in the Shirt factory. Nine days later, McNutt also  signed Homer van Meter’s release papers.

But paperwork took time to clear. A lot of time. CHAPTER 23:  GOING STRAIGHT After the decision was made to release John Dillinger  back into the world, nothing happened for eleven days. Then, in the early afternoon  of May 20, 1933, Indiana State Prison  Warden Walter H. Daly was handed a telegram  from a prisoner’s father: JOHN DILLINGER NO 13225 MOTHER NOT EXPECTED TO LIVE CAN YOU SEND HIM AT ONCE ANSWER.

“Mom” had been making a cake for her son Hubert’s upcoming birthday when she suffered a stroke and collapsed on  the farmhouse kitchen floor. Daly told an assistant  to finish processing Dillinger’s papers. He could be picked up in two days. Hubert Dillinger and Fred Hancock, Audrey’s eldest son, sped the 140 miles north  to Michigan City in an old car, and arrived just  after 6 PM on May 22.

John Jr., brighter,  trimmer, and more muscular, was given a cheap suit, a ten-dollar bill, and a handshake from the Warden. On his way out, he turned to look at  the hated building and said: “I’d rather be dead  than ever go back in there.” The trio raced home, but an overheating engine  and a blown tire slowed them down  by twenty minutes.

They arrived at the Dillinger farm  in Mooresville at 12:30 AM, just as another car pulled  into the driveway: the local funeral director. John walked into the house,  saw his father, and asked: “Where’s Mom?” His father couldn’t speak. Mom had died only minutes before. John Sr. recalled: “I just looked up at him, trying to see his face  that swam in my tears,” The two embraced and wept together.

Johnnie had lost his mom, his stepmom, the love of his life, his wife, and nearly nine years  of his formative years. It was time for a change. In the car to  Crown Hill Cemetary in Indianapolis, Dillinger told the undertaker: “I’m sick of it.  I’m going straight.” When John left the solemn funeral, he paid a visit to Frank Morgan.

Morgan recalled: “He shook my hand and said, ‘I want to apologize  for socking you that time. I’ve turned over a new leaf.  I’ve reformed. I want to thank you  for helping me get my parole.’ He seemed to realize  that he had been bad.” After making amends with Morgan, John dropped in on his ex-wife,  spooking her.

Beryl figured “He just wanted to know  how I was getting along. I asked him to leave, and he did.” Johnnie got a visit  from Mrs. Gertrude Reinier, the Quaker pastor of the Friend’s church that the Dillingers attended. The Indiana State Warden  had sent her a letter asking her to look in  on John Jr.’s “spiritual needs.

” Many townsfolk believed that Ed Singleton had been the crime’s mastermind and that Dillinger was just a shill. Some wondered, even worried,  whether Dillinger would seek revenge. It was rumored that Singleton  had built a saferoom and always carried a knife. Johnnie saw Ed at a local gas station. And ignored him.

A few Sundays later,  on Father’s Day, he attended a church service where the pastor preached  about the prodigal son. Dillinger wept. Pastor Reinier remembered. “Throughout the sermon, young John  sat there beside his father crying. Afterwards, he came to me and said: You will never know how much good  that sermon has done me.

” While Pastor Reinier cheered Johnnie on, some at the strict Quaker church  thought Dillinger was… well, full of it. During an “altar call,” a Quaker ritual  involving church members kneeling at the altar to support a sinner, Dillinger was left on his own. He was furious and  told Audrey afterward that: “I will never go to church again  as long as I live.

” The parishioners must  have picked up on something… In the two weeks he’d been back, John Dillinger had already  robbed two supermarkets, a drugstore, and a small bank. More about that in the next episode. See you there!