John Dillinger: America’s First Public Enemy Rogues Gallery  Episode 3

July 22nd, 1934 is a steamy summer night in Chicago. Escaping the sweltering heat, public enemy number one, John Dillinger, spends 2 hours enjoying a gangster picture with his girlfriend and the infamous lady in red. Stepping out of the theater, Dillinger unwittingly steps into a deadly trap set by the FBI and East Chicago police.

 Within seconds, Dillinger’s meteoric career  as America’s most notorious criminal ends as he lays dying in a pool of  blood. A stunned crowd gathers around Dillinger’s  body and dips handkerchiefs in his blood for a souvenir, soaking up a piece of the legend that  John Dillinger had become.

Rogu’s Gallery is narrated by William Debain. This episode, John Dillinger. How could a simple farm boy  become the first public enemy number one? In a brief career which lasted only 15 months, Dillinger is arguably the most notorious criminal of this century. A man both hunted  and celebrated, a hero and a villain.

 The first media savvy outlaw whose good looks, affable charm, and outrageous exploits make him irresistible to the  public at large and to women in particular. Known for his fearlessness and bravado, he is at the same time so average and easygoing that he is able to hide in plain sight.

 Even when his mug  shot is on the front page of every paper in the country, it becomes a personal obsession for J. Edgar Hoover to capture Dillinger, without whom there may never have been an FBI. Ultimately, Hoover will prevail, but not before Dillinger leads the entire country on one of the most sensational manhunts in history and becomes the country’s first superstar outlaw.

Dillinger  was the last of the rugged individualists. It was a cops and robbers game nationwide, the Gmen versus John Dillinger. The truth of the matter was he was a he was a cop killer and a bank robber. He was not a hero.  He was spectacular. He had style in class.  Although he was a bad guy, he he made being a bad guy look good the way he did it.

 Finding the truth behind  his myth means turning back the clock to a time and a place which bears little resemblance to present-day America. John Herbert Dillinger is born June 22nd, 1903 in Indianapolis, Indiana. His mother dies when he’s three, and young Jon is raised by his doting 16-year-old sister, Audrey.

Dillinger’s father, a stern and god-fearing man, remarries when Jon is nine. Not long after, Dillinger leads his first gang called the Dirty Dozen. When the gang is caught stealing coal, Dillinger makes his first appearance in court. The judge tells Dillinger to stop chewing gum and take off his hat. Dillinger smiles defiantly and puts the gum on his cap, to which the judge replies, “Your mind is crippled.

” Dillinger’s wild behavior prompts his father to move the family to a farm in the small town of Moorsville, Indiana. >> He was considered a basically likable kid, but um had problems with discipline with his father who would blow hot and cold. He would punish him one time and not punish him another and try to get him to settle down to farm life and Dillinger would rather play pool.

Already a petty delinquent, Dillinger drops out of school at 16 and begins hanging out in pool holes. He takes odd jobs, but his real passions are his hero Jesse James, baseball, and girls. [cheering] At 19, brokenhearted over a teenage romance, he decides to join the Navy. Navy life disagrees with Dillinger and after going AWOL and being put in solitary confinement, he simply deserts, earning a dishonorable discharge.

Returning to Moorsville, he marries 16-year-old Barl Hovius. >> He might not have been a good husband, but uh Dillinger was very restless, and he was into more or less harmless delinquency until he uh fell in with a older fellow named Ed Singleton. Singleton is older, an ex-con, and Dillinger’s teammate on the local baseball team.

 He soon encourages Dillinger to play a much more dangerous game. [music] Grosser BF Morgan is heading home with the day’s receipts. Dillinger and Singleton attack Morgan, bludgeoning him over the head with a bolt wrapped in a sack. But the feisty old man refuses [music] to give up the money, and the robbery is unsuccessful. Dillinger is captured the next day.

Without a lawyer, he pleads guilty, expecting leniency. Instead, [music] the judge throws the book at him, and he’s harshly sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. >> It must have been a severe shock. He didn’t have a lawyer. He didn’t have any good legal advice. He didn’t uh know what he was doing, what he was getting into.

 And so when the court dropped the hammer on him, he must have felt rather bitter. >> When Dillinger enters the gate of Pendleton [music] Reformatory, he crosses a threshold from which there is no turning back. Disillusioned and angry, he spends his youth serving this sentence and falls under the toutelage of the hardened criminals who become his mentors and the core of his gang.

Harry Pont, Russell Clark, [music] Charles Mley, and Homer Van Meter. Veteran bank robbers who take Dillinger, an avid pupil, under their wing. [music] >> He was more or less like any rowdy farm boy. And had it not been for the prison experience. He probably would have grown [music] out of it. >> After 5 years and several botched escape attempts, he has dealt two more blows.

When his wife files for divorce, Dillinger is devastated. A few weeks later, he is denied parole. Hopeless, he makes an outrageous request to be transferred to the much harsher Indiana State Prison. [music] He claims it’s because they have a better baseball team, but in reality, he is eager to join his mentor, Harry [music] Pont, who has been transferred there for being a troublemaker.

 Another four years of hard time pass before Dillinger [music] is finally parrolled. But where he entered prison a novice, Dillinger leaves a hardened, embittered criminal. Walking out of that prison for Dillinger was probably like embarking on a new career. He already had arrangements made with the men that he’d worked with in the prison to smuggle them guns, create a bank robbing gang.

 Had already committed himself to a life of crime. On May 22nd, 1933, Dillinger leaves Indiana State Prison and returns home to receive another blow. His ailing stepmother, whom Jon has come to love as his own, [music] has died just hours before his homecoming. Being an ex-con in a small town at the height of the depression doesn’t leave Dillinger [music] many opportunities.

And within two months of his release, just shy of his 30th birthday, Dillinger commits his first bank robbery. Together with two accompllices, he holds up the bank in New Carile, Ohio. Facing nothing more daunting than a nervous teller and an open safe. In less than 5 minutes, he leaves the bank with $3,500.

In less than a year, he will be the most famous and the most hunted man in America. After the success of his first bank job, Dillinger pulls off three more robberies within the next month. With his flare for the dramatic, leaping athletically over counters and his polite, gentle manner, he quickly captures the public’s attention.

 People were looking for a hero in those days, and this [music] guy provided it. He never stole from any people. He stole from the banks. [music] And of course that was a symbol of authority to a lot of people who didn’t have money in the banks and wish they did. >> In fact, Dillinger’s popularity owes much to the moment in history in which he emerged.

America is in the grip of the depression with banks seen as heartless institutions foreclosing on innocent people. Prohibition has bred massive corruption and eroded public confidence [music] in the law. At a time when the economy was as bad as it was, when people were looking for heroes, John Dillinger was lionized as a romantic individual.

>> He wasn’t exactly a folk hero, but he was a folk character. He was somebody whose adventures they could follow like uh Robin Hood. >> He had a reputation for giving money to the needy people, people uh farmers who couldn’t pay their mortgages. >> While known for his generosity, Dillinger is also fiercely loyal.

Finally in a position to deliver on the promise he made to his fellow inmates, he tosses a package of guns and ammunition over the prison wall. Perant, Hamilton, Mley, and seven other men use the guns to pull off a spectacular prison break. But at the same time the gang is on its way out of prison, Dillinger is on his way back in.

While waiting for his pals to break out, Dillinger begins dating a young divorce named Mary Long Maker. Despite being a well publicized [music] wanted man, he brazenly enjoys going out with her in public. >> He went to the World’s Fair in Chicago. Thousands and thousands of people [music] milling around at the fairground.

 And here’s a wanted criminal not only milling around with them, but he went up to a police officer and asked, “May I take your picture?” And the cop posed for him while he photographed the guy. He seemed to uh like living on the edge of danger that way. But on September 25th, 1933, the fun and games come to an end when police snare Dillinger at Mary’s apartment.

Dillinger’s fugitive [music] pals find him awaiting trial in a small jail in Lima, Ohio. I stick to my friends and my friends stick to me, he says. [music] And so they do, returning the favor by breaking him out of the small jail and killing Sheriff Jesse Sarver in the process. It is Dillinger’s first exposure to murder and the violent nature that he does not share with his partners.

>> He was [music] by no means a psychopath. He avoided hurting people. I would say he was crooked but not twisted. >> But for now, the core of what will soon become famous as the Dillinger gang is reunited. In reality, the gang is very democratic and it’s Peront, if anyone, who acts more as the leader, not the rookie Dillinger.

 It’s the police who branded the Dillinger [music] gang in a deliberate attempt to create friction among Dillinger and Peront. It doesn’t work. For now, the gang is unstoppable. They just [music] need one thing, guns. 2 days after the jailbreak, the Dillinger gang makes history. Not by robbing banks, but police stations in Auburn and Peru, Indiana.

 They come away with submachine guns, rifles, pistols, bulletproof vests, and enough ammunition for a small army. Now outgunning most of the cops, they begin a mad crime spree across the entire Midwest. With the motorc car and the absence of coordinated law enforcement, it was possible to have a [music] pretty effective uh life of crime in one state and skip across the line to another and uh get away with it.

But that also demonstrated the ineffectiveness of localized law enforcement. >> John Dillinger really did help the FBI become uh wellestablished in law enforcement. The FBI was at that point only about 9 years old and still fairly new in terms of law enforcement. We were more investigators and were not very much involved in apprehending armed and dangerous fugitives.

 In 1933, the bureau has less than 600 agents not yet licensed to carry [music] guns, but bureau head Jed Garoover is determined to prove his [music] force of Gmen. At the time that John Dillinger was robbing banks, it was not a federal crime. It became a federal crime in the mid 1930s due in part to John Dillinger and his cohorts robbing banks and crossing state lines.

 Hoover saw these armed robbers as his ticket to getting laws passed that were in fact extremely progressive. >> Frustrated by his inability to fight organized crime, Hoover seizes the opportunity to nail a notorious desperado like Dillinger. He launches a highly publicized campaign designed to keep [music] Dillinger and the FBI in the news. >> By publicizing the exploits of Dillinger, the [music] FBI was able to persuade Congress of the need for federal anti-rime laws.

 So Dillinger happened to come along at [music] just exactly the right moment. And it was like the Gmen were born overnight as a result of Dillinger. The FBI couldn’t catch him. They couldn’t keep up with the guy. Here’s one one little guy getting away with all of this stuff and thumbming his nose at the US government and uh doing it with style before dealing robbed a bank.

 He checked it out just like going for a job interview. As the police are getting more sophisticated, so too is Dillinger, who develops a highly professional method. Weeks prior to the robbery, two of the gang visit the bank to survey the interior, noting the location of the safes and who opens them. At the same time, the escape route is driven several [music] times.

 Gas cans are hidden by the side of the road as are cans of nails. >> And then when he was making his getaway, if the cops were chasing him, he’d throw these nails out the window of the car so the police would get flat tires. It’s It was a good story. Whatever he did made good copy for the news. >> The newspapers had a real dilemma dealing with Dillinger.

 Just the term daring daylight bank robbery betrayed a certain respect for somebody who could get away with what Dillinger was getting away with. Dillinger sold newspapers. Uh his his long name alone looked great in the headline all the way across page one. Dillinger did this. Dillinger robs bank. Dillinger escapes jail.

 He was good press as as we would say today. As a reporter, you’d be sitting down writing a true adventure story when you’re just writing what he did yesterday. >> On October 23rd, the Dillinger gang is at it again, robbing $20,000 in Greencastle, Indiana. With this latest robbery, the entire state of Indiana is now in an uproar.

 State police go on 24-hour duty and over 600 National Guardsmen are deputized. In the midst of all this panic, Dillinger falls in love. Her name is Evelyn Fchett, known as Billy. She is an attractive 26-year-old [music] who impresses Dillinger with both her refined demeanor and passionate love making. Falling in love with John was something that took care of itself.

 She [music] later writes, “I always figured that what he did was one thing and what he was another. I was in love with what he was.” Billy becomes his constant companion in a fast-paced, dangerous life of crime and occasionally his able accomplice. When Dillinger is ambushed during a doctor’s visit, [music] it is Billy who drives their car at 85 mph through the city, leaving the police in the dust.

The car is later found with 52 bullet holes in it. But after losing the police, the pair merrily continue on to a party. But Dillinger’s party is destined to be a short one. He is living fast and furious, driven by an awareness that he has [music] passed a point of no return.

 With just 9 months left to live, Dillinger will transform from a swaggering bank robber into a hunted animal. >> [music] >> In the winter of 1933, things get a little too hot in Chicago. So, Dillinger and gang take a few weeks vacation in Daytona Beach, Florida, renting a 17 room beach house [music] and enjoying the fruits of their labor.

 Their cover is almost blown when the gang deliriously fire their machine guns at the moon to [music] celebrate New Year’s Eve. For many of them, it would be their last. Returning to the Midwest, Dillinger is now wanted in three states, but fame [music] only makes him more cocky and outrageous. >> If alarm went off, this would not concern him.

 Even when they robbed the bank and we seen Wisconsin, there was uh 30 to 45 minute lapse between the time the alarm went off and they finally made their exit. >> But sometimes Dillinger waits too long and is forced to escape using hostages as human shields. When hostages were taken, it was always a polite relationship with them.

 Never real fear that they had. He hadn’t killed many people. Only only William Patrick Ali of the Chicago Police Force was ever killed by Dillinger. As Dillinger tries to make his escape from a robbery of the First National Bank in East Chicago, he encounters tough, dedicated officer Ali, who steadfastly refuses to back down.

 As rounds ricochet off his bulletproof vest, Dillinger shouts, “You asked for it.” and fires his Tommy gun at Omali’s legs to disable him. But as Ali falls, he is struck in the heart and dies instantly. Intentional or not, Dillinger is now a killer. Dillinger, [music] I don’t think, regarded himself as an evil [snorts] person.

 He was a professional bank robber, but he didn’t think of himself as a wrongdoer. and he had a sense of hiding in plain sight. >> Dillinger’s name and face are posted everywhere. Amazingly, he moves about quite freely. >> He seemed fearless. You’d never expect the man at the next table over at the nightclub to be public enemy number one.

And even if he looked like public enemy number one, obviously it couldn’t be because he would be in hiding someplace. Well, that wasn’t the case. He and uh a girlfriend would be the first people out on the dance floor dancing. Uh newspapers would pick up pictures and they had uh wanted posters, but the linger’s face was not that familiar to the average individual and he could walk around because he didn’t look like a criminal and he usually walked away from any suspicion.

 It is still possible for somebody to be walking the streets in a city like Chicago with three or four million people basically have total freedom unless they do something wrong where they get caught. But it’s still a very difficult task. It’s just a different set of rules almost today. He and Art Ori, his lawyer’s contact man, are sitting at a bench one night and the policeman comes up and tells them to move along.

 And instead of panicking or anything else, Dillinger just thanks the officer for the information and they get up and leave. >> Despite his ability to disappear in the crowd following the Ali killing, Dillinger and the gang decide to lay low in Tucson, Arizona. It is here in the desert that Dillinger’s luck dries up. Mley and Clark are staying at a hotel which catches fire and arouse suspicions when they tip firemen $50 to rescue their bags which are filled with weapons and [music] loot.

 The gang is quickly taken into custody. A few hours later, as Dillinger and Billy return to their rented house, they are ambushed by 15 policemen. Armed but outgunned, Dillinger surrenders, [music] saying, “What a laugh to be picked up by a bunch of hick cops. The capture of the Dillinger gang in Tucson was considered a national event.

And the fact that these local officers captured the whole gang without firing a shot uh was considered [music] quite a coup, quite a achievement. And Dillinger became even [music] more famous as all these different states started competing for his extradition. Three Midwestern states battle for Dillinger, who hopes to be sent to Wisconsin, [music] which has no capital punishment, but the judge sends him to Indiana, where if convicted, he will face the electric chair.

 Here lies the inevitable end of criminals like Dillinger. The electric chair yawns for its foder of callous human beasts whose warped minds prompt [music] evil deeds. The wages of sin is death. [bell] Crime never pays. While the rest of the gang is taken by train to stand trial in Ohio, Dillinger is flown back to Indiana, where his plane is met by a mass of photographers, reporters, and curious citizens.

Dillinger finds himself in the middle of a media frenzy as he becomes the country’s first superstar outlaw. >> Uh, it was quite a carnival and he was already a celebrity by then. Everybody wanted to look at Dillinger and it looked like his career was over. He is taken to the escapep proof Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana, where his proud jailer, Sheriff Lillian Holly, and the man assigned to prosecute him, Robert Estole, pose happily for the cameras.

The pictures of the group smiling with their arms around each other cause a tremendous uproar and ultimately cost Esto his career. When Jay Edgar Hoover sees the photos, he is livid. Despite the fact that Dillinger has engaged high-priced, flamboyant attorney Louis Pakquette to defend him, and Sheriff Holly has instituted roundthe-clock vigilance, [music] there is still a fear that Dillinger will escape.

 Crown Point officials refuse to appear weak or inept, and Pquette is able to block Dillinger’s transfer to the more secure Michigan State prison. [music] As a result, Dillinger makes the most amazing prison break in crime history. On Saturday morning, March 3rd, 1934, Dillinger thrusts a wooden gun into the back of a prison guard. Armed only with the handcarved wooden pistol and audacious nerve, he manages to systematically disarm the entire prison staff, including the warden, and herd them into a jail cell.

 Apologizing to the warden, Dillinger passes a hat among his former jailers, politely urging them to donate generously to his escape. With a collection of $15, Dillinger and a fellow inmate grab a couple of machine guns and stroll out of the jail and enter the prison garage where he commandeers the fastest car, Sheriff Holly’s Ford V8.

He takes Deputy Ernest Blunk and mechanic Edwin Sager as hostages [music] and comments to his passengers, “I wish I wasn’t in such a hurry. I’d like to stop at the bank.” After being left on a dirt road, hostage Sager becomes an [music] instant celebrity. >> How was Dillinger’s mood uh during the ride in the car? >> Well, he was very happy.

 He was singing part of the time. >> What uh did he remember any of the songs that he sang? Uh, get along little doggy. Get along. And and uh the last roundup. That’s so >> Dillinger’s escape is unquestionably an astonishing feat. But while the full truth of the escape may never be known, it [music] is known that Dillinger had help.

Deputy Blanc and Mechanic Sager had been paid off and the wooden gun probably supplied by Chicago Underworld Connections. The story on the wooden gun was this. Everybody thought at the time that Dillinger had made it in his cell, that he had carved this [music] out of a chunk of wood and had put some shoe polish on it.

 And the true story, according to Artillery, was that he himself slipped the wooden gun in, not to Dinger, but to the [music] next cellmate, Herbert Young Bloodood, and that Young Bloodood, in turn gave it to Dillinger the morning of the breakout. Dillinger’s escape is flawless, except for one oversight. He drives Sheriff Holly’s car from Indiana to Illinois, thus violating the Federal Dire Act, >> where the new FBI was helpless.

 They didn’t have laws. There are no federal laws against what these guys were doing except stealing cars. So, most of these guys became federal fugitives, not for robbing banks, not for killing people, but because they stole a car and drove it across state lines. The FBI finally has cause to step into the Dillinger case.

 And Hoover pounces on the opportunity. Fiercely determined to make Dillinger pay for thumbming his nose at justice. Hoover charges agent Melvin Pervvis, young bookish head of the Chicago FBI Bureau, to use every means in his power to close the net on the desperado. For Pervvis, capturing Dillinger becomes a personal obsession. By now, Dillinger has become a victim of his own publicity.

 On any given day, there are 15 Dillinger sightings across the [music] Midwest. Local and federal officials relentlessly track down every clue, every possible lead. They will not rest until Dillinger is captured. Dead or alive. I guess my only bad habit is robbing banks, Dillinger [music] confesses.

 I smoke very little and don’t drink much. proving that old habits die hard. Dillinger doesn’t have much time to celebrate his new freedom with Billy Fchett before he is back to work. With the old gang locked up in Ohio, Dillinger joins up with a new gang which includes Homer Van Meter, a wiry, ruthless killer, and a vicious sociopath named Babyface Nelson.

Barely 3 days after the jailbreak, Dillinger and his new gang hit a bank in Sou Falls, South Dakota, and nab nearly $50,000. A week later, they strike again in Mason City, Iowa, netting 52,000 in cash. The new Dillinger gang, as they are called, have quickly established themselves [music] with two of the biggest scores of Dillinger’s career.

You get different figures on how much Dillinger stole. 200,000, 300,000. multiply that for inflation purposes and that turns out to be millions of dollars. But that split up among a number of gang members and the support group that helped these people supplied them cars, supplied them medical treatment, gouged them.

 They had to constantly pay people off with large amounts of money. While Dillinger and his new gang are terrorizing the Midwest with their increasingly ambitious bank jobs, the old gang are on trial in Lima, Ohio. The whole city is practically under martial law, expecting Dillinger to arrive and free his cronies.

 [music] Somehow, Dillinger does slip into town and quickly realizes it would take an army to release his gang. While they wait in vain to be freed, all three are convicted. Perpont and Mley [music] are sentenced to die in the electric chair while Russell Clark is spared with life in prison. Dillinger and Billy flee to St.

 Paul [music] where on March 30th the police net around them closes in and officers surround their apartment. Amazingly, they escape, but Dillinger is wounded in the leg in the ensuing gun battle. With an unprecedented manhunt underway, Dillinger’s world is getting quite small. With nowhere else to go, Dillinger makes an audacious move.

Betting the cops would never expect it, he travels to the most obvious spot, his father’s farm in Morsville, Indiana. With every law enforcement official in the country looking for him, Dillinger spends a warm and loving weekend with [music] his family. He introduces Billy as his bride and poses for pictures with the [music] wooden pistol he used in his escape.

 His sister bakes his favorite coconut cream pie and his father is overjoyed to see him. After Dillinger is safely gone, his father talks to the news reel cameras. >> Don’t think he’s done near as much as they claim he has, but I think he’d given the chance would go straight. And uh as far as the uh family reunion that we claimed we had, we just happened to have a Sunday dinner and no preparations made only for the dinner, but we didn’t know that John was coming.

 John just happened to drop in on it. Leaving home for the last time, Dillinger heads straight into a trap at a roadhouse where he stops to meet an old friend, now turned informer. Although Dillinger manages to escape, he helplessly watches as Billy is arrested and charged with harboring a fugitive. He desperately contemplates heroic rescues and writes her that he wants nothing more than to be allowed to die while holding her in his arms, but there is little he can do aside from hiring Pakquette to defend her.

 Sentenced to two years in prison, they will never see each other again. Having lost the woman he loves, Dillinger tries to keep his gang together at the little Bohemia lodge in remote northern Wisconsin. There was less heat up here from the gunm smoke of Cicero and the like. They came up here just to relax and pull the gang together and uh try as a unit again.

>> The owner, Emo Wanatka, grows suspicious of this large party during the off season. >> Emo Wanetka Jr. was playing baseball with Babyface Nelson and he was so mean. Little Em, who was 8 years old at the time, started to cry because Babyface Nelson threw it so hard. But then his mother sent him to a relative’s birthday party because she smelled these were gangsters up here.

 Convinced that his guests are none other than the infamous Dillinger gang, Watka tips off the FBI, Melvin Pervvis frantically puts together a posy of Gmen and rushes [music] to Wisconsin by plane. Fighting harsh winter conditions and lacking any knowledge of the geography, Pervvis stations his men and mounts a hasty and illprepared attack.

 But as they are getting into position, three civilians exit the lodge and innocently get into their car. Jittery and apprehensive, Pervvis shouts for the car to halt. The windows were rolled up. They couldn’t hear. All of a sudden, the FBI opens up on the three people in the car. Dillinger, meanwhile, hears this.

 The gang has been calmly playing cards, but quickly spring into action. Running upstairs, they discover that the rear of the lodge is unguarded and jump out the window, fleeing into the night. The gang splits up. Dillinger Van Meter and Hamilton stick together while Babyface Nelson encounters a car full of FBI agents and Babyface Nelson sees the headlights. He panics.

 He grabs a Thompson submachine gun and fires into the car, killing FBI agent W. Carter Bound. Meanwhile, the FBI does not know Dillinger has left and they fire all night. The bullets keep hitting this place. Tear gas is wafting through the building. Only on about 7:30 when we’re getting good daylight here in the North Woods do they realize.

 And by this time, Dillingers had a good 8 hour jump. >> The little Bohemia thing was a great black eye for the [music] FBI. Lost Gman in the process. The Gmen also managed to shoot up three innocent people, killing one of them. [music] So, it was a general screw-up on everybody’s part except uh Dillinger, who managed to skin out [music] of there.

 Certain that they had finally caught Dillinger, Hoover happily notifies the press to [music] keep space available for banner headlines. Instead, the allotted space is filled with stories of the bureau’s blunders and incompetence and even calls [snorts and music] for Hoover’s resignation. Despite their primitive efforts at spin control, Dillinger’s the one who comes [music] out on top.

The press [music] had a field day with this. It seemed to confirm the incompetence of the FBI. News reels reporting the fiasco reinforced Dillinger’s image as a depression era Robin Hood. >> And the next day it was Saturday. I found out it was Dillinger. I thought it was from the paper him while he was his two days.

 He had a lot of fun. He’s a good card player and was very continual follow. >> He treated both of us very nice. And he said to me, “Don’t be afraid, mother. And you won’t sit cold because I’ll put this blanket around you.” So far, Dillinger has had a charmed life, but it won’t be long now. The orders are shoot to kill. With the Little Bohemia incident, Dillinger humiliates the authorities one too [music] many times, bringing the full wrath of the FBI upon him.

 The mandate now killed Dillinger. It is now impossible for him to find refuge. And it wasn’t until the FBI [music] started tightening the noose on his support group did they start closing in on Dillinger and his life became more and more desperate. [music] Having to live in the back of a panel truck, having to camp out places, having to hide.

 The last few weeks of his career were uh [music] pretty desperate. >> The rest of John Dillinger’s short life becomes a blur of hiding places. Sick with pneumonia, he and Van Meter roam the countryside in a panel truck, trying to stay one step ahead of the law. There doesn’t seem to be any way out for Dillinger, [music] except for one desperate chance.

Although he and Van Meter desperately wander the countryside living like hunted animals, Dillinger [music] still dreams of living a normal life, marrying his sweetheart Billy, taking care of his dad, and going to the ball game every day. But they [music] are pipe dreams. John Dillinger will never be allowed to live a normal life.

 But what if he could truly change his identity? [music] At the end of May, Dillinger underos painful plastic surgery and alters his fingerprints with acid. He nearly dies from the anesthetic. The surgery is less than perfect, but does alter some of his more prominent features. With dyed hair and a mustache, Dillinger appears in public again.

 He hasn’t pulled any bank jobs in nearly 2 months, and rumors are he’s left the country. In fact, he’s taken up residence in Chicago at a brothel run by an old acquaintance, Anna Sage. Through Anna, Dillinger meets Polly Hamilton, who becomes his new [music] sweetheart. On June 22nd, 1934, Dillinger celebrates his 31st birthday.

 He receives a backhanded present from Jay Edgar Hoover when he’s officially named the [music] country’s first public enemy. number one. Dillinger celebrates by taking Polly dancing at a swanky Chicago club. The fact that he was number one didn’t [music] bother him, but another comment that Hoover made did, and that was that the youth of the country were idolizing him.

 Dillinger was very upset over that comment. Disturbed by the thought of kids romanticizing his lifestyle, Dillinger composes and plans to publish a letter addressed to the youth of the country in which he explains the harsh realities of being an outlaw. [music] He said, “You’re never really at peace, never really at ease. You never can be sure that you’re going to have a full night’s sleep or whether somebody could stick a gun in your ribs.

 Who will turn you in? Who are your friends? Do you really have any friends?” He says, “If I could do it over again, I would not follow the life of crime that I have, although I would advise you to change your decisions and choices while you still can, unfortunately.” And and in this sense, he probably forecast his own death.

 He says, “The end for me will probably be that I’ll end up being shot to death in some alley someplace.” Anna Sage, facing [music] deportation to her native Romania, sees an opportunity in Dillinger and decides [music] to turn him in. She turns to a former boyfriend, a corrupt East Chicago police sergeant named Martin Zarkovich. Zarkovich and Anna [music] Sage had had a relationship going way back into the early 20s.

 In fact, his divorce was uh prompted by [music] his relationship with Anna Sage, who was a madam. He was essentially her pimp. >> When I learned he was down here, I knew he had been killing without mercy. So I went to a policeman I knew and he arranged a conference with the government agent. >> Zarkovich [music] orchestrates a meeting with Melvin Pervvis.

 Still desperate to redeem himself after the fiasco at Little Bohemia, Pervvis strikes a deal. Anna will lead Dillinger [music] into a trap and Pervvis promises to intervene in her deportation hearing. He also allows Sarovich to participate in the trap, ostensibly [music] to avenge the death of fellow officer Omali. But in truth, Zarovich’s motives [music] are much darker.

>> More likely he was after him to silence him. It was almost a mob hit. Because if Dillinger found out that Zarkovich [music] and and a Sage were the people who betrayed him, he [music] would have exposed uh the political corruption that was in East Chicago. Zarkovich was charged on the scene with uh shall we say making sure that Dinger was killed or was it was certainly speculated that his presence on that scene was to verify this Dillinger was not to be taken alive.

It’s blazingly hot in Chicago on Sunday July 22nd 1934. Anna Sage tips Pervvis that Dillinger has invited Polly and her to a movie that night at the air conditioned Biograph Theater. The trap is set. To ensure that no mistake is made, she will wear a bright orange skirt. But much to her annoyance, for the rest of her life, Anna Sage will be known as the Lady in Red, portrayer of John [music] Dillinger.

 Dillinger, a huge fan of gangster movies, enjoys the fictitious exploits of Clark Gable in Manhattan melodrama, completely oblivious to the real life death trap awaiting him outside the theater. For Pervvis and the 20 agents surrounding the Biograph, it is a nerve-wracking 2-hour wait. >> I’ve often thought that the term apprehension is an interesting term because we use that term a lot in the FBI when you apprehend somebody and you report the apprehension of an individual.

 And there is that use of the term apprehension. But there’s also the other use of the word apprehension [music] and that’s concern. What’s going to happen? What’s it’s the unknown? and there’s a dangerous felon, armed and dangerous individual inside this theater. Are we going to be able to make the arrest with nobody getting hurt? Uh, unfortunately for John Dillinger, it ended a little bit differently.

 Among the first to leave the theater at 10:35, Dillinger is identified with [music] Anna and Polly walking on either side of him. Pervvis signals nervously lighting a cigar. As Anna and Polly drop back, the agents move [music] into position. Two shots strike Dillinger. The fatal bullet enters the back of his neck and exits under his right eye.

 Two innocent women are hit by ricochets as Dillinger stumbles forward. He falls in the alley and dies [music] in a pool of blood, his gun still in his pocket. The scene instantly becomes a spectacle. Officials morbidly pose with Dillinger’s [music] lifeless corpse as spectators dip handkerchiefs in his still warm blood. The FBI claims that Dillinger has resisted arrest, [music] but evidence shows the incident is more of an execution.

Hoover told his men, “Don’t shoot unless he draws and fires at you first.” Well, the FBI men and the Indiana cops who were at the scene, they ran up behind him and shot him in the back. Uh he never drew his gun after he was dead and they hauled him away. They he was carrying a gun, but it was still in his pocket.

 It went against the grain of the American people to just bushwack a guy just to shoot him in the back. A lot of newspapers received angry letters complaining that this was not the way to uh take down even a man of Dillinger’s notoriety. >> The FBI receives nearly as much criticism as praise. There are even calls for Hoover’s resignation in the wake of the shooting.

 But Hoover, elated, makes a morbid trophy of Dillinger’s personal items outside his office, pointing out that Dillinger had only $7.70 on him when he was killed. The fact is he left the house by Anna Sage’s admission carrying somewhere 67 $8,000. But one of these Chicago cops said that he saw Zarovich go through Dillinger’s pocket.

 And the $7.70 was supposed to indicate that crime doesn’t pay, but it didn’t pay because the Chicago police stole his money. >> The scenes after Dillinger’s death are even more macob. His corpse is put on public display [music] and thousands pass through to look at a legend up close. So many death masks are made that the skin on his face begins to [music] wear away.

Swarms of people converge on Dillinger’s funeral in Moorsville. So reverent are his admirers that the crowd beats up a reporter for not demonstrating the proper respect. His father offers a final statement to the everpresent news reel cameras. >> I’m awful sorry that John got into this trouble and sorry that it’s ended up the way it has.

 I want the people to know that I tried to raise him right and that he’s always been a goodhearted boy. I believe that’s about all. >> Within months, [music] the rest of the Dillinger gang, Van Meter, Mley, Perpot, and Babyface Nelson, are all dead. Anna Sage becomes a center of [music] controversy when despite the promises made to her, she is still deported to her native Romania.

Melvin Pervvis, lionized by the press for taking down Dillinger, becomes the most famous Gman in America. But there’s only room for one famous Gman. Hounded by the bureau chief, [music] Pervvis resigns less than a year after Dillinger’s death. It’s Hoover himself who benefits most from the life and [music] death of John Dillinger.

Using Dillinger’s colorful career, he builds his FBI into the powerful establishment it is [music] today. But while Hoover will continue to consolidate his power for generations to come, it is this Indiana farm boy, [music] this hooer hoodlam whose short career is the flash point in American crime history.

 [music] It’s with John Dillinger that the modern era of crime fighting is born and the era of romantic [music] desperados dies. Dinger was always himself. He was perceived to be different than he was largely by the the hype that was given in the media, but he he was true to himself. He was a police killer. He was a bank robber.

 But we have a society today where we have many more severe crimes. Putting John Dillinger in 1996, I don’t think he’d even deserve a note on page 29 of the metro section. Frankly, >> if we were to write the story and end it, uh, we [music] would try to make him look like a good bad guy. If there is such a thing as a good bad guy, Dillinger was a good bad guy.

>> When they finally brought him down, I think it could be honestly said that people [music] were a bit uh, saddened. My own father used to [music] remark, I don’t necessarily approve of what John Dillinger done, but you got to give him credit. Heat. [music] Heat. >> [music]